Tag Archives: ambulance

Saturday 10th May 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to switch the alarms back on this morning? That’s right. Bane of Britain has triumphed again.

Consequently I had a nice, long sleep until all of 07:31 when I suddenly awoke with one of these dramatic awakenings that I have every now and again. It was nice, bright sunlight outside so I immediately guessed that there was something wrong, so I glanced at the time.

And after another late night last night a really good sleep probably did me some good too. I was exhausted after the journey back and by the time that I’d finished my meal and was back in here I wasn’t fit for very much.

Nevertheless I wrote the notes and performed some of the backing- up and then crawled off to bed at about 23:40 or something. I was asleep quite quickly and, for a change, I was dead to the World throughout the entire night. I remember nothing whatever until I awoke at 07:31.

Once I’d realised exactly what time it was I dashed … "errr … quite" – ed … into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and sorted out the washing. Far too much to put in one machine so I just put the important things into the washing machine and set it off on its routine.

In the kitchen I had my medication, forgetting the vitamin D and the vitamin B12 that the hospital wants me to take and then back in here I was just about to check the dictaphone when Isabelle the Nurse turned up.

She admired the huge plaster on my leg and read the prescription attentively. She made a list of what she needed and ticked off what we had, indicated on the hospital’s prescription what she needed, and then issued instructions as to what else she needed, promising to write a prescription for tomorrow.

After that, it was breakfast. And then I read more of MY BOOK. Except that I didn’t. I was side-tracked yet again, firstly reading about the curious antics of Ranulf Flambard, the treasurer of William Rufus and imprisoned by Henry I, only to become the first-ever prisoner known to have escaped from the Tower of London, and then of the downfall and subsequent resurgence of William de Forz and the siege and subsequent capture of Castle Bytham by Henry III.

You can probably understand why I was no good at being a University Student. I was always wandering off down alleyways that led me far away from my course syllabus.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something last night about a ferry – a small one like one of the ones that they have here in Granville that go out to the Ile de Chausey. In some kind of tempest or hurricane it had been badly damaged. The ferry company had one of their previous ferries – it was sitting on a plinth outside their office. What they did was to take the boat off the plinth and put it in the water and began to use that. The damaged one, they hauled it out of the water and put it on the plinth. The owners of the company decided that they would give it a thorough overhaul and repair it. Then they would check it every three years for any kind of deterioration and keep on repairing it if it needed it so that if something similar happened again they could take the one off the plinth and drop that in the water and it would be ready to go without any problems whatsoever

There was a similar story about the “Gate Guardians”, the Spitfires and Hurricanes that stood on plinths outside former World War II airfields. When we were kids, on our way to North Wales, we always noticed the one at Hawarden Airfield. However, when the film BATTLE OF BRITAIN was proposed, all of the Gate Guardians were rounded up and where it was possible to do so, were put back into the air.

There was also something about being in hospital and a nurse doing something to me which impressed me so I said something. She replied that she was only a student nurse, which surprised me. I wonder who she was. I’ve had several student nurses attending to me in the past

After that? I had some e-mails to write. There is a mountain of correspondence here going back weeks that I really must answer. However, I must have let the time slip away with me because my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches when I was nowhere near ready.

She turned up, but the taxi didn’t. After waiting half an hour, I ‘phoned them up. "Ohh merde!" said the dispatcher in a voice loud enough that even my cleaner heard it. "I’ll find another vehicle for you".

We decided to go outside and wait, and we had a lovely forty minutes under the sun until an ambulance turned up. I hate them – it’s quite a fight for me to put myself inside – but if it’s the only vehicle available I can’t complain.

It was driven by the driver who took me to Paris. She told me that they had been on the autoroute not far from St-Lô when the call had come through. No wonder that it had taken so long to arrive. I told her that I didn’t understand any of this – after all, the taxi company had brought me back from Paris yesterday so they knew that I was at home.

Hours late at the dialysis centre, and what made it even worse was that it was a three-and-a-half hour session today. Had the taxi been on time, I could have had a very pleasant late afternoon back at my place.

The consolation was that I had Lexi and Océane dealing with me today. All of the nurses there are wonderful but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Lexi really does have the most delicate touch.

Who cares whether or not the coupling-up was painful? After Tuesday afternoon and the muscular biopsy, nothing else is painful. I had plenty of work to do, apart from sitting there watching the blood pressure slowly sink through the floor to a rather dangerous 88.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there too, but she remained stoically in her little glass cage. If she wanted something, she sent one of the girls for it. It’s a shame that she’s no longer speaking to me after my revolt the other week.

This evening, I was the last one there so they were both dealing with me. While Lexi was compressing me, Océane was inspecting my feet. I told them that I had delayed my arrival on purpose so as to have the undivided attention of both of them.

The taxi was waiting for me to bring me home and we had a very silent drive back. My cleaner was waiting and she watched and helped a little while I struggled up the stairs. She’d been to the chemist’s to buy what was needed and had bought a lettuce and some potatoes for me.

After she left, I made tea. Baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and almond soya dessert.

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I have some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed. I have plenty of work to do tomorrow, and there’s footy too – Caernarfon v Cardiff Metro, the winner going on to meet Hwlffordd to compete for the vital third European spot, accompanying TNS and Penybont.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about student nurses … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not made correctly and taking a blood sample from me is not easy.
Nevertheless, I always encourage the student nurses to have a go. After all, they have to learn somewhere.
One of them was having so much difficulty that I told her "cheer up! If I leave this hospital alive, you won’t need to sit your exams. You will have earned your diploma by default."

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Monday 28th April 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting at my desk in my office.

And there’s a huge red mark on my file “Leaving the Hospital Against Medical Advice”.

What has happened is that they want me to stay for another scan on my stomach. So I telephoned the hospital myself and spoke to the scanner and asked him "when could I have an appointment for a scan? I have a prescription from Doctor …" (luckily it wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant who saw me)
He paused for a minute and said "The next appointment is 1st of June".
My response was "Doctor … says that it’s urgent".
"It doesn’t matter" he said "We can’t do it any earlier".

So if anyone thinks that I’m going to sit around for five weeks kicking my heels in a hospital when I have so much to do, they are out of their tiny minds.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the medical staff and I have different aims. Their aim is to keep me alive as long as possible, clinging on by the end of my fingertips while they pump me full of morphine to deaden the pain. For my part, I wouldn’t care if I were to die tomorrow if I had had a full and active life up to that point.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the hysteria that took place at Leuven in 2019 when I told them that I was abandoning my treatment for three months while I went on an expedition to the High Arctic.

Anyway, that’s another story completely. Last night I had a much better night and after I finished my notes etc I went almost straight to sleep and there I stayed until all of 06:00 when they awoke me for a blood test.

After that I actually went back to sleep and stayed there until about 07:55.

When I awoke was in my Ford Transit. I’d been talking to my youngest sister. She wandered ff saying that she’ll be back in a minute. Ten minutes later she still hadn’t returned so I drove round to the club on Nantwich Road where she had gone. After another ten minutes she still didn’t come so I buttonholed one of her mother’s friends who was standing by the door. He told me that she was busy and wouldn’t be finished for a while. I was extremely angry and told the guy to tell her that she would have to stay there because I had things to do, and drove off down one of the side streets on the south side of Nantwich Road.

That sounds just like my family, but again, that’s all water that floated under the bridge a very long time ago. But I’ve still no idea why I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about Crewe. In total, I only lived there for about 12 years of my life.

After I’d washed and shaved (and went in search of my gant de toilette that the cleaner had taken by mistake) they served me breakfast. And once again, it was starvation rations and there was nothing that I could do about it. Apparently, the staff had been warned.

Next were the dictaphone notes. And there were piles of those last night. I was doing something with … I can’t remember what now but it was involving my brother and his wife and it was something to do with being disabled and someone at the centre turned up. In the end no matter what we were doing a friend of mine, a young girl who had a car, she said that she would take us all home. I was sitting in the back with someone and the girl was sitting in the front and there was a seat next to her. The disabled woman came out. She said that she could travel with us so she put her walkframe in the back of the boot so she told her that she could sit in the front so she ran round to the front so what she was doing with a walkframe ….. She had a big stool with her but found that it wouldn’t fit in so we said “why don’t you give it to us and we’ll hold it?”. So she climbed in and the girl drove and dropped off the two of us who were sitting in the back and went on to take Mrs Whateverhername is back to her bungalow. And the thing about this is that I was telling my brother about the dream and he was in it, telling exactly this dream to him

My family again, God bless them. And one of the women now from dialysis. This story is going out of hand, there’s no doubt about that. The interesting part though is that I was dreaming within a dream. That’s not something that happens very often with me. However, it does show that my nocturnal rhythms are settling down after a major period of disturbance.

There has been a lot of further contact between people in many of these dreams and that dream just now involved a girl who could play the violin. I didn’t particularly like her all that much but we needed a flute player as well and this girl could do them both so we had to be nice to her. That meant that she’d even come to see me in the hospital and when she went back to the hospital administration offices at the other side of the road from here there was no way of going home so we offered to drive her if she was feeling willing

There’s an interesting story about the girl with the violin but the World is not ready to hear it. However, her second instrument was the piano and maybe some power chords on a Fender Telecaster. I can say though that if in the dream I said that I didn’t like her, that is being somewhat “economical with the truth”.

And later on I’d gone to volunteer for certain hospital tests and they were busy taking some pulse from me. I was told that it would be a morning session and an afternoon session so I’d gone in the afternoon and time was really dragging on, like it was 18:00, 19:00, 20:00. I mentioned this to the doctor who was taking some samples from me. He eventually went to the ‘phone, by which time it was about midnight and telephoned someone. He told them the situation and I heard the reply, which was “these people come as volunteers and volunteer for certain tasks and so they have to stay until they are done. If he doesn’t like it he can clear off and never come back again, particularly after all of the trouble that we had last time with him”. I tried to think of the last time that I was here and what trouble I had caused, but I couldn’t think of any. Then I was put into a car, the car that does the hospital transfers. We drove into the town centre. There was a taxi parked at the side of the road. I wondered if the taxi had been ordered for me to take me home and they would drop me off here or whether I was expected to stay in the one that I was with and carry on. However the traffic lights were red and we had to stop and wait until they turned green before we could move on

It beats me, the significance of this dream. I’ve offered my services as a guinea pig to a couple of hospitals where I’ve been staying, but when it presents to you the possibility of having several handfuls of student nurses crawling all over you, who wouldn’t?

Later on I was in Chester. I was talking to some guys about music. We were working out some songs with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. We decided that the big solo that he would play would make a great track on its own so we were busy thinking of ways to expand the first track. I walked down by the river and walked to the car park and there was my car there, the old Mercedes that I had once. Parked next to it was a sleek black limousine with a chauffeur by it. I looked at the driver and I knew him from when I was chauffeuring. He looked at me and said “chauffeuring again?. I said “yes”, yes because I was driving for. So I told him that there was a British trade delegation. He looked at the car, this old Merc, and I said “yes, because they don’t have very much money because they didn’t do very much. I opened the door and there was a couple of people inside – the boss and one of the girls. I asked them if they were ready to go. They replied “no” – they were waiting for a third person. Meantime, the little girl who was in there, she opened her rucksack and pulled out a computer. “It’s not mine” she said. “It’s one of the training ones. I said “you’ll have to take it home and look after it tonight and take it back in the morning”. She was annoyed by that because she had all her contacts on it for chatting etc. I replied “it can’t be helped. You should really check your things if you put them away in the bag.

There is also a story about walking down by the river but the World is not ready to hear that one either. As far as Ian Anderson goes, the Ian Anderson may well be another Ian Anderson, a folk singer with whom I have had some correspondence at one time. He has an interesting claim to fame which listeners of my radio shows at the end of August may well discover. The story about the chauffeuring and the computer is bizarre and I don’t know to what that relates, except that I still have my old Mercedes, festering down the field on the farm next to a Ford Cortina and a Ford Transit ditto.

Meantime, the doctor came to see me. I told her that I wanted to leave after dialysis this afternoon
"You can’t" she replied
"Can’t I?" I said. "You just watch"

And then the argument began.

She gave me a very long speech about everything, the highlight of which was "this is not a prison, but …". When she finished, I replied "I’ve listened carefully to you and I’ve understood everything that you have said. But nevertheless I am still leaving."

The truth of the matter is that I have had news that my locataire loaded up a van with half of her possessions early this morning. She might even (although it’s doubtful) finish tomorrow and leave the apartment. Secondly, I have a visitor coming from this evening for a few days. Thirdly, I have a builder coming round on Wednesday morning. Fourthly, I’m going to Paris for a week at the other hospital on Monday.

And so the argument raged on and on until in the end she left. She came back with a sheaf of my discharge papers with the prominent red stamp upon it.

It was an ambulance with a stretcher that took me over the road to the dialysis centre where, apparently, amongst the nurses my rebellion is headline news. Julie the Cook, my allocated nurse, came for a chat to “make further enquiries”.

But proof that the hospital regime has done me some good is that there was only 1.4 kilos of water to remove from me so it was a three-and-a-half hour session. And afterwards, I had never felt so well for quite some considerable time.

While I was there I was in an exchange of messages with a friend of mine. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have an ongoing major project in the UK and a friend of mine from my Manchester days is handling it. He has a few days spare so he wanted to come over to see me.

He turned up at the dialysis centre just as I was being thrown out and he brought me home. We came the pretty way by the coast because it’s been a while since I’ve passed that way.

My faithful cleaner helped me up the stairs and after I left, I made stuffed peppers for two followed by chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert, all of which went down a treat.

Right now though, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about walkframes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a friend of mine telling me "Sony has brought out a new product for our generation"
"Ohh yes?" I replied, bitterly regretting it thirty seconds later
"It’s called ‘The Sony Walkframe’"

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Thursday 13th March 2025 – THERE HAS BEEN SNOW …

… up the road in Caen earlier today, so someone said. I don’t imagine that there was very much at all, but even so, it’s a sign that winter is still with us, despite the glorious week that we had at Carnaval.

It was certainly freezing last night. My cleaner mentioned that there was ice everywhere quite early on and when Isabelle the Nurse came round, it was a mere 2°c, despite the sunshine.

Not that I felt any of it, because I was tucked up in bed and fast asleep. I finally managed to drop off into the Land of Nod, even though it was another late night last night. I managed to catch Colwyn Bay come from behind to beat Caersws and to watch Gresford Athletics really good run of form over the last few weeks come to a shuddering halt against Cegidfa.

But at least it wasn’t as late as the previous one though. I was in bed by 00:30 which was about an hour earlier. And I remember almost nothing of what happened during the night – just a vague memory of changing the batteries in the dictaphone, so there must be something on there from the night.

Despite actually managing to sleep, it was a very weary Yours Truly who struggled out from underneath the sheets and into the light, beating the second alarm by not very much at all.

And after a good scrub up it’s Dialysis Day) and a stop in the kitchen for the medication I came back here to listen to the dictaphone. I was doing something with a 3D character when the bed collapsed underneath me. I had a panic attack at that point because I couldn’t pick myself up off the floor and couldn’t stand up again. When I was dictating that the batteries in the dictaphone went flat so it’s not been my night at all

And apart from that moment about changing the batteries in the dictaphone I remember nothing at all.

Isabelle the Nurse was late yet again, flying in and flying out again. She apologised for being late today because one of her clients had mislaid his medication. And for that reason,when I finally move downstairs, all of my medication will be in one box on one shelf and nowhere else.

While we’re on the subject of moving downstairs … "well, one of us is" – ed … I forgot, to my shame, to mention yesterday that I’d had a chat with Alison. How could I forget to mention that? Anyway, it looks as if our intrepid band of travellers will be descending on me some time in August. That will be lovely.

Breakfast was next, and then MY NEW BOOK. Today, our talk on “cohabiting customs” has taken us into the realm of migration.

He makes some very interesting points too. He reckons that as in most mammal groups, there may well have been a dominant male who kept the females to himself and when teen boys reached sexual maturity they were expelled from the group.

If one man had five women, then it means of course that four men had none. And the only way that they would obtain a mate was either by overpowering the senior male and seizing some of his, or else roaming afield to raid a neighbouring group. If a strong group of wandering males encountered a weaker group, they would seize the females and the men of that group would either be killed or would flee.

That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Samuel Hearne’s first-nation Canadians, on their way back from their trip, came across a weaker band, seized all of the women and girls and … well … Samuel Hearne didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … book, the fleeing men would start off the next cycle, roaming afield until they in turn found a weaker band und so weiter

He draws a parallel between this scenario and the fact that it seems to be always the weaker, more impoverished and less-technologically-advanced groups who seem to exist in the worst and poorest environments.

There are pages and pages of this – in my opinion far more than there needs to be, and I can’t help thinking that our author must have been a bundle of fun to have around at parties.

After breakfast I began to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated on Saturday night but I didn’t manage to go very far because I was distracted. And in any case my cleaner appeared, earlier than usual.

It’s a good job that she did too because my 12:30 taxi to dialysis turned out to be a 12:05 ambulance on its way back to Avranches, and so we had the pantomime of me trying to climb into the back. With no power in my legs, I have to sit on the floor and heave myself up with my arms. God alone only knows what will happen when this paralysis spreads into my arms.

First in again though at dialysis, so early that I had to wait around. But when they did let me in I was first in and first to be coupled up. With the anaesthetic not having had long enough to act, I spent five minutes with an icepack wrapped around my arm but it didn’t seem to do very much good and I certainly felt it.

Apart from the coffee coming round, no-one at all interrupted me and I managed to accomplish a pile of work today. I wish that it would be like that all the time.

The guy who seems to run the show came to pick me up tonight and with another passenger on board, we came to Granville. My cleaner was there waiting for me and it really was nice to be back here by 18:30. I wish that it would be like that every trip. And who knows? When they set up the centre at Granville, whenever that may be, I may well be home before then.

Tea tonight was one of my pies with steamed veg and gravy. Potatoes, broccoli, sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower, a little of each. And my pie was delicious. But I really have gone too far overboard with all this cabbage. It’ll still be here long after I’ve gone.

But I’ll be gone in a moment- off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … we had some fun in the centre this afternoon.
One of the nurses was going to couple up a female patient, and she was saying "now just relax, Julie. It’s only a little job this with the two needles. It’s not difficult and it won’t hurt, Julie, and it’ll be all over in a matter of seconds and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief"
"But my name’s not Julie" said the patient
"I know" said the nurse "but mine is"

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Saturday 15th February 2025 – I REALLY AM …

… off my food. And that can only mean one thing – and that is that I am going to be ill. It’s quite simply not normal for me to be off my food.

That’s something that I can well do without because I have far too many other things going on right now to worry about that.

Sleeping is one of them. I was not unreasonably late in bed last night after I’d finished what I had to do, but now for the howevermenyeth night in succession I could count the minutes of sleep on one hand

Once more, tossing and turning in a perspiration-laden semi-comatose state waiting for something to happen. I might have been asleep at some point but I was wide awake when the alarm went off, actually planning on raising myself from the Dead..

In vast contrast to the other more recent nights, I was wide-awake too on leaving the bed and I was thinking “this can’t be correct at all. I can’t have had as little sleep as this over the last few days and still feel rather sprightly (well, comparatively sprightly)”

Not just washing myself this morning but washing my clothes too. It’s Saturday so the night attire and undies go into the sink for a good scrub around so that I can keep on top of the wash. With so few clothes in this apartment, that’s important.

In the kitchen I had the medication, including the sunlight solution, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. No Zero, no Castor, regrettably. They have probably gone for a rest to prepare themselves for the next time that I’ll need them

Instead there was a young person at home on its own in the house so it decided that it would go to have a shower. As it was stripping off its clothes and putting on a dressing gown ready to go into the bathroom it noticed that the window in the dining room was slowly sliding open and could see a shadow outside. The person screamed. Whatever it was outside also screamed and ran off screaming. A couple of minutes later the parent turned up with a small child in tow, obviously scared to death. What had happened was this this was the younger sibling of this other child that had come home and because it couldn’t open the door it decided to climb in through the window. But just at that moment its elder sibling had seen it while in a state of deshabille, had screamed and the younger sibling had run off to find its parent. The mother ordered an enquiry about who hit who and who screamed at who and who did what. In the end the truth was brought out but no-one claimed to have hit anyone else although someone claimed to be hit. In the end the mother took an SD memory card and went to download the information onto the SD card but the child who had told the story wanted it left where it was rather than moved and was then having to find a way to think of either distracting its mother or trying to persuade its mother not to do it.

Putting in an SD Card in order to extract a memory – if only it were that easy. It would save me a lot of time but it doesn’t really happen like that. I’m impressed that I’m dreaming in French though, even if I don’t have a clue as to what this dream might be referring.

And then I walked into a pawn shop last night and was having a look around. I noticed on the wall there were two really long boxes with a well-known make of amplifier written on it, a bass amp. The boxes were bent, implying that their contents inside were bent, but the price was €269:00 for one of the amplifiers. I knew that that probably wasn’t a tenth of the price that it was worth because these were proper stadium amplifiers of the type that you would have on the stage in a stadium when you are playing bass to thousands of people. I went and had a look and opened one of the boxes. It was certainly bent but it was exactly what I was thinking. I thought that maybe I was onto something here. I asked if they had a bass guitar that I could use. They said that it comes with a bass guitar and produced a very bent and battered Fender clone. It was completely blank of any name so I wondered “it couldn’t possibly be … could it?”. I had a look at the pickups and they were called “Mercury” which didn’t ring any particular bell and any importance. Of course as soon as I opened all of this everyone began to crowd around wishing that they had seen it first but I wasn’t going to let this lot go out of my hands without some kind of a fight.

This of course relates to the Genz Benz combo amp that I found in a pawn shop in Ottawa when I’d gone in there with my cousin Sandra to look at something else. And the Jaguar bass came from a pawn shop in Montréal. I used to have hours of endless funs in pawn shops in Canada, but not in the USA. The hundreds of guns on open display in an American pawn shop is enough to put the willies up anyone

Finally, I awoke again, right in the middle of this next dream and lost half of it but it was something to do with increasing the size of the keyboard by having two new characters to increase the scope of names that were available but I can’t remember any more about it than this. I really did awaken too, and it was all of this that was going on when the alarm went off.

Isabelle the Nurse was in another big rush today. Plenty of blood tests to carry out today. Yes, her oppo is back in a day or two so everyone is having them done right now beforehand.

After she left I made breakfast (I did have breakfast) and read MY NEW BOOK.

And never have I been so confused as he probably was either. On page 291 he tells us that "the habit of accidentally losing things is no special peculiarity of modern days, and a Roman was as liable to lose his purse as any other man. He might lose also his hunting-gear, brooch, ring, or pocket-knife, and the chance discovery of any single article of such personal character is no more proof of a ” site” than it would be to-day."

However, when talking about a site at Masham in North Yorkshire, he tells us that "it is absurdly called a Danish Camp in the vicinity. The late Mr. Lukis had a statuette of Diana in silver, 8 inches high, which was ploughed up in the field next to the camp."

So why is the statuette of a Roman goddess, not actually at the site but “in the field next to” it, proof or disproof of anything?

Back in here I had bills to pay. It’s that time of the year again and I can’t see why one particular bill, a failed monthly standing order, comes up every month as regular as clockwork when, each time I go to pay it on-line, the payment order automatically inserts the bank account details that they say I haven’t supplied?

My cleaner appeared on time to fit my anaesthetic patches and to help me prepare my bag, and then stayed and chatted for a while until the ambulance turned up.

Yes, an ambulance. Saturday is a strange day when timing goes out of the window, and an ambulance dropping people in Granville and its next pick-up back in Avranches means that I don’t have to wait as long as otherwise I might.

My way of clambering into the rear has them all bewildered though and although it is their natural instinct to try to help me, there’s only one way that it works and only I know that particular way.

Leaving the vehicle is just as bewildering but it does work and I was eventually safe and sound in my bed.

Connection wasn’t as painful as some have been, but once the anaesthetic wore off then I knew all about it, to be sure.

They took a blood test today, the miserable doctor came round to ask what he could do for me (“nothing, thanks”) and then I was left pretty much alone. I revised my Welsh and spent the rest of the time doing some research into something that I had wanted to do for a while

When I was unplugged the taxi to take me home was already here. It was the driver who usually brings me home on a Saturday but once again, he wasn’t as talkative as he used to be. I have the impression that this is really his usual self and when he was more talkative, it was to probe me about some of the other drivers.

My cleaner was waiting again and she watched as a very weary me stumbled upstairs and collapsed into a chair.

A small tea, write my notes, then I’ll do my dictating and go to bed. I hope that I’ll feel better in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about tha ambulance … "well, one of us has" – ed … they were telling me that they had taken someone from last night’s football to the Accident department because of an injury that he had suffered during the game.
When he saw the sign he said "not there! not there! You’re taking me to the wrong place!"
"What do you mean?" they asked
"That basket back there who did this – he did it on purpose!"

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Friday 24th January 2024 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting at my desk in the comfort and safety of my own apartment (well, someone else’s but I live in it) after without any doubt the quickest drive home that I have ever had.

It was an ambulance that brought me home, and there are a couple of advantages of being in an ambulance in Paris. Those two advantages are blue and they flash. Hence we didn’t have too much trouble fighting our way through the rush-hour traffic.

One of the big advantages of having thrown in my lot with the biggest taxi, VSL and ambulance company in Normandy is that they have vehicles everywhere. So when the hospital administration ‘phones them to say that I’m ready to go home, it’s not “okay, I have too find a driver first and then it’ll be a four-hour wait while he drives there”, it’s “we have an ambulance in Paris already, dropping off someone at another hospital, so when they are free, we’ll send it round”.

And so they finished with me at 16:40 and by 17:40 we were just about on our way home

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Last night after I had finished my notes it was late – very late. But never mind. I went to bed, put my headphones back on and listened to some more good music for hours and hours.

Eventually I fell asleep, awoke again and switched off the computer, and then went back to sleep.

But it was a horrible night. It was as if my left shin had caught fire and eventually I had to give up and I called for the nurse. She smothered it in cold cream and that seemed to ease the pain for a while, and eventually I went back to sleep.

At 07:00 I had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. I decided nevertheless to stay in bed and tease the nurses again, but it was a different crew today. They were nice and cheerful too, and that really makes a difference.

It was breakfast in bed yet again but I restrained myself from asking if the young student nurse would feed me with grapes.

After breakfast I went and had a good scrub up in the bathroom. I asked for a chair for the bathroom so that I could have a shower and eventually it turned up, just after I’d given up waiting and dressed. Never mind – I’ll have a shower later.

Back in the bedroom I transcribed the dictaphone notes. It’s a surprise that there actually were some, the way that the night had gone. And look at this! Moonchild came to see me last night. She came DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER to see me in a folk music group. We were playing at Dungeness at the extreme south-east of Kent. I was playing some instrument or other. She wanted to come along and see what happened and see what went on and so of course I agreed to take her. Although she was in this dream she was very much in the background and it wasn’t really about her at all, more about this group I suppose.

But I’m still shaking my head in bewilderment about what’s going on here. Not that I’m complaining of course – in fact regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Moonchild has been rapidly promoted into the top tier of favourite nocturnal invitees along with Castor, Zero and TOTGA, and hasn’t worked anything like as hard as the others to be there, but I don’t understand why her dramatic appearance should have taken place at all. At the actual moments in real life when Moonchild was present, they was of no significance whatsoever. The folk festival is of some significance and so is the idea of taking her somewhere, but her fading into the background is, shall we say, disappointing at the very least.

And not playing bass? This probably relates to a decision that I made a day or so ago, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been to Dungeness ON A COUPLE OF OCCASIONS, including the famous occasion when I had to repair a Spitfire, and I bet that you think that I am joking too.

Later on we were talking about – there was a girl from work. Another one with long, blond hair. I’d been chatting to her for quite a while and it seemed that she had been becoming much more attached to me than perhaps she ought, not that I was objecting but she had a boyfriend. There was some talk about work, going away on a mission somewhere. Of course she was going, and I was going too. Our conversation developed into something quite intimate and it was suggested that this was one way that our employers could save the cost of one room. We were going home from work and ended up walking around Frank Bott Avenue, Underwood Lane area of Crewe. As we walked up towards West Street and the old railway works we began to discuss how close we were going to be. It was quite obvious that both of us had plans. The talk came round to how nervous people are the first time that they take each other to bed, how things never worked out as they were planned to do etc. So she just stopped, looked at me and said “does your weekly budget run to the cost of renting a room in a hotel for a night where we could go?”. I was stunned by this, but of course I replied “if it didn’t, I would make it”. At that point we walked hand-in-hand down West Street. We came past a hotel and we noticed that the side door was open. We walked in through the side door, walked upstairs, found an empty room and went in. A couple of weeks later, still before this trip, we were organising a party at work and were having fancy dress clothes etc. Of the costumes, there was only one left when I went into the changing room. It was something that I don’t suppose was particularly appropriate and it was small but I had to put it on. She was sitting on the top shelf of a cupboard laughing and joking. I asked her if I could change my clothes in there because there was nowhere else. She wondered why I had asked her and no-one else. I explained that I thought that she was part of the organising committee like me, although with an undertone that implied that she was probably much more friendly with me than anyone else there. She was with her boyfriend at the time, laughing and joking. In the end she climbed down from her shelf and went off. I climbed into her shelf and began to change. Then I was thinking that has what happened just now changed anything that might otherwise have happened at the place where were going away. Have I once more managed to rip defeat from the jaws of victory?

Getting the Girl? How often does that happen in a dream? It can’t have been more than a handful of times during the 26 or so years that I’ve been undertaking this project. Where are the members of my family who usually come along and stick le baton dans la roue at the crucial moment? They always used to do that in real life and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, they do it quite often in my dreams too. But I’m impressed that I can remember phrases like to “rip defeat from the jaws of victory” in my sleep although, of course, “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” as I did right at the end here in this dream is also par for the course.

I was having a really long, complicated dream when all of a sudden at 07:00 exactly I awoke and sat bolt-upright and the whole thing disappeared except for right at the end when I was sitting at a table about to give a presentation. One of the women sitting at a table sideways on to me also on the stage asked if she could close the curtain so that she could be hidden from view. I told her that that would be fine provided that I could use the plug at her feet to plug in one of the machines that I needed for my presentation. Then I was thinking that perhaps I ought to make some kind of flying lead so that I could plug that into the floor at my feet and plug in a couple of appliances to that.

In the past I’ve given several presentations, like the one on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when I talked about the changing shape of maps in the High Arctic due to the melt of the Polar ice-cap and the one in France when I gave a lecture on my drive around THE TRANS-LABRADOR HIGHWAY but they’ve usually passed off with the same amount of polite and genteel passive disinterest

One task that I had set myself, TO PROVE MYSELF WORTHY was to deal with the outstanding correspondence, of which there was more than enough.

So no-one should be waiting for a reply from me now because I hope that I’m up-to-date. If you still haven’t had a reply to anything that you have sent to me, then drop me a reminder. And if you haven’t written to me but want to drop me a line, there’s a “contact me” button down at the bottom-right of your screen. I love to interact with my audience

My nice cute Romanian doctoress came to see me and reminded me of the biopsy, which will take place at abut midday. So no time to take a shower.

Lunch came on time, and considering that I had signed a form to say that I was a vegan, lunch today was fish –
IT’S FISH EVERY FRIDAY
IT’S FISH TWO FEET WIDE
IT COVERS UP YOUR PLATE
AND HANGS OVER THE SIDE

Round about 13:00, waiting for the biopsy, I began another project which was to track down *.pdf copies of some of the books that I downloaded years ago when this Gutenberg/Google project wasn’t as organised and it was all in *.txt format.

Some of them haven’t as yet been converted but others have so I was downloading those that I could find. It’s important to have the *.pdf copies if they are available because the *.txt copies didn’t, obviously, include the maps and illustrations.

Round about 14:00 my cute little Romanian doctoress came to tell me that the biopsy will be at 15:00 as the person who performs it is busy. So no time for a shower right now.

It was 16:00 when she finally put in an appearance, with my cute little Romanian doctoress trailing along behind. She wanted a slice of a saliva gland from my lip so first she gave me a local anaesthetic.

The actual sectioning of the gland was totally painless thanks to the injection, and they were very happy with what they had taken. They wandered off, leaving me lying on the bed waiting for someone to come back and sort me out.

Eventually my cute little Romanian doctoress came back with a huge pile of paperwork, and told me that I was free to go. They won’t have the results now until Monday and there’s no sense my staying there. The senior doctor in charge of my case will call me back for a discussion in due course.

Thinking that “at last I can have my shower because there will be four hours before the taxi arrives” she told me that they’d be here in half an hour. So no time for a shower.

Most of my stuff was already packed so I put the rest away ready for when my driver turned up. Only it was two of them. What had I done to deserve an ambulance?

This was when they told me about the person whom they were bringing. No shower then, but at least I’ll be home at some respectable time.

And so I was too. We dashed through the rush-hour traffic and then sped down the motorway. I have an app. on my ‘phone that can follow a route and it displays the speed at which we were travelling. Down the motorway in the pouring rain at 139kph will put hairs on anyone’s chest.

When we arrived and I told them that I was impressed with the speed, the driver apologised and said "I couldn’t go as fast as usual because of the conditions". I’ll travel with him next time in the sunny daylight them and compare notes.

Getting in and out of the ambulance is fun though. To climb in, I have to sit on the floor, swivel my legs in, press them up against the bulkhead and use the force of my arms and shoulders to lever myself up into the seat in the back. Exiting the vehicle is the reverse of the procedure

Back in here my cleaner helped me unpack and here I am, ready to fight another day. I’ll have the results of everything in a few days and then we’ll know where we are going with all of this.

But the story behind this ambulance is that someone called the Emergency Service.
He said "send an ambulance to 6 rue Monseigneur Aethelbaldric Essioriaeth. My wife has been taken seriously ill"
"Certainly sir" said the operator. "How do you spell the street name?"
"Wait a minute" said the caller. And then there was silence
"Are you still there?" asked the operator
And a heavy-breathing voice replied "Yes I am"
"Where have you been?" asked the operator
"I couldn’t spell the street name" said the caller "so I dragged her around the corner and she’s now on the pavement in the Rue Haute."

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Thursday 19th December 2027 – I CAME BACK …

… from Dialysis in an ambulance this evening!

But don’t worry. There’s no reason to be upset or concerned. With these new Social Security arrangements, I was having to wait half an hour for the other patient from Granville to finish his dialysis session and then we could come home together in the same taxi.

However there was an ambulance that had come to drop off someone at the hospital across the road and was going back empty, so would I like to thumb a lift?

If it means coming home half an hour earlier than I otherwise would, then it’s no problem to me and I clambered aboard.

Still a big problem though going to bed early. Once more, it was round about 23:30 by the time that I’d finished my notes and done everything that I needed to do. And that included taking the Christmas cake out of the oven, wrapping it in baking paper and tinfoil and putting it in the fridge.

Marzipanning and icing over the weekend, I reckon. And then we’ll see where we are. I need to make some mince pies too one way or another. I have several jars of mincemeat thanks to Liz who brought some over when she came here last year but I need to keep an eye out on when anyone else is coming over because at some point I’ll run out of stock and I can’t find the ingredients to make my own.

So there I was, in bed late again last night, and I fell asleep quite quickly. I remember nothing, nothing at all, until the alarm went off at 07:00.

It was even more of a struggle than usual to haul myself out of my stinking pit but I wandered off eventually to the bathroom where I did some washing and had a good clean-up and shave ready for this afternoon.

In the kitchen I prepared a drink to wash down my medication, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night.

I was in hospital, but I’d been recruited for the Secret Service and was supposed to wander around and make little enquiries, find out who was doing what and what information there might be that was being leaked to a foreign power. In the end I spent a lot of time there. But my room-mate was extremely difficult and seemed to think that I needed organising, taking in charge. Everything that I did in my personal life, he was there making comments and observations. For example, when it came to my slippers, he told me not to wear my slippers any more. I asked why and he told me that they were rather large, I might slip and trip over. I ought to find some slip-on slippers my own size. That’s OK, but I have trouble putting them on and taking them off. I can manage with the ones that I have, whether I’m wearing socks or whether I’m wearing these bandages that I used to have. I had to try to explain to him without going into any great detail exactly why I was doing the kind of things that I was

And there’s more truth in that dream than I would ever care to admit.

Isabelle the nurse was in a rush once more today. It can’t be easy for her having to do all of the blood tests and injections for her little circuit of patients, bearing in mind that she has a partner who, for reasons known only to himself, fails to produce “the touch” that makes it all look so easy and makes it feel so painless for the patients.

It seems to me that she’s ready for her seven days off after just the first day of being back on duty.

After she left, I made my breakfast and had a look at my archaeology reports on this abandoned Gallo-Roman farm. They’ve now uncovered several buildings that belong to the period in France called Antiquité Tardive – “Late Antiquity”.

That’s roughly corresponding to what the British call “The Dark Ages” , the period following the collapse of the Roman Empire in England, and the absence of any written record of contemporary events, until the renaissance of English culture under Alfred the Great and the monks of Jarrow.

In France though, there was no such period. Orderly, civilised life went on for the most part and the religious institutions and the court of the Merovingian Kings as well as several writers such as Gregory of Tours kept contemporary records, although it’s fair to say that there’s nothing like as much as I would like there to be.

Anyway, they are cracking on with this excavation, discovering building after building, trench after trench and road after road, not to mention the countless post holes that they have found in the ground.

Back in here I had a few things to do and once more I was overwhelmed by the arrival of my faithful cleaner who came to fit my anaesthetic patches.

It didn’t take long to do that and then I had to loiter around for the arrival of the taxi. It was a chatty driver who picked me up and then we went round to pick up the other passenger who we take, and then rolled off to Avranches.

Once more I was last to be plugged in and once more, one of the pins went in painlessly and the other one hurt like Hades.

It was one of those days where there was a constant stream of visitors. The nurses were checking up on all kinds of things today, and even the dietician came to see me.

With being a vegan I have a low protein count and this dialysis is making things worse so she has now prescribed a food supplement for me. That’s one more medication to add to the list.

She needed to have the prescription signed and so went in search of the doctor. It was Emilie the Cute Consultant on duty today who signed the prescription.

And I remembered that she was going to come to watch the nurses connect me up and use the echograph to see what the problem might be. In fact, the nurses had done all of the preparation, however she never showed up.

"Maybe she’s forgotten you" said a nurse. And that’s put the tin hat on it, hasn’t it? How could anyone forget me? Especially Emilie the Cute Consultant?

Still, my LeClerc order is complete, ready to be sent off tomorrow morning. I did manage to find some time in my busy schedule to do something.

As I aid earlier, I came home in an ambulance tonight. There’s a kind of rumble-seat in the rear of the ambulance and I came home sitting in that. It wasn’t easy though to climb in. First I had to sit on the floor of the vehicle and than haul myself up with my arms and fall into the seat.

That can only mean one thing – my upper body strength must be quite impressive these days.

Back here, I climbed up the first flight of stairs with less difficulty than previously but had to come up in the lift from the half-landing to the next half-landing and walk halfway down again because the handrail outside here still hasn’t been fixed.

Tea tonight was more steamed vegetables with vegan sausage and vegan cheese sauce followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Lovely as usual.

So now that I’ve finished I’ll think about going to bed ready for a day radioing tomorrow.

What I was wondering about this dietary supplement is whether or not this might be the same supplement that they have tried to give me when I was here in the Summer.
"You have a very low protein count" said the dietician. "It’s probably because you’re a vegan and your diet doesn’t allow you to eat many things high in protein. Take this supplement."
So having accepted the bottle, "excuse me" I said. "You just told me that as I’m a vegan and my diet prevents me from taking many foods, I need a food supplement"
"That’s right" said the dietician, smiling
"So if you know that I’m a vegan and don’t eat many things" I said "what are you doing giving me a food supplement that is milk-based?"

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Thursday 24th October 2024 – THEY BROUGHT ME …

… home in an ambulance this evening.

Don’t ask me why, because I didn’t ask for it and I certainly didn’t want it. But nevertheless, there I was, strapped into a stretcher in the back.

My faithful cleaner thinks that it’s because none of the female drivers wants to bring me home on her own but I dunno. I’ve clearly upset someone somewhere if the only way that they are going to transport me is strapped down in the back of an ambulance

Actually, last night I might have been strapped down in bed because I certainly didn’t move at all, at least, not that I remember.

To cap it all, I was even in bed before 23:00. Not by very much, it has to be said, but enough to make it worth recording all the same. For some reason or other it didn’t take as long as it usually does to finish everything off. And there I was, tucked up nicely in bed.

Once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking either. I was out like a light quite quickly and there I stayed until 07:00 when the alarm went off, and when was the last time that that happened?

When the alarm went off I had some kind of nurse living with me who was trying to organise me about going out because Tuesday afternoon I had to go to the bank and Wednesday afternoon I had to go somewhere. That involved a lot of organisation with the buses, all of that kind of thing. She was busy trying to make all of the necessary arrangements for me to go to do these tasks on the bus without having to use an ambulance or a taxi.

The only person who might do that would be Percy Penguin. She’s quite used to dealing with the elderly, the infirm and those people who might not have both paddles in the water but I think that even she would draw the line at sorting me out.

So at the sound of the alarm I hauled myself out of bed and made my way into the bathroom for a good scrub up and to prepare myself in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there at the Dialysis Centre this afternoon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were going on a coach trip somewhere. There was a big group of us on board this coach. I was on my own so I sat in a seat and everyone left me alone which was very nice. The coach stopped for a toilet break halfway along the route so I set up a coffee machine. With the cups that I had I started a little coffee production line. A girl came to help me and the two of us managed to keep it going with coffee. The driver said that he and the other two members of his staff had their own cups but I had to use the cups that I could find, which were not very good. Nevertheless, people drank it. There was one moment when I had to go to make some more coffee and I had to go to the end of the line where the machine was. I didn’t have the coffee so I shouted to the girl to bring the coffee back down quick but then found that I actually had the coffee in my hand. There was that particular moment but that’s all that I remember about this dream

Wouldn’t it be nice to find out how to keep 53 people happy with one coffee machine. I suppose that it’s the 21st Century equivalent of “five loaves, two fishes and a pot of tea for five thousand, please”.

There was an earlier dream about someone in the theatrical business who had a small, domineering personality. He had a lot of affairs with different women. He was at one time with a Japanese or Korean girl who was a member of a dancing troupe but he abandoned her for another woman. The newspapers said something like “he’ll certainly notice the difference with this large, overbearing Spanish woman compared to the girl he had previously who had barely entered puberty” that sort of thing but I can’t remember very much about that dream either except nothing really.

That was rather a strange thing to dream, and I can’t think of where it might have any relevance in anything particular.

In that last dream I did absolutely everything towards this play, writing and directing etc. The only thing was when it came to the orchestra, conducting the orchestra I had to step aside and let someone else do that because of some kind of agreement with the particular Trade Union that covers the engagement of musicians in their practical sphere.

And the same with this. A few more things to add to my nocturnal talents. If only I had someone who could organise and motivate me to do these things for real.

Hurricane Isabelle blew in a little later. She didn’t have time to give me my ‘flu jab. It’s booked in for Saturday when she has no blood tests to do. It’s no surprise really that she’s snowed under with requests for blood tests right now. She has “the touch” whereas her oppo doesn’t and people are beginning to realise it.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. Our Naturalists are busy roaming about the estate of the President examining his trees, of which there are many historic ones.

But it’s a shame what subsequently happened to his estate. His family fell on hard times and it was sold, eventually becoming a hospital. It was used for severe cases during World War II and then abandoned, the house being blown up by the Royal Engineers in a training exercise in 1959

Back in here I spent the morning tracking down the dates of more concerts and, as usual, SETLIST.FM came up trumps yet again and helped me identify a dozen or so

My cleaner turned up at lunchtime and helped me fix the patches on my arm, and then the taxi came early for me. It’s a good job that I was ready.

We drove all the way to Avranches and at the roundabout the driver turned right towards the town rather than to the left to the hospital.

He quickly realised his error and performed a U-turn and a voice in the back said "did you forget something?". We’d gone all that way with a passenger in the back and I had never noticed at all.

With being early this afternoon I was first in at the clinic, thus first to be dealt with, which made a nice change.

A doctor came to see me, but only for two minutes and she didn’t seem to be too interested. And apart from the coffee, that was that. I read my Welsh notes, listened to music and finished off by carrying on with my “Curious Church Customs”.

They unplugged me quite early and I was free to go. That was when we had the pantomime about me trying unsuccessfully to climb into the ambulance.

After several attempts they gave up and brought out the stretcher.

We drove back in perfect silence to here where my faithful cleaner was waiting, and she watched as I made it up all thirteen of the first flight of stairs. That was really impressive, considering how much difficulty I had had with the ambulance.

Tea tonight was different. There had been a can of beansprouts festering on the shelves since it was triumphantly carried off the Ark by Noah, and so I made myself a spicy stir-fry. In fact, everything will be spicy now that I have a jar of chilis.

It was hot, and delicious, especially followed by apple cake and caramel-flavoured soya cream.

So now I’m off to bed for a nice early night, as it looks as if I’m going to have a visit tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subject of Noah … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of the teacher in Primary School discussing certain Biblical events with the children.
She asked them "do you know who Noah’s wife was?" and one boy at the back of class raised his hand
"Please, Miss" said the boy "I do!"
"So who was it, little Johnny?" she asked
And the boy replied "please Miss, wasn’t it Joan of Arc?"

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Tuesday 18th June 2024 – ON OUR WAY …

… home, going home where lovers roam.

Yes, unfortunately I can’t welcome you to the Pleasuredome yet – that’s another year away once the tenant downstairs clears off, but I can certainly welcome you to an apartment that I have never ever seen in all my life before.

Not only is the apartment spotlessly clean, and by that I mean my office and bedroom too, everything in sight has been washed to death including all the bedding and I have a lovely clean bed in which to climb later this evening.

My cleaner has worked miracles to have this place ready for me and I’m beyond speechless at the efforts that she’s made for me.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the solidarity that I have encountered in this building has made coming to live here all worthwhile.

A shame that the hospital couldn’t have joined in the fun. Like most French public functions it’s “duty before everything else” and most of the staff had a tendency to be rather brusque but nevertheless, in unguarded moments they could all (well, mostly) be good fun and apart from the dreadful stuff that passed for food, I enjoyed my stay.

Well, most of it, anyway.

And for a change, I actually enjoyed last night. I had a good sleep for once. Although I wasn’t in bed until long after midnight, I slept right the way through until 06:00 without awakening when I had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse.

And would you believe, well, I’m sure you would because you’ve been following these pages long enough, someone chose that moment to come in to tell me that they wanted to take a blood sample.

"Come back in five minutes" I grunted.

Ten minutes later we had the 06:15 whirlwind through the ward. I gave blood and just about everything else. Surprisingly they didn’t ask for a diabetes sample – I suppose that they’ll “get that from the blood test” – but they gave me a totally unsolicited glass of orange juice all the same.

Having gulped that down, I settled down under the covers again and was totally dead to the World until the next round of awakening at 08:15. That two hours or however long it was was the deepest sleep that I have ever had, I’m sure of that.

With that procedure out of the way, breakfast came round. And once I’d polished that off I nipped into the bathroom where, sitting astride the you-know-what, I had my last hospital shower.

And remembering what happened the other week in Paris, I didn’t wash my clothes. I don’t want to be lugging soaking wet clothes halfway around Normandy.

After the shower I had a visit from the medical staff. All of my medication has changed and I noticed with a wry smile that in some cases we’re back to where we were a couple of years ago.

And a real surprise was that the chief of the dieticians came to see me today to excuse herself and her team. Nothing I can say or do will change the Byzantine nature of things in the French Public Service so I listened politely and thanked them for coming, but I must admit that it was through gritted teeth.

As well as all of that, there are several appointments in the immediate future and a couple of tasks for the nursing staff who come to the apartment every morning. I’m definitely going to be having my money’s worth.

What was sad that it wasn’t Emilie the cute consultant who came to say “goodbye”. She sent a sidekick to blast me off into Eternity today and I was really disappointed at that.

And so it went on for several hours, people preparing me and then unpreparing me for departure so in the end I gave up and went to sleep in my chair.

Eventually an ambulance arrived and the ambulanciers strapped me to a stretcher and loaded me into the back of their vehicle. And there I was, hoping for a rather discreet and unobtrusive return.

My cleaner bless her was waiting downstairs to help me up here but the guys put me in a chair and carried me up. It’s a good job that I’d lost all that weight.

Once inside the place, while I was being overwhelmed by the kindness, my cleaner was going through my prescription, restoring to the shelves medicaments that had been discarded in the past, withdrawing medicaments that had only just been prescribed and then she sallied forth into town to have the new prescription made up, and presumably to arrange a lorry to bring it all back.

While she was away I had some hummus and biscottes along with a mug of hot chocolate. New stuff fresh from the bottle – you should have seen how bloated the stuff was in the fridge that I’d left when I went in.

When my cleaner came back, she had half the stuff. The rest will be here over the next few days. But we both came to the conclusion that the amount of stuff here now is overwhelming and I am going to need help to sort myself out with this medication otherwise we’ll be having a tragedy.

What I shall probably have to do is to involve the visiting nurse in all of this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. That was when we just realised that there would be quite a lot more than just rape back at our base so we decided to hurry back from the end of this mission and take up some kind of armed guard although we expected that if our armies were defeated we’d all be disarmed anyway in which case if would be very pot luck as to what happened and what people had to suffer before the end of the war was announced.

Quite a gruesome subject, I know, and ordinarily I wouldn’t post something like this but it actually has some kind of basis in fact. A prison camp containing prisoners of all nations was overrun by the Russians in Eastern Europe and the prisoners were released. Many of the prisoners remained in some kind of orderly cohesion but the Russian prisoners went berserk and began to commit all kinds of atrocities. A delegation from a local village came to the camp and pleaded with the British officer in charge to send a platoon of British prisoners to protect the inhabitants of the village from the depredations of the Russians. The irony of the situation was not lost on the British prisoners – defending their enemies from their allies – and it was definitely a premonition of the times five years hence.

Tea tonight was my long-anticipated pasta with vegetables and melted cheese, along with a burger from the European Burger Mountain in my fridge. And you’ve no idea just how delicious it was. It made the waiting all worthwhile.

Well, perhaps not.

So now I’m going to curl up in my luxurious clean bed and if it wasn’t for the nurse in the morning, I wouldn’t be leaving it for a week.

At least there will be no bed-baths. There was a strange, foreign nurse on the ward this morning giving bed-baths. With one guy she folded down his nightgown to his waist and said "first I wash as far as possible"
Then she rolled up his nightgown, began to wash his legs and said "next I wash as far as possible"
And finally, with a flourish, she ripped off his gown and said "and now I wash possible"

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Friday 8th March 2024 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in my comfortable chair back in my office.

Yes people, I’m back home and I won’t use the Golden Earring “Back Home” salutation, to spare Sean’s suffering. He thinks that I’ve used it too often but in my opinion it shows you just how many journeys I’ve made in the past.

In fact it reminds me of that big poster I saw in a Travel Agent’s in Brussels once. I’m the last to criticise someone’s efforts to communicate in a foreign language – mine are nothing much to write home about – but sometimes you have to.

In an attempt to attract as many as possible of the English-speaking community to visit their shop and book a holiday with them, the sign, in large block letters, read "Why Don’t You Go Away?"

It’s almost as interesting as the sign I once saw in West Berlin in the late 1970s. Intourist, the Russian Travel Agency during the Cold War, opened an office there.

In an attempt to attract westerners there with their hard currency, they ran an advertising campaign with a big poster in their shop window "Come And Visit The Soviet Union"
And someone had written underneath "Before It Comes To Visit You"

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

As I expected, and indeed foretold, sleeping last night was not easy. It seemed like every five minutes someone was dropping stuff on the floor.

But anyway at about 06:30 I seemed to recover consciousness and began to wait for things to happen.

There was the flood of people – nurses, nursing assistants, trainee doctors and the like. And in mid-wash someone came for me to take me to the building where they would give me this brain scan.

For the benefit of new readers, the hospital at Paris isn’t like a traditional hospital where they’ve built upwards in the same building. Here, it’s like a University campus with different buildings of different epochs scattered all over the grounds.

There’s a shuttle bus all around the campus for people who can walk but for people like me there’s a fleet of small electric vans where the rear floor drops down and they can push a wheelchair in and ferry the person to another building.

It was a long wait for my scan and when it was my turn they clamped a metal guard over my head to keep it perfectly still and then pushed me back and forth through this Stargate time-tunnel machine made by my former employer General Electric for a good half an hour

Back in my room the visits kept on coming but I did manage to dictate the details of my nocturnal travels. We were discussing a drummer last night. I don’t know who he was but people were wondering just how good he was. Someone said that it was always suggested that he played drums on LIEGE AND LIEF by Steeleye Span … "you mean Fairport Convention" – ed … instead of Gerry Conway, if it was Gerry Conway who played drums on that album, I dunno … "no, it was Dave Mattacks" – ed … That seemed to mark him down as being one of the better folk-rock drummers in the UK everyone agreed that if he had played on Liege and Lief he would certainly have been someone at some point.

And I was impressed that I could remember as much as I did about it all in a dream last night

There was something else about the snow. Someone in a black pickup was sliding in the snow an what looked as if it might have been a camp site. The pickup hit something in the snow, an electric trunk or whatever and came to an extremely sudden stop. I wish that I knew where that is now

Then someone with a Renault Espace-type of vehicle had gone to the airport to pick up some people but for some reason he had some time to spare. We noticed this group of 4 people weaving in and out of the traffic that was waiting a the airport, talking to each other. They had an accent that I thought was South African. They were big people and had some luggage with them. They weren’t the type who looked business-like. I wondered if maybe they needed a taxi to go somewhere and this guy could take them if he had time and earn himself a little money. I waited until they came near to me. They squeezed in between two cars to cross the road so I went over to them and told them never ever to do that because they could end up being crushed if one of the cars moved. They were rather contrite. Anyway I was talking to them. They lived or were going to somewhere in the Saddleworth/Oldham area. I suggested that they might want this particular guy to take them. They agreed to go with him. The guy had a quick chat about the fare. I reckoned that a tenner would be a good price to charge them in those days. They all began to pile into the Renault Espace

I’d gone to a party for some reason at someone’s house, one of these house parties that you had years ago. There was a young girl there who had had a cocktail. She was obviously so young that she’d never had one before and so was a little unsteady on her feet, so I noticed. When we were all going into the house I went over to her to ask her if she needed any help and to be there for her to lean on. We began to chat and she said the usual things about how she’s not very pretty etc. We began to talk about make-up. She said that she didn’t wear make-up except on special occasions which at her age was hardly a surprise. Things began to click between the two of us and at the end of the night I arranged to see her again. Then I had the problem of cars. I had the yellow Cortina that was making a horrible noise when you turned left and the MoT had long expired. There was a brown Cortina that had had an accident and we’d stripped the nearside down. It was still running on the road but with no nearside wing on it or anything like that and the MoT had long since expired on that too. I thought to myself that if I were to start taking the girl out I’m going to at least need the correct kind of car, something that’s working and reliable and more to the point, had an MoT. I was trying to work out what to do about these two Cortinas, even considering collecting all my Cortinas, all the bits, everything and just junking them somewhere and going to buy a car that was legal and could keep on the road

This is a recurring dream, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. In real life things did actually get out of hand about this kind of thing in the late 80s when I had my taxi business. I put it down of course to there not having enough time in the day to deal with everything that was arising, and the fact that I was really in a very dark place at that time. If I had cleared out all of the rubbish and had just one decent car it would have probably cost me the same in the end and made life a lot less complicated but, as the old saying goes, when you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to remember that you came just to drain the swamp. But it’s really quite funny – there I was last night on the verge of Getting The Girl and it was my own problems that were putting the baton dans la rue as they say around here, confounding me at the vital moment. That’s the story of my life too – I’m my own worst enemy. But that’s the usual case when there are several persons living inside this body. You never know which version of me you are going to get on any given day.

There was no time for a shower though with all of the confusion, which was a pity. I was really looking forward to one this morning, but no such luck.

Eventually the doctor came to see me

"How was the brain scan, doctor?" I asked
"We found nothing" he replied
That was not reassuring, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it’s not unexpected.

But the bad news is that the fluid drained off from the lumbar puncture is “inconclusive”. They’ve had to send it away for in-depth studies and the results won’t be ready for several weeks. According to the doctor, there’s no point in my hanging around there for several weeks and then the results might show nothing at all, so I may as well go home.

He handed me my leaving papers, which included yet more medication and a daily visit from the nurse. It looks as if my depressing series of later and later Sunday lie-ins has resolved itself without any help from me. He and his sidekick pass by the building usually at 08:30.

A few minutes later the doctor came dashing back to swap some papers over.

Apparently they’ve rung for a taxi to come to fetch me but there’s an ambulance belonging to the same company already in town. If they had an “ambulance” voucher instead of a taxi voucher they could come for me now. So we played “swaps”.

The nurses came a few moments later to usher me out of my room. Apparently they can clean it and fit another patient in before the end of the day so I had to go down to the waiting room.

When the ambulance came for me we all went downstairs and they began to take out the stretcher from the back of the vehicle

"What’s going on here?" I asked, bewildered
"The ambulance voucher says ‘transport allongée’ and ‘allongée’ means ‘allongée’" replied the assistant

While they were strapping me into the stretcher they noticed that the nurses hadn’t taken the catheter out of my arm. So unstrapped, off the stretcher, back upstairs to find a nurse.

And then back downstairs, onto the stretcher, strapped in and shoved into the back of the ambulance like a pizza going into the oven

If you don’t know the slang meaning of the French phrase etre à cheval sur, then a trip with these two will explain everything. ‘Allongée’ means ‘allongée’, yes, but your 4 hours working period means a 4-hour period, not 4:05, and a half hour break means a half-hour break, not 29 minutes.

Having a passenger strapped immobile in the back makes no difference at all.

And ‘keeping a calm environment’ means not uttering a word to your passenger at all during the entire journey. The assistant can however tell the driver “that lane’s quicker” or “you should be over there” or “quick – he’s through the péage”

Had I been driving, I would have found a novel and inventive use for half a roll of plasters.

Back here my faithful cleaner was there to help me and we managed to find our way upstairs. "Do you need any help now?" she asked
"No thanks" I replied. "I have things to do" and if you’d been strapped to a stretcher immobile in the back of an ambulance for five hours, you’d have things to do too.

Imitating THE CARMICHAELS, supper waited on the table inside a tin. In fact the pasta was dried and in a box but the Greek Mushrooms were in the tin. I didn’t have time or the urge to make anything else right now.

Now I’m off to bed for pleasant dreams (I hope) and I’ll tidy up and put away tomorrow. My fudge tastes really nice – I tried a piece just now. That was definitely a success and I’ll make it again

But that phrase reminds me of the time that I dashed into the legendary Gentlemen’s Rest Room on Crewe Bus Station on my way home after a heavy night on the Boddington’s at the Lion and Swan

"Phew!" I exclaimed with a sigh of relief. "Just made it!"
"Blimey!" said the man in the next stall, looking over into mine. "Can you make me one like it?"

But returning to the subject of signs, Brussels was always good for a laugh for signs like this nevertheless. When SABENA – “Such A Bad Experience – Never Again” launched its direct flights from Brussels to Singapore, it had all these posters "Breakfast in Brussels – Supper in Singapore"
And underneath every one someone had written "And Luggage in Lagos"

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Sunday 14th January 2024 – GUESS WHO…

… spent several hours in the Casualty department of the local hospital here in Granville last night?

What at first had appeared to be just a dull, throbbing pain though the part of my right leg that can actually feel anything, I could feel it going worse and worse as the evening continued and I began to freeze.

Once in bed, the pain increased and I began to shiver violently. I can recognise the symptoms of severe shock just as well as anyone else and with no improvement with the passage of time (quite the reverse, as it happened), in the end I gave up and phoned my cleaner who lives upstairs.

She was down here in an instant and one look was all that it took. She phoned up the emergency number and we all had a very lengthy chat with three different people before they decided to send an ambulance.

While we were waiting she, following my instructions, packed my emergency bag which she promised to bring during the day, and then she helped the ambulancemen, one of whom I knew, take me to their vehicle. And that wasn’t easy either, 25 steps and no lift.

Once I arrived, I told my story to four different people, one after the other after the other, while the pain was increasing and increasing, and then I was x-rayed with my leg and foot being twisted into some of the most painful positions imaginable, without even the suggestion of a painkiller.

Wheeled out of the x-ray cabinet on a stretcher far too small for me, I was told to “get some rest” which, as you can imagine, on a tiny stretcher with a painful leg overhanging into a void and with no painkiller or anything, was pretty much impossible.

Eventually, they came back, told me that the x-rays showed no breaks, gave me a couple of painkillers and said that the ambulance will be back shortly to pick me up and take me home.

And lifting me up 25 steps with no lift was no laughing matter either for the poor ambulancemen, but I was back in bed in a state of semi-comatose stupefaction (and drugged up to the eyebrows too) by 05:00.

Liz had a chat with me at about 08:45 on the internet but I was talking utter nonsense and fell asleep again, to awaken at 12:45.

The painkillers had worn off by then but I had some more around here. I hate using painkillers because while you’re walking around on damaged bone and tissue, you don’t realise the damage that you are doing. But in my case, the right leg is damaged enough so it makes no difference.

It’s a good job that it’s not my left leg that I hurt. I really would be in difficulty. But even so, the damaged nerve in my right leg that gives me those stabbing pains in the soles of my foot that I thought that I’d dealt with is now back again, and in spades too.

After my delicious soup, bread and coffee (and it really was too) I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Yes, to my surprise there were some, but none of the young lady who was here or hereabouts last night. But we did have various musicians with us, including someone from IN THE LAND OF GREY AND PINK, un autre groupe … "dreaming in French again, are we?" – ed … who played in front of us. I leant over too far for something and ended up with my right knee totally collapsed just as the football was finishing. I had to watch the first two chapters on my foot but my right arm was really depressed and unstable. I’ve not able to be visited by my mother-in-law about the cables everywhere yet but when I’m too ill to see The Land Of Grey And Pink … fell asleep here … and the chairwoman as I said called the meeting to order and sent me off for these things

And then some woman was being investigated by the Tax Office for some kind of irregularities in connection with a hairdressing salon. It turned out that many years ago she’d also been the subject of an investigation in respect of a chip shop somewhere in Bradwell in Newcastle under Lyme. Quite naturally, having fallen foul of the Tax Office twice they were being quite severe with her. This investigation had been going on and I’d been asked if I would like to take part in part of it. I went along to see the people there at the Tax Office but for some reason they were extremely busy and never had the time really to talk to me. I just sat there and listened. I knew that the information that they were discussing was wrong but what business of it was mine? The interesting part about this was that they came out with something that was called “The Secret Root”. I didn’t have a clue what the Secret Root was. It turned out that it was some kind of secret and unofficial percentage that the Tax Office uses to bind all transactions together, bearing in mind of course that people have business relationships with each other and that all transactions are somehow interlinked. Back several years ago the figure of the Secret Root was 3.9 but now it was 3.1 and that made a difference to some of the calculations that had been made. I was sitting here really interested because I’d never heard of this Secret Root before. I was intent on finding out more about it because it sounded quite so interesting so I didn’t even bother to mention what it was that I’d come along here to discuss. I just sat there and listened while they were discussing this Secret Root.

One or two people who follow this blog know about my relationship with the local Tax Office in Crewe and I’d tell the rest of you about it, except that a certain law called the Obscene Publications Act is still in force. As well as that, there are certain well-enforced Laws of Libel in the UK and the site that deals with the administration of this blog has terms and conditions about its use.

So instead, let me just ask you what the Tax Office and a pelican have in common.
The answer is that that they can both shove their bills up their @rses

There was no pizza dough left in the freezer so I had to make some more. But Rosemary called me just as I was starting and I ended up being all behind. To make matters worse, I used the wrong flour so the base for the one that I baked wasn’t as good as it might have been.

It was still quite delicious though, as I found out when I came to eat it. And I’m sure that the two in the freezer will do just the same.

So doped up to the eyebrows in painkillers and falling asleep, I’m off to bed. And I’ll try to keep out of mischief while I do it. I can’t go through this again.

But final word on the subject of last night must go to my cleaner.

Having called her at some silly hour to come to my rescue, I apologised for waking her.
"Ohh, I wasn’t asleep" she said. "I was watching TV when you phoned"
"Then I hope that I didn’t make you miss anything interesting" I said.
"Don’t you worry about that" she said. "What goes on in your apartment is far more interesting than anything that I could see on TV."

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Wednesday 30th August 2023 – AS SEEMS TO BE …

… usual these days when I have to go somewhere important, I was actually awake and up and about (in principle, at least) when the alarm went off at 07:00

That was despite having gone on several travels during the night. There was something about trying to download the course book for my next lot of Welsh lessons and then trying to find and download a mannequin and various poses for when we’ll be taking off a Welsh lesson but I can’t remember too much at all about this and I fell back to sleep afterwards.

And then I was with Rosemary. We’d been staying for a weekend with a couple whom we’d met somewhere who had 2 children, a young girl and a young boy. They were in the middle of rebuilding a house so I went up on the scaffolding to have a good look around. He didn’t really understand what he was supposed to be doing so I gave him a few tips from my experience and we actually did some work together. I told him of a few things that he needed to buy, one or two tips about sanding down the wood and filling gaps etc. He was very impressed. Sooner or later it became time to go so we had to climb down and say goodbye. For some reason this was a really heart-breaking moment. I remember saying to this woman and guy that I wanted to stay. Rosemary said that it’s not quite possible and we’d have to go which was certainly true but for some reason I was truly heartbroken about having to leave. That was what was most disturbing – not so much the dream about having to leave but how I was actually feeling about leaving

Finally I had to take the young girl to the station because she was going to Boarding School. When she’d been before, she’d been taken as far as the barrier and sent through on her own to look for her own school party. She was saying that that was really difficult so she asked me if I’d come through the barrier with her down onto the platform and help her find her group of people. I didn’t see any reason why not so I said that I would. She was talking about being sent away to school, basically to give her mother some free time which I knew but I had somehow to explain to the girl that it was so that she would learn a whole variety of different things that she’d never learn at home, how it would be a big experience for her and how much of a better person she’d be because of it, although I wasn’t convinced myself. On the way to the station we walked down the street past the University Library. She made some comment about how a pile of books had been arranged in a Y shape but we were talking about the library saying how untidy it was. I said that I was surprised that the librarians would let a University Library fall into this state. I was really enjoying my conversation with this little girl. again, it was another thing that I was going to be really sad when it was all over and she’d gone.

First thing was to dive into the shower and clean myself up ready to be poked and probed by a doctor, and then, having grabbed by backpack and crutches, Caliburn and I headed off to the railway station.

Luckily there was a parking space available outside the station so we managed to tuck ourselves in without having to walk miles.

The train was already in the station and, to my surprise, the coffee machine which has been out of order since Covid struck is now working so I could fuel up with a coffee in peace and comfort. I can’t carry a mug while I’m walking as I don’t have my hands free, so I had to drink it leaning up against the wall.

For a change, I was lucky with the train. The earlier train that had set out before this one had encountered a fallen tree across the line but the issue had been resolved by the time that we set out and we arrived in Paris on time.

Being limited to what I could bring with me, I didn’t have the computer but I did have a book.

Ages ago I’d bought a copy of Dashiell Hammett’s famous novel THE MALTESE FALCON but I’d never had the opportunity to read it so I brought it along.

Much as I like THE FILM which is one of my favourites and I can watch time after time, the book goes into the story in much more detail and answers several questions that were left unanswered in the film. Some of the action is quite different too and makes much more sense.

We pulled into the station on time for a change but I had to wait a while for my lift to arrive and then they drove me to the hospital, flashing blue lights through red traffic lights, the whole works.

At the hospital I had to wait around for some time but eventually I was dragged into a room where they gave me the works. It was another one of these electrical shock things that really hurts and I really hate, and it was much more thorough than the ones that I’d had before. It took much longer too.

The doctor spent some time examining the results and then we had a chat. He tells me that there are two reasons why I might be suffering. One is that my underlying illness might be eating its way into my nervous system, or else I might have a serious infection.

However, everything that everyone has seen in all of the examinations that I’ve had, the lumbar puncture included, don’t show any of the classic symptoms that they would expect to see in either of the two situations.

The net result of this is that at the moment they are puzzled. However "we can’t leave things alone and leave you like this".

What they are proposing is that I "would probably benefit from a stay here for a few days while we undergo some more exhaustive tests".

They’ve taken all of the details about the hospital in Leuven too in order to contact them about my case and compare notes.

And so we’ll have to see how the future unfolds, but at least I haven’t been abandoned to face my destiny on my own, and that’s a good thing to know.

There’s a café outside the building where I was being examined so I went and had a coffee before I was picked up again and taken back to the station. Here, to my dismay I found that my train would be departing from Vaugirard, so I had a long walk down the platform, during which I came within an ace of falling over.

There was a very long wait for the train back home and we didn’t pull into the station until 23:10. It was 23:30 when I finally sat down in my little apartment, thoroughly exhausted and wasted. It had been a very long day and, to my complete surprise, I hadn’t crashed out at all.

However I was far too tired to do anything else so I cleared off straight to bed. It’s actually 5 years to the day that I first encountered The Vanilla Queen and 4 years to the night that I’d had the first of a short series of the strangest, most bizarre nights that I’ve ever had

All of these were events that totally changed my perception of various aspects of humanity.

The artist Samuel Gurney Cresswell who had accompanied James Clark Ross on his Arctic voyage of 1848-49 and said of Captain Robert McClure, who had almost come to grief in the ice, that a voyage to the High Arctic “ought to make anyone a wiser and better man”. All that I can say is that it didn’t work for me.

But ask me if I want to change any of it.

That’s something on which I can dwell while I’m deep in the arms of Morpheus.

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Friday 27th January 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… lie-in this morning.

But that was completely involuntary and by accident because the alarm failed to go off this morning.

When I checked the mobile phone I found that the battery had gone flat and it had switched off. Further enquiry revealed that what had happened was that the charging plug had somehow become detached from the telephone. With no possibility to repair something like this, that was that.

We aren’t lost though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I lost my mobile phone and being totally unable to find it, I bought another one. A few months later, when I was tidying Caliburn looking for something else, I found the ‘phone down underneath the driver’s seat. so it went into a drawer and I forgot all about it.

Today’s events made ne remember where it was so I hunted it down but found, to my dismay, that the SIM card wasn’t the same size. But not to worry – I’ll sort it out later.

The morning was spent working on the notes for the radio programmes that I’ll be doing on Monday and chatting to Liz and Rosemary on the internet. But once the afternoon came round I dressed myself up and went out to catch the bus.

And today I’m very proud of myself in one respect, but not in another. When the bus dropped me off at the Place Godal I set off on my marathon hike to the Orange Telecom shop. That really is quite a walk, only about 400 metres short of the railway station and I was really impressed that I made it all the way there on my crutches.

But not so impressed when I spoke to the assistant at the shop. he took both telephones, took the SIM card out of the one that i’m going to use, peeled off the small adapter that was around it, put the SIM card from the broken ‘phone into the adapter and put that in the other ‘phone.

It was as simple as that and had I noticed that earlier when I was at home this morning, I could have saved myself the walk.

However the walk did me good and it’s made me think a little more about how I might go for broke and try one of these days to walk on my crutches to the railway station. But the last 400 metres is a killer hill, and I bet that the whole route will be a lot more difficult when I have things to carry.

Back down in the town I went to the Carrefour and bought a few bits and pieces, like mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and the like.

At the bus stop there was a 45-minute wait for the bus and it was cold out there and so I decided that I’d cross over the road and catch the bus in the other direction, round to the terminus at the other end of the line and then rode the bus back. At least it was warm and comfortable on the bus out of the wind.

Just about 45 minutes after I returned home I had to go back out again. The taxi came to pick me up to take me to this nerve specialist. and I’ll tell you now that pumping electricity through me as he did was one of the most painful things that has ever happened to me.

There’s nothing much wrong with my arms but there’s an issue with my left leg. As for my right leg, well, the least said about that the better. It’s quite clear according to him that there’s some serious damage.

He’s going to discuss things with my doctor but he did warn me that I need to pack my suitcase. I suppose that I’ll have to buy a couple of pairs of pyjamas too. Hospital nightwear is pretty depressing and I … errr … don’t actually have any of my own.

After I returned I transcribed the notes of my voyages from last night. I’d just finished work and I needed something for the weekend, which was in Chester, so I set out for Chester. It was such a nice evening so I decided that I would walk. I took a t-shirt, a cagoule, a fleece and another rainproof jacket just in case. The walk as far as the suburbs of Chester was quite uneventful and I quite enjoyed it but as I arrived closer to the city, it went really dark. We suddenly had a torrential downpour of rain. Luckily with the 2 rain jackets that I had and the fleece in between the 2 I kept warm and dry. I was able to walk quite comfortably up to the traffic lights on the edge of the city. Then the rain stopped and it went bright again. I stopped to take off the rain jacket. There were some people coming the other way who started to admire my rain jacket and particularly my yellow fleece, starting to talk to each other about it. They asked me a few questions but for some unknown reason I replied in French. I could see a look of puzzle on their faces as I did so but I didn’t really want to hang around and chat to them because I had a lot to do. I wanted to have it done as quickly as possible because of course it’s a long way to Chester and a long way back if you are walking.

As an aside, I walked back through the night from Chester to where I was living near Audlem a couple of times – all 30 or so miles of it – when the girl whom I was seeing went to College there and I didn’t have a car. It didn’t take me as long as you might think and even once or twice I walked straight to work and did 8 hours before going home to bed. I couldn’t do it now, even if I didn’t have the crutches.

I can’t remember who I was with later on, but it was a married couple. They were my age. It concerned a Ford Granada and there was some work that needed doing on it, the front wheel bearings and a few other bits and pieces. It had been around for a while and the work hadn’t started. I was with the woman who said that she had had a dream last night about her husband who had gone off to do this and that and somethign else. She’d happened to mention the Granada and he replied “oh yes, I’m going to get down to do it starting tomorrow”. He seemed so enthusiastic so she said that that’s possibly a good sign that means that he will. I said “strangely enough, I had a dream about someone working on a Granada too”. Then I told her the story of a friend whom I knew who had a Granada and who had been in the same position. He just wouldn’t start doing the repairs which was something to do with the wheel bearings and the front wings. After so many months he’d just put everything in a box and sold it, including the car, for someone else to do. She was surprised. Next time I went round her husband was there. He said “by the way, I’d done one of those front wheel bearings. It only took me 15 minutes as well”.

Tea tonight was some of these mini sausage rolls with baked potatoes, veg and gravy. They were actually quite delicious. I’ll have to work out a way of ordering some more of these “Green Cuisine” products. Noz has them in on the odd occasion but I’d love to have a more regular supply. It’s not possible to order stuff like this from the UK these days, what with Brexit and all that.

So hopefully tomorrow the alarm will go of and awaken me properly this time. Not that I have too much to do this weekend – do my cleaner’s accounts, do some more work on sorting out how I’m going to pay for this apartment that I’m supposed to be buying and that kind of thing. So I might even finish the notes for these radio programmes.

And having been to the shops this week, I have everything that I need, I reckon, but I really am going to try to go out for a walk more often, even if it isn’t far. Having made it as far as the Orange Mobile place today, I need to keep up the good work and see if I can exercise myself back into some sort of condition.

Only time will tell.

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Wednesday 8th December 2021 – I WAS RIGHT …

replacing cobbles rue st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021… when I said the other day that maybe I was being rather too hasty with my vituperative comments about the surface of the Rue St Michel

Those big bags that we saw on the back of that pick-up yesterday were actually full of cobbles and then are all now dumped on the corner in the Rue de Cambernon. But several have actually made it up to the far end of the street.

If you look carefully at this photograph you’ll see that a pile of them have even been laid and the work is slowly progressing down the hill towards where I’m standing.

Mind you, it’ll take them a good few days to reach this end of the street. And then, I suppose, someone else will come along and dig it up for some other purpose.

After last night’s antics I needed someone to come along and dig me up out of bed when the alarm went off because firstly I was in bed late, not being tired earlier, and then I was awake after just about 4 hours of sleep and couldn’t go back to sleep until, as usual, about 5 minutes before the alarm went off.

Consequently I was staggering around for a good few minutes trying to gather my wits once I finally made it out of bed.

Once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages I went and edited the sound-file from Sunday morning. It was a mess as I expected, with pops and bangs everywhere, but I’ve managed to trim well over 40 minutes of sound down to half that – and there’s plenty more to go as well.

However I need to send it off to Laurent for a listen and for him to dictate some supplementary questions.

A propos of absolutely nothing, two of the interviewees started to talk about the Erasmus scheme and the ending of mutual recognition of qualifications and that will make a pretty good interview all on its own so I cut it out and filed it separately.

All of that took me right up to 18:20 this evening, but it was a job well-done.

There were the usual interruptions of course, one of which was for breakfast, and another was for a shower. And having weighed myself again, I’m down to my lowest weight since it piled back on after I stopped running. Those were the days, hey?

With a late lunch as well today, it was almost time to go straight out for my walk to the physiotherapist’s.

repairing medieval city wall place du marché aux chevaux Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021Seeing as I was a few minutes early today, I went to have a look at the repairs to the medieval city wall at the Place du Marché aux Chevaux.

First thing that I noticed was that they hadn’t re-erected the shelter that was blown down by Storm Arwen, the shelter that they have over their heads when they are pointing the wall, to stop objects from above falling on their heads.

But then by the looks of things, the pointing has hardly advanced at all since we saw it last. Mind you, they have had other things to worry about, like gale-force winds and the like. And this afternoon’s wind was nothing to be ashamed of either.

You have already seen the photo of the Rue St Michel so I pushed on and walked over the drawbridge into the Rue des Juifs.

marité chausiaise port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021The other day we saw a photo of all of the Ile de Chausey boats moored up in the inner harbour.

However today, there has been some shuffling around of the fleet. The Joly France ferry that was over on the far side of the harbour has now disappeared completely.

Chausiaise has also moved, but not as far. She’s now in front of Marité in the loading bay underneath the crane but I don’t think that all of that freight just there is for her.

As for the other two boats, they are still tied up here against the quayside right underneath where I’m standing.

site of christmas market place pelley le pleville Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021There’s quite a lot of activity going on down below too on the Place Pleville de Pelley.

That’s where the bar ephemère hangs out during the summer and is used as the boulodrome for the rest of the time, but today they are setting up some little wooden cabins there.

We’re going to be having a Christmas Fair, so I’m told, and that looks as if it’s it. It doesn’t look particularly impressive though.

Given half a chance I’d be in Aachen or Köln next weekend at a real Christmas Fair, but I’m going nowhere unnecessary while there’s all of this going on.

On the way up the hill I stopped at the Carrefour and bought a bunch of bananas. I’m running low on them and I can’t survive at all without bananas.

At the physiotherapist’s, she had me on the cross trainer again for 5 minutes and then more kinetic exercises, including throwing this ball about again. Today though, I don’t know what happened but I wasn’t feeling anything like as well as I have done this last couple of weeks – and that was nothing much to write home about was it?

ambulance rue couraye Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021As I stepped out of the physiotherapist’s, I was overtaken by an ambulance going down the hill at some speed.

There must be some kind of emergency somewhere for him to be driving like that with all of his lights flashing.

Having taken a photo I pushed on down the hill where I bumped into “Father Christmas” coming out of a shop. We had quite a chat about our interview the other day and he was quite impressed with how well it came out.

In the end, they didn’t do a bad job of it but it could have been ohhhh! So much better and I feel that an opportunity has been let slip here.

cherry picker fixing wreath to town hall place general de gaulle Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021There was more excitement going on when I arrived at the town centre.

There’s one of the Council’s cherry-pickers down there in the Place General de Gaulle and the gus in the nacelle are erecting some kind of Christmas wreath on the wall of the Mairie.

Not that I have any idea why they would be wanting to do that because putting it as high up as they seem to be doing, it’s not as if many people are going to notice it up there.

empty port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021By now we were having a really heavy hailstorm so I wrapped my rain jacket tighter around me and carried on through the town and up the hill.

The part of the port where the fishing boats tie up was strangely deserted this afternoon. Almost every boat was out at sea, and in this weather too. They must be expecting a bumper harvest this evening when they all come back on the tide.

When you think about it, it’s quite a heroic endeavour being a fisherman and since the demise of coal-mining in the West, it’s probably one of the most dangerous occupations going. On the other side of the Cotentin Peninsula a trawler with four people on board was lost at sea two nights ago.

beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo December 2021Despite the lousy weather right now, I went over to have my customary look at the beach.

As I expected, there was no-one down there at all right now. People have far more sense than to be out and about in all of this.

Back here I made myself a nice hot coffee and then carried on with editing this sound file. I was glad when I finished it too – at least this particular bit. There will be plenty more work to be done on it, and on the other sound files too that relate to this project.

And who knows? Maybe even one of my colleagues might contribute something to this project, but I’m not holding my breath.

Tea was the rest of last night’s curry and left-over curry is even more delicious the next day when all of the spices have marinaded deeper into the food.

So that’s enough for today. I’m off to bed. For the next two days I’m staying at home with no plans anywhere. So that’s the cue for Caliburn’s bits and pieces to be delivered to the parcels centre and for his new tyres to arrive, isn’t it?

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Wednesday 25th August 2021 – I WENT TO …

… see the rapist this afternoon.

rue cambernon Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallFirst thing that I have to say about it all is that there’s traffic flowing again down the Rue Cambernon again.

It looks as if the braderie was only a one-day thing because everything seems to have been cleared away, all of the streets are now open and the cars are driving along them.

It’s a shame really because for that one day it was quite interesting and quite quiet too. It reminded me of the “car-free Sunday” that we had once a year when I lived in Brussels. All of the public transport was free, all of the parks and museums were open and you could wander everywhere without any interruption at all.

And, at the end of the day, the normal haze that hung over the city had gone and the sky was really clear.

Just for one day.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, one of the things that really gets my goat around here is the pathetic parking.

bad parking rue paul poirier Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallYou’ve seen so much of it that I’ve been trying to avoid showing it, in order not to bore you to death, but sometimes there is something so extreme that I have to feature it. Something like this, for example.

The white car, with a registration number from out of the département so clearly a tourist, has stopped – with a couple of wheels on a zebra crossing, and let his wife out to go and buy a baguette from the bakery here.

And then he sits and waits for her.

This is a bus route for the large service buses that ply up and down the coast, and he’s blocking the road so that this bus can’t go past.

And does he move? Of course he doesn’t. He’s a tourist. The town belongs to him. Who cares about the locals?

But anyway, let’s start at the very beginning.

Despite having a good deal less than 5 hours sleep last night, I was up and about at 06:00 and went to take my medicine.

Back in here again I checked my messages – well, I didn’t – just about half of them. I didn’t actually go to sleep – I was wide awake – but in something like a zombie-like trance for a couple of hours, unable to function at all.

When I finally gathered my wits – which takes far longer these days than it ought, seeing how few wits I have left these days, I made myself a coffee and cut a slice of my gorgeous fruit bread – which really is gorgeous by the way – and then came back in here to finish off checking my messages.

Next task was to prepare a music playlist for the week. It’s the turn of the music in the “BB” folder to be selected and it will be any 11 tracks from about 15 of the 50 artists and groups in the folder.

The playlist will now be running continuously until Sunday night (as long as the computer is switched on) and I’ll be listening to all of the relevant albums, choosing tracks that might be interesting, noting down their running times and the albums from which they come, and whether they are good or faulty.

And whether they are needing editing too. Chopping exciting bits out of “Tubular Bells” or “Thick as a Brick” – stuff like that. Much as I like the complete albums, my listeners would fall asleep if I played all of them non-stop.

There was the dictaphone to check of course and eventually I managed to get around to it. Last night I was living on some kind of island. There was a huge explosion that had destroyed part of the buildings. Everyone had to evacuate this island and move onto another one that was already occupied. Everyone immediately thought that it was me who had blown up this island or whatever it was, so no-one was really my friend and gave me all cold stares when I’d tried to talk to them about anything.

And doesn’t that remind me of an event about two years ago?

Later on, I’d been on a bike and apparently I’d started off walking. It was medieval times. I was loaded up and on my way somewhere or other. The priest of this area was standing there looking over the harbour and everything. As I walked past he made the sign of the cross to me so I made the sign of the cross to him. He said “good evening” and I thought “it’s morning, isn’t it?”. I carried on walking and then I was on a bike cycling down a hill near Lyon. A group of 5 people walked off the pavement straight in front of me. I gave them a tinkle of the bell. They moved slowly out of the way so I swore at them and cursed them in French. They were making all kinds of gestures and insults but I carried on. In the end someone invited me to appear on television. I thought “if they had heard that lot just now they wouldn’t have allowed me on at all.

After that, I know that I did something else, but don’t ask me what it was because I can’t remember.

After lunch I went and had a shower and a general clean and tidy up, and then went off on my travels to see the rapist.

transhipment porte st jean Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBut I didn’t go very far before I came to a stop.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, because I’ve said it before … “and on many previous occasions too” – ed … living intra muros in the old walled city does have its drawbacks Like the height of the gateway into the old walled city.

If you are having anything big delivered, you need to have some kind of trans-shipment system in place because the chances are that the delivery lorry might not be able to fit through the arch. We’ve seen all kinds of Heath-Robinson arrangements since I’ve been living here.

port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallMeanwhile, a little farther on along the road I come out to one of the viewpoints on the outer walls – the one that overlooks the fish processing plant.

The first thing that I noticed was that all of the “charter hire” yachts like Aztec Lady, Spirit of Conrad and so on are conspicuous by their absence.

Not that it is a real surprise because I heard on the grapevine that the Channel Islands are relaxing their strict anti-Covid controls on visitors from France, and so everyone who is anyone has headed off in a northward direction.

And had I not had my series of appointments starting this week, I would have been tempted to have joined them as well.

Les Epiettes port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallEvery now and again we’ve been seeing a small red, white and blue boat running around in the bay or just outside the harbour.

It might be this one here. I know that we encountered one, called Les Epiettes once when we were on Spirit of Conrad out at the Ile de Chausey, but unfortunately we can’t see her name from here.

When I was back in the apartment later I checked the port call register and there was no trace of a boat that resembled her so she probably has her AIS switched off.

But I did discover something else and I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

charlevy port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd I’m sure that we all recognise this trawler. It’s been the subject of quite a few photos just recently.

Unless I’m very much mistaken, she’s our old friend Charlevy, anchored at the loading bay with one of the cranes working on her.

What I suspect is that while she’s been in the chantier naval she’s had all of her nets taken out and presumably overhauled and repaired on the quayside as we’ve seen them do before.

Today, it looks as if the crane is reassembling all of her fishing gear, ready for her to go back out to sea.

From there I pushed on through the streets and up the hill to the therapist. And the climb up there was a little better than on Monday.

He had me walking up and down a step, doing some stretching exercises and then standing on some kind of tilting, vibrating plate that reminded me on being on the deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR in a hurricane.

There was a kind of ski-walking machine there but that wasn’t a success. Not because I couldn’t work it but I didn’t have the breath to keep it going.

After half an hour he threw me out and I walked home, feeling actually a little more sprightly in my right leg than I have done for a while. I wonder what it will be like at the end of the sessions.

Passing the shenanigans outside the bakers I carried on towards home and my ice-cold strawberry smoothie. And the climb up the hill in the Rue des Juifs went rather better than the other day.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I was out, I thought that I’d go and see how things were down on the beach. It’s much more like my usual time of afternoon.

Plenty of beach to be on or course because the tide is well on its way out now. You could see quite a difference to how it was 90 minutes ago when i set off for my appointment.

But the holiday season is definitely coming to an end. Three days now on the run I’ve made the point that there have been fewer and fewer people down on the beach , and once again I couldn’t see anyone in the water either. It’s a sad end to a rather depressing summer season here.

ile de chausey baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I was at it, I was having a good look out to sea.

The NIKON D3000 was my main camera between the demise of the Nikon D5000 and the purchase of the NIKON D500 and while I was happy with it at the time, I’ve had to do a lot of post-work to pull out a photo of the Ile de Chausey from the haze out at sea.

None of the Joly France ferries in sight – they must all be sheltering in the gap between the two islands. Just the odd yacht or two out there this afternoon. Nothing much to be excite myself today. I did see a brown smudge on the horizon which at first I thought was Marité but it turned out to be a mark on the computer screen.

people on beach plat gousset Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallGoing back to the apartment, there was a view of the beach down at the Plat Gousset – a view that I don’t usually see because I’m going the other way.

Quite a few people going for a paddle around in the water retained by the medieval fish trap, and a few folk on the beach down there too. But seeing as that area is the most popular part of the beach, I was expecting it to be much busier than that.

A few people down on the beach at Donville les Bains though. I can just about make them out in the distance.

So back into the apartment I came and had my strawberry smoothie – and the next thing that I remembered was thatt it was 18:30. I’d been stark out for 90 minutes. The walk out and back had taken it all out of me.

There were carrots that needed peeling and blanching ready for freezing and then it was time for tea. I had the rest of the mushrooms which were going to start to do something rather peculiar if I didn’t do anything with them so I threw in a small tin of lentils and a few other bits and pieces and made a quick curry.

big wheel at night place albert godal Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBack in here I came to write up my notes but while I was checking the radar to see whether it really was Les Epiettes coming into the port, I noticed a rather large boat coming into the port, larger than any that have been in here recently.

Immediately I grabbed the camera and dashed outside to see what it might be, falling over a concrete bollard in the street in the darkness.

Firstly though, the big wheel was working, even though it was quite late. People must be staying up until all hours, being still in the holiday mood even if they don’t want to go down to the beach during the daytime.

big wheel at night place albert godal Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallOne of the attractions of the big wheel, especially for the spectator, is that it changes colour as it goes round.

As I watched, it went through all of the colours of the rainbow and made quite an exciting spectacle.

But only for a few more days. It usually closes down round about the end of August so maybe next week will be the last that we shall see of it.

And the tourists too. While I’m always pleased to see them leave, I do feel sorry for them for the miserable summer that they have had.

medical emergency at galeon andalucia port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallYou probably noticed in the two photos of the big wheel a set of lights coming down the hill in the Rue Couraye. What you won’t have heard of course is the sound of the sirens that came with the lights.

There’s something rather large and top-heavy down there and it’s certainly not a gravel boat as I was originally thinking.

And why it’s put into the harbour is presumably due to some kind of medical emergency that needs to be dealt with

medical emergency at galeon andalucia port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallBut in the meantime I can tell you something about her, because she has her AIS beacon switched on.

Believe it or not, she’s a Spanish galleon. Not a original one, I haste to add, and wouldn’t that be something if it were, but a faithful replica of a Spanish galleon of the 17th Century and at an overall length of almost 48 metres, she’s the largest ship of any description to come in here for quite a while.

How long she’ll be staying is something else, so I’ll be out there first thing in the morning to see her in daylight, because the harbour gates open early.

trawler leaving port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallWhile I’m out, I’m not going to bed quite yet. I may as well make the most of things

With the harbour gates being open, one of the trawlers here is taking the opportunity to slip out to sea. She doesn’t have her AIS beacon switched on so I can’t tell you who she is. It’s just a purple lozenge on my radar screen with no name attached.

Anyway, that’s enough excitement for this evening. I’m going back to the apartment to carry on with my journal entry for today before I forget any more.

Now, much later than intended, I’m off to bed. A whole day at home with no interruptions. I bet that I’ll fall asleep and miss most of it.

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Wednesday 18th August 2021 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was!

It was alright until about 02:45 when the people in one of the rooms backing onto mine came back in from wherever they had been and put the music on.

And it was still going on at 11:00 this morning when I went out to the shops.

Nothing that I could do would get them to turn down the sound and telephoning the management was a waste of time too as the all-night emergency number was switched to the answerphone.

Luckily I managed to button-hole the manager this morning when I came back and told him what I thought about the situation.

He told me that he will speak to the people concerned. We shall see.

So most of last night was spent drifting in and out of sleep, and there are tons of stuff on the dictaphone. There was a little girl wandering around the complex here. I’d seen her once or twice and I caught up with her again the following day. I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was looking for a donkey for some part in a film, something like that. We had a look around a few of the outhouses, places like that together, but we couldn’t see anything. We had a little chat and she went on her way. a little while later we bumped into some people who were also wandering around the apartment trying to sort out this music that was coming from another house in the street that backs onto here. It was a woman in her 40s and a couple of young people. We started to chat and the subject came up about this particular situation and the subject of this girl came up. Apparently she was her daughter and was 11. She asked me how she was and I replied that she was a little sunburnt but apart from that she’s fine. The woman said in that case I’ll leave her over in the UK. I replied “there’s no need to do that because she seems to be OK around here and I can keep an eye on her”. Then these people by now were loading something onto the roof of a Volvo, rather like a bed or something with a huge tubular metal frame. They were having to tie it on and I was having to help by holding the corners of these ropes so that they could tighten them up. Of course I had to concentrate for if I relaxed my grip this metal pole would go through the rear window. I remember thinking that I’ve moved some strange stuff in some strange fashions at one time but this beats just about everything.

Later on we were running a camp site, Liz, Terry and me, during the night. In the morning we had to apologise to people because of the noise that was being made because of the noise that was being made and we had to track down the culprits. We were generally tidying things up after people had started to leave and making plans about how we were going to develop things in the future. There was a sleeping bag piled up in a heap down at the bottom end of the course so I went to straighten it out, but there was a girl of about 7 asleep in it. We asked her if she had been the one making all the noise. She said “no” so we teased her – “doesn’t it have a cute little nose, that thing in that sleeping bag?” all that kind of thing.

later still, having been fired rather unceremoniously by Gill Leese for having read the newspaper, there was still an outstanding job that needed to be done, for us to take several lorry-loads of scrap to the scrap breakers. I thought that I’d go out and do that anyway because I wasn’t doing very much. By now everyone had gone. I got into a lorry that was fully-loaded, a rigid bulk carrier with trailer, and set out to drive it. Going through Nantwich and everywhere was quite easy but getting out towards Middlewich and Winsford, the road became a bit tougher and a couple of times I had to get out and walk and set the hand throttle so that the lorry would steer itself through the obstructions. There was one particular bit of obstruction that was very difficult to negotiate but someone came along with a tow rope to help me tow it through. Instead, he had the lorry wedged sideways in it and it was well and truly stuck. I thought “this is going to be a lot more complicated with Gill Leese than I could possibly imagine”.

Round about 09:30 I left my bed and went for breakfast. That was followed by a spell working on choosing the music for another radio programme.

Having only done half the shopping yesterday I went out later this morning to buy the food that I needed for lunch, otherwise I’ll be starving.

After lunch I had a shower and then chose the music for another programme, following which I went out to the bus station.

statue or sculpture of hot air balloon outside bus station leuven belgium Eric HallHere is something that I hadn’t noticed yesterday when I left the railway station.

Belgium, and Leuven in particular might be famous for many things but hot-air ballooning isn’t one of them. Most of the early balloonatics were French. So why there is a statue or a carving of a hot air balloon outside the bus station is something that has completely defeated me.

What I’ll have to do is to wander down that way and see if there’s a plaque affixed to it to give an explanation.

It’s quite new too. I don’t remember seeing it when I was here five weeks ago

martelarenplein leuven belgium Eric HallMeanwhile, while I was here I went to have a look at the Maartelarenplein outside the railway station.

That’s been dug up now for longer than I care to remember and progress is taking place at a snail’s pace. This is a very long task.

This afternoon I had to go to the offices of the local bus company, De Lijn. I have some old multi-use bus tickets but they have been withdrawn. I had to change them for the new type.

Then I boarded a bus that took me to Alison’s new house, known in the locality as “Alison’s Wonderland”. It was her housewarming party.

war graves leefdaal belgium Eric HallInstead of getting off at her house I went on to the next bus stop at the church.

Alison had told me that there were a couple of British Commonwealth War Graves there from May 1940. I was half-expecting to see the crew of a Fairey Battle but instead, it’s two soldiers from the Grenadier Guards killed on 18th May 1940 during the British Army’s retreat from Leuven.

It’s a mystery though why the graves have been left here. It was common policy after the war for to inhabitants of these small cemeteries to be regrouped into a couple of large ones.

civilian war graves leefdaal belgium Eric HallThere were some civilian graves here too. Civilians were by no means spared from the fighting during the German push through Belgium.

From there I walked down to Alison’s for the barbecue. A few of her colleagues from work were there and we all had a chat for a while. But rather earlier than most people I started to feel tired long before events had really warmed up and so like a reporter from the News of the Screws I made my excuses and left.

There was quite a wait for the bus back to town, but the journey passed quickly enough and I was soon alighting at the bus stop across the road.

ambulance attending road accident tiensestraat tiensevest leuven belgium Eric HallThere was an ambulance across the road too with its blue emergency lights flashing.

By its side was a rather badly distorted bicycle that looks as if it’s been run down by a passing car, although there was no other vehicle that looked as if it might have been involved.

Having taken a photo of it, I crossed the road and headed for home and to write up my notes.

Now they are done, I’m off to bed to try to get as mush sleep as possible in case the music starts up again later. But I’m not setting an alarm, just to be on the safe side.

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