Tag Archives: anglo saxon cemetery at monkton

Friday 8th May 2026 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

Yours Truly spent a nice hour this morning completing his shopping list for LeClerc and then went to send it off for delivery later today.

At first, the delivery site wouldn’t load, and when it finally did, it was service indisponible – "service unavailable". So what’s going on here? I kept on trying for a good while, using all sorts of tricks and so on to navigate what I thought was a blockage in the service’s website.

And then, after a while, the lightbulb suddenly clicked on. It’s a bank holiday here today, isn’t it? D’ohhh.

What I put it down to is too much sleep. Last night, by the time that I’d finished my notes and done everything that needed doing, it was about 21:30, and wasn’t I glad to slide under the bedcovers at that time? It took a while … "as usual these days" – ed … to fall asleep, but that was into a nice deep sleep, which I enjoyed intensely.

During the night, I awoke a couple of times. At one moment, 04:10 to be precise, I was lying on my back and not coughing, which surprised me a considerable amount, but I didn’t spend too long thinking about it because I was soon asleep again. And there I lay until the alarm went off at 06:29.

As usual, it took a while to leave the bed, and then I went off to the bathroom to sort myself out. In the kitchen, I had my high-energy drink to wash down my medication and then came back in here to find out what had gone on during the night.

I was on a mission to the moon last night and we were all strapped into these various seats inside what I suppose was the space shuttle or something. A series of tapes was running all the time and the blast-off was extraordinary. I’d never felt anything like that in the past. We soared up into the sky and within four or five minutes, we made a perfect landing wherever it was that we were supposed to be. I managed to find some insects after I’d been chosen and I’d found a few more on the moon. We were all there, looking at different things and everything like that. No-one thought for a minute about how we were going to come back. We were just not interested in that but interested in finding out what there was to see. But there won’t ever be anything like that blast-off. It was absolutely out of this World.

To whatever this relates, I have no idea. But judging by the tone of my voice when I was dictating it, that blast-off must have been really impressive. And going somewhere and finding myself too busy to bother about coming back is par for the course for me.

However, four or five minutes to go from here to the moon is impressive in anyone’s language – however, it does have to be said that, believe it or not, it takes longer to go 30 or so miles from Bangor to Porthmadog by train on British Railways than it does to go to the moon.

I was with my former friend from Stoke on Trent doing something or other. Things didn’t seem to be working out very well there so I left. I found myself in London and wanted to go to the third floor of this building, but when we arrived there, the third floor was absolutely out of order with all of the lifts. We had to force the lift open. There were some people up there directing us and we managed to find our way onto the stairwell. I remember going down one flight of steps but I ended up in a subterranean car park. I went into the street and there was a Lloyd’s Bank there. It was heaving with people, there were people fighting to enter and others fighting to leave. The staff was having to push them out of the door. eventually, I managed to find my way in but it was so crowded that I couldn’t find a cash point anywhere. In the end, I ended up wedged against the counter so I asked the girl there if I could withdraw some cash. she asked if I had an account there, so I replied that I had a bank card and a cheque book, which seemed to satisfy her, so I had to search through my pockets for the bank card. I found all kinds of cards in there – old SIM cards, old memory cards, all kinds of things like that. In the end, I found my bank card and I handed it over to her, and she filled out a form and stamped it. Then she began to stamp all the other cards, and I couldn’t understand why. She asked me if the thing was always as slow as this, to which I replied that I had no idea. This carried on like this – she was busy stamping everything in my possession that she could possibly find.

It’s a shame about my former friend. He was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, until he had his accident and they gave him these pills …

The bit about London doesn’t fit in with any of our “London” dreams unfortunately, and neither does the bank, but the relentless stamping of everything in sight reminds me of the French obsession with documents, paperwork and rubber stamps on everything.

And we’ve been in this underground car park before, during one of our “Brussels” dreams ages ago.

Did I dictate the dream about being at my friend’s house where he and his wife were in bed or doing something in the bedroom? I had to go to the bathroom so I went in, and for five minutes I did some running on the spot to try to keep fit, but they became really annoyed about this. In the end, I decided to wait for a suitable moment and then pack up and leave.

… "No you didn’t, but this looks as if it might have been near the start of the previous dream." – ed …

The nurse turned up as usual this morning. We talked about the panic at the dialysis centre but he didn’t understand the point that I was trying to make. But not to worry, I’ll make my point on Monday at the dialysis centre, no problem.

The name Charles Roach Smith has appeared countless times during our reading of these historic books on the Romans in Britain. He was one of the foundres of modern archaeology in the UK in the mid-nineteenth century. Today, having finished THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT MONKTON, the next on the list turns out to be REPORT ON EXCAVATIONS MADE UPON THE SITE OF THE ROMAN CASTRUM AT PEVENSEY by Roach Smith so, after having made breakfast, I began.

It’s only a very short book so we’ll only be here a day or two. So far, he’s avoiding controversy by giving a description of the site.

Back in here afterwards, I had the LeClerc order to send off, as I mentioned, and then I had a printer to coax back into life so that I could print a return label to send a package back. That took longer than intended too. I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.

After that, we had two matches in the Scottish playoffs to watch from earlier in the week. Dunfermline v Arbroath and Alloa Athletic v Airdrie United. Regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall that when I used to visit my friend Lorna up in Scotland, I stood on the terraces at Alloa a few times, so I have a soft spot for the Wasps.

Later on, I attacked the radio programme that I’d begun the other day, and now, all of the notes are written, ready for dictation. That’s quite a pile that is building up on the back burner waiting for this coughing to stop and I need to make a plan about them.

There were a couple of interruptions today during the radio notes. Firstly, my cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff as usual, and I declined a shower again today. I’m not in the right kind of health at the moment for that.

Secondly, after she left, I made a taco roll with cheese and salad. It’s not much, but I’ll try to break myself slowly into eating again, if I can.

With the time that was left, I began to think about the radio programmes for next week. We’ll see where we go with those.

But one thing about seeing where we go is that I can see where I’ll be going very shortly. My bed is right behind me, even as I type, and I won’t have far to go for that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going to the moon … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the early summer of 1969 when a North Vietnamese peasant told his friend "The Americans have gone to the moon."
"What?" cried his friend, incredulously. "All of them?"

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Thursday 7th May 2026 – IT SEEMS TO ME …

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

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

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

Anyway, that was today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 6th May 2026 – OHHHHH! THAT WAS SOOOOOOO …

… comfortable. I’ve never felt anything like it. There I was, busy choosing the music for the next radio programme and I must have fallen asleep in mid-work. When I awoke, not far short of 20:00, I was so comfortable and relaxed in my chair that I didn’t know who I was, where I was or even when it was.

One thing that I knew though was that it was so pleasant, rather like a walk in a Japanese garden, that I was determined not to miss any of it so I wrote a terse note on my blog, rolled off my chair onto the bed, threw the covers over me and that was that.

It was something most unusual and most unexpected, particularly after last night. It wasn’t as early as I had hoped it would be when I finished everything, but I can’t complain about being in bed at about 21:45.

As usual, it took a while to go off to sleep. The constant coughing didn’t help, but once I’d gone to sleep, I was gone completely until about … ohh, I dunno. I didn’t look at the clock. I lay there for ages, so it seemed, but I must have dropped off again at some point because when the alarm sounded at 06:29 as usual, I was fast asleep.

When the alarm went off, there was a family living in a house that was very much like Vine Tree Avenue. They all seemed to be sleeping in the living room. It was time for them to get up so their father got out of bed and stood on one of these big round balls and rolled himself over to the far side of the room to switch off the alarm and then rolled back. And then as the kids were starting to leave their beds, the mother put her head into the door to ask if one of the boys could go to play with another child from his class after school. She joked and said that he could come round at 18:00 and he’d be fed, etc. The boy will be waiting for him after his favourite programme on the TV at 17:45, etc. She said “that’s just typical of their family. They are absolutely organised to the hilt”.

We lived in our council house in Vine Tree Avenue from 1957 to 1970. “All quite modern”, they said, with just the fire in the living room, a back boiler for the hot water and a kitchen stove heated by the fire in the living room. Dashing up to bed at night with our hot water bottles into ICE STATION ZEBRA upstairs, and scraping the ice from the insides of our bedroom windows in the morning.

Anyone who talks to me about “the good old days” will get a smack in the mouth.

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

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

It took several minutes … "as usual" – ed … to summon up the strength to stand up and head for the bathroom, and then, in the kitchen, I tried this energy drink thing again with which to take my medicine. I’ve no ida if it’s working or not, but anything is worth a chance.

Back in here, there was plenty of time to check the dictaphone notes to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

There was something about a record producer in the 1970s whose sound was becoming way out of date and he needed to compete with a more modern group. So he financed his concerts by taking some of his groups on trips around old people’s homes, things like that … fell asleep here … He then had this idea that how would songs of the period of the 1950s and 1960s sound with all new modern equipment? Because he realised that his equipment was all out-of-date and he was going to have to upgrade everything to capture a more modern type of sound, he looked through his catalogue for back recordings and found one or two pop songs from that era and decided to rework them with this modern technique, music and equipment in the hope that they would come out as nº 1 hits across Europe.

There’s a story behind this too, and whilst the World is not yet ready to hear it at the moment, it’ll all become apparent in a few months.

But reworking hits from the 1950s and early 1960s with modern production techniques and sound would be quite an interesting project for someone.

The nurse turned up early again and we had quite a discussion about dialysis and my constant coughing fits that were driving him to distraction too. On leaving, he urged me to “rest and take it easy”. If only I could.

Once he’d gone, I made breakfast and started my next book, THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT MONKTON by the Kent Archaeological Service.

It’s not really a book – it’s more a forty-one-page brochure, I suppose, and it describes the examination of twenty-two Anglo-Saxon graves that were unearthed during the laying of a gas pipeline through Monkton on the Isle of Thanet in Kent.

However, I couldn’t resist a smile, or even a laugh, when the author tells us that several graves "had evidently been robbed in antiquity" and a couple of pages later, he tells us that the finds that they themselves made "are now in the museum at Maidstone."

A well-known phrase involving a pot and a kettle springs to my mind here.

Back in here, I followed the advice of my nurse and settled down in my chair. And that was that for about ninety minutes. For much of that time, I wasn’t really asleep but in one of those situations where I was drifting around somewhere in a different plane of existence.

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together and I began to write the notes for the radio programme that I’d begun yesterday. It wasn’t a particularly quick exercise and took me much longer than it should, but the constant coughing, which had caused me to vomit a few times, really was annoying me.

When I’d finally finished, I went for a disgusting drink break and my afternoon medication, and then back in here, Rosemary called me for a chat. It was another marathon where we talked about nothing much for ages, but we did chat about how her vegetable garden was going on. If there’s one thing that I really, really miss from my time in the Auvergne, it’s my vegetable patch and all the fresh vegetables that I used to grow.

After that, I began to research the next radio programme and to look for all the music that I needed. That was taking a positive age too, and it was during all of this that I slid into dreamland on my chair.

When I awoke, I did nothing of what I needed to do at the end of the day. I was determined to carry on with this wonderful feeling that I was experiencing, so I just went to bed and that was that. I can’t even remember my head hitting the pillow – that’s how far gone I was.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the ineffectiveness so far of my antibiotics … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a doctor I know who bumped into one of his patients in the street.
"Did those suppositories that I gave you ease your piles any?" asked the doctor.
"No, doctor" replied the patient. "In fact, to tell the truth, for all the good that they did me, I may as well have shoved them up my a*@e"

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