Tag Archives: antibiotics

Saturday 9th May 2026 – I HAVE TO ADMIT …

… that I was feeling much better this morning. Not exactly sprightly, unfortunately, but much better than I was a few days ago.

What I put it down to is the course of antibiotics that I’ve been given. I know that one swallow doesn’t make a summer and two tablets out of the ten that I’ve been given don’t count for a lot, but I awoke several times during the night, and to my surprise, I wasn’t coughing.

Last night, I started to write out my notes quite early in an effort to have yet another early night, and it was just before 21:00 when they finally went online. There were a few other things that needed doing afterwards, including taking my evening medication, but it can’t have been much after 21:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

As I mentioned just now, it was a turbulent night when I awoke on three or four occasions. I’ve no idea what time because I didn’t look, but it was dark and the electric water heater was working.

The final time that I awoke, there was bright daylight streaming in around the edges of the shutters so I wondered if I’d overslept through the alarms. But when I checked, it was 06:25 – four minutes before the alarm was due to go off. The nights are getting shorter.

In theory, I could have put my feet on the floor and claimed an early start, but I couldn’t be bothered. Instead, I lay in the warmth under the covers and waited for it to go off.

It didn’t take quite so long to summon up the enthusiasm to go into the bathroom this morning, and then I went into the kitchen for my energy drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised at the distance that I seem to have covered.

I was somewhere in some kind of school or college. We were doing a kind of science fiction film and everything like that. There was a group of us, or we were divided into small groups or something, and we were wandering around in our group. One of the other groups came along and began to attack us with these weird science-fiction type machines. It became something of an aerial display or bombardment or something from these really rapid, powerful and fast machines flying overhead all the time, going mainly in one direction and then presumably turning around somewhere and coming back in the same direction and so on. It had us, well, not pinned down because it wasn’t aggressive, but it was a flying display of all kinds of these strange machines. We were trying to work out whether they were remote-controlled or whether there were people flying them or something, because there were far too many to be flown by this one small group. This went on for ages and ages with these plane-type things flying over our heads. Eventually, they all disappeared. We were somewhere along the track of an old disused railway. Once they had all gone, one of the people with us decided that he was feeling hungry and was going to eat something. He asked about the rest of us, so I replied that I’d just nip back to school for a moment and fetch some biscuits from my bag. I went back to school and there were kids everywhere. There were all kinds of equipment and so on relating to these science-fiction things. I went to my bag for some biscuits but there weren’t all that many. Someone gave me some kind of cable but I already had four or five different ones in my hand so I had to go back to my room to sort them out, to make sure that I had what I wanted, and the one that that other person had given me, I’d leave behind on the bed for later.

This must have been a fascinating dream. I can still see the flying machines even now, and they would have been too small to carry a person. They reminded me of the very primitive attempts at gliders or kites such as those built by the Frenchman Clément Ader, with bat-like wings, and they were yellow, red or green. But there were thousands of them.

I spent a lot of time last night roaming through the junior levels of the Welsh pyramid. There were two cases that came to mind – the first was a girl who had been administered a vitamin supplement twice – first by her former team and then by the team that she rejoined later. This was put down to a confusion of paperwork between the two clubs so no action was taken against anyone. The second was a similar kind of case between three small boys. This was ruled to be due to a change of personnel or something like that, and someone who had left hadn’t noted something in a file. There were no charges brought against any of the clubs for misbehaviour or anything like that. It was all due to negligence or carelessness or something.

Interested as I am in football in Cymru, I’ve no idea of anything at all about this dream. And the idea of three small boys is nothing special. Drug testing in football over there is routine these days, and the Football Association of Wales controls all football from under-11 upwards, and I’ve seen 9-year-olds playing in under-11 games in the past.

There was a girl at work with whom I’d been at school. Somehow, we found ourselves in the same supermarket after work. She bought one or two things and so did I, and I gave her a lift home in my van afterwards. Next day at work, we were working away quite happily but then, in the afternoon, I had to go somewhere to do something. I went down to my van and found half a baguette in there that I’d bought, another half-baguette and a loaf of bread that this girl had bought. I picked up the loaf of bread and thought that when I go back to the office, I’ll take it to her and give it to her. I set off on foot on this errand and began to walk down Welsh Row in Nantwich. I ended up walking miles, and it was all through streets and lanes around Nantwich. Then I was in Brussels, walking through Brussels. It seemed to take ages to do what I was trying to do, with walking all around these places. It was sunny, it was sweaty and I was walking up a pedestrian alley, but someone had tied a rope across it as if to close it so I just opened the rope and walked through. Some Dutch guy began to have an argument with me about moving the rope so I told him to clear off, but he didn’t and this argument carried on. In the end, I used a couple of really vulgar Flemish terms and it looked as if he was going to come over and fight with me, but instead, he just wandered away. I found myself in a park, and after walking through this park for five minutes, I realised that there was a huge drop over the wall and I wasn’t sure how I was going to find my way out. Suddenly, I came to an entry that I didn’t know was there so I went through an entry onto the road and began to walk towards Nantwich. There was a house with a ginger cat so I went to stroke the cat but it wouldn’t come to me. It ran away. Eventually, I found myself back in Brussels again, walking up from Woluwe St Lambert into the centre of the city and into work again. There was one lift that you could only take, that went all the way to the top so I went in there, came out and went into another lift and went back down to my floor and found that I was in the wrong building. I had to go across to the next lift, which was exactly the same – straight to the top – and back down again into the office. I still had this loaf of bread with me but when I came into my office to sit down, I couldn’t see the girl at that moment.

The girl concerned in this dream unfortunately died shortly after leaving school. When a group of us heard that she had become seriously ill, we went round to her house but her parents wouldn’t let us come in. At first, we were quite annoyed by that, but as time has gone on and I’ve seen people die, I can understand how she and her parents must have been feeling.

And a lift again, just like the previous night. I wonder why these are suddenly appearing during my dreams. It’s not as if I’m ever likely to encounter any these days. However, wandering around Brussels in my dreams is nothing new.

The nurse turned up as usual and asked how I was. I told him that I was feeling better than yesterday, but he didn’t have much to say for himself. He was soon gone and then I could make breakfast and read some more of REPORT ON EXCAVATIONS MADE UPON THE SITE OF THE ROMAN CASTRUM AT PEVENSEY by Charles Roach Smith.

And here we go again. He tells us that "the mortar, that important ingredient which Saxon, Norman and English architects only imperfectly understood, was made by Roman masons on a principle so sound and unvarying that its tenacity is unimpaired by age and its solidity is nothing inferior to the stones and tiles it cements together"

He then goes on to mention that "it is nothing unusual to find Roman mortar used as facing stone in the walls of our medieval churches".

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I wonder what happened to the people who built the stone walls so well and made the mortar that has lasted for all these years. If they had been pushed into Wales or over to Brittany, as has often been suggested, why aren’t there any of these types of stone buildings there dating from the early mediaeval period? And if they had been absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon population, why didn’t the use of stone and mortar continue?

It really beats me why ethnic cleansing has been ruled out by most authorities.

Back in here, there was football to watch. Arbroath v Dunfermline, with Arbroath failing to overturn the 1-0 deficit from midweek. So Dunfermline march on, one step further towards the Scottish Premier Division.

Afterwards, it was the National League playoff semi-finals – Carlisle v Boreham Wood and Rochdale v Scunthorpe. With both games ending 2-1, we’ll have a final between Rochdale and Boreham Wood to see who plays next season in League Two.

With all of that out of the way, I had another look at the radio programme that I mentioned yesterday. This is going to be a complicated affair but I cracked on all the same. In the end, after much binding in the marsh, I was able to identify, from a list that I had to make, which ended up containing 451 albums of all genres and of all different kinds of obscurity, about twenty that I actually owned, by fourteen different artists.

At that point, I went into the kitchen for my afternoon medication and ended up spending an hour tidying out the fridge. I really must be feeling better!

Having done that, I made a taco roll with some of that vegan cream cheese and salad. And it was really nice too. I shall have to order some more of that next time I’m online shopping.

Back in here again, the sunlight was streaming in through the windows, the temperature was 24°C and it was lovely. I thought that I’d just close my eyes for a few minutes and soak up the heat, so there I was, thoroughly enjoying myself until I fell off the chair seventy-five minutes later. What a waste of time, but it really was nice.

Pushing on, I finished sorting out the music for the radio programme and I had even chosen more than half of the tracks and remixed and re-edited them by the time that I knocked off.

So right now, I’m off to bed, looking forward to a good sleep and a lie-in tomorrow until the nurse wakes me up … "he hopes" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about these flying machines … "well, one of us has" – ed … it remind me of a scene from UP THE CHASTITY BELT as Frankie Howerd prepares to leap from the top of the castle tower, wearing his bat-like wings.
"Oh look!" exclaimed Lady Lobelia. "It’s Lurkalot. He flies again!"
"Ahh, Lurkalot!" exclaimed the boxer Billy Walker, playing the part of Chopper the Woodsman. "His flies be his undoing."

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Tuesday 5th May 2026 – MARGARET THATCHER ONCE …

… said something along the lines of "anyone can do a good day’s work when they really want to, but a true professional is someone who can do a good day’s work when he doesn’t want to.". It’s not an exact quote, I know, but it was something like it, and after what I have managed to do today, I can call myself a “true professional”.

Not that you would have thought so after yesterday evening. I was definitely feeling at the end of my tether when I was writing up my notes and after having completed everything that needed doing, there was no-one happier than me to be in bed, even if it was approaching 22:00.

As usual, it took a while to drop off, but once I’d gone, I remember nothing whatever until I awoke. I’ve no idea what time it was, but it was still dark and the electric water heater was still on. Surprisingly, I was lying on my back which, although it’s my favourite position, it’s the one where I cough the most – and I wasn’t coughing. Consequently, I lay there like that for what remained of the night until the alarm went off. It wasn’t long.

Once I’d moved to sit on the edge of the bed, that’s when the coughing began in earnest, and it’s kept on going like that throughout the day, even to now.

It took an age for me to find the energy to rise up from the bed and to stagger into the bathroom. And even then, I couldn’t move from the bathroom chair for quite a while. Consequently, I was quite late arriving in the kitchen.

And then I had a bright idea. Back in the bad old days in Leuven when, at times, I could hardly move, I was living on these high energy caffeine drinks. There are still a few knocking around here so I took one of those with my medication in an effort to kickstart my day.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, but to my dismay, the recorder was empty. Instead, I did a few other bits and pieces until the nurse arrived.

He was quite early today after his week off. He asked me how things went during the week, so I told him. And he was astonished about the dramatic steps that they took at dialysis yesterday. He was a former dialysis nurse himself in the past.

After he left, I made breakfast and read the last of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

His pages on the Celts and the Saxons were somewhat disappointing, and his Roman work, whilst very thorough and complete, relied too much on the forged “works of Richard of Cirencester”, and his own personal assumptions, being forcefully put, have quite often turned out after modern research and discovery, to be totally inaccurate.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I revised and prepared my Welsh for the lesson.

We’ve started the last chapter of the book, which is a taster for the final two years of the course, which is supposed to be the A-level part. And if those next two years are going to be anything like this chapter, then God help us all. It rolls along at a frantic pace.

Our teacher gave us some questions to do, and they had my brain breaking out into steam. Little did we all know that they were actually part of an ‘A’ level paper from 2024.

At the end of the lesson, I fell asleep. No surprise there. My cleaner awoke me when she came in to do her stuff, but I declined the offer of a shower. Instead, I went back to sleep.

Whilst I was having a little doze in the afternoon, there was something about someone sending morse code signals. But when I awoke, it was my cleaner cleaning something in the kitchen.

That could have been something exciting had the dream carried on, but instead, I went back to sleep and I missed her departure.

Some time later, after I’d awoken, I decided that I can’t let a day slip by like this, so I had a look at the next radio programme.

And by the time that I knocked off, I’d found all the music, reformatted, re-edited and remixed it, paired and segued it. I’d even written some of the notes for it too.

As I said earlier, I should be pleased with what I’ve done today.

So right now, I’m going to finish a few things off and then go to bed ready for a busy day tomorrow, if my coughing will let me. I now have the fierce antibiotics for the cough, so I’m going to take the first one just before I slide into bed. God knows what will happen during the night but if it sorts out this cough, then I’m prepared to give it a full go, whatever happens.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about falling asleep … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once fell asleep with a girlfriend at a friend’s house. All I could find were four coats so I gave her two and I had two.
Half an hour later, she awoke me. "Eric, I’m cold" so I gave her one of my coats.
Half an hour later, she awoke me again. "Eric, I’m still cold" so I gave her the other one.
Half an hour later, she awoke me yet again. "Eric, I’m still cold"
"Look," I said. "It’s only one night, and everyone else has gone to bed, so why don’t we pretend that we’re married"
"A good idea" she replied eagerly.
"Right" I said. "Go and find your own blasted coats."

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Sunday 8th May 2016 – I WAS A BIT PREMATURE …

… in my thoughts that I could turn of the air-conditioning in my room. By the time that I went back there at the end of the day, the thing had started up again and that was that. The night-nurse had a play with it later but he could only manage to slow it down rather than switch it off and so that was that.

It didn’t make a blind bit of difference though because firstly, the one right outside the door started off full-tilt a little later and secondly, we had an “incident” during the night. I’m not sure what it was but a group of family members which had stayed well-past the end of official visiting hours until the small hours of the morning suddenly upped sticks and went outside the room and two nurses came down, who promptly closed the security curtains around everyone else’s room entrances. One can only speculate.

I was awake until long after 01:00, again at 04:00, again at 05:30, again at 06:00 and I gave it up for good at about 07:00. By 07:45 I was encamped in the window seat in the day-room although with much less sun than before and with a nice pleasant breeze blowing in through the open door. But judging by the grief-stricken faces of the German-speaking family in there this morning, my speculation about the events of last night can only be correct. And later on, a nurse confirmed it when I asked her, although she was clearly unhappy to tell me.

I’d been on my travels too for quite a while during the night (so it can’t be the antibiotics that’s causing those then, can it?). I started off at home with my mother and my elder sister and we were as usual having a dispute. I needed everyone’s co-operation (and the chances of that every happening in our family were about zero, as anyone who has ever read any of this rubbish will realise) to be somewhere at 14:00. It was now 12:45 and nothing had happened and everyone seemed to be enjoying my discomfort. In the end I stormed out of the house, went off to a group of people – long-haired motorcyclists whom I knew – and we promptly all came back to my family’s garage-cum-service station (because last night that’s what we owned and that’s where we lived) and smashed the place and everything in it to smithereens and then burnt it down to the ground in an orgy of anger and destruction. It didn’t solve the problem of course but you’ve absolutely no idea how much better it felt.
Later, a friend and I were actually involved in the running of some kind of informal garage service. We’d taken over a derelict site that was still in working order (not the family one of course) and set ourselves up in business. I was dishing out the fuel from these dilapidated petrol pumps but I couldn’t let the cars go (there were only three of them anyway) because my colleague hadn’t come back with the paperwork that I needed (as you all know, I have a “thing” about recording fuel consumption, mileages and so on). When he did finally put in his appearance he had forgotten to bring the stuff with him so my plans were all of a waste of time. But then a car (a black Capri) appeared and asked for fuel, and an air line because the front offside (a RHD car) tyre was flat. My colleague said that the wheel bearing on that side had gone and needed to change it. The driver stuck his head over the wing of the car and asked if we needed to take the wheel off so I replied in the affirmative. He said “to blow the tyre up?” to which I answered that I thought that he was talking about the wheel bearing – you don’t need to remove the wheel to blow up the tyre.
A short while later, I was off a-wandering on the bank up to the railway station at the top end of Winsford. I don’t remember who was with me but one person might well have been Nerina (although I can’t be sure now) and the other was someone who was something of a long-term unemployed man who had to scratch around to make a living (reminding me very much of someone whom I used to know in Crewe in the early 1970s). We were walking up the bank and an aeroplane – a huge Guppy-type thing – passed right over our heads and descended even lower, passing over a village in the valley at less-than-rooftop height as it went into land at Manchester Airport (this is a good flight-path, I can tell you). The plane itself was painted white and belonged to the parcels carrier whose livery is white with dark red stripes and a kind of script writing (and whose name I will remember as soon as I press “Publish”). I asked our companion whether the planes flying as low as this overhead bothered him, to which he replied that these don’t, but the two that come over at 10:30 and 16:00 are devastating. We ended up back in his house and Nerina (or whoever) went into the kitchen to make food or something. The guy had been out for a while and came back, counting a sum of money which I reckoned to be about £120:00. This seemed to be his share of his “dole” money after his rent and other stuff had been paid. He told me that if I were to look in my jacket pocket I would find “a couple of quid”. This was intended to be for whoever was in the kitchen, for everything that she was doing for him, and he would be grateful if I could pass it on to her at a convenient moment.

Alison said that she would come to see me so I wandered back to my room to get prettied up ready for her visit – after all, I have to look my best, don’t I? And in my room I found a banana and a bottle of lemonade too. It’s like a hotel here and I’m so lucky.

When Alison turned up, she brought a few surprises with her. Such as, a pot of almond-based ice-cream, two cans of fiery ginger beer, two packets of dry toasts, one pack of rice cakes, two soya vanilla desserts, some strawberries, one partridge and one pear tree. The ice cream disappeared without trace right in front of her eyes and after she had gone, one of the vanilla desserts, the strawberries and some rice cakes went as well. And after she went, I went and made myself another cheese butty. My appetite is back and raging, isn’t it?

It was lovely to see Alison, though. A bright, cheerful, smiling face to match the sunshine outside. She stayed for almost two hours too which, at the price of parking here at the hospital, shows a major sacrifice. We had plenty of time to discuss my latest plans which, as you know, change with the weather (or, more likely, my state of health).

And if you think that that food was enough to be going on, that really isn’t all. My favourite little nursey, hearing that I couldn’t eat the bread on offer, went off and toasted a couple of rounds for me which was really nice of her. She even brought me an ice-cold bottle of lemonade afterwards so I must be clearly in her good books.

But apart from all of that, what else have I been up to today?

The answer is “loads and loads”.

I’ve finally been in the right frame of mind to have a huge attack at updating my blog.

You might remember that when I brought my blog in-house in 2013 all of the tags and links were missing, and the photos didn’t set right. I started a little plan of attack to correct it, which I have continued in a desultory kind of fashion but today I crashed right on, did the whole of April 2012 and some of July 2012 too (May and June need “special consideration” for which I need to concentrate). I just hope that I can maintain the momentum for the rest of the site.

So now I’m going to prepare for an early night. If I am being ejected tomorrow, I need to be on form. And furthermore, I need to know where I’m going to be living too because the girl at the Social Services was absent last week.

Good job that I have the fold-up bed and single quilt in the back of Caliburn, isn’t it?

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Friday 6th May 2016 – NOW, I WONDER …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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