Tag Archives: apple cake

Friday 14th February 2025 – HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY …

… to everyone who didn’t have anyone to send a Valentine’s Card to them.

Not that I am in that bracket, of course, … "he said, smirking" – ed … because at 00:01 precisely on Valentine’s Day morning a Valentine’s Card fell into my electronic inbox. You know who you are of course, and so do I, and a big thank-you to you because it cheered me up immensely. I imagine though that with all of your connections, you weren’t short of too many

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s not true in my case because all the night did was to harden my resolve.

And my resolve is just about the only thing that will harden overnight, Valentine’s Cards notwithstanding, these days. Times are definitely sad.

But what I have decided is that I am not going for a fourth session of dialysis. I have to draw the line somewhere otherwise I’ll be living there permanently. Not only that, my cleaner has her own life and a business to run. She can’t plan all of her affairs around the caprices of the dialysis centre.

Consequently, I foresee a major argument breaking out on Monday afternoon. We shall see.

Anyway, I had plenty of time to brood on my situation last night because this was yet another night where I had almost nothing in the way of sleep. Tossing and turning and perspiring all the way through the night with just the occasional flash of sleep, an odd five minutes here and there. How many nights is this now?

When the alarm went off I was however asleep, and once more it was a desperate struggle to fight my way out of bed before the second alarm. And having said the other day that I had never felt less like doing it, I now wish to withdraw that remark.

After a good wash I went into the kitchen to take my medication and then came back in here to find that the computer wouldn’t fire up. Well, it would fire up, but it wouldn’t launch the software operating system.

That’s twice now that it’s done that after a major update, and the last thing that I felt like this morning was to be playing about in the BIOS

When Isabelle the Nurse came round I told her of my woes. Her response was "but you have to" However, when I asked her to give me one good reason why, she was stuck for an answer. Instead, she was out of the apartment like a ferret up a trouser leg.

My appetite is still diminished but I made breakfast anyway and then went to read MY NEW BOOK

We’re discussing water supply at some of these camps that have no obvious source, and he is relying heavily on the presence of dew ponds, which is a somewhat precarious way to go about things.

He also mentions that "It is surprising how little drink is really needed even by modern man when he has perforce to stint himself; probably his Neolithic predecessor required still less, not merely for climatic reasons, but also by habit.^" Whether that’s the case or not, I’m intrigued to know what he thinks are the reasons why Neolithic Man had so many pot-boilers, clearly showing signs of heavy use, lying around if he didn’t have much water in which to drop them.

Back in here, once I’d finished playing with the computer and persuaded it to fire up, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. To my surprise there were actually some to transcribe.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were going though some kind of crisis similar to this one a few months ago, Castor appeared in the night and stood silently at the foot of my bed as if watching over me to keep me safe from harm. Last night, not only was Zero’s father there again, so this time was Zero. I’d been doing something with someone but I can’t remember who. It was quite late in the evening so we walked round to their house for some kind of reason. Zero was there with her parents. We talked, or, rather, I didn’t. The guy with me talked to Zero’s father but I was doing my very best not to fall asleep because I was so absolutely tired. As the evening drew on I felt even more and more tired. During this whole dream I just didn’t even say a word to anyone. I just listened to the conversation that was taking place. At the end of it we both set out to go back to from where we had come.

It was really strange that neither I nor Zero said a word during all of this. We just sat there looking at each other throughout the whole affair. If it’s this kind of thing that can summon up Castor and Zero, maybe I ought to throw teddy out of the pram more often.

A little later I heard someone read out the football results. There were just a few and one of the last ones that I heard was “Crystal Palace 1, Notts County 5” and then I awoke. I’ve no idea what would have inspired this.

There was also the Welsh rock band “Man” being included, trying to sneak along under cover and under disguise as the name of another group at one point during the night. Bizarrely, just as I am typing this, round on the playlist come George Jones (Mickey’s son)’s group “Son Of Man” with guest star Deke Leonard. So no early night for me while this plays out.

So there we are anyway. Zero came back to see me last night, and how nice it was to see her too.

Next task was to check over my shopping list and send it off, especially as my faithful cleaner sent me a message to remind me

Having done that, I sat down to think about preparing another radio programme. And by the time that I knocked off today, I had chosen the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it and written the notes for it too. So that’s two ready to dictate tomorrow night if I’m up to it.

There was even an hour or so afterwards to chill out.

That radio programme wasn’t all that I did either. About an hour later the delivery driver ‘phoned me. "I know that you said ‘after 17:00’ on your form but is it any problem if I were to come round in half an hour?"

Clearly someone wants to be away early today. I’m not going anywhere so it’s no problem to me. But I had to rush to put it all away before my cleaner came around to do her stuff. She doesn’t want to be tripping over it, which is why I don’t usually want it delivered until after she has gone.

Lunch was next, but only a short lunch as I wasn’t hungry. And while there was no mid-afternoon snack, there was still the disgusting drink break

So all-in-all I’ve been a very busy boy today. I ought to have a few more of these crises.

Just another small tea tonight – a handful of chips, a couple of vegan nuggets and a small salad followed by apple cake and lemon soya dessert.

So when Son of Man finish, I’m off to bed for what I hope will be a good sleep. I can’t believe that I’ve had so little sleep just recently but I’m still going on. Tomorrow I have to fight the good fight at the dialysis centre and then on Sunday there’s a Welsh Cup foot-fest as well as Stranraer hoping to stop the rot.

Four days at the dialysis centre? They must be joking.

But while we are talking of Zero appearing … "well, one of us is" – ed … a bunch of us, Zero included, went once for a day out years ago and I ended up buying lunch for her.
And quite frankly, I was amazed at what she was preparing to put away.
"Does your mum make you meals like this at home?" I asked
"Ohh no" she replied. "She doesn’t want to sleep with me."

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Tuesday 11th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anything that happened today. It was one of those days where nothing seemed to go to plan, even from the very start. In fact, this is probably going to be a week to forget, all in all.

Last night was rather later than I intended it to be, what with one thing and another. Well after midnight, in fact. And not everything that I wanted to be done was done either.

It had been my aim to finish off the Welsh homework before going to bed but with the head full of spaghetti that I had on my shoulders, I abandoned the plan and left it for another day. There was the radio programme that I’d edited at the dialysis centre that I wanted to send off, but that was left too.

Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep and then it was a very disturbed night as is usual after a dialysis session, waking up here and there and perspiring like there is no tomorrow

When the alarm went off I hauled myself out of bed with the utmost difficulty and then staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I started to transcribe the dictaphone notes but was surprised by the amount of stuff on there. I’d only finished about half of it when Isabelle the Nurse turned up, and she wasn’t early either. I’m not going to have the homework done this morning either, am I?

She and I had a little chat about nothing much and after she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK

Our author has made a couple of points that are extremely curious. He notes that at Worlebury Camp, overlooking Weston-Super-Mare, where there are according to him, unmistakeable signs of Roman siege and conquest, the skulls of the deceased, complete with battle-wounds, are "the long-headed (Iberian) type, and suggest that at the date in question the dominant race in south-western Britain were the descendants of those Iberians who had preceded the round-headed Brythonic race, and who had been ousted by them from the more easterly parts of the island."

Anyone remember when we were discussing stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and none at all?

Secondly, "Incredible as it must seem to anyone who tries to realize the labour involved in the building of any great camp, it seems none the less to be the fact that many of them were planned and constructed according to one original design."

And if that really is the case (and after all, he’s the expert), given the number of different races and tribes, the time period and the distance to travel, it’s probably the most interesting thing that I have read on the whole subject.

Back here, I revised for my Welsh, complete with a full pot of coffee because I needed it. And I don’t know what I would have done without it because even so, the lesson, well, let’s just say that it did not go as I would have wished, and I was glad when it was over.

After lunch I came back in here and carried on with the dictaphone notes, and as I said earlier, I was surprised by how many there were. I dreamed that I was in a scrapyard looking for all bits and pieces of a car. I couldn’t see what I wanted. It was the springs that retained the headlight in. They were tiny micro-springs. I’d had three and I had put them down but when I went to look again I couldn’t see them. They were so small. I was hunting again. In the meantime two guys turned up in a red MkIII saloon with a black vinyl roof. They had parked their car on a trailer while they had gone off to the pub. Someone told them about their car on someone else’s trailer so they just took their car off the pile and just rolled it down the hill into the scrap. They said “well never mind. We only paid £50:00 for this. Immediately everyone swarmed over to it to strip it for spares as they did in the old days. I went to have a look and someone asked me if I needed anything. I told him that I was looking for an old tax disc holder, the type that suckered on to your window but which had an aerial connector in it. People remembered those from years ago but no-one had seen one. I’d looked at a couple of car tax discs of cars that were ‘S’ reg in 1977/78 but there was nothing around there at all. In the end I left and had to stop at a road junction while a big group of soldiers who were on a military parade marched past where I was standing.

Cars for £50:00. Anyone remember those days? And Nerina and I once drove all the way around Central and Eastern Europe in one that cost £25:00, and on another occasion in a different car at the same price all the way round the South of France.

‘And ‘S’ registered cars from 1977/78? I’m really impressed that I could remember that in a dream as well. But as for cars in scrapyards, I’ve done more than my share of scrapyard scavenging in the past

Later on I was with a group of people. One was a small girl. It was a girl whom I’d seen so many times before and we’d always had a laugh and a joke. Then I mentioned something about taking her out and she said “yes, fine!” she said. “When should we go?” or something like that so I hadn’t realised that she was serious but I was ready to take her then and there practically

There is more to this than meets the eye too. However, let me guess. Small as in “one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed” I suppose. But me Getting The Girl in a dream? It’s a good job that this dream ended before my family came along to spike my guns as they usually do at the crucial moment

There was also something else about buses in Alsager, driving buses out towards Kidsgrove and the back of Stoke on Trent at Werrington, etc, but it was something to do with the arrangement of fares, keeping fares down and buses not going into anyone else’s territory but I can’t remember that

Later yet, I was living in an apartment in a modern block of flats in Brussels but I’d bought the apartment downstairs to where I’m going to move, so I’d given my notice to the landlord. He’d put the property in the newspapers and was arranging visits. The first visit came when I was really unexpecting it so the place wasn’t very tidy at all. It was a nice youngish guy, quite tall, who was shown around. He noticed the Tesla that I had in a wooden box that was a pre-war spark generator sitting in the bottom of the room on top of the piano so we had a discussion about that. Then he asked me a few more questions then he decided to leave. He talked about decorating but I told him that I moved here and didn’t do anything. It didn’t bother me, the decorations being a little tired but he said that maybe he could move into one room and decorate all round him. As he left the Estate Agents gave me all of the duplicate keys that I’d never actually had to the property. As he left he asked me a question about the television. Were the “Free” company’s services available here? I told him that I didn’t know. As he left I noticed another couple waiting in the hall. I thought that I wished that I’d known that there were going to be all these visits because I could have tidied up the property. He did ask me before he went if he could come back and have another look. He wanted to come back at 07:30 so I shuddered but said “yes, it’s not a problem” so at that point he left.

Me? An untidy apartment? Perish the thought! And I wish that I had a pre-war Tesla spark generator lying around here somewhere. But the apartment – we’ve been in that apartment before in another nocturnal ramble, a long time ago when I drove a car into the centre of Brussels round the big Basilica. It’s strange how these things crop up so far apart in time.

Did I dictate this dream where I was in a cheap hotel somewhere? … "no you didn’t" – ed … There was a crowd of people in the room with me. The bath was across the end of the room and there was a glass partition in it that only covered a part of the bath. I decided that I’d take a bath. I went in there and began to run the water but the bath didn’t fill up. Then I found that the plug wasn’t in so I had to put it in. It was still not filling up. I saw that the water was cascading out of the joint of the immersion heater. By the time that there was anything like some water in the bath it was cold. I didn’t really fancy the bath but I thought that I needed one. There were all these people there too. Next thing that I remember, I was outside. It was 18:30. I didn’t have time for the bath because we were going to a nearby café for a meal, so I thought that I’d have to hurry up

The idea of me having a bath is interesting too. Leaving aside the fact that I couldn’t climb out of a bath these days, I would prefer a shower any day of the week. And a cold bath? In my case, that’s water at 36.9°C

Later, I was with Zero’s father and a couple of small boys was asking me that he had to go to school and tell them how a carburettor worked . I asked him if he knew how a carburettor worked. He said a few words but obviously didn’t understand the basic principles. We went down to one of the cars. Zero’s father handed a set of keys to me but I couldn’t make them work. In the end I put the key in the other way round. It worked so I could open the bonnet and we began to discuss the carburettor. Zero’s father was there but he kept on confusing the matter. I was trying to make things as simple as possible for this little boy and he was just complicating them by giving long technical explanations that were not really what was needed, not for a boy in Primary School anyway.

There are always some people who will take a simple explanation and complicate it unnecessarily, who don’t seem to realise exactly who their audience is and the purpose of what you are trying to explain. It’s like our author, Arthur Hadrian Allcroft, who is writing for an audience that excludes about 75% of the population. I realise that the aim of any kind of education is to bring people up to a higher level, but how far up are some of these people sitting?

How depressing is it though that Zero’s father is there and not Zero herself?

Believe it or not, that took me up to afternoon nasty drink break and then I had bread to make as I have all-but run out. That took longer than anticipated but I do have to say that the loaf that I made is perfection itself. It couldn’t possibly be any better. I’ll go with that any time.

There was just time for me to finish the Welsh homework before going to make my tea. And why it was so difficult I have no idea. My brain, if that’s what you call it, has ceased to function, and ceased a long time ago.

Tea was as usual a taco roll with veg and rice, followed by apple cake and soya dessert. Just as nice as ever. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t make it.

So that’s the end of another depressing day. I’m glad that it’s over, Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. I shall have to try to be more optimistic

But seeing as we have been talking of cold water … "well, one of us has" – ed … those crazy Canadians with whom I spent a lot of time up in the Arctic used to love to leap into the cold water from the loading platform of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR at every available opportunity
On one occasion deep in the North-West Passage Castor and Pollux were going to leap in with them – at MINUS 0.5°C in the water. It was about minus 10°C in the air
Castor came to look for me and asked "are you going to come and jump in with us, Eric?"
"I can’t, pet" I replied. "I have this catheter port in my chest and it can’t be immersed in salt water"
After she left, a guy who had overheard the conversation asked me "if you didn’t have that catheter port in your chest, what would you have done?"
"What would I have done?" I said. "Simple. I would have thought of another excuse."

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Monday 10th February 2025 – I’M FED UP …

… of asking people questions and having a completely different response to that which would have answered the question and terminated the discussion.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall when in Québec I encountered Spruce Beer for the first time, so I asked "is this beer alcoholic?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "that’s over there"

Today at the Dialysis Centre I asked the doctor "have you prescribed me a sleeping pill?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "do you want one?"

Leaving aside the ethical question of patients self-prescribing their own medication with the connivance of doctors, what’s wrong with anyone answering a question simply and straightforwardly?

As you can tell, I’m in a foul humour this evening. And it started out so well too.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished my notes and done what I had to do, it wasn’t all that late so I headed to bed at something like a reasonable time for once. And that cheered me up.

Once in bed I was asleep fairly quickly and there I stayed until all of about 05:30 when I heard the phantom doorbell. At least, that’s what it said on the dictaphone round about that time. I have no recollection of that at all.

When the alarm went off I was away with the fairies (although not in any situation likely to bring forth comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) and it was a very weary me who staggered off into the bathroom

It’s Dialysis Day today so I had a good clean-up, a shave and so on ready for if I encounter Emilie the Cute Consultant and then went for my medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had a girlfriend at school. She used to come into school later than we did so when I came in I would go to my classroom and about 08:25 she would turn up. But one day there was a load of people in our classroom who didn’t belong in there, some kind of managers or something like that. I imagined that they would have an awful lot to say about this girl coming into a different classroom in the morning. I was there waiting for her and round about 08:20-08:25-08:30 she hadn’t turned up but I had some things to do so I went into the boss’s office next door. I caught a glimpse of her and she smiled at me and went into our room. I took these things for the boss and went back into our room. There was my girlfriend on the scales weighing herself. Really disappointedly she’d reached 325lb this week and was very disappointed by that. I noticed that she’d filled out this white dress suit that she was wearing, filled it out rather too much. We basically agreed to see each other at lunchtime and then she cleared off. The teacher looked at me, looked at the people who were surveying the class, looked at me again and asked me some comment about the girl, then looked at these people again as if to say “just be careful what you say because they’ll be writing it down and noting it”.

Weighing yourself as you go into a room? What does that remind you of? It certainly does to me.

To each his own of course, but attraction is a very personal thing – as they say over here des gouts et les couleurs on ne discute pas – but my ideal kind of girl would be one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed. Strangely enough, apart from once at school, I have never ever ended up with anyone at all like that. It just goes to show that life and fate sometimes deal out some very strange hands and you have to play them as best as you can. Whoever would have thought 30 years ago that I would have ended up in a relationship where there was a child present?

It’s true nevertheless that our school bus, which was the prolongation of a service route, always used to arrive first and a couple of girls with whom I spent some time used to travel on the last one to arrive. As for the rest of the dream, it rings a vague bell somewhere in the back of my mind that is best left there.

Having finished that I made a start on finishing off the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. However, Isabelle the Nurse interrupted me. We talked about Carnaval and her float while she sorted out my legs, and then she cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve moved on now to discuss the construction of an earthen fort, with helpful plans and diagrams. That will come in useful if the Romans ever attack us here, I suppose. But joking apart, it’s extremely interesting and I wonder what I’m going to discover next.

Before we leave the general pages, he mentions that "It would seem to be a legitimate inference from such a priori reasoning that, subject of course to exceptional circumstances, a camp is later in date according as it is less irregular in plan, less elaborately defended, and constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site"

Anyone who has ever seen a Norman or Edwardian castle will know that this is far from the case. And while many of the forts that we visited in the USA were built accordingly, when Fetterman and Curser dug themselves in against the rampaging hordes of Native Americans, they both chose hilltops and promontories

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that in 2014 we WERE AT MONTSEGUR, the last refuge of the Cathars, and that is probably the most inaccessible, difficult-to-reach castle that I have ever visited, and I knew all about that climb for several days. None of your “constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site” with Montségur.

Back in here I finished off the radio programme, chose the final track and wrote out the notes ready for dictation on Saturday night. Then I made a start on the remainder of the Welsh homework. That’s not yet finished, and heaven alone knows when I’m going to find time to do it.

My cleaner took me by surprise yet again as I was nowhere near ready, and she fitted my anaesthetic patches. We talked about cats, and it seems that I’m not going to find it as easy to adopt one as I might think. These days, these refuges are very picky and choosy as to who can adopt a cat and she reckons that I would fall down near the end of the queue.

If that’s not enough bad news for the moment, the taxi didn’t turn up until 12:45. It’s the school holidays of course and many drivers have taken time off. The car that came to pick me up was the wheelchair-carrier and we hadn’t gone half a mile before his ‘phone flashed a message “next job, wheelchair from the Centre Normandy – at 13:00”. So he had 15 minutes to undertake a 90-minute round trip to Avranches and back.

It wouldn’t have been quite so bad had we not encountered just about every problem possible on the road. And then when we arrived, there were seven vehicles all trying to unload at the same time – and we were sixth, so we had to wait our turn.

With everyone arriving at once and me being next-to-last I had to wait an age to be seen

The connection was as painful as it could possibly be and I suffered throughout the whole session. But the nurse did confirm to me that once the machine does start up, it’s not uncommon to have a wave of fatigue. It’s to do with the drop of blood pressure and strain on the heart.

The doctor came to see me as well, the unsociable one. We had our little discussion as I mentioned earlier and eventually he did confirm to me, as I suspected, that they had prescribed a sleeping pill. It has several other uses too which they think might be useful, which was why they prescribed it in the first place.

My response was that I was going to stop taking it as of now. He replied that I might find it difficult all at once and I should “taper off”, but if it’s a medication like that then I don’t want to be on it anyway so as of earlier this evening it’s off the list.

And so, incidentally, is the medication that they prescribed to counter some of the side-effects.

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in, and then I had to wait. The driver who was to take me home had stuck her head in earlier but I told her that I would be fifteen minutes so as she had someone to pick up at the Clinic across town she decided to go there first.

She hadn’t come back by the time that I was ready so I waited. And waited.

Not that I minded because Emilie the Cute Consultant came past.

"Wiating for your taxi, Mr Hall?" she asked
“No, I’m waiting for N°11 bus to Marble Arch and Trafalgar Square” I would have said had it been anyone else but Emilie the Cute Consultant
"Yes I am" I replied "You don’t fancy taking me home, do you?"
"I don’t live in Granville any more" she said. "I live in Marcey, just around the corner"
"Well, you could always take me to Marcey with you"

She had the decency to laugh, but she wasn’t all that impressed. Ahh well …

A car suddenly screeched up outside, but it wasn’t my driver who hopped out. Nevertheless he had come for me.

He was one of the ambulance crew who was in the depot washing the vehicle when the call came through. Apparently my driver who had gone to the clinic discovered that there was a major problem there with the other passenger and she was obliged to wait. It’s a good job that I hadn’t gone with her.

We had a good chat all the way home, so much so that I forgot to warn the cleaner that I was on my way, and she had a mad scramble to meet the car. 19:45 when I finally arrived home.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by apple cake and soya dessert. But then I cut up the date bread that I had made, and if the rest of it tastes as good as the crumbs that I tasted, it will be absolutely excellent.

So fed up, in pain and glad that the day is almost over, I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow. I can understand what they meant in Leuven back in 2016 when they said "save your strength for the battle that lies ahead" because I can’t do with too many more days like this one.

But talking about going home just now … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of a guy in a pub in Nantwich.
He would sneak a photo out of his pocket, glance at it, put it back and then order a beer.
After three or four times curiosity got the better of the and he asked the customer about the photo
"What’s about the photo?" he asked
"It’s the wife" replied the man
"Do you always look at it just before you order a beer?"
"Yes I do" he replied. "When she starts to look beautiful, that’s when it’s time to go home"

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Saturday 8th February 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… just about enough of this dialysis.

These four-hour sessions didn’t last long. Today, they gave me four and a half hours, and they still haven’t extracted all of the water from me that they ought to have extracted. So how long is it going to be when I go back on Monday?

One thing’s for certain though, and that is that if they keep on pumping the stuff out of me at this rate, I’ll be pushing up the daisies quicker than I think.

Ordinarily I would have complained, except that the doctor on duty was the miserable one who hates his job and loves his patients even less. I imagine that I would have been sent away with a flea in my ear had I gone to see him

In fact, it’s true to say that I am having as much luck with the senior hospital staff as I am about going to bed early because for no particular reason last night it was another late night by the time that I’d finished everything. It was a very weary me who staggered into bed at about 00:30 this morning.

And even though I was fast asleep straight away and didn’t move for the whole night, at 05:35 I sat dramatically upright, wide awake. I’ve no idea what awoke me either because I couldn’t hear any noise.

Try as I might, I could not go back to sleep and in the end gave it up as a bad job. When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was having a good scrub in the bathroom, followed by a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

Once I was ready, I filled the washing machine with all of the clothes that remained and se it off on its cycle (a very clever machine, mine) and then went into the kitchen for my medication, remembering not to take the anti-potassium stuff and not the sunlight pills either

Back in here I began to transcribe the dictaphone notes but there were so many that I hadn’t finished by the time that the nurse came.

There were the usual banal questions and then I wished him a very happy holiday. It’s his turn to go skiing now. Isabelle should be back tomorrow.

Breakfast was next, and then I read MY NEW BOOK.

We’re still moving on with our discussion of contour forts and he gives a few example of them. With regard to several of them he makes the pertinent observation that "the fortress seems to be too large to have been defended by any force which it could shelter."

That is of course perfectly true but it’s a moot point because if the defenders are not likely to be very numerous, neither are the attackers, so the defenders wouldn’t have to defend all of the perimeter. Instead, they would just concentrate on the point where the attackers are launching their particular offensive

No-one has any idea of the population of Britain in 500BC but it can’t have been more than half a million, so it’s not as if you could gather a large army at one place and at one time.

Back in here I finished off the dictaphone notes. I was in the living room of a semi-detached house. I’d been off with this girl and her parents weren’t very happy. We’d had a confrontation when I’d brought her home. We had managed to pass over the confrontation and we were saying goodbye to each other in the hall when the dream faded away

Apart from the fact that there I was, just about to Get The Girl and the dream dies, there’s a great deal more to this dream that anyone would imagine or realise, and I would care to admit. And parents being unhappy was just about par for the course back in those days.

There was also something about the ceremonial exchange of keys for a car that I ended up buying from a garage. The exchange was something that was reproduced in India at the same times. If you were buying something in India you would have to step back for thirty seconds so to convince everyone that it was OK. It was during that period that the recourse would take place, that the former wife of a friend of mine, would come along and do something instead of whatever her name was and me.

So who is “whatever her name was”? And why can’t I remember the first part of this dream? f there’s a girl involved, I ought not to go around forgetting or missing out..

I was out with a friend and we were wandering around a fairground. There were two of us, a guy and a girl. We walked around this fairground and ended up in a place where we could have a hot snack. One of my friends wanted a hot snack so we went round there but the hot snack place was closed. There was a tape across it. We ended up having a coffee. The coffees were tiny, a tiny expresso type of thing and they had to be drunk in the cafeteria on the first floor. ….battery flat .. So we bought a coffee and we had to go up the stairs to drink it to the café. There was a spiral staircase, very tight, very steep and I couldn’t walk up it so we were there with these coffees wondering what to do

So who were my friends? Do I have any?

Then I was with a group of gendarmes. We were going somewhere to pick up something and we had to go there very quietly but we suddenly discovered that something had gone wrong. When we looked at one of the objects that we had that we’d bought at this café we could see the maker’s name. That suddenly rang a bell with one of the gendarmes. He told the others, who suddenly realised what it was. We all piled into the car and we drove. It was driving through Crewe down a few of the side streets. We came in to the bottom end of Delamere Street. We drove down to the bottom. We were looking for a number something like 148 but there weren’t that many houses in that street, not at all, so we didn’t know or I didn’t know where this was going to be. They identified a house – at least, the guy in charge did – that was nowhere near that number and he said to the driver “park a little further down the street” so we did . Someone exited the car and there was some kind of commotion outside so I left the car to go to see. The guy who had exited the car was helping a pedestrian stand up who had been knocked down. I suddenly realised that our car was driving forward. I shouted to “put the brake on” but no-one paid any attention to it. It kept on rolling forward and forward and forward. Suddenly it stopped. I shouted “for God’s sake put the brake on!”. Someone in the car said “well, it was on, but we didn’t know what was going on”. I said “you were rolling forward and you knocked someone down!”. Anyway one of the gendarmes went up to the house. He had a key in his pocket and unlocked it. He walked in and we followed him. It was a filthy, disgusting, untidy house. I have never seen or smelled anything like this . It was full of cats. At first though there was nothing. There was no-one to be seen and he walked around shouting. In the end he walked through this curtain that was hanging over the doorway into what was the kitchen. It was filthy and disgusting, and smelly. There were these cats everywhere. Suddenly two girls appeared. One was about twelve and the other was about nine. The younger one was blonde, the elder one was dark. I suddenly realised where we were because I’d sent birthday presents to these kids. They were the family of one of these gendarmes. They were trying to make some coffee, he was asking them where such-and-such was but they didn’t know. He was looking around for papers and came across some papers about two matching pieces of furniture. He said “this might explain the mystery because they were bequeathed to the two of us and it looks as if the guy has just taken one which he thinks might be his share but we were so totally in the dark and totally bewildered about this.

The house is still clear to me even now. If anyone knows Crewe, it’s just before where the old white single-storey buildings and the belisha beacons and zebra crossing used to be. But the stench in that house was so strong I could actually smell it at the time. Apart from that, it was just like a sketch out of one of the GENDARME DE ST TROPEZ films.

And finally we had a nightmare. I’m not sure where this fitted in anywhere but at one point I dreamed that my cleaner went to take off my plasters and found that one of my puncture holes was still leaking after all this time. There was blood everywhere all over this plaster and all over my lower arm

That really is my worst nightmare of all of this and I shall hate the day when it happens

After typing out my notes, I crashed out, believe it or not. Never mind about being upset about crashing out, I can’t believe that I crashed out so early on in the day. I might at least have had the decency to have waited until I was on my bed in the dialysis centre.

Once I awoke though, I finished off the notes of the next radio programme and was busy involved in doing a few other things when the cleaner turned up. I told her about my nightmare and prepared her to be standing by just in case … .

The taxi was late again, but not as late as it might have been. Just me as a passenger with a friendly, peasant driver and we had a nice drive down to the centre.

For a change, I was first to be seen and that boded ill for the rest of the day. And it hurt just as much as it had on previous days.

There was football on the internet too – TNS v Penybont, 1st v second. At one time Penybont were pushing for the Championship but they have fallen away quite badly just recently, and were well-beaten by TNS, even with TNS playing the final 10 minutes with just 10 players.

One of the nurses came by with the bad news about the extension to the session (the doctor, I suppose, didn’t have the nerve) and so at the end I was the last out of the centre. I mentioned my nightmare to the nurse who unplugged me so she put extra plaster strips on my dressing.

And with the taxi having to drop off someone at Avranches, it was miserably late when I arrived home, tired, fed up and completely exhausted.

You have no idea how much a dialysis session takes out of me, never mind a four-and-half-hour session.

Tea was a burger on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by apple cake and soya dessert, and that’s it for tonight. I’ll dictate my notes and then I’m off to bed. Quite frankly, I don’t have the courage or the energy to do anything else.

The secret of these increased dialysis sessions was explained to me later. Apparently one of the doctors (I’ll leave you to guess) is fed up of me chatting her up all the time
She told the girls to increase the suction time to take more water out at each session
"Isn’t that dangerous?" asked one of the nurses
"Who cares?" answered the doctor."If we extract at a rate of 5 kilos per session, in 16 sessions he’ll be gone completely."

0

Wednesday 5th February 2025 – WE ARE GOING .

… to have yet another very late night. I’m not sure why but to cook and eat my tea and to clean up afterwards has taken me two and a half hours. I’ve no idea what I was doing for most of that time but then unkind people say that I have no idea what I’m doing at the best of times.

But if I’ve been unconsciously relaxing this evening, it’s no surprise, and I deserve it because I’ve been hard at it all day. I have accomplished a lot of work today too.

It all started last night. When I’d finished my notes and was preparing for bed, I noticed how quiet it was outside in the street. Not many caravanettes down on their parking ground down the road near the lighthouse, I reckon. So seizing the moment, I grabbed hold of the ZOOM H8 and re-dictated the notes that were all messed up on Saturday. That’s one job less to do.

Eventually I made it into bed, much later than I anticipated but never mind. Once I was in there, that was it. I was away with the fairies almost straight away and I’ve no idea if the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine was there, observing and taking notes. If so I wish that she would tell me how I did.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the World and what a struggle it was to rise up to my feet and head into the bathroom. But I had a good wash and scrub up before going into the kitchen to take my medicine for the morning.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out how I did during the night and to see if there had been any call for the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine to be concerned. But unfortunately not. There had been some kind of crisis and the local speedway team had been evicted from its home ground by the local council. They were wondering what to do as they had a match arranged. I was on my way to the bar where everyone met. I was walking down a road that I recognised as the main London road in Church Lawton. I walked past this semi-derelict motel. I noticed that the road that went from the office up through the cabins to the far end was actually divided off by a line. Obviously they had had two different loads of concrete. One had set before they had put the other down so they had a line that went right across the road that went between the cabins. I had a good look at that. Then I went into the bar. Everyone was there and the riders were there in their leathers, all wondering what to do about it so I told them about this concrete and the line that went across it and said quite simply “why don’t you go to race up there between the cabins? You could use the line as your starting point. You’ll all finish at the hedge but it would work. I reckon that the Council would give you back your ground in five minutes if they knew where it was that you were going to perform. Everyone left the bar and went to look at this concrete road and the line that I’d mentioned. I was sitting there thinking “I do hope that it was there and not a figment of my imagination with all of these people going to look at it”.

It was however quite impressive that I could say in a dream that the road looked like the main London Road in Church Lawton. The only problem though is that it didn’t. It resembled that run-down motel in which I stayed near Myrtle Beach in 2005 when I was awoken by the sound of a couple of South Carolina’s finest dragging someone out of a nearby cabin. And you certainly wouldn’t find a semi-derelict, run-down motel anywhere near Church Lawton. A speedway race taking place in a straight line would be interesting too. You wouldn’t make four laps out of that.

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about the speedway. Crewe had its own team for a while during the speedway boom of the late 60s and early 70s, and I used to go on Friday nights with a friend on his motor bike to Wolverhampton to see the Wolves. And of course, when I lived in that squat out in the sticks I was within walking distance of the Hatherton moto-cross field where we’d see people like Arthur Lampkin, Dave Bickers and Vic Eastwood doing their stuff through the swamp

The nurse was early again. He’s told me that this blood test that I have to have forty-eight hours before I go back to Paris, whenever that might be, I can have it done at the Dialysis Centre.

"What happens if it’s not forty-eight hours but 24, or 72 hours before I go?" I asked.

"It makes no difference" he said. "They can do it and it will be OK"

He’s absolutely flatly refusing to carry out any blood tests now. No wonder he’s so early and his oppo is so late when she comes. She’s the one who has to do all the blood tests.

So after he had finished asking me all kinds of stupid questions he left and I could go to make breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

We have finally made it into the meat of the book and we’ve begun to discuss “promontory forts”.

These are Neolithic or Iron-Age fortresses at the end of peninsulae or promontories where there is just a fortification on one side – the other three are protected by sharp inclines that no army could reasonably climb.

He’s commented in general on forts of this era. Chalk uplands are a favourite location in which to find them and there’s plenty of evidence of primitive field-systems hard by. Today though, these areas are fairly dry and barren and so he conjectures that the climate was damper in those days and the water table was higher, leading to a better environment in which more produce would grow.

That’s as maybe, and he could well be correct, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall from 2019 when we visited all of the old US forts in “Indian Territory” in North-West USA that the soldiers would rather gather crops and wood etc closer to the fort, even if they were of lesser quality, rather than venture further from the fort and from the protection that it offered in order to gather better-quality stuff further away. The promontory forts and other forts of the same era are (in my opinion) a sign of a hostile environment, regardless of whatever modern thought may say, and maybe the same considerations applied with the Neolithic and Iron-Age inhabitant – “produce whatever we can as close to the fort as possible”.

After breakfast I edited the notes that I’d dictated last night. And then I had to prepare the programme.

It ended up being a massive 01:16 over the one-hour spot so it was necessary to engage in some ruthless editing. But now it’s all done and I have my one-hour programme for the end of October. It’s a good one too.

Having put that one to bed, I began to tackle the next. So how to reduce eighty-seven minutes of music to about 57 minutes, to allow time for some introductory speech.

Several tracks were ruthlessly axed, some applause was edited out and I even swapped some of the running order around because it sounded much better in a different order.

So now I have a fairly decent live concert that lasts for 57:59, meaning that I need just two minutes and one second of speech. My note-tab is configured to three hundred characters per line and my speech is three hundred characters per seventeen seconds, so I need just over seven lines of speech.

By the time that I’d finished, I had five and a half lines of speech. I could have finished it but there were several interruptions throughout the day.

Firstly the taxi came for me again. Trying to convince them that the Wednesday trip the other week was just a one-off is difficult. I felt sorry for the driver but I rang up the taxi office to remind them not to send anyone on a Wednesday and to remember to send someone for me on a Thursday.

Lunch was next and I was caught in flagrante delicto once more by the cleaner who came to do her stuff.

She also stood and watched as I climbed into (and out of) the bath to have my shower. It was a lovely sensation and I’m all nice and clean, but I can’t wait to be in the apartment downstairs, smash it all about and have a walk-in shower instead

With having finished the Christmas Cake yesterday it was back to the crackers and hummus. But of course, no chocolate drink. My mid-afternoon drink is now this horrible protein stuff. I suppose that I have to drink it and like it.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with the nicest naan that I have ever made. The curry was delicious too, as was the apple cake with chocolate soya dessert. No idea what I’m going to make for tomorrow though. I shall have to have a think.

Tomorrow is another day, though. Right now I’m off to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about the moto-cross at Hatherton, I went there once on my old Suzuki M12 with my brother on the pillion. We were late for the start and so we were travelling at a somewhat-excessive speed.
Going down the bank at Wybunbury we were stopped by a police radar trap
"Going rather fast, aren’t we?" asked the policeman. "That’s what I call a dangerous speed"
"Have no fear" I replied. "The Lord is with us."
"In that case" said the policeman "I’m going to have to book you. Three up on a motorcycle is not allowed."

0

Monday 3rd February 2025 – THAT WAS NEVER …

… four hours under the thumb of the dialysis machine today.

This evening I was back home even earlier than on many occasions when I was only having three and a half hours. There was something quite strange about that today and I wish that I knew what it was.

But at least I had a visit today. Not Emilie the Cute Consultant unfortunately but the doctor with no bedside manner whatever. He asked me if I was OK so I replied that I was, and so in the best traditions of the reporters of the much-lamented and very-much missed “News of the Screws”, he “made his excuses and left”.

But last night, even though I didn’t have many excuses to make, I still had difficulty leaving my comfortable chair and once again it was a rather late night by the time that I finally managed to tear myself away

After having had a bit of a scrub up and so on, I came back in here, fell into bed and that was the last that I remembered.

When the alarm went off, I was still absolutely dead to the World and it was quite an effort to raise myself up and stagger off into the bathroom. But all cleaned up, and ready to go, I went into the kitchen to attack the stores in the European Medication Mountain, when I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to take the anti-potassium stuff. Ahhh well …

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone and, to my dismay, there was nothing on there from the night. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend on my nocturnal peregrinations to supply me with what bit of excitement is ever likely to be present in my life.

Having been someone who has led a very lively and exciting life, I’m finding a great deal of difficulty adjusting to being housebound and disabled. Not that I am contemplating it, not by any means, but I can see why many disabled people (and healthy people too) resort to artificial or chemical means of stimulating the senses.

The nurse was early today. He had the usual couple of minutes of banal chat and then wandered away leaving me to go to make my breakfast.

Before I began to read my new book, I read a recent leaflet about a discovery of what would seem to be the camp of Caesar when he came ashore in 54BC, right near to my old stamping ground as a child at Pegwell bay.

Whilst the leaflet is of considerable interest, it’s even more interesting to see what the writer, a researcher at Leicester University, has to say about our old friend T Rice Holmes, because this latest discovery calls into question Rice Holmes’s theories.

The author tells us that Rice Holmes was "concluding vigorously that ‘it has been demonstrated that he did land in both in 55 and in 54 B.C. in east Kent’ ", although “vigorously” is hardly the adverb that I would use

He goes on to quote Rice Holmes’s theory, complete with his gratuitous commentary that Caesar landed firstly, "between Walmer and Deal Castles, in the latter north of Deal Castle. That some will still for a time dispute these conclusions is likely enough, but not those whose judgements count. For them, the problem is solved’", commenting that "The thoroughness of Holmes analysis was matched only by the confident abrasiveness of his critique. He brooked no argument. "

Never mind “confident abrasiveness”. “Arrogance” would have been a good word to emply.

So having moved that out of the way, the next book on the list to read is EARTHWORK OF ENGLAND, written by Arthur Hadrian Allcroft and published in 1908.

The book has been said to be “a standard work of reference” of its type but it’s probably well-out-of-date now. Nevertheless, it’ll be another one of the type that we have read recently, with hopefully plenty of interesting facts and, hopefully, a bibliography.

But how times have changed. Talking about some remains that were uncovered in Northern England, he tells us that "the erection of a new factory near Allendale -Town, causing the heather upon the adjacent moors to perish, revealed the perfectly preserved outlines of a great camp"

Can you imagine that today? Allcroft’s comment was quite matter-of-fact as if that kind of thing was perfectly normal, and it probably was too.

Back in here, I had a listen to the radio programme that I would be sending off for broadcast at the weekend and found, to my horror, that I’d made something of a pig’s ear of this one. I don’t know what on earth I must have been doing.

So while the computer was backing up onto the memory stick, I was chopping and changing the radio programme. It was really complicated to reassemble and ended up being sixteen seconds over, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can soon lose sixteen seconds.

When I’d finished, I made a start on the Welsh homework but didn’t go all that far before my cleaner came to fit me with my anaesthetic patches.

And we were taken by surprise by the taxi arriving. These new Social Security regulations are playing havoc with everything. There was another passenger having to go to the big clinic so I was thrown in with him and as his appointment was before mine, I had to have the round trip.

Not that I’m complaining though, because it was my favourite driver, although she was rather subdued today and I don’t think that she raised her voice to another motorist once. Someone else who seems to be losing her touch.

However, she did confirm my suspicions about one of the other drivers and told me to guard my tongue. I’d worked that out the other day when he’d asked me one or two questions about one or two of the other drivers.

In the Centre we had to wait for a while before we could be let in so it can’t have been that early that I was plugged in and wired up.

Today, the first puncture hurt just slightly and the second hardly at all, but all of that changed as the anaesthetic wore off.

Today, I tidied up the laptop’s directories, backed up most of the files and then dealt with the sound file that I’d recorded for the concert.

It’s not by any means easy to edit sound-flies on the laptop but I managed it, which is good news. I shall have to persevere because if I can use the time profitably while I’m there, then so much the better.

After they unplugged me I walked outside to find my taxi waiting, and I had a very taciturn driver who gave me a very quiet ride home. Not that I’m complaining, because I was in no mood to chat. I feel as if I’ve been sucked dry by a vacuum cleaner after all that they crammed into what was surely a shorter session.

My cleaner was surprised to see me, but she was there and watched as I strode all the way up to the top of two flights of stairs to arrive here, and promptly collapsed into my chair.

later on I made a stuffed pepper with pasta, tomato sauce and veg followed by apple cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed, totally wasted, but hoping for a better night with a lot of mileage to cover during the hours of darkness.

However, seeing as we have been mentioning the unsociable doctor … "well, one of us has" – ed … he was the one who was dismissed from the fertility clinic .
The clinic itself was in Paris, and at one certain moment he was in charge of the sperm donor section, but it was a total failure, so I heard.
"Why was that?" I asked the nurse
"They only had three candidates and there were, apparently, transport difficulties." she said. "Two of the donors came on the bus but the third one missed the tube"

0

Saturday 1st February 2025 – I REALLY MUST SHUT …

… up and stop moaning about this dialysis. If I were to tell you that we had another four painful hours of life coupled up to the machine you would very soon become as fed up as I am about the whole affair. I really can’t believe that everyone else suffers as much as I do about all of this.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

After I’d finished my notes last night I had a few things to do and once more it was quite late by the time that I finally went off to bed. Not that I’m bothered too much. Times have changed these last few months.

Once in bed thought, it was totally painless. I didn’t feel a thing for the whole six hours or so until the alarm went off the following morning.

And that was an effort to leave the bed before the second alarm. I’m having to push myself along as best as I can at the moment and hope that I can keep on going. It’s now my shoulders and my back that are giving me major problems

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, with a shave and plenty of deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant. And then I attacked the washing.

“Attacked” is the correct word too. There were piles of it. So much so that even with the washing machine loaded to the brim, there was still plenty that wouldn’t fit in which will have to wait for another time. This is becoming ridiculous.

In the kitchen I had all of my medication, not forgetting the Vitamin D supplement, and then I had to tidy up the empty shopping bags that were lying around all over the place.

It’s not been a very happy morning so far, has it?

If the nurse had turned up two minutes earlier he would have caught me in flagrante delicto. I’d just finished tidying up when he came. Of course he had to do his “cocorico” after Friday’s rugby, but that doesn’t bother me. I have no interest whatever in the game, except to say that it’s a sport played by men with odd-shaped balls.

He was in and out in a few seconds today. he didn’t stay around at all. That suits me fine and I could make breakfast and read my book.

We’re reaching the conclusion and it is as I suspected – a great deal of construction done quite rapidly around 400-380BC, periods of calm, increase in wealth and a relax in tension, followed by spells of more rapid overhauling of the forts until, in the words of the writers, "this is now an architecture of intimidation …. alongside a ‘deliberate closing down’ of the wider agricultural landscape, including animal slaughter"

Not just animal slaughter either. There’s evidence of warfare, such as heaps of slingshot pellets in readiness by the gates, and also, regrettably, piles of skeletons of men, women and children, clearly victims of a battle, cast into a pit.

This all started with some iron relics that were found in a caravan. And they have now identified them as a convex bowl on a spike that would be thrust into a tree-trunk to act as the pivot for a gate, sitting in a corresponding concave bowl set in a sill-beam in the floor.

That’s not all either. to stop the tree-trunk from splitting, a couple of iron bands were heated and strapped around the end of the tree-trunk. They would shrink and contract the wood, and the spike would be rammed home, with the bands preventing the wood from splitting

And if that’s not clever for Iron-Age engineering 2500 years ago, I don’t know what is.

Controversy has at last reared its ugly head. But it’s expressed in a much more scholarly way than T Rice Holmes ever did. The authors tell us "It seems worth stating here that there are so many problems with Avery’s (1993, App. A, 146 ff.) understanding of Varley’s work that it is in some ways safer simply not to consult Avery "

Back in here, first task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with Steve Knightley at a concert. He was organising one of these entertainments. It was a shame because there was only about a dozen people attending them. I’d been on the stage during one of his songs to do something so during a pause he was doing an entertainment having half a dozen people up on the stage for something like a quiz. He looked at me and said “you’ve just been up, haven’t you?”. He couldn’t find enough people to make up the team that he wanted on the stage. They were about to ask him the prize to start to answer the questions. Someone asked him “what are the prizes?”. He ummed and ahhed and didn’t say anything. Then he took all the people off the stage before the quiz had started and then led them out into the car park. We walked through the car park. Someone worked out that “ohh the first prize is marriage” to which one of the women said ” it can’t be that. I’m already married”. And then she looked at Steve Knightley and said “unless there’s a nice, gallant man who is going to arrange it for me”. We walked down to the far side of the car park and there were four or five cars parked down there. I recognised mine, and there was a Black Tulip BMC 1100-type of car. His was an Austin A40, a dirty green metallic and the whole of the bottom was rusting away. The wheels were rusting. He told me that he was a concrete examiner during the day. I thought that he’d been driving the car through the concrete. He said “yes, it needs something doing to the paintwork to stop it rusting further” he said. Why do’t you come down on Friday and do it for me?”. I thought “he lives the other side of Bristol”. He said “oh by the way my wife likes to have her one flat tyre each week so she’s probably have that while you’re down there”. I thought “well, I don’t suppose that I’m doing anything on Friday but even so ..”

Even though I remember nothing whatsoever of this dream, I can see the car park and see my car. It was a black Ford Consul MkI, a car that I have never owned, but would have given my right arm to have had at the time. Steve Knightley is much more well-known for being one third of the group “A Show Of Hands” whom I have never seen live but I have several of their concerts sent to me by a friend who works at a folk festival. He would really be quite good as a game show host I reckon. Judging by the cars though, this was set in the early 1970s when life was so much different. I’m not saying “better” because TB, rickets and waking up to ice on the bedroom window in the morning wasn’t good at any moment in history.

Next stop was to finish off the radio notes from yesterday. They are all done and dusted now ready to be dictated. It didn’t take me too long. But there are quite a few that need dictating tonight so I have better hurry up and finish my notes.

When the cleaner poked her head into the apartment I was backing up the computer, so once more that fell by the wayside. I’ll do this full back-up onto the travelling laptop yet.

She put the patches on my arm and then I had to wait for my driver so I tidied up in the kitchen.

It was my favourite driver today, so we had the whole running commentary, complete with gesticulations, all the way down to Avranches. And at Avranches we had the usual painful procedure that’s enough to drive me wild.

Once installed though, I could settle down to watch the football. Penybont v Hwlfforth is a match of second v third, with both teams keen for points – Penybont to stay clutching on to the coat-tails of TNS and for Hwlfforth to fight off Caernarfon for the coveted third place.

But I’m not sure what game I was watching because, apart from the fact that its quality can best be described as “agricultural”, I don’t think that either goalkeeper had any serious work to do. The match finished 0-0, with both sides lucky to get nil and if they are still playing now I reckon the score would still be 0-0.

The rest of the time at the hospital I spent backing up the computer, with still a long way to go. But when the buzzer goes off and the girls come to disconnect me, I just want to go home.

They guy who brought me back was the one who, I reckon, has some part in running the affair. We had a little chat on the way home and he dropped me off in the capable hands of my cleaner.

Now that the stair handrails have been fixed I strode personfully up all twenty-five steps to my door, and then collapsed inside.

Tea was a burger on a bap with vegan salad and baked potato, followed by apple cake and caramel soya dessert. Life doesn’t get much better than that And now that I’ve written my notes I’ll dictate the notes for the radio programmes and then go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about Steve Knightly and his small crowd … "well, one of us has" – ed … it made me smile. I once told someone that I played in several one-man shows
"I thought that there were three people in your two most famous groups" she replied
"Indeed there were" I replied. "but when I talk about a “one man show” I’m usually referring to the size of the audience"

0

Saturday 31st January 2025 – BROCCOLI STALK SOUP …

… is back on the menu … "PERSONSu" – ed … for Sunday lunch.

LeClerc has made a delivery this afternoon, and one of the options on special offer was a head of broccoli at €0:99. Consequently the head has been divided into its individual florets, blanched and is now in the freezer freezing. The stalk is being kept out of harm’s way in the fridge, along with about half a litre of water in which the broccoli was blanched. That will come in handy for making the soup.

While I was at the Dialysis Centre yesterday I reviewed my LeClerc shopping list, added a few things, subtracted a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.

After I’d finished my notes last night and backed up everything (now that I’m having to take two back-ups) I reviewed my shopping list once again to make sure that I had everything that I needed, adding a few things and subtracting a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.

Consequently it was another late night last night. But not because I was going over my shopping list. In fact I probably would have found something else to do instead to waste the time.

Once I’d finished everything I didn’t loiter about though, and was in bed quite smartly. If only I could show this kind of motivation when it matters

Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep but once I was gone, I was gone. I seem to be having a few deep sleeps these days. I wonder if one of the medicine that I’m taking in the evening has this deep-sleep effect. I’ll have t look at the side-effects and if so, I’ll have to go back to taking it in the morning, whichever it is..

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the morning’s medication. This is really getting on my nerves right now but there’s not too much that I can do about it.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. No sign of Moonchild, or any of the other Fearsome Foursome for that matter, which is a shame, of course. But anyway I’d been in hospital. I was in a ward. I was lying there. Something that I’d been doing had been giving me some kind of exercise so I was quite tired at one point. A doctor came in to examine me and asked me to sit up. Sitting up was at first extremely difficult. In the end I managed to sit up and he could examine me. But this brought back some memories of a few other people who had been in my ward a little earlier but I can’t remember very much as to who they are and why they came.

Never mind not remembering who came in beforehand, I can’t even remember this dream – not at all. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m usually in a deep sleep when I’m dictating, but even so, when I’m transcribing, something awakens in the back of my mind about what had gone on. But not in this case. Hospital dreams though are two-a-penny. It is after all where I spend most of my life.

Later on I went back to sleep at some point … "you didn’t even know that you’d been awake" – ed … and there was a story about a nine-year old girl who had been found dead in a hospital in a bath in her own particular ward. They were wondering why this had happened but that was all that I remember of this.

Like I said, hospital dreams are two-a-penny

There was also something about being at a concert somewhere where a friend of mine was playing drums. He had a black pearl basic drum kit with faces of native Americans painted on the skins. The drums were far too loud and were drowning out everything else on stage, but I wondered later whether that might have been due to the position of the monitor mikes that were picking up more of his sound to relay to us in the wings.

That’s not all either, but you wouldn’t thank me for telling you the rest, especially if you are eating your meal right now.

There was a friend of mine who had a drum kit like that, and it is he who figured in this dream. But he wasn’t known for his loudness when he played so I can’t think why he would be drowning everyone else out. As for sitting in the wings, for several years I did help a guy who was a sound engineer at concerts. He had all of his equipment but couldn’t drive, and I had the traditional Ford Transit and could help lift the gear. And, of course, slip a discreet C90 into the tape head on the mixer desk.

And that reminds me – on the music site from where I obtain most of my equipment, they had a lovely budget-priced table-top mixer with USB and Micro SD capability. Get thee behind me, Satan!

It’s Isabelle the Nurse’s last day today for a while. She’s off to the ski slopes tomorrow morning, lucky person. And there’s no room in her suitcase for me. Ahhh well!

After she left, I made breakfast and read my book. The three guys who investigated the Eddisbury Hillfort are now comparing it with a few others, notably Hembury and Cadbury.

Because of similarities in the construction and reconstruction of the three hillforts they are able to give some kind of date for the commencement of the major fortifications. They put it at something round about 400BC, which corresponds with the arrival of the Celtic people. Presumably the forts are built by the Belgae to defend themselves from the Celts, or by the Celts to defend themselves from counter-attack

There are subsequent stages of abandonment, with reoccupation and repair, indicating that there were a few really turbulent moments in the next few centuries. Unfortunately, the absence of any written record makes it difficult to date anything or to give some kind of coherent history.

But there is one interesting fact that comes out of all of this. There are, generally speaking, several types of hillfort. Despite being in a zone where the “Northwestern” design is most common, Eddisbury bears a much more startling resemblance to the hillforts of Southwest England. So what was happening here?

The person who excavated Cadbury in the 1970s was called Leslie Alcock and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in an earlier version of this rubbish we talked about Leslie Alcock’s book while I was reading it. His work has subsequently been amended by later research and I managed to track down a copy.

At least, I tracked it down to where it was stored. And you’ve guessed it – at Cambridge University Library and they want me to pay £19:00 to read it. I shan’t go into a rant this time though. I shall just sit and seethe quietly. If I had a spieen I would vent it.

Back in here I had a ‘phone call from Paris asking how I was. I told them that they ought to be telling me how I am, seeing as they have the results and I don’t. But the specialist is away on holiday this week so the results might be a few days.

They also told me that I will have an appointment soon.

"Days? Weeks? Months?" I asked

"Certainly not months" I was told. So expect an appointment in July some time.

Today I’ve been editing a rock concert. There’s a reasonably famous concert that was recorded live for an LP back in 1982 but it’s a little-known fact that the group did a dummy-run of the concert a week or so earlier.

What’s even less-well-known than that is that the concert was recorded, which is significant for the fact that one of the tracks that they played lasted almost 50 minutes in the first concert, and cut down dramatically in the second that was recorded onto the LP.

The reason why was that some of the changes within the track were so difficult that they kept on fluffing them at the practice conference, so they decided to leave them out. Unfortunately, this tape that I have has passed through a couple of hands before it came my way and a few people have had a play at editing it to leave out the fluffed parts and make a seamless concert, but they haven’t done it so well and each subsequent editing has made it worse. The bits that were cut out have been lost a long time ago, so I’ve been trying to create a seamless concert with what I have.

It wasn’t easy but I’ve managed it and it doesn’t sound too bad at all compared to how it was when I received it. In fact it sounds quite good and I’m reasonably pleased with it. And if anyone wants the 24 seconds in total that I cut out, I still have them.

Having done that, I began to write the notes. And for a concert that runs for 58:27, I don’t need much in the way of notes. Just 1:33 which at 17 seconds per line, works out at five and a half. Well, it did when I went to school. Heaven alone knows what it is now.

There were the usual interruptions. There was lunch of course, when I realised that I hadn’t sent off my LeClerc order, and then my cleaner who interrupted my lunch. So once the dust had settled I had to attack the LeClerc stuff. I have to eat. So I added a few things, subtracted a few things and off it blasted

There was Christmas Cake break, and there is some Christmas cake being left until Sunday, which is quite handy, I suppose because I can plan something else to make then if necessary. If not, it’s back to the crackers and hummus

But before the Christmas cake there was LeClerc. “After 17:00” was my delivery slot so he turned up at 16:10. "In a rush to get off for the weekend, are we?"

All of that had to be put away and the broccoli blanched. And now, after several weeks of calm, the freezer is full again. Full to the brim.

There’s not much left now to do for the notes of the concert, so I’ll finish that off tomorrow morning ready to dictate tomorrow night. I went for tea instead.

Tonight’s tea was chips and vegan salad with the other half of that strange vegan thing from a couple of weeks ago, followed by apple cake and caramel soya dessert. That should keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.

Yes, with all of this stuff I’ve been reading about Julius Caesar and T Rice Holmes’s showing-off, it’s rekindled the Latin that I haven’t learned or used since school. Whatever next? Puer amat mensam I suppose.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Satan … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to someone who asked me if I knew about the dyslexic devil-worshipper
"Was he the one who didn’t believe that there was a Dog?" I asked, smart @rse that I am
"That’s right. Him" said my friend. "He ended up selling his soul to Santa"

0

Thursday 30th January 2025 – ANOTHER FOUR HOURS …

… coupled up to the machine, and I’m not sure which hurt the most – the pain in my arm once the anaesthetic wore off or the stabbing pain in my heel that arrived mid-session. It was another one of those days.

And can you guess the medical staff’s reaction to both? Of course you can. "Would you like a Doliprane, Mr Hall?". Yes, this whole country seems to float on a lake of Doliprane.

But seeing as we are talking about floating … "well, one of us is" – ed … I don’t know what I was floating on the other night when I managed a fairly early night but I wish that it had come back to float me off last night.

Even though I’d finished at a not-unreasonable time it was still a good while later when I could manage to find the courage to rise up and go to bed. It was probably only the hope that in bed would be the only way that I would be able to see Moonchild again, or one of the other Fearsome Foursome, that drove me on.

Once in bed though, I didn’t hang around and was soon asleep. And there I stayed until the alarm went off in the morning at 07:00.

It goes without saying that I wasn’t in any kind of mood to raise myself from the Dead but I did manage to beat the second alarm into the bathroom where I had a good wash and scrub up. While I was there I also applied plenty of deodorant and had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

In the kitchen I had the morning’s medication, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day. But the bad news is that I’ve run out of my anti-cancer portable chemotherapy stuff that’s been keeping me alive for the last couple of years. I hope that there was a bottle in the last batch of medication that my faithful cleaner brought me. If not, I’ll be pushing up the daisies much quicker than even I think.

Thinking about it though, I should have asked for a new prescription when I was in Paris just now (they can’t prescribe it in Avranches) but I was hoping that I’d manage to see my consultant when I was there. But with the results not being anything like ready (they had hardly finished all the tests) I’m having to go back some time soon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I’ve no idea of anything at all about anything out of this. We had another phantom alarm at 02:50. It sounded so real that I did actually rise up and begin to leave the bed. But I’d been in some kind of folk group and had been playing an instrument and it had been the case of hitting my knees with my hand in the rhythm of the music, something like that. Anyway they stood me up and took me and we just – Rick – and at that traffic lights that was that hippo that was Rod Wayne’s and at that meeting I had to drive all the way back to Crewe when I could be posting but then having to think about disposing of her. Where will I dispose of her and then I said “if you are going to take me to this troublesome bear-y and dispose of Linda at the end of the programme so that we could have a little life? We had a girls’ school at first and looked after it. It was a very shabby and run-down area (…fell asleep here …)

Apart from the fact that none of it makes any sense … "so what in your dreams actually does?" – ed … I can’t remember a single moment of it. However, the utter gibberish and falling asleep indicate that I must have been really tired while all of that was going on.

Isabelle the Nurse is counting down the moments until her ski holiday. She’s promised to show me the photos but that’s no good at all. I need to see the real snow, and feel in under my skis. It’s probably a dozen years since I’ve last been skiing and how I really used to enjoy it.

After she left I made my breakfast and then began to read my new book.

To most of you, it’s probably not very exciting. And it’s not a book either. In 1936 an archaeologist named William Jones Varley excavated an Iron-Age Hillfort at Eddisbury in Cheshire. Although he had made a couple of initial reports, he died in 1970 with his in-depth report unfinished.

In 2006 when his wife died, a box in her caravan was examined and found to contain some very rusty pieces of iron which, judging by the quality of the ironwork and welding, were believed to relate to the Iron Age.

These were passed to a group of researchers who, comparing the pieces with Jones’s written notes, believe that these pieces of ironwork are the pivot points of the gates of Eddisbury Hillfort.

They published their own report a few years later after an extensive examination of the pieces and a re-examination of the site, and I’ve managed to lay my hands on a copy. So far I’m on about page 26 and no-one has managed to insult or abuse anyone else, even if the authors do disagree with some of Jones’s conclusions, so it makes some nice, calm reading

Back in here I had things to do, such as to finish off the missing notes from the next radio programme. So that’s all done now and it’s ready to be dictated on Saturday night.

The rest of the morning was spent on this question of backing-up that’s going to be the bane of my life over the next few weeks because there isn’t enough room on the USB key that hangs on my keyring.

“So why not use a portable drive like I used to in the olden days?” The question that I need to ask before that is “can I make a portable drive work with one hand?”. Remember that when I’m in the Dialysis Centre I had pipes and tubes going into one arm and the arm is clamped into a mould to hold it still, clamped to my leg

My cleaner was rather late coming to fit my patches, so as you might have expected, the taxi was rather early. He didn’t like having to wait for me, which was no surprise seeing as he had someone else in the car with him.

It was a slinet drive down to Avranches and we were really early there so I had to wait 20 minutes. Still, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish I suppose.

My bed was down in the far corner today which is always something of a struggle, especially when there’s almost 5kg of water to remove today

In the end, they agreed that they would only remove 4.5 kg. What they are going to do with this excess water, now that they are already on the maximum (1.1kg/hour at a maximum of four hours), I really don’t know. And neither, I suspect, do they

Once I was comfortable I began the back-up but then had one of those dramatic crash-outs that I used to have in the bad old days. But there I was a little later, being shaken awake by none other than Emilie the Cute Consultant.

"Mr Hall!" she said. "I thought that you were having a crisis!". She obviously doesn’t know about these diabetic comas.

And you should be even more proud of me that you were a few days ago. It took a great, immense effort but I managed to avoid saying "next time you want to awaken me, don’t shake me. Just roll over and give me a gentle nudge."

Before I was plugged in, I reminded the nurses that I needed a prescription of all of my other medication. They’d printed it off on Monday but there was no doctor there to sign it. Anyway, while she was hovering over me, I reminded Emilie the Cute Consultant that I needed it.

Ten minutes later one of the nurses came back waving a prescription signed by one of the doctors, and five minutes later Emilie the Cute Consultant came in carrying one too.

"Ohhh" she said. "I see that you already have one" and began to turn on her heel.

"In fact, I’d rather have yours" I replied. "It has your nice handwriting and signature on it" and she blushed again.

Once more, I was the last to leave. I hadn’t lost all of the liquid, which is no surprise. But it’s not going to help. What’s the betting that within a year I’ll be permanently coupled up to a dialysis machine?

The taxi was waiting for me when I came out. There was another lady to travel with me who lived in Avranches but this time we went up the old road that is probably one of the steepest roads that I have ever travelled. And then I had a lovely view of the old city walls and castle on the way past after we’d dropped her off.

She had mobility problems so I’d sat in the back of the car … "as if you don’t!" – ed … and after she left, I didn’t have the energy to move into the front. It was a very quiet and subdued drive home.

My cleaner was waiting for me and she watched as I climbed all 25 steps to my door – the stair handrails are now fixed.

We had a little chat and she promised to have the prescription framed, with Emilie the Cute Consultant’s signature in full view

After gathering my breath and having my protein drink, I made tea. Steamed vegetables and vegan sausage in a vegan cheese sauce. It was absolutely delicious. And my apple cake and caramel soya dessert was magnificent. The cake is as good as I thought it would be.

Bedtime now, and more work to do tomorrow. It’s a never-ending cycle, isn’t it? One of these days it will stop, but only when I’m pushing up the daisies.

But going back a little, seeing as we have been talking about archaeologists … "well, one of us has" – ed … have you ever noticed how so many of the people on the site are female?
On day I was passing an archaeological site and noticed this so I asked the team leader.
"We always engage women when we can" he replied. "And usually married women"
"Why’s that?" I asked
"Because they are so good at it" he explained. "There is nothing like a married woman for digging up all the past"

0

Wednesday 29th January 2025 – MY APPLE CAKE …

… is magnificent.

In the oven, it rose up like a lift – the first cake to ever do that in all the time since I’ve started baking.

It’s a basic oil cake but instead of it being all-vegetable oil I substituted some coconut oil in place of about half of it, slowly melted in the microwave. In the cake itself are two eating apples, minced up with my big whizzer and also some desiccated coconut and spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.

It’s now in the fridge, cut up into sixteen slices and ready to eat as of tomorrow night with the soya dessert because the chocolate cake is now all finished.

But talking of the beautiful cake … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ve had a really good day today, which is a surprise considering how much moaning I’ve done just recently. But there’s a reason for that – I had a visitor during the night.

But more of that … "anon" – ed …

First of all, in yet more surprising news, I was actually in bed early. Not before 23:00 I hasten to add, but by 23:40 and that’s quite an early time for me these days.

But once in bed I remember nothing at all until the alarm went off. I was really soundly and comfortably asleep.

Once more, it was a struggle to rise to my feet but, beating the second alarm (only just), I headed off into the bathroom to sort myself out.

Into the kitchen afterwards to take my medicine, all of it (except the Vitamin D supplement) this morning, and then back into here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night.

And look at this! There was a football club that had recently undergone a change of manager. It was the first game under the new manager last night. The commentators were talking and were saying that this is a very important match for this manager to win because with him being new he will have set his stall out and the club that he was managing, which was Peterborough United was a big club with many fans who all used to go to the ground on one occasion but attendances had dwindled. I had a look at the attendances and found that they were in the nine thousands, which I thought for a town like Peterborough with a team like theirs is actually pretty good going in any case. If he could bring it up to eleven or twelve thousand that would be exceptional. This apparently was not an unrealistic dream and the commentators were fully behind him as he sorted out his team and would take advantage of his new position and take them to win the game. Somewhere amongst all of this, Moonchild was there. I distinctly remember speaking to her although I didn’t say very much of any interest but she was certainly there last night looking at the situation and looking at me on this commentary team talking about Peterborough United.

Yes, Moonchild came DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER … PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH THE GHOSTS OF DAWN, WAITING FOR A SMILE FROM A SUN CHILD and put in an appearance, How lovely to see her. It may not be a satisfactory appearance, her being on the fringe of a dream, but she was there none-the-less. I shall have to work much harder and try to entice her further towards centre-stage.

However, what’s all this about Peterborough United? That’s a team that has absolutely no significance in anything that I have ever done, so I’ve no idea why the club should figure during a night-time voyage. But then again, if I hadn’t gone there I wouldn’t have seen Moonchild.

Later on, there was a group of disabled people, me included, that were being examined for reassessment etc. Just as it was about to be my turn and everyone was going for a coffee or something like that, it was the end of the day and everything was quietening down, my alarm began to sound. everyone looked at me and said “Eric! How could you!” in an air of bitter disappointment. It wasn’t until about 30 seconds later that I realised that it actually was my alarm going off.

That was somehow prophetic, wasn’t it? But I’ve had plenty of dreams where the subject matter has fused into something that was actually happening simultaneously in real life.

Isabelle the Nurse and I had something of a chat. She’s off to the ski slopes on Saturday but unfortunately there is no room in her suitcase for me. I really need a holiday right now but that’s impossible.

If they had told me last summer that I wouldn’t have ever gone far again for the rest of my life, I’d have booked a cruise or something, or gone to a special home or resort where I could relax and stretch out. I enjoyed the voyage on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR and I’d happily do it again. At least I fulfilled a few of my lifetime ambitions, such as crossing the Atlantic by sea and then sailing the North West Passage.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

At long last, I’ve finished it, and I can’t say that I’m sorry. He’s spent page after page after page in complicated calculations, such as on which date did Caesar sail, only to tell us that it doesn’t really matter. I’ve come to the conclusion that he has plenty of knowledge (which is impressive) and I’ve enjoyed sharing in it but how he loves to flaunt it, quite often unnecessarily. And how he loves to insult his contemporaries who don’t have the same knowledge as he does, and don’t have the time to find it.

Here’s hoping that my next book, whatever it is, is less confrontational than this one was. It was really hard going.

Back in here I had bills to pay. Once more, the standing order that pays my taxe foncière – my local authority rates, has failed and I’ve no idea why. But anyway, these days we can pay on-line so once I’d found my wallet, off I go.

There was also the Property Tax on my place in Canada to organise.

Buying that place in Canada was a shrewd move. There are no identity cards in Canada so evidence of habitation is served by the possession of a Property Tax assessment. And armed with my Property Tax Assessment I could open a bank account, buy a mobile ‘phone, buy a pick-up, take out car insurance and a thousand and one other things.

Once I’d sorted myself out it was almost lunchtime but I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme.

Lunch was a slice of flapjack and some fruit which was nice, especially the flapjack. Mixing the ingredients in the big mixer is definitely the way forward. That mixer was a shrewd investment too.

Back in here I had to resort the music as I had mistaken one musician, but eventually all of the stuff was chosen, remixed, edited, converted, paired and segued.

At this point, the cleaner came along to do her stuff. And that included helping me into the shower.

First though, I have to hand-wash some clothes and then throw them into the bath where they will be rinsed. And then I climb in. It’s still quite a laugh that the company who came here to “help” me wanted €300-odd for a machine to help me that didn’t work, and my cleaner and I rigged up a system with one chair and two wooden boxes, cost €0.00.

After she left I began to write the notes for the music but it was soon Christmas Cake time. Just one more helping of Christmas Cake, which will be on Friday, and then it will be back to the hummus and crackers again

When my little break was over I made my cake. And as I said, it’s wonderful. It took even longer to bake than previous cakes but it’s risen really well, and really equally too. I’ll start eating that tomorrow with my soya dessert and if it tastes as nice as the crumbs that I ate, it really will be nice.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, but there wasn’t much left over so a handful of lentils went into it. No naan either because I forgot to take some dough out of the freezer at lunchtime. Still, it really was nice all the same.

So right now I’m off to bed ready to finish off my music notes in the morning, and then continue this downloading..

But seeing as we have been talking about Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … Canada is lovely, the people are lovely (especially my family in New Brunswick and Ottawa as well as Castor of course) and I could have quite happily emigrated there.

However, I fell into that gap – over 55 means no work permit and you can’t be an aged dependant until you are 65. I was 57 when I applied, and when I was 65 I was too ill to go.

But someone told me a lovely story about Canadians. It went "how do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time? "
"Go on" I replied. "I’ll buy it. How do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time?"
"Simple" replied my interlocutor. "You ask them."

0

Tuesday 29th October 2024 – I HAVE LOST …

… a sock somewhere in this apartment. And with only 40m² in which to lose it, that’s some going.

Last night I took them off and stuck them over the back of my office chair ready for the morning, and when I went to pick them up, there was one on the floor and the other was nowhere to be found.

This is the kind of thing that you would immediately blame on the cat, but that’s rather difficult to do when I don’t have a cat, and we all know that there’s a sock goblin who lives in every washing machine, goblin up the socks but again that’s not likely to be the case seeing as my socks were nowhere near the washing machine.

But it’s not anywhere to be found, this missing sock. I have turned the place upside down to try to find it but it seems to have made good its escape and that would seem to be that.

It was just before going to bed that I took them off. That was rather later than I planned after everything that I had to do, and it annoyed me that I was so late yet again

Once I was in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly but awoke shortly afterwards and then spent a couple of hours tossing and turning before going back to sleep – something of a variation on the usual post-dialysis procedure.

This morning I didn’t need the alarm to awaken. In fact, when I looked at my watch to see what time it was, it was actually 06:59 – one minute before the alarm was due to go off. It goes without saying that I didn’t beat it to my feet this morning.

Gathering up my clothes to take into the bathroom, that was when I noticed the absence of a sock. “Never mind” I mused. “There’s a clean pair hanging from the octopus in the bathroom. I’ll find the missing sock in due course”. That was famous last words, wasn’t it?

While I was washing, I realised that despite what I said last night, I wasn’t all that disturbed by the events in the Dialysis Clinic and I’d survived the night without any serious issues. Live to fight another day, I reckon.

Back in here I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone note to find out where I’d been during the night. There I was having some kind of dream about being in bed, connecting up to dialysis machines, all that kind of thing. I was really surprised to find myself on the right side of the bed when I briefly awoke instead of on the left side where I’d just been in that dream. I didn’t remember too much of this but I suddenly awoke and was freezing cold again

That sounds as if it was exciting, dreaming about the Dialysis Clinic. Maybe it did affect me more than I thought just now. And if I’m dreaming that I’m cold, that’s worrying because in order to cover up my arms and not tear the plasters off by mistake, I’d gone to bed with a jumper on.

And then I was in Crewe and had to go to the centre of Brussels to see the doctor or to give him a form or ask him for something. I set off on foot but went a strange way and ended up going down Earle Street. I thought “I don’t have all that much time if I have to be there”. I had a think and thought that it takes me 30 or 40 minutes going this way then I have to cut through all the side streets and alleys etc. All in all it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes and it’s complicated but if I just went straight into the centre of Brussels down the Boulevard and around the Ring it would only take me an hour and fifteen minutes going that way. I set off clutching my form and a few other things, still trying to work out the times. I went past Zero’s house. Usually I’d be going in there, having a coffee, staying for a chat and generally making myself unwelcome but today I was in a rush so I just went to say hello as I was passing. We ended up having a good talk about T.Rex. I’d given Zero’s father a single or two in the past but suddenly he began to search among his CDs and then went through a box, a tin that looked as if it was a tin that contained CDs. He was obviously looking for a CD but in the end couldn’t find it. I said “don’t worry. It’ll do, whatever it is, another time”. Then of course I had to go but for some reason I couldn’t tear myself away but time was drawing on. I’d miss my slot at the doctor’s to hand over this form if I didn’t get a move on very quickly.

If I’m planning on walking from Crewe to Brussels in one hour and fifteen minutes I ought to be competing in the Olympics. Strangely though, if I walked to work from where I lived with Laurence and Roxanne and went through the alleys of Schaerbeek it did take one hour and fifteen minutes. But when I lived out on the edge of the city in Expo it was more usual for me to talk down the Boulevard to the city centre then around the Inner Ring and down the Rue de la Loi. That was, until I went to work out at the sub-office when it was back to the alleys of Schaerbeek again.

It’s not unreasonable to expect me to find it difficult to tear myself away from Zero’s house. Imagine being there and she being elsewhere. It’s a few times that that has happened and it’s rather depressing to think that I’ve missed her like that.

Later on, a friend of mine contacted me to ask if I wanted to buy ten American school buses. “Not particularly” I thought but then again I thought that it depends for how much they are on sale. Something like that could be extremely interesting so I resolved to make further enquiries. The first thing that I did was to check his bank account, making sure that the numbers that he quoted me came out as being to him so I knew that at least that part of the deal was going to be OK. This all happened while I was at work. I had two enormous files on my desk full of work that I was trying to resolve for a couple of people. It was really complicated and I was having to think about this. I had a young girl assistant who kept coming and going, taking one of the files to do some of the work that I’d pointed out. All of this was going on, there was one thing and then the other. Then the ‘phone rang. It was a voice saying “hello Eric. Se we’re off to Chicago at the end of the month”. I asked “are we?” and they replied “ohh are you going too?”. I didn’t have the first clue who it was but this conversation went on for quite a long time until suddenly he said something, then I realised that he was a guy whom I’d met in a pub while we’d been watching an American Football game. We ended up talking about the Superbowl – it would have been nice as an event but not the complete Carnival the way that it was shown on TV, how there had been so much controversy about the way that it had been shown that they were no longer showing it. The guy was really sad because he had a friend who was a lottery expert. They’d all won the lottery so this was why they were going but now with no American Football there was no longer a lottery. This conversation went on for hours like this guy was my best friend and I’d only met him just that once. We talked about the USA, we talked about Scotland, how they were OK to visit but only in small doses. I had to say that I was just totally bewildered about all of this, why I’d suddenly seemed to become this guy’s very best friend.

Just recently I’ve had to verify a bank account in some kind of similar circumstances, but not in connection with buying American school buses. One of my friends actually does own a retired school bus, don’t you, Rhys, and I’ve slept in it too when I was in South Carolina. But there have been several occasions when I’ve had long and complicated and quite often personal conversations with people either on the ‘phone or in real life and I’ve ended up wondering “who the hell was that?” because I didn’t recognise them or their voice at all.

Isabelle the nurse came round and she tried her best to motivate me and lift up my spirits. That’s not an easy thing to do when I’m down in the dumps but I was grateful for her kind words.

After she left I made breakfast and finished off my book. The geology lecture was very interesting and the book concluded with a list of walks where we could see the different strata. There were eight walks in all and if I were in the UK and in better health I’d go out and do them. But they aren’t for the faint-hearted. The author tells us "much time is taken up in surveying the country and hammering the rocks, and that a twelve miles’ walk as estimated by the map is a good day’s work for the hardiest geologist"

How many people these days would be prepared to have a twelve-mile walk? Add to that the fact that these walks start and finish at local rural railway stations, most of which fell victim to the Beeching Axe in the mid-60s and so you’d have even farther to walk these days.

The next book is going to be EARLY BRITISH TRACKWAYS by our old friend Alfred Watkins who we have met before.

He was at one time President of the Woolhope Naturalists and his book is a summary and enlargement of the talk that he gave to the Society in 1921.

This book is important because it was while researching it that he developed his theory of ley lines, a theory that led to his book THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK that we read and discussed a couple of months ago and which created such a stir when people began to realise the significance of the subject that he was discussing.

His theory was that many prehistoric and not so prehistoric man-made geographical features and many natural geographical features lay along straight lines that stretched for miles across the country and even across the sea to mainland Europe, and he was probing for a reason why this would be so. He reckoned that there were so many of them that it was hardly a coincidence.

His theories were given a new lease of life by new-age people in the 1960s and 1970s and pushed way beyond any boundary that Watkins ever imagined. However his theories have been rubbished by modern researchers who have pointed out that you could draw the same straight lines through the position of such objects as telephone boxes

However, that’s not as strange as you might imagine. Watkins comments that his “ley lines” passed through such places as road junctions, many of which are situated at the crossing of ancient prehistoric trackways that might have been incorporated into the modern road network. And they passed through many churches too, which are quite often (more often than many people will admit) situated on ancient, prehistoric sacred sites. And where would you expect to find a telephone box? At a road junction or outside a church of course, which might correspond with the position of one of Watkins’ points on a ley line.

So whether or not you believe in whatever Watkins was trying to prove, his books make a very interesting and absorbing read.

Back in here I didn’t do much at first. It’s half-term so there’s no Welsh class so I just relaxed for a couple of hours and made the most of it.

Then, before lunch, I attacked the Welsh homework that I had planned to do today. That’s half of it done and I’ll do the other half at the weekend.

After lunch I made a start on another radio programme.

This one is also a special occasion and finding the music wasn’t easy. But I managed to track down everything that, although it’s not exactly what I wanted, will still make a good, relevant programme. And I began to write the text for it.

There are eleven tracks, which run to about one hour and twenty-eight minutes. Then there’s the text to go with it. So for one hour’s worth of programme there will have to be some serious editing.

So which tracks to leave out? The answer is to write and dictate the notes for all of them, see what I have and then see where I end up. It’s a shame though to leave some of them out because there’s some good stuff in there.

There was a break for hot chocolate and the last of the chocolate cake. Tomorrow I’ll be back on the crackers and hummus while I think of my next move.

With no stuffing, my tea tonight was rather different. It was still a taco roll but there had been a tin of refried beans that must, I reckon, have been lying around here since the building was built in 1668. So it was refried beans and salad on my taco roll tonight, cooked lightly in the microwave.

Refried beans reminds me of my trip TO SANTA FE IN 2002 when I drove all around the town looking for refried beans and eventually tracked down some spicy chili beans.

There’s not much of my apple cake left. Just enough for tomorrow so I may well on Thursday have a bash at a rice pudding and see how that works out. I may as well experiment with the air fryer and see what I can do

But not now as I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow.

But talking of telephone boxes … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of a discussion that I had a while back.
With the rise of mobile ‘phones and the loss of all of these telephone boxes all over the country, where do superheroes go when they want to put their underpants on outside their trousers?
When we all lived in the Auvergne I had to plead with the mayor of Virlet to keep the one in our village so if anyone asked for my urgent help, I could dash into the telephone box and put my underpants on outside my trousers and then dash off to their aid.
But while we were discussing telephone boxes one of my friends mentioned that she’d seen my brother with his underpants on outside his trousers once
"Is he a superhero too?" she asked
"Not at all" I replied
"So why does he do it?"
"He does it" I said "because he’s two sandwiches short of a picnic"

0

Monday 28th October 2024 – I’M FED UP …

… of this blasted dialysis and the pain that it’s causing me. Everything that could go wrong at the Clinic did go wrong today and during my three and a half hours coupled up to the machine I was wracked with non-stop pain.

What made it worse was that of the three teams there, it was the team that I consider to be the best that was there on duty this afternoon.

There’s going to have to be some dramatic improvement in the way that things work in there because if it carries on like this, I shan’t consider the 18 hours per week that I waste going to the Clinic to be worth the effort.

It’s all very well saying that they are doing their best to keep me alive, which I’m sure they are, but if I have to spend the rest of my life in pain like this three times per week, then I’d rather not bother.

One consolation though was that I was in bed before 23:00 last night, which was really nice. In fact, it was a good half-hour before and that was something for which I’d been longing.

However, I failed to make the most of it. There I was, wide-awake at 06:00 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, even applying a liberal helping of deodorant. I know that Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, but that’s no reason not to make an effort. I even changed my clothes.

Back in here I had a bash at transcribing the dictaphone notes. This was another one of these chaotic houses with lots of things happening and lots of people living there, all their lives intertwined etc. People kept on changing beds and bedrooms for some reason or other. I know that a couple of girls changed their bedding and ended up in a bed where I had slept. I pretended to forget that it was a bed where I was no longer sleeping, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, but I’m not!. Next morning there were the usual things that needed doing but I was quite looking forward to the evening because I hoped that the beds would be like they were last night and I could carry on. I had a whole variety of tasks that I needed to perform. Round about mid-afternoon I decided that I’d sit down and put my feet up for five minutes because I was tired after having had very little sleep the previous night. I sat down and put up my feet, and the next thing that I remember, it was bright sunlight and there were a lot of people about. I looked at my watch and it was 07:35. It must have been the following morning and I’d slept. I went in and everyone was having breakfast. I thought “I’ve missed my chance again, haven’t I?”. While I was wandering around looking for people I ended up in some woman’s room. She was sitting there. She’d had an accident, her glasses were broken and roughly where her glasses were broken there was a huge scar in her head. She looked quite a mess. I told her what had happened but of course I left out the part about in bed, just the part about me falling asleep. She thought that it was quite funny and told one or two other people. It was really quite funny too, especially the way that it stopped me doing what I was hoping to do.

Actually, it wasn’t all that funny. For once in my life I managed to Get The Girl … "not ‘arf ‘e did!" – ed … and then miss out on the second occasion due to crashing out. It really is unbelievable although regular readers of this rubbish will recall the unbelievable part of it being that I actually had some good luck for a change. Quite usually the second part of that affair is par for the course where I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But chaos? It sounds just like home.

And then the vogue of child painting was starting to come into effect, people having their children painted by well-known artists. Where we were living there was the occasional quest, seeing as my wife could do painting and I could write verses etc. Then of course we began to receive real-life commissions. One of them was this small child aged about three. I sat him down and tried to make him calm etc but it was clear that mathematics was just not his thing. He yowled and yowled all through this ceremony and made a right mess of this photo because there was never ever a correct moment to take it

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … although I’m asleep when I’m dreaming and dictating, I usually have some kind of vague recollection that is triggered when I’m typing out the notes. But for this dream, I have no recollection at all. Not a single bit. I’ve no idea at all what to make of this.

Finally, another dream in the long-running saga of new houses. I finally moved into my new house and was slowly settling in. I’d had a look at the one that I’d had in Winsford and they were in a terrible state so I had a look at the windows of mine and they could do with some attention if not replacing so I took out the two at the back of the house, the dining room and the rear bedroom. I began to clean up the one in the dining room and made a pretty nice job of it. I fitted it back in ready to paint but I noticed that now the sun had gone in and there were really heavy storm clouds. It was starting to rain so I took the ladder to go to fit the window back in the bedroom but the rain beat me. We had this torrential rain but I continued, trying to make this ladder work against the rear of the house but I was having so much trouble because I can’t do with ladders very well. The rain went and the rain stopped so in the end I tried to go round to the front of the house but I couldn’t work out how to get there. I tried a couple of ways but there was no obvious way to go round to the front.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve had several dreams about new houses, in one of which I had actually bought two new houses and couldn’t make up my mind in which one to live. But it did remind me of my house in Winsford and while I was at the Dialysis Clinic I came over all nostalgic about my little house. I wonder how my life and my future would have panned out had I not moved to Gainsborough Road in Crewe and stayed in Winsford.

But that’s not all, although you wouldn’t thank me for posting anything else, especially if you are eating your meal right now. As Thomas Allen Reed once said, "It was fortunate for my reputation that it never afterwards saw the light"

Isabelle the nurse came round and she collided with my cleaner, and they both came in together to assail me. My cleaner wanted my health card for the chemist and the nurse wanted to deal with my legs. They both did what they needed to do in here and left together.

After they had gone I had breakfast and read my book. We’ve now finished the speeches and we are having a lecture on geology. And I have to say that if anyone wants to take up the study of geology, they’ll do much worse than read this lecture because it’s fascinating.

In fact it’s the first geology lecture that I have ever seen where mathematical calculations are well to the fore, but if you don’t want to carry out the calculations you’ll have just as much interest looking at the diagrams.

Back in here I spent some time going through my live concerts and dating them as best as I can, and then I made a start on my Welsh homework. Even though there’s no lesson tomorrow (half-term) I want to crack on.

My cleaner came early to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s just as well because the taxi was early once more.

And here hangs a tale, because it was a driver who has taken me before. She’s usually quite chatty but today she hardly said a word and was rather snappy when she did. She had one of those auras that I could sense before she even said anything, and it wasn’t a good sensation at all.

At the Dialysis Clinic the nurse connected me up painlessly, but the machine didn’t work and nothing that she tried would make it.

With the aid of the portable x-ray machine they worked out that the needles hadn’t gone into the tube in my arm so they took them out and tried again. By this time though the anaesthetic had worn off.

Eventually they had a good contact but the machine still wouldn’t fire up. They eventually managed it but only if the pipes were in a certain position so they taped them in that position to my arm. At one stage I had five nurses and three nursing assistants standing round my bed and it’s a shame that I was in no condition to enjoy it.

That’s all very well, but you try lying like that for three and a half hours without moving your arm even half an inch. Eventually, they were so fed up of coming to deal with the plaintive wails of the machine every time I winced with pain that they rigged up a cradle with some kevlar padding.

Then I had no choice but not to move my arm

When I could I read through my Welsh and then finished off my “Curious Church Customs”. I’ll have to find a new book to read, something like HORRID CRIMES OF BYGONE CHESHIRE to see if any of my relatives are in it, and not as victims either.

The trick cyclist came by. She asked me if I was OK and when I replied that I was, she cleared off elsewhere and left me alone, which suited me fine.

With all of the excitement everything was running late, and when they came to unplug me, the compression on my arm failed again and once more the place was like a slaughterhouse

It’s no surprise that I was glad to see the back of the place and climb into the taxi to bring me home. It was another new driver and I ended up having to give directions after she took a wrong turn

My faithful cleaner was at her post again to help me out of the car but I managed the first flight of all thirteen steps without using my hand to lift my leg. If I can do that for a whole week I’m going to try the second flight up to my front door

And she had some news for me. One of the medicaments that I need is on special order and the chemist has had to send away for a box. So what’s the betting that that will be changed in a few days?

In the absence of a pepper, I made an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit for tea. I had one helping with pasta and veg, and there are three more that are destined for the freezer

The apple-cake has almost all gone now, so I might persevere with a cake in the air fryer. The chocolate cake which I cooked and which is almost all gone now, ended up being something of a success despite the misgivings that I had at the start.

So now I’m going to be brave and go to bed, even though my arm is quite painful. I’ve warned my cleaner to take her ‘phone to bed and expect a phone call because I’m not convinced at all about how this compression is going to work. I don’t suppose that I shall have a wink of sleep.

But there’s a guy who comes to the Dialysis Clinic in an ambulance because he has lost both his legs.
He was looking on with interest at this pantomime this afternoon and eventually we struck up a conversation
"have you been coming to the Dialysis Clinic for a long time?" I asked him
"Ohh no" he replied. "I lost my legs during the War."

0

Saturday 26th October 2024 – YOU AREN’T GOING …

… to believe this – or maybe you are, I don’t know – but do you remember that new prescription that I had just the other day?

And so here we are just 10 days later, and it’s already been changed. Furthermore, the medication that he added in? That’s been changed too. After just 10 days. I don’t know what the chemist is going to say when my poor cleaner goes there on Monday

The issue is that some of these pills and potions aren’t a regular order but have to be ordered specially. And you can’t order just one packet, you have to order – and pay for – a box full. Reimbursement isn’t made until the medication is prescribed and collected by the patient.

So if the chemist has ordered a boxful of rare stuff and only handed out one packet, she’s stuck with the rest until the expiry date at which point she has to throw it away, and she’ll be well out-of-pocket

In my opinion, she will have every reason to be upset by all of this and I’m glad that it’s not me who has to go to face her

But anyway, that’s something to worry about for another time.

Last night I struggled into bed just about at the correct time, just before 23:00. And glad I was too to be finally in bed

There wasn’t even time to start my little night-time mantra before I was asleep, but it didn’t last. Not that I was cold, because I’d gone to sleep in my tee-shirt, but it was a disturbed night nevertheless. I was awakening and going back to sleep on regular occasions too numerous to count.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I had a great deal of difficulty rising up out of my stinking pit and it was a very undignified stagger into the living room to collect some clean clothes.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, and even a shave, and then all of the dirty clothes that were hanging about went into the washing machine and I set it off on a cycle (a very clever washing machine, mine).

Back in the living room I put away all of the shopping bags from LeClerc ready to hand back next time they deliver, and then put all of the drained carrots into the freezer ready for the next few weeks.

Back in here I made a start on the dictaphone notes, but I didn’t get very far before Isabelle came. With everything that I’d done, I was running late.

She gave me my ‘flu injection, and told me that the side-effects might be a painful shoulder and ‘lu-like symptoms for a very short while, so I need to have the Doliprane standing by, so I told her to clear off. This whole country floats on Doliprane – the slightest problem that arises and “I’ll pass you the Doliprane”. If you’re hurting, there’s a reason and masking the pain can just make the problem worse.

After she left I had breakfast and read my book. We’ve finished fossils and we’re now discussing the notes that the speaker who had proposed the mushroom book had prepared and brought to the meeting to present to the assembled multitudes.

And we’ve yet to find out anything about Mr Houghton’s “photographs of a very curious and interesting character”. I’ll be sure to tell you when I find out.

Back in here I finished off transcribing the dictaphone notes. I started off going to flower shows, inspecting flowers etc. I even in my dream sent myself a message although I’ve no idea what it was about but it concerns flowers etc and that’s mainly because everything that I’ve been discussing I’ve been reading about discussions of mixed lists

It’s quite impressive that I can even in a dream remember what’s been going on at the breakfast table. But what interest do I have in flowers? My friend Lorna once said that the only time I’d ever take a photograph of a flower would be if there were a car parked on top of it.

A couple of years ago I’d had a huge, blazing row with a member of public about something or other which had turned rather ugly. Anyway I thought no more about it but suddenly a group of policemen turned up and said that they were going to take me off down to the police station. I thought that it might have been for questioning, something like that, so I went along. I met my boss who was there. I asked him what was going on and he told me that this was going to be the hearing about remand and liability. I couldn’t understand this. I expected the proceedings to be similar to how they were in the UK. He replied “oh now. You won’t have bail. You’ll be remanded and the case will be dealt with tomorrow”. “That’s rather quick”. He asked “what are you going to do afterwards? Are you going back to your old job in the UK?”. I replied “I’m hoping that I’ll stay here”. He answered “well you can’t stay here if you’re going to do this. You’ll lose your job. For a start” he said, showing me a spark plug “this won’t be able to fit under your vehicle”. I couldn’t understand any of this. There was the guy with whom I had this altercation. The police turned to him and asked “do you still wish to go ahead with this?”. He replied “Yes” so two policemen took me inside. One of them asked “you don’t mind sharing a cell on your own, do you?”. I asked if there was going to be any bail. He replied “oh, no. The case will be heard in the morning. You’re remanded overnight. They took me down into the bowels of the police station like in one of these old films. There’s a room there with about fifty people in it on a load of benches and they just sat me on a bench at the back. There were several other people around and we were watching a procession that set off – all people in brightly-coloured clothes and flags of the various nations. A whole group of people from Sweden set off followed by some people from Croatia. I was all completely bewildered by this. I hadn’t the least idea about what was going on

I stepped back into that dream later on and was driving back to the house where I’d been just now. There was a pile of mud on the floor with some traffic lights on red. I didn’t see the line where to stop so I stopped where I thought it was and found that I was in the middle of the junction. I raised my hand in apology to everyone and drove off. As I raised my hand a Rover 820 saloon, a silver one with a pattern part wing on it pulled out of a garage. I thought to myself “that’s the guy with whom I’d had this row and that’s his car. I hope that he doesn’t think that I’m waving to him”. I carried on driving and eventually turned up at the house where I was supposed to be. I was looking for a parking place because parking on the street was not allowed. They were parking two-abreast on the pavement. I could see that outside the house where I was supposed to go there was some parking and there was also some room in the drive at the back.

All of the above is quite surreal, especially the flags. It reminds me of Carnaval here in Granville. I’m not sure why the Police would want to come knocking at my door these days though. I’ve been doing my best to keep my head down, but even so, there are some people who just won’t leave you alone

I was dictating into my hand again here, which is something that I do on the odd occasion. There’s a village just off the headland here called “Pentref-Uchaf”, the “Highest Village”. It was a tiny village. It was the village Open Day at the garage. One woman there learned how to fit gas bottles which she said was going to be interesting. I learned how to make mint drinks which was also going to be interesting. On the headland by the village was a big house where we were kept as prisoners. You could see by the trees which way the winds were blowing because the trees were growing in all funny shapes, all pointing towards the east. When I arrived at this house on remand I was asked which bed I wanted. I said that I didn’t mind. Everything they offered me, I said that I’d take whatever they give me, I’m not bothered. I was helping another inmate in the kitchen. He asked me which set of cutlery I wanted, the big one or the small one. I said that I wasn’t bothered. He replied that I was the ideal companion to be incarcerated with. We were trying to make a meal for people but we couldn’t find anything. The guy giving us the instructions took far too long and we’d prepared half of it by the time we’d finished. It was all really strange, the third part of this dream.

This prison bit – I hope that it’s not a forewarning of something. It seems to be rather persistent tonight. But last night I was dreaming in French and tonight it’s Welsh. When I start dreaming in Innu then you know that the World is at an end.

The washing was now ready so I sorted it out and hung it up to dry. And then back in here I attacked the correspondence. Everyone should now have had a reply, but if I’ve missed you, let me know.

My cleaner came early to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s just as well because the taxi came early too. We had to pick someone else up so we went round there but she wasn’t ready to come back yet to Avranches so we had a good drive down there on our own.

Being so early I was first in and first dealt with, but even though sticking the ports in me was painless the nurse missed her target so she had to take them out and start again. They are doing their best to torture me in there.

Once it was finally up and running they pretty much left me alone. However the doctor was another story. He came round and asked how I was and then told me about the medication. Later on he sent me the prescription.

As to why they are actually changing the medication I don’t really know. It doesn’t seem to me to be logical to change it so quickly before anything has had time to act.

Once they left me alone, I read my Welsh, listened to music and read my “Curious Church Customs”.

The taxi was waiting for me and we had quite a quick return, where I could only manage nine steps before I had to use my hands to lift up my legs – a backward step … "very good" – ed …

There was football tonight – Hwlffordd v Caernarfon, and what a dreary match that was. Hwlfford played the nicer football but Caernarfon’s approach was rather agricultural. The whole spark seems to have gone out of Caernarfon’s midfield this last few weeks

The final score was 0-0 and both teams were lucky to get nil. This was a match that I’ll forget quite quickly.

Tea was baked potato, vegan salad and a burger on a bun followed by apple cake and caramel soya cream. Nice it was too.

But now I have some dictating to do and then I’m going to bed. It’s an extra hour in bed in the morning and I want to make the most of it.

But the doctor at the Clinic didn’t only see me. He saw others too and after he left, I noticed that one patient whom he’d seen was crying.
"What’s the matter with you?" I asked him
"It’s the doctor" he said. "He’s told me that I have to take one pill every day for the rest of my life"
"There’s no need to be upset" I said "Lots of people have to do that. I’ve been doing it for nine years!"
"It’s all right for you" he said "but the doctor’s only given me six"

0

Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good day today, and accomplished everything that I set out to do, with time to spare.

Tomorrow I am going to have a morning doing some correspondence. Several people are awaiting e-mails from me so I am going to do my best to try to answer them. Post is building back up again.

What probably contributed to at least some of the good day today was that last night I made it to bed before 23:00. It was really nice to be able to do that for once. I don’t do it often enough in my opinion, but then again that could be said about a lot of things.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly – but not for long. It was freezing last night and I seem to have gone in one swell foop from sweating profusely during the night to shivering like a jelly as a lorry is going past

In the end I gave up the struggle and put on my dressing gown. Not an ideal thing in which to be sleeping but it was the nearest thing to hand. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a cold winter.

It was quite a restless night too, which seems to be normal after a session at the Dialysis Clinic. I was wide-awake at 02:30, 04:00 and 06:00 and although I made an attempt each time to go back to sleep, at the latter time I failed miserably.

Consequently, when the alarm went off I was already in the kitchen making the bread. Another early start.

While the dough was festering away I went to have a wash, and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I’d been for a dialysis and that included having a bath (and wouldn’t that be nice?). When I left the Centre I’d left my earphones behind – a beautiful little pair that I’d received free when I’d telecharged or ordered something off the internet and downloaded it a while back. I thought that I’d never ever see those again because they were so nice and I’d never ever have another pair quite like them. I was completely devastated by the loss of my earphones

–telecharged? Downloaded, you mean. We’re dreaming in French again are we? And I did once leave my headphones behind at the Dialysis Centre not so long ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And it will be the end if I do leave those behind and lose them because they are quite lightweight and fold up making them quite portable. I have another pair here and there’s a third pair somewhere and I wish that I could find them.

Next was a party of Arctic explorers stranded out on the ice trying to return home, having all kinds of difficulties. One of the young officers was in charge of manoeuvring the huge sledge that they had, loaded with all of their possessions. It happened to catch on something, tilt over and go in through the ice, and was lost. The dream went on to say that he did the only thing that he could. He saluted, clicked his heels, turned and walked out into the night. He was never seen again, leaving the other three members to make their way home as best as they could with what they had left, which was almost nothing.

The British had a frightfully stiff upper lip when it came to Polar exploration. While other countries sent their teams out with sleds hauled by dogs, the British insisted on man-hauling them. And consequently while casualties amongst the foreign explorers were generally caused by events such as ship-sinkings and to being iced in, the British pulled their sled by hand all the way to their doom. They were driven by the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, whose guiding principle was "the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well". Consequently it was the foreigners who conquered and the British who fought well, but died by the dozen. As the Canadian historian Pierre Berton put it, the British "failed to conquer because instead of adapting to the environment, they tried to bring their environment with them". The later explorers who discovered the camps of the party of Sir John Franklin, 134 strong that was wiped out to the last man, found dinner plates, silver service, dress suits, bottles of claret and all the luxuries that a British officer and gentleman would require at the dining table of his stately home while my American namesake, searching for traces of Franklin, was living in an igloo amongst the Inuit eating blubber off his sleeping bag with his bare hands.

Later on we were back living in Shavington. I was running my taxi business from there. I had a girl who worked the radio for me part-time at weekends. She was a young, rather unkempt girl. I took one of the cars off for a little spin round and came back. All the cats were loitering around the house so I stopped the car right by the front gate and climbed out. This girl came out of the house to see me. She told me that I ought to give her congratulations. I asked why and she replied that she’d won nearly £50,000 on the football pools. Of course I was really pleased for her. She replied that at last she could maybe have a flat. I asked where she was living at the moment. Was it in a hostel? She replied “no”. She was living in someone’s garage, which I thought was horrible. To make it worse, she’d lost her job during the day so she was loitering around and the owner of the garage didn’t like that. She was talking about buying a little snack bar too. I was really so pleased for her and so impressed. I asked her how many proposals of marriage she’d received already. She replied “none as yet but not many people know”. We had a little chat about the future, maybe she might start to run a snack bar or something. I told her that if she needed any help she could always ask me. But I was really genuinely impressed and genuinely pleased for her.

This was another one of these nice comfortable dreams that I have occasionally. But running my taxis from Shavington – not that that would be likely to work. I was glad really to leave Shavington. If Crewe is extremely parochial and small-minded, Shavington is ten times worse. But then, most small villages are.

Finally, Nerina and I had flown to Montreal and rented a car. We’d gone for a big drive round. We found ourselves down in the south-west corner of the USA in California. We were quite happy driving around through all these desert tracks and I happened to notice from the GPS that according to the GPS we were now in Mexico. I thought that we’d better make it back to the USA before we find ourselves in trouble here. We headed back to the border and this time we picked up the motorway that brought us back to an immigration centre. By now it was very late at night. Eventually it was our turn to be investigated. He gave my passport a cursory once-over and handed it back. But Nerina’s he examined much more closely and began to speak to her in Italian. She was rather put out by this, being caught unawares, but I replied in Italian, so the border guard and I had a little chat. We talked about beautiful women. Eventually he have Nerina back her passport and waved us through. But he was studying our entry stamps quite carefully. Of course we had Canada, and Canada to the USA but there was nothing about us going into Mexico because we’d driven through the desert. When we were back in the car I said “when we’re back home I’m going to work out that route that we took and sell it on eBay. I bet that I’d make a fortune”. Nerina replied “ohh no. I’m going to tell the American authorities so that they can block it”. We came into a small town and Nerina climbed out of the car and went to look at an American car. She hung her lantern on the bonnet and walked away. She pointed to another American car that was bashed and battered. She then tried a house door, and it was open so she went in. She settled down on the sofa and said “I’m not moving from here until I’ve had a sleep”. I replied “Nerina, you can’t sleep there! This is the USA! They’ll shoot you if they see you!”. “Well, I’m not moving”. I pleaded with her to move. I told her that I’d find a hotel somewhere. She said that she’d looked on the internet and there wasn’t a hotel with a room in the neighbourhood. I pleaded with her for anything that she’d move because she really would be shot if some American were to find her asleep in his living room but it was all to no avail

It recalled MY TRIP THROUGH THE DESERT IN 2002. What a trip that was! Driving past all of the sites that I’d seen in so many Westerns in the past. But there would be no question of leaving Nerina behind to face her doom at the hands of a paranoid American armed to the teeth. Believe it or not, I happen to like Nerina. Anyone who will put up with me for nine years has to be worth liking. What went wrong in our relationship was that I was in a bad place at a bad time fighting too many demons, and I fought quite a few more than I ought to have done. And of course, both of us were too tired and too stressed to learn to talk to each other. There were plenty of thoughts that we should have exchanged.

Isabelle came – and went. She was in quite a rush and didn’t stop around to talk. She’s promised though to film the events tomorrow morning in the town centre when they try to set up the market amongst the major roadworks in the centre.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. We’re still at the annual dinner, the talk on trees has ended and we’re now talking about sheep, geology and fossils. And, apparently "Mr. Houghton had been kind enough to bring with him some photographs of a very curious and interesting character"

Photographs of a very curious and interesting character? Wouldn’t I have liked to have been at that meeting?

Back in here I had to sort out a few things, deal with my order to LeClerc and then I attacked the radio notes. It didn’t take me long to finish off the notes for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went to lunch – a salad sandwich on nice, soft fresh bread.

But the bread was another failure. I made a careful study of it today. I put the loaf in the oven at exactly the same spot that I put it last week, and once again, one side of it didn’t rise.

That’s the side nearest the front, and so I think that the door is fitting badly and there’s a draught of air coming in around it. If the temperature sender is at the back, that will explain why the temperatures are so messed up, because with the current of air, the temperature at the front will be much lower.

It’s a shame because I have a perfectly good oven in the van downstairs but it’s beyond me to bring it up here.

This afternoon I reviewed the notes that I’d written a while back for a couple of radio programmes. They are rather complicated and involved so I’d left them to one side until I had a lot of time to go over them. So that was this afternoon’s task.

Some of the stuff I rewrote, some other stuff I corrected and I reckon that barring accidents I have them ready to dictate. I might actually do these tomorrow night and then they’ll be out of the way. But I imagine that they’ll take some editing.

My cleaner had stuck her head in the door this morning to pick up a few things to take into town, and while I was reviewing my notes she came in and did her stuff. Now the place looks as if someone lives here.

Just after I finished my hot chocolate and chocolate cake the food delivery came, so I spent a very pleasant late afternoon dealing with 2kg of carrots making them ready to be frozen, and putting away the rest of the stuff.

It was actually a struggle to make up the €50:00 minimum order today. It seems that I have a good supply of everything that I need.

LeClerc had no peppers thought. So stuffed peppers are off the menu for the next couple of weeks. But they had aubergines on special offer and I took advantage, so it looks like we’ll be in for plenty of aubergine and kidney bean whatsits for a while.

Tea tonight was a nice salad with chips and falafel followed by apple cake in caramel sauce. So what shall I do when the apple cake is all gone. I have a fancy to see how a rice pudding would do in the air fryer

So having spent a pleasant twenty minutes looking for and finding the missing headphones, I’m off to bed

But before I go, seeing as we’re on the subject of the desert … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ll tell you about the encounter I had with three men in the desert whose car had broken down and they were walking to try to find help.
One was carrying the radiator, the other a hub cap and the third one a door and so I asked them why
"I’m carrying the radiator" said the first "because if I become too hot, I can drink the water"
"I’m carrying a hub cap" said the second "because if I become too hot I can shelter in its shade"
"I’m carrying a door" said the third "because if I become too hot, I can wind the window down"

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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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