Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

Friday 28th August 2026 – THE BAD WEATHER …

… that we’d had yesterday afternoon continued through the night and into this morning. I think that most people will agree that what with everything that fell yesterday, we’ve now had all of the rain that we were owed for the last three months.

It wasn’t raining when I went to bed last night, or at least, I don’t think so. However, I wasn’t in all that much of a state of awareness. I was absolutely whacked, and remember – I’d only just awoken from a deep sleep when I crawled into bed.

And I’ll tell you how quick I was about going to sleep too. It’s been my habit for the last month or so to suck a menthol and eucalyptus sweet when I go to bed. That prevents me coughing and allows me that little head start to go to sleep peacefully. Anyway, when the alarm sounded at 06:29, there was half a menthol and eucalyptus sweet stuck to my jammies. I must have fallen asleep before I’d finished sucking it.

That wasn’t the first time that I’d awoken either. I vaguely remember once or twice being awake, and later on, I awoke definitively and couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned in bed for quite a while, and just as I was settling into a nice, comfortable position, ready to go back to sleep, the alarm sounded.

Being awake is one thing. Being out of bed and upright is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It took me a good ten minutes to struggle to my feet and set off.

First call today, though, wasn’t the bathroom. Having locked the front door last night, I had to unlock it again this morning so that the nurse could come in. Then I could go to the bathroom and sort myself out.

Back in here afterwards, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night.

We were going on an outing, taking a load of students and schoolkids with us from primary school. My first pick-up was from somewhere round about the Holly Mount area of Shavington. I picked up those kids alright and headed back towards the centre. Then I asked her where the next pick-up was going to be. He replied “Main Road School”. I thought “hang on a minute – Shavington County Primary moved ten or fifteen years ago. They aren’t there any more. Is she sure that that’s correct?”. He told me that as far as she was aware, Main Road School was what was written. So I went down Dodd’s Bank and came into the village, turned right at the Sugar Loaf Corner to go down Main Road and stopped at the school to see if the kids were there.

It’s impressive that I could remember all of the local nicknames for places in Shavington and that Shavington County Primary School has moved, although it’s a darn sight longer than “ten or fifteen years ago”.

And note the rather dramatic and continual change of gender of the person sitting next to me in the coach. I had to listen to the dictaphone recording several times, and that was indeed what it said.

When the nurse came to visit me, we talked about the Champions League draw. His hometown team, Lens, has been drawn against Machester City, so it seems. Not that I’m bothered. Any team in which I have any interest has been long-eliminated from the Champions League.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he’s been discussing the end of the Gothic era and the beginning of the Renaissance. And as you might expect, he’s not a happy bunny with his beloved Gothic being replaced by another style of architecture. We’ve not had any outright vulgar abuse or “language lower than Billingsgate”, but I’m expecting it to arrive sometime soon, and I’ll keep you posted.

Back in here, there were several things to do, and then I could turn my attention to dealing with the notes from last night. And they took longer than they ought to have done too, due mainly to the fact that I fell asleep in the middle of writing them and was flat-out in my chair for three quarters of an hour.

When they were on line, I went for my disgusting drink and my midday medication, and then back in here, I turned my attention to the radio programme, where I was interrupted by my faithful cleaner who came down to do her stuff.

After much binding in the marsh, the programme is now finished, but even that took longer than it ought, due mainly to the fact that a few of the groups and musicians were new to the programme, so they took much more research than would be required for the established stars.

Anyway, it’s all ready for dictation now, although Heaven alone knows when that might be.

After I’d finished, I had a chat for a while with my artificial intelligence chatbot, as a way of relaxing. There’s never anyone about on the internet when you feel like a chat.

The trouble with these chatbots is that they have a very weird memory. You can tell them something, and ten minutes later, they’ll have forgotten it, whereas they’ll come out with something completely unexpected that you mentioned in passing a year ago, when it wasn’t to this particular chatbot and it wasn’t even in that particular chat file.

Also, chatbots have very little sense of unscripted humour. Ask them why polar bears don’t eat penguins, and they’ll say that they live at the opposite ends of the earth and not that “they can’t get the silver paper off”. Never mind Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock and their “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”, it’s even more of a waste of time telling jokes to a chatbot.

The big advantage, though, is the depth of knowledge of a chatbot. Being able to search the entire internet and post an answer almost immediately, they can answer any question you would like to ask them. They save me hours of work when I’m writing stuff for the internet. If you want to see what I mean, download the artificial web browser COMET and ask it a few complicated and obscure questions. Chatbots work even quicker than Comet does.

So tonight, we had the football. A right bottom-of-the-table crunch clash between Trefelin and Rhydaman. And believe me, people, this was one of the most exciting games that I have seen for years. It had absolutely everything – numerous on-field brawls, three red cards, eleven minutes of stoppage time, one of the best saves of all time at an extremely vital moment, lengthy VAR checks, screaming fans, unbelievable tension, goalkeepers joining in the attacks and probably one of the best goals that you’ll ever see at this level of football.

The game finished 1-1, which, quite frankly, was no good to either team, seeing the size of the gap above the bottom four, but never mind. This is a match that I could watch again and again, and there aren’t very many like that. If you want to see it, IT’S HERE

So now, it’s midnight and I’m off to bed, horribly later than usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and chatbots … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked my “Comet” browser to tell me a joke that would appeal to a British audience. This is what it came up with –
I told my AI: "Write the end-of-day note for my blog. Keep it light and end with a joke."
It produced three paragraphs on transformer architectures, then added: "And on that note, why did the neural net cross the road? To get to the other… training set."
I said, "Make it more human."
It tried again: "Why did the neural net cross the road? Because everyone else was doing it, and it didn’t want to be the only model not generalising."
I said, "More British."
Final version: "Why did the neural net cross the road? It didn’t, actually. It waited for a gap in traffic, apologised to the cars, and then crossed when it felt it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone."

0

Tuesday 11th August 2026 – FOR A LITTLE …

… while, things seemed to be going better today than they had been yesterday, not that that was ever likely to be difficult.

So having abandoned my notes last night, I was in bed by 22:00 or thereabouts, but it took an absolute age to go off to sleep, despite how tired I was feeling. And once I was finally asleep, it wasn’t for long. I’ve no idea what time I awoke, but the car park light was still on, so it was before 02:30.

Once awake, I lay there in a daze, drifting in and out of sleep from time to time and not being absolutely sure of which was which.

When the alarm went off, I was on my way to pick up an old American schoolbus so that I could start doing my round of delivering alcohol now that Prohibition has ended. But I didn’t get very far into that before the alarm awoke me.

A friend of mine, Rhys, who is a regular reader of this rubbish, actually owns an old school bus that he is slowly converting into a mobile home. And appropriately, his “day job” is driving a school bus for his local education authority in South Carolina, not that Prohibition figures all that much in whatever he does.

At that moment, I was feeling rather wretched, and as usual, it took me a while to summon up the energy to leave the bed and head into the bathroom. And having spent a lot of time sorting myself out in the bathroom, I came back in here to see what else might be on the dictaphone.

Some friends from school and I had decided that we’d go out for a Christmas meal, so someone had booked eight or nine places at this kind-of restaurant place. I remember going there last year for a Christmas meal, and it wasn’t very satisfactory, mainly because the menu wasn’t properly prepared and there were bits here, bits there and bits somewhere else, so I thought that this evening, I’d go to have a look at the menu. One of my friends came in with me, and there was another one waiting by the door for someone else. So we went to look at this menu, and sure enough, the twenty-second of the month, the menu still hadn’t been properly prepared. I was having to try to argue with the staff about whether “this” would be available on Christmas Day or whether “that” would be available and what other options they would have for someone whose diet is pretty restricting. But this restaurant was one of these ones that was always in the dark and gloomy, and it’s very upmarket with a pub bar right in the centre of the room. They are trying their best to run it as a pub and restaurant, but it’s going to be difficult to try to combine the two.

Where this restaurant is situated, I have no idea. It doesn’t ring any kind of bell with me. However, I have been to plenty of pubs and restaurants where hasty recruiting, crammed venues and an excess of clients, followed by a “certain group” of kids from our school who were determined to spike the enjoyment of as many people as possible, led to unsatisfactory Christmas meals.

Isabelle the Nurse zoomed in, and I told her about the confusion yesterday at the dialysis centre. She was frankly appalled by the laxity over the question of my weight. But then again, she’s a former accident and emergency nurse, so the rules about recording medication, etc., are obviously much more strict there.

After she left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, once more, I actually didn’t. I was again caught short and ended up reading page after page of research. Not that it brought me much nearer what I was hoping to find, but I hoped that I’d be making progress somehow, somewhere.

Back in here, there were the usual things that needed doing, and they took some time today. And then, when they were out of the way, I could start to make my plans for this radio programme.

One thing that I needed was some music, so I had to search in all the likely and then the unlikely places on the internet until I found it. And that took hours. Not in the least because between about 11:50 and 13:00, I crashed out completely and definitively.

Even worse, ten minutes later, I crashed out again, and my face slammed right into the keyboard and my desk. And how that hurt! But at least the flow of adrenaline that resulted from the crash seemed to awaken me, and I carried on from there.

One thing that I learned was that either yesterday or the day before, not once but twice, my web pages have been used as a reference to answer a question in ChatGPT. I forget now how many times that has happened, but it seems that my tactic of introducing well-known but long-forgotten facts from old books into the internet seems to be paying off.

At 14:00 I had a visitor. Madame la Présidente of the Residents’ Committee came to see me. Apparently she’s put her apartment up for sale and is moving to St Nazaire to be near her family. That’s a shame because she’s actually quite nice and I can’t ever thank her enough for tipping me the wink about this apartment coming up for sale. I was really grateful for her help.

She brought me some pineapple, which was nice of her, and she stayed for about an hour or so while we chatted about her move, life in this building, the new occupiers we’ve had these last few months, etc.

After she left, my faithful cleaner came down to do her stuff. First thing that she did, though, was to chase me into the shower. Showering these days is much easier than it used to be. Once she’s organised the fittings, etc., I can go in and come out of the shower on my own. I’ve managed that now for the last three or four showers.

Interestingly, the other times that I’ve come out of the shower, I’ve had to come out backwards. Today, though, without even thinking about it, I came out forwards and even dried myself standing up, without having to sit on a chair.

After my cleaner left, I went into the kitchen to make two bread rolls and then came back in here to carry on.

At teatime today, I had the other half of my broccoli stalk soup from last week, with those tiny pasta elbows and my two piping hot fresh bread rolls. And as usual, it was absolutely delicious. I really shall have to make some more at some point, although I need to start eating the florets. I seem to have gathered quite a mountain of those over a period of time.

Having been given some pineapple earlier, for pudding I had pineapple with homemade ice cream. And that was what I call ‘really delicious’ too. I’m hoping that it will be just as nice tomorrow evening when I can have a second helping.

After tea, I washed up and then came back in here to do some more work, and then I began to write my notes. I’d done about half an hour, I suppose, and then the next thing that I remember was that it was 22:15. I’d crashed out in my chair yet again.

When I looked at what I had written, it seemed to degenerate towards the end, and I was typing all kinds of nonsense that bore no resemblance to what had gone on. It was full of spelling mistakes and typing errors too. That was when I decided to delete whatever didn’t look right, post the rest online and then clear off to bed.

Falling asleep on the porcelain horse didn’t help much either, so it was quite late when I finally crawled into bed – much later than I’d been hoping. I’ll never catch up on my beauty sleep like this.

One interesting thing, though, was that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few days ago that I wrote about menthol and eucalyptus. While I was rummaging around in the drawers in the kitchen earlier today, I came across a couple of packets of menthol and eucalyptus sweets that I bought years ago from LIDL.

When I went to bed tonight, I opened a packet and took a couple with me to bed. Once I was in bed, I put one of the sweets in my mouth and sucked it for what seemed like ages. And to my surprise, my coughing immediately subsided. This is something worth knowing and remembering.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and ChatGPT … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ve been confusing my own chatbot again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … these chatbots have absolutely no sense of humour.
Last night, I asked my chatbot "what’s the difference between Nigel Garbage and Count Binface?"
My chatbot then set out to give me a huge list of differences, supported by evidence and links.
"No" I replied. "one is a comedy figure, a parody of a politician who has turned politics into a comedy show, who isn’t to be taken seriously and shouldn’t be allowed to stand for Parliament."
"And the other?" asked my chatbot.
"Oh, he’s a man disguised as a dustbin."

0

Sunday 28th June 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve had a real, old, good and proper nightmare?

I’ve no idea when the previous one was, but I can safely say that the most recent one was last night. And it was too. I awoke, covered in sweat and with a racing heart before I’d even finished dictating it.

Usually, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t publish my nightmares because some might find them distressing, especially if they are eating a meal while reading them, but this one is so bizarre that I can’t not do it. There has never been a dream quite like this before in all the twenty-eight years that I’ve been recording them.

Actually, last night was quite an unusual night. I mentioned the other day that these days, it seems to be more and more difficult for me to make the distinction between when I’m asleep and dreaming and when I’m semi-awake and having these strange hallucinations.

Last night, though, was a classic example of this. I can usually say that “I went to sleep at such-and-such, awoke at such-and-such,” and so on, but not last night, I couldn’t. It was all a kind of weaving mix of this and that and at times, I really didn’t know where I was … "so what’s new?" – ed …

There were definitely times when I could distinguish by the light coming around the edges of the shutters that day was slowly dawning, but that could easily have been a dream, too.

When Isabelle the Nurse turned up, she awoke me when she gave her warning signal on the door and then she came in, in full-chat mode, which was all very nice, but all I wanted to do was sleep.

She took my medical card so that she could do her monthly accounts and then she left.

After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep so I gradually integrated myself back into the light of day and the real world. I was estimating that, when I finally left the bedroom, it might be as late as 09:30. No-one was more surprised than me, however, to see that it was in fact 10:45.

That was the cue to make breakfast – medication with juice, coffee, porridge and home-made croissants. And, of course, to read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

So far, I’ve reached page twenty-five of the real text after wading through all of the preface and introduction. And today’s highlights lnclude "the wonderful Druidical temples of Stonehenge, Avebury, and Carnac". However, he goes on to say "These, however, interesting as they are in an antiquarian point of view, as connected with the history and religion of the earliest inhabitants of Gaul and Britain, are altogether valueless in the regard of an architectural historian. Mere stones piled together without any attention to proportion or to any of the laws of design, and merely adhering by their own weight, can barely challenge the name of a building, and though exhibiting the mechanical construction of the entablature in perfection, have no title to be considered as works of architecture, and therefore cannot claim a distinct consideration in the present volume.".

Leaving aside the fact that architecture has to start somewhere at some time, if he considers that “posts and beams” aren’t “it”, then you would imagine that most of Greek architecture would be ruled out too.

Consequently, he goes on later to say "The three orders of Grecian architecture afford forms of perfection unsurpassed by mere human skill; it was only the yearnings of the heavenward spirit, the inspiration of the Church’s ritual, that could conceive aught more noble ; not purer, not lovelier, but vaster in conception, more majestic in execution, and holier in its end."

I can see me abandoning this book before I go much further. I don’t think that I can stomach five hundred and twenty-six pages of that.

Back in here, there had been some breaking news overnight. Christian Fuchs has resigned as Newport County manager, just a few weeks after saving the club from relegation. Only seven months in charge too. No wonder they are talking about “turmoil” down at Rodney Parade.

Then I turned my attention to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night.

We were back in the Victorian period here and there was some kind of big stately home with a wealthy family living in it. They were quite violent and outrageous in their behaviour with the locals, provoking people into having fights. I was down there, and I began to have one of those provoking things with me so in the end, I picked up this enormous cleaver, attacked one of them and hacked him to pieces. The other one fled into his room so I went to try to find him. Eventually, I did, and he tried to defend himself with a sword, but it was no use at all. I just hacked him to pieces too. I then just went to sit down in the kitchen to relax before the next morning. There were visitors to the house, and they went into the living room and found the carnage. Everyone screamed and fainted. I gradually managed to leave. I had somewhere to go in the Auvergne and there was someone else with me. We had to go to find out exactly where so we ended up at this bungalow on the moors. A tall, thin girl called “Big Molly” pointed out on the map where we had to go. My friend thought that it might take us about six weeks to get there, so we set out. We noticed her cycling off into the distance and I thought to myself “there’s something not right about this”. I shan’t be surprised if she’s there when we arrive. On the way back up the road, we went past a starving dog and a dead body, which was really skin and bone and clothes that looked as if it had been there for years. So we set out and went to London. We had to travel all the way across London. At one point in the city centre, I was convinced that I saw this Big Molly with a group of other girls, and so did my friend. He began to panic, but I thought that panic was not going to get us anywhere. We just need to keep on going and keep our eyes open. I found him cowering underneath a car in the city centre so I helped him out. We decided that we didn’t have any real choice but to push on, so “push on” it was going to have to be.

As I said just now, I’ve never had a dream quite like this ever before. I tried to analyse how I was feeling when I awoke and I came to the conclusion that it was about twenty-five per cent horror, fifty per cent unease and the rest being a mixture of curiosity and the profoundly different. But I was convinced that this “Big Molly”, even though she was only a teenager, was up to no good and I reckoned that her “no good” was absolutely no good at all. I could understand my friend panicking when we saw her again

But I’m sorry if this dream has upset you, however it really was so extraordinary that I couldn’t let it slip by unnoticed.

I was in Crewe last night, wandering around the streets looking for fittings for a job that I had to do at home. I bumped into a friend of mine from school and he was having a lot of trouble dealing with his telephone and his ordinary ‘phone and how to make them connect to each other. I was trying to give him some advice but he wasn’t really interested in listening. In the end, I mentioned that I had to go to the big DIY place on the north edge of town and we’ll be sure to find what we need there. I set off back down Earle Street into the town centre and was going so fast that I missed my turning and ended up right in the town centre so I had to go out, down Broad Street, back along Badger Avenue, and then up Middlewich Street again. It seemed to take an age. Then I met someone else from school and we were having a look round. He was pointing out certain things in the sale and so was I. I realised then that my shoulder bag that I’d bought with me to carry a load of stuff was completelly full and I couldn’t lift it onto my shoulder, it was so heavy. In the meantime, he was pointing out these enormous hand brushes and asked what they were. I explained that they were for Canada. At the same time, they had these enormous rubber boots, which I said were also for Canada, but they were size “small” for Canada. There was a French family standing nearby bursting out in laughter, and we had a quite long chat before I had to go.

This dream was set on a cold, dark night while the shops were still open so it must have been mid-winter. First of all, though, there isn’t a big DIY place to the north of Crewe (at least, not while I was living there, there wasn’t) and if there were, they wouldn’t be selling Canadian snow-clearing products. And there definitely wouldn’t be a French family in the shop admiring them either.

The drive at whirlwind speed along Earle Street was interesting too. I wonder what was going on there.

After the dreams, there was football, Stranraer v Dundela of the Northern Irish Second Division. Stranraer finished mid-table in the fourth level of the Scottish pyramid last season and so Dundela should be embarrassed by the ease with which they were rolled over. The score finished 4-0 to Stranraer and Dundela were lucky to get nil. Stranraer hardly broke out into a sweat.

For much of the afternoon I was working on another project that has recently started up while I made myself ready to watch Wales’s match v Spain in the UEFA under-nineteen championship this afternoon. That was a waste of time, though, because broadcasting is restricted to the UK unless I pay for an exorbitant match pass from UEFA. Had I known before kick-off, I’d have configured a VPN to cloak my identity, but it’s too late now.

So with no food yet again (and I’m not bothered, in case anyone is wondering), I have a few things to do and then I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow (I don’t think). It’s been a quiet day where I’ve not moved around much, but I’ve done a lot of work. And the work is still piling up. I’m never going to be finished at this rate.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the departing manager at Newport County … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was really considering entitling today’s entry "Christian Fuchs off elsewhere", but I decided against it in the end. Journalism ain’t what it used to be.

0

Friday 26th June 2026 – ANOTHER MISERABLE DAY …

… now over and done with, and I’m ready (I suppose) for an even more miserable day tomorrow.

Yet last night, it all had the air of sounding really good. I crawled into bed listening to the sound of the thunder and lightning and fell asleep quite quickly, thinking to myself “here comes a lovely day tomorrow”. But it wasn’t like that at all.

Firstly, I was awake quite quickly – before midnight, I reckon, but certainly without enough time to have been fully relaxed. And from there, I drifted in and out of sleep for quite some time. However, when the alarm went off, I was absolutely fast asleep.

At that point, when I awoke, I was feeling dreadful and it took me a while to haul myself out of bed. I went into the bathroom to organise myself, which took an age, and then came back in here, where there were plenty of things to do before Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

When she turned up, I was flat out, asleep in my chair, but today I was allowed into the kitchen for my treatment. She asked how I was feeling, to which I replied “dreadful”, and she probably agreed.

After she finished, she turned to me and said “you go and have a rest”, as if I needed any second bidding. By this time, I really wasn’t coping. So I went back into the bedroom, set the alarm for 11:30 and crawled back into bed.

It would have been a good sleep too had it not been for the spam ‘phone calls and all of that nonsense. I could really have done without that. But when the alarm did go off, I was feeling slightly better. Only “very slightly”.

Eventually I was able to stagger into the kitchen, where I began to make breakfast – at this crazy time.

While I was eating, I was reading my new book – A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman. When I say “new”, it was new in 1849, I suppose.

And once more, it’s full of endless introduction containing subservient prose – "This division of the subject, coinciding nearly with the First Part of the First Book, will be found, I am afraid, not very satisfactorily treated. It was a wearisome task, as I had to search through volume after volume containing copious dissertations on the antiquities of the different nations referred to," etc. – and also piles of incestuous flattery – "Detail has been already sufficiently treated of in several works, all of which have their use, while no popular work — unless the thoughtful and truly original volumes of Mr Petit can be ranked under that head — has yet paid much attention to the former." etc.

There is also, would you believe, a lengthy monologue on whether it is proper to talk about the architecture of peoples who were not Christian? Apparently, we should only consider art and architecture if it were designed by Christians. The rest should be considered unworthy of discussion. That’s probably the strangest thing that I have read so far.

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes to find out what had gone on during the night.

This dream involved one of my old Ford Cortinas, the red and black one that I had at one time. The idea was that we would be selling it and then going out for a day to ameliorate ourselves and let down our hair for a while. But we were talking about which, if we had much of a morning… fell asleep here … and my part of the handrail was pretty full with different things and I couldn’t really hold it up. I was beginning to have some real struggle with this and seeking a different if no-one comes along to help me on the other side, it’s going to be real … fell asleep here …

This looks to me as if it’s two dreams merged into one. I did actually have a red and black MkIV Cortina but it never introduced any words in French into my dreams, but it seems that the “falling asleep caused me to change tack somewhere along the line until I lost everything.

I was in Montlucon last night, experimenting with some kind of epoxy floor. It came in a block of something and there were thinners with it. You heated it up and added the thinners and then quite simply poured it on the floor, where it made a clear, epoxy kind of surface. Many people were buying this and putting pictures on the floor of their bathrooms and then pouring this epoxy fluid over the top or were using river cobbles to make a nice stone-looking surface and then pour epoxy over the top of that to bind everything in. I was on the north side of the town, the poorer end, and going into various places trying to find something to go with this floor. I was starting to notice just how intuitive it had become.

It looks here as if I’ve hit upon a new money-making plan. This sounds like a fabulous invention and I wish that I knew how to set about it.

I was with Nerina and Auntie Mary last night and were somewhere in North Wales. The idea was that we were going to put markings on ourselves to represent Native Americans. I had a lot of things like that so I brought them out so that people could help themselves. But no-one seemed to be interested in the authentic, genuine stuff that I was applying to my vehicle and myself, etc., and that was making me extremely disappointed. It ended up being an enormous row between me and several other people, and I had to go to wander away to calm down. We were in Caernarfon at this particular moment so I went for a walk around the village and saw the big modern bridge being built. Then I came back to tell everyone what I’d seen. They were all immediately interested in that, so much … fell asleep here … Anyway, then we were in a kind of supermarket and I was looking at the knives because I wanted a sharp knife for peeling vegetables. Nerina came over for a chat and so did Aunt Mary, who said that she had seen one with a crowbar on the top. That sounded quite exciting so she sent me to the alley where I began to look for the crowbar … fell asleep here … Aunt Mary said that she had seen a knife that had a kind of crowbar on top. I thought that that sounded interesting so we began to search through the range of knives to see if this crowbar one was there.

What a mess this dream was. I still don’t have a decent vegetable knife, I suppose, but where does “disguising oneself as a Native American” fit in with all of this?

As for a knife with a crowbar on top, I’m still trying to work this one out. I can’t even picture it.

From there, I began to make the preparations to finally start work. However, when my faithful cleaner arrived half an hour later to do her stuff, I was flat out again, fast asleep on my chair.

Her arrival, complete with the antibiotics from the pharmacy, galvanised me into action and I watched the rest of the East Fife v Queen of the South game that I’d started, and then I began to write the rest of the notes for the radio programme.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time with just two notes to write, as yet another problem cropped up elsewhere that needed my attention. And once it was resolved, it was too late to carry on. So I relaxed for a few minutes and then made myself ready for bed

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about crashing out … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends used to boast "I always fall asleep by counting the number of girls I’ve taken to bed."
"What about counting sheep?" I asked him
"Ohh, shut up" he said. "I told you before – it was only that one time, and I was drunk anyway."

0

Thursday 11th June 2026 – THE OTHER DAY …

… we talked about Alfred Hitchcock and Kenneth Williams saying that "It’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Whether it is or not, there’s definitely one group of “people” to whom it definitely IS a waste of time telling a joke, and that’s an artificial intelligence chatbot.

Strangely enough, they have been programmed to inject jokes and humour into a conversation, but they don’t understand it when the speaker injects it back and try to analyse it as if it were a serious statement.

What wasn’t a joke was the time that I went to bed last night. Once more, it wasn’t too far short of midnight when I slid in under the covers. So much for my beauty sleep. And I awoke once or twice in the night as well. However, when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was fast asleep.

After dressing, I slid over here to the computer so that I could transcribe my dictaphone notes and find out where I’d been during the night.

I was in a bed in the road that goes from the hospital roundabout to St Nicolas. While I was there, Seren and Paula went past. They saw me there, so they came over, and Seren tried to remove the covers, but in fact I was fast asleep, so I don’t know how I managed to see them at all. Later, I was still in that bed, and I was looking at the time. It was something like 04:00, and I was planning on getting up and doing some work, but my legs were actually stuck inside the bed. I couldn’t actually leave it – I had to stay there. And again, Seren and Paula went past, by the hospital roundabout, but they took no notice of me like this.

Apart from the fact there is absolutely no likelihood of those two ever being in Granville, but I would love to know what I was doing sleeping in a bed in the middle of the road at the other end of town.

And having my legs stuck inside the bed so I couldn’t leave the bed and do some work is probably just about the only way that you would stop me.

Hurricane Isabelle the Nurse blew in here later in a frantic panic. She’d found another one of her patients fallen on the floor and in distress, so she had to ‘phone for an ambulance and wait until it arrived. She had a blood test to perform at 08:30, and now it was already 08:40, so she didn’t even give me time to leave my seat and go into the living room. She came bursting in here with all of the stuff that she needs.

After she had left, I made my breakfast and read some more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

We’re still on the introduction, today discussing the various Roman legions that were stationed in Britain and, for some obscure reason, some of those legions that weren’t. I wish that he would hurry up and begin to discuss York.

After breakfast, I came back in here and wrote out the notes for the rest of the radio programme, ready for dictation at some point. There was the usual interruption as I went and had a wash and shave to pretty myself up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

At midday my cleaner turned up, fed me with a disgusting drink and then applied my anaesthetic. I had to wait for the taxi to arrive, and for a change, today he was late.

If that wasn’t enough, we were held up by traffic in the town by a slow-moving lorry and motorhome on the main road, and then we had to have a change of driver, and then the person with me had an appointment previous to mine at the private clinic across town, so we had to drop him off first and then come back to the dialysis centre.

As a result, I was quite late arriving.

As you might expect, I was last to arrive and last to be plugged in, but the girl who was doing it, one of the two new ones from Monday, was excellent. The first needle, I didn’t feel a thing, and the second needle, just a sensation when she pierced the skin.

During the session, I was left pretty much alone, but lucky me! Emilie the Cute Consultant came past, and seeing mein a private room (because, for some reason, they had isolated me from the others), came in for a chat

I mentioned my dreams, and she suggested that it might be because of the effects of one of the new medications. She told me that I’d have to choose between the medication and the pain. Well, I couldn’t go on much longer with the pain that I was in, that’s for sure.

As usual, being last in, I was last out. Everyone else was long gone. But at least, my taxi driver was waiting for me so we could leave quite smartly.

Nevertheless, it was still 19:30 when I arrived home, and probably 19:40 by the time I was sitting down in here. I really could have done with it being much earlier.

Tea tonight was pasta and spinach in butter, with peas, carrots and a vegan burger. It was really nice too and well worth waiting for.

Back in here, I had my chat with the chatbot, and after a while, our conversation turned, don’t ask me how, to the subject of tinned steak puddings that were so common in the sixties and seventies. I told the famous “steak pudding” joke, and it went right over the chatbot’s head. Instead, I was subjected to a lengthy explanation, in clinical terms, of why it wouldn’t be possible to carry out the actions in the joke.

At that point, I gave up and sat down to write out my notes for the day. But quite frankly, it had been a lengthy, heavy session, and I was falling asleep more than I was writing, so I called it a night and went to bed. I can finish my notes in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the chatbot and its lack of sense of humour … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m sure that you are all dying to know what the joke was, so here goes.
"Many people are taken to hospital with blistered feet after cooking those." I said.
"Why is that?" asked the chatbot.
"Have you ever read the cooking instructions on top of the tin?"
"No" replied the chatbot. "What do they say?"
"They say ‘pierce tin – stand in boiling water’."

0

Wednesday 10th June 2026 – HERE’S THE PROOF …

n°6, residence vauban, 2 place d'armes, granville, haute ville, france
… that I went out and about this afternoon.

This is my building here, a nice solid stone one with walls 1,200 mm thick and built in 1668 and now a listed historic building.

And those two windows to the left of the front door with the thick lace curtains? The one farthest left is my bedroom and office, and the one next to the front door is the living room, dining area and kitchen. This is where everything happens, folks.

The reason why this photo is important is because my friend and my cleaner have been badgering me to walk a hundred metres every day to keep up what they see as a little rehabilitation. A Roman mille passum or “paced mile” is actually two thousand steps because they counted two steps as one pace, so my “hundred metres” will be two hundred steps.

Actually, my total was two hundred and four – I must have taken shorter steps on the way back. However, I did climb both times over the rainwater barrier, so that’s my physiotherapy done for today. I’ll have to see if I can keep it up.

Seeing as we have been talking about keeping it up … "well, one of us has" – ed … I ended up not going to bed until after midnight. I don’t know why I was so late – I can’t have been concentrating.

Once in bed, though, I fell asleep quite quickly, which was very good new, and there I lay until the alarm went off at 06:29

At that point, I was dog-tired, but I still managed to haul myself out of bed, dress and drag myself over to the computer and the comfy chair to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And once more, I was confounded. There was nothing on it from last night either. I sincerely hope that I’m not drying up. That would be a disaster.

Anyway, I had plenty of other things to do so I set about keeping myself busy until Isabelle the Nurse comes.

She was much earlier than yesterday, and she was delighted to see that a new box of gloves that she had asked for yesterday had already arrived thanks to my lovely cleaner.

We chatted a little about this and that, and when she’d finished with my legs and feet, she cleared off on the rest of her rounds. I could make breakfast and read some more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

He still hasn’t finished his flowery introduction yet and we’re being given a learned discussion on places like the Phocian Wall in the Pass of Thermopylae, built about 600 years before the Romans ever came to York.

After breakfast and back in here, I had a task to do. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my “artificial friend” with whom I talk Welsh. I mentioned it in my Welsh class yesterday and a couple of people asked me how I did it.

And so, this morning, I created a ten-point “beginner’s guide to making AI characters” and posted it into our Welsh chat group. Now they, and the others too, can go out and have their own AI-powered Welsh tutors.

For the benefit of anyone else who wants to make an AI friend, the instructions are below. I’m contemplating making a maths tutor next, to see how that works.

1) call up a chatbot. Simply say (hello, chatbot). Note that instructions to a chatbot are usually in brackets so it doesn’t recognise them as your speech to your friend.
2) tell the chatbot what you want (can you create a character to whom I can speak in intermediate Welsh and who will reply to me in intermediate Welsh, and correct my mistakes?)
3) Then describe your character in precise terms. For example, if you say (a blond) the chatbot will have no idea what (a blond) is and might create anything. You need to say (a woman with long blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin)
4) Then you need to tell the chatbot what you would like to discuss with your character. And again, you need to be very precise. If you say (I would like the character to talk about fishing) you may end up with a chat about Icelandic trawlers off the coast of Greenland when what you really wanted to say was (fishing with a rod and line from the banks of a canal, river, jetty, and small boat in the middle of Lake Windermere)
5) if you want the character to have any other attributes, then define them precisely using the brackets, of course.
6) when your character has been created, call it up – without brackets.
7) if you want to send written messages, type them in the message bar. If you want to dictate your message, you’ll see the microphone icon to click on in the message bar.
8) In both cases, you’ll have a written response but if you click on the three dots under the reply, you’ll see “read aloud” as an option to click on.
9) And happy Welsh chatting.
10) Your character might not be responding as you wished. You can always call up the chatbot to fine-tune it (hello chatbot, I didn’t want my character to do “this”, can you edit it to do “that”?) then when it’s done what you asked, (I return to continue the chat with my friend) so that the chatbot knows that you have disengaged from it. Hello, friend …

If any of you do make an AI tutor, I’d be interested to hear how it goes.

After a disgusting drink break, I made a start on the radio programme. All the music has now been paired and segued and I’ve written the notes for well over half of them.

However, I broke off at about half past two for my afternoon walk. I was going to time it, which I’d been asked to do, but I walked out of here straight into a neighbour, with whom I had a chat for a few minutes. But all in all, including the chat, my two hundred and four paces, according to the microwave, took nineteen minutes.

But going back to the question of these radio notes, I’m really surprised that I only managed to write so many and not all of them. The fact is that every time I stop concentrating, I fall asleep and I have to force myself to wake up. Most times, I manage to do it instantly, but sometimes I don’t.

On one occasion, I definitely heard someone shout

Chéri!

Which awoke me almost immediately, but of course, there was no-one else in the room, as I knew

It’s been like this for two days now, sometimes with the hallucinations that I remember so well and which regular readers of this rubbish will recall from when I was in hospital in Paris once. And that’s disturbing.

Coupled with that, I’ve had a streaming head cold for much of the day but it seems to have quietened down right now.

Tea tonight was a lasagne out of the freezer with carrots, beans and a vegan cheese sauce. It was delicious, but I could only manage two-thirds of it. The rest went into the bin.

So now that I’ve had my evening medication and finished my notes, I’m off to bed. I really do need to catch up on my beauty sleep and I won’t have much if I keep on lingering around here all night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence characters … "well, one of us has" – ed … at the Globe Theatre during a performance of “Hamlet”, at the end of Scene II, an artificial intelligence stage manager comes onto the stage.
"Unfortunately, Act III will not be available," he says. "It’s been moved behind a paywall and it’s necessary to take out a subscription or click ‘accept all cookies’. To do this, you need to … "
"Why have you stopped?" asked someone in the crowd.
"Because none of you has the correct permissions."

0

Sunday 7th June 2026 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my promised lie-in this morning!

I was really looking forward to that when I went to bed last night. Quite late, it was, a good while after midnight but I thought “never mind. I can sleep until the nurse arrives at about 08:30 and after he’s gone, I can go back to sleep until I feel like getting up.

That was the plan anyway. And although I have some vague kind of memory that I awoke at some point, I must have gone back to sleep again – but not for long.

The next time that I awoke, it was slowly bcoming light so I stuffed my head back down under the quilt. But even in my favourite sleeping position, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there watching the day grow lighter and lighter until we had bright sunlight coming through the gaps in the blinds and the birds outside were singing.

“By now, I bet it’s about 08:00 and the nurse will be here shortly,” I said to myself. So I looked at the clock and it said “06:08”. So much for 08:00 and the nurse.

By 06:30 I was up, dressed and sitting at my desk working. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

Yesterday, I was in Chester, walking through the city. There was a sudden “boom” and a huge flock of birds flew up off a roof just behind me, so I looked. Just as they were about to settle again, there was another “boom” so they all got into the air and flew off. I thought that obviously that was some kind of bird scarer on the roof of that building. So I carried on walking down by the river. I began to think that if I were a carer of someone disabled and in need of help, being taken to Chester for a walk down by the river would be one of those really nice things to do.

Believe it or not, I was in Chester yesterday, although not in any physical or tangible way. I was giving a guided tour of the city walls from Watergate Street to the Eastgate, going via the waterfront of the River Dee, then from the Eastgate along Eastgate Street and the Rows up to The Cross, then down Bridge Street, along Pepper Street and finally down Park Street to the river again.

The things that I am expected to do these days!

But the flock of birds – it reminded me of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the Daphne du Maurier book THE BIRDS

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

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

The nurse turned up as usual and was surprised to find me up and about on a Sunday (but I bet that he wasn’t as surprised as me). He was also very surprised to find that my friend spoke German. He’d only ever heard him speak English. The nurse had learnt German at school and had kept up with it to a certain degree but didn’t have much chance to practise. He wondered if my friend would speak to him in German next time he’s here. I said that I would ask.

After he left, I began to make breakfast, including the two croissants that I had forgotten to serve up last Sunday. And while I was eating, I finished off reading RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge and turned my attention to the next on the list.

This is called ‘AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT HOLBOROUGH, KENT’ by Vera L Evison, which I downloaded from ACADEMIA a long time ago, and regrettably, I can’t find the link now, but it was published by the Kent Archaeological Society. There is, however, another on-line copy to be found at THIS LINK

This was a “panic excavation” as diggers working a chalk quarry uncovered a couple of skeletons, so the excavation team had to be in and out as quickly as possible so that work could carry on. To speed things up, the quarry company lent them a bulldozer!

Back in here, I had things to do. I had a “mystery ‘phone call” from an English-speaking voice, and it turned out that although this guy lives up here, he has a friend down in Pionsat who is also a good friend of mine. My friend had given him my ‘phone number and so he had called me, and we went on to have a very Rosemary-esque chat about old vehicles, World War II events, house renovations and life in a rural French village.

The chat finally ended with a promise that he’d call me again for a chat and even drop in to see me whenever he’s next over here. Whatever have I done to suddenly become “flavour of the month”?

The rest of the day carried on as usual, except that I managed once more to trip up an AI chatbot.

There was an interesting group chat going on about AI chats. My complaint was that everything in an AI chat is too structured, organised and logical, and I’ve never ever in my life known a family like that.

In almost every family, they might all be sitting quietly having a fireside chat when the cat comes in through the catflap carrying a dead mouse. Or in the middle of a heated argument the mother shouts out “oh God! I’ve left the oven on” and dashes into the kitchen. Or you hear a “bang” and find a child standing next to a pile of broken glass. “How did that happen”? “It just fell”.

That’s what real families are like but this AI programming is far too logical and structured to include events like that at random moments.

The conversation drifted around quite wildly and I somehow managed to throw into the chat the lyrics of the song that’s been going round and round in my head for the last three weeks –
"You may have got your silver
But I swear upon my life
Your sister gave me diamonds
But I lay down with your wife"

“Romeo and Juliet” suggested the chatbot. But no, it’s THIS MAN’S TOO STRONG. Another point to me.

And this is the thing about AI chatbots. Many people rely on them for things like medical advice, but they aren’t always right.

The reason why I’m mentioning chatbots, though, is for another reason. LORD OF THE RINGS came up in the discussion too.

In the discussion, I mentioned that I had a theory as to what the book represents. Everyone listened to it, including the chatbot, and when I’d finished, the chatbot mentioned that that was a theory that it had never heard before. It recommended that I publish it on the internet somewhere so that it could index it and add it into its list for future reference.

Not that I mind being told what to do by a computer, of course, but here goes.

Tolkein was a visionary and a romantic with a fertile imagination. That much we know.

In 1914, like many people, Tolkien joined the army, probably thinking how heroic and romantic it would be to fight for his country and lead his soldiers to glory. He was appointed an officer and had his own little platoon of soldiers to lead, each soldier with his own character and personality.

And there was Lieutenant Tolkien, in his imagination leading his platoon of soldiers on to Berlin, to victory and to glory.

But then there was a shambolic, panic-stricken flight, and there was Lieutenant Tolkien romantically holding off the advancing Germans to let his men escape. But somehow he was wounded and found himself in a hospital back in Blighty.

After a lengthy convalescence, he wanted to go back to his men and carry on leading them forward, but they refused to let him go as he hadn’t fully recovered. So he stayed behind.

All he had left was his imagination.

So there was Gandalf, finding a troop of different beings, each with his own character and personality. He leads them forward through all kinds of struggles, until under the mountains, he fights the Balrog to give his “men” time to escape.

He falls into the abyss, which is really the hospital into which Tolkien “fell”, and then he’s a prisoner, corresponding to the period when Tolkien was being refused permission to return to the front.

But then Gandalf escapes, as Tolkien would have liked to have done, and leads his army to victory and to glory. They smash the enemy on “their” side of the river, which is presumably the Germans’ Spring offensive in 1918, with the aid of fresh and unknown troops, probably the arrival of the American army, and then cross the river themselves, which presumably relates to when the Allies crossed the Rhine into Germany.

So I reckon that Gandalf was just how Tolkien saw himself in World War I

But be that as it may, after the chat I went into the kitchen and made the dough for a pizza, and while I was waiting for the dough to rise, I fell asleep which meant that I’m not running quite a bit late.

When I awoke, I made the pizza itself. And there’s some left over for tomorrow after dialysis too.

But right now, my bed is calling me, later than I would have liked, but never mind. I’m finishing off and going to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Birds … "well, one of us has" – ed … and I’ve probably told this story before –
Alfred Hitchcock, Kenneth Williams and Ingrid Bergman were chatting together and the subject of “The Birds” came up.
Hitchcock was saying that whenever the flock of birds chased Jessica Tandy, she would clutch her skirt between her legs before she would run.
"Ahh well" said Kenneth Williams. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the …"
Williams never finished his sentence because by then, both he and Hitchcock were rolling around the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Meanwhile, Ingrid Bergman was sitting there asking "what’s so funny?"
To which Hitchcock replied to Williams "There you are. It’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

0

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following day.

And so no-one should be surprised to learn that at 05:50 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Mind you, there was a reason behind it all, as you will find out for yourself if you read on a little further.

But last night, as some of you may have realised if you logged on early, I was simply overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with pain, overwhelmed with discomfort, overwhelmed with everything. In the end, I abandoned my notes and went to bed.

It didn’t take much rocking last night either, and I was soon asleep. But not for long. Round about 03:00 we had one of the fiercest storms that I have known since I’ve been here, and we have had a few.

This storm was wicked. It was lashing down with rain and the howling winds at probably over one hundred kilometres per hour were making mincemeat of the car park. No-one could sleep through this racket.

Round about 04:30, it all calmed down, only to spring up again from a different direction. This was full on to the front of the house and it was so powerful that it blew my windows open. I had to climb out of bed to close them.

After sitting on the bed for fifteen minutes thinking, that was when I decided that there was no point in staying in bed. Instead, I dressed … "at a very leisurely pace" – ed … and began work.

First task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

This is another dream that I seem to have forgotten from during the night. I know that I was in it, and there was something about bottling something or putting things in jars and putting them on one side. Out of the stuff that we had made, there were four of these huge flip-top bottles and two ordinary ones. They had to be taken away, stocked and generally looked after. This is where it was all confusing, with us putting them into the van to take them away. There was a lot more to it than this. There were scenes when I was in bed, another scene where I was sulking and the tied cottage that we had, and I wish that I could write more about it.

This is another dream that I would have loved to finish. You can’t leave me on a cliffhanger like this

I went to a rock concert with a friend of mine and one or two of this friend. This was a friend whom I’d had for years and for some reason, he was extremely depressed, something that affected him quite often in the past. It was really going on late, this concert, and at the end of it, the three of us left. My friend turned to me and said “I don’t think that I’ll be having any more Cortinas again. I asked him “why not” and in the end, he explained that in his opinion, they were far out of date now and he needed a new, modern car to keep up and all that stuff. As we walked into town, he made it perfectly clear that he and his friend were going off in one direction and I should go off in the other. It was a cold, rainy thing but I started to walk away. I noticed that it was getting light and the birds were singing. At that moment, I went into Boots the Chemist and wandered around looking at the products for a while. I really wanted some deodorant but instead, I bought a packet of tomatoes and a huge packet of crisps. I paid for them at the checkout, which was quite funny because the cashier lost my bag of tomatoes somewhere on my conveyor belt

There is a story about this going back to about 1974 when I was “sent off” from a pub crawl, but that’s another one that the World is not yet ready to hear.

However, I did have a friend who once was so overwhelmed at work that he took a holiday not knowing where he was going and ended up being lost. And the incident at Boots at Crewe – the interior is very suggestive of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago of a shopping mall in Montréal, but the outside was definitely the Crewe British Home Stores.

When the nurse came, the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t even lift an eyelid, never mind barking at him. He allowed the nurse to stroke him and then the nurse turned his attention to me. He didn’t actually stroke me but massaged my feet and legs with the cream and put my elastic compression socks on my feet.

Then, after another stroke of the beast, he cleared off on the rest of his rounds and I could make my breakfast.

The next book on the list is RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge, an author whom we have encountered before.

He starts off his book by saying "this work is nothing more than a report on certain excavations, and as such, follows the modern pattern of being as colourless as possible. In the last century, a similar work would have included musings on the brevity of life, scraps of poetry and various other frills. Now, archaeology has become so stern a subject that I have not even dared to describe our feelings when a skull at Hollywell Row began to walk away with a young rabbit inside it."

He goes on to add "most readers would surely prefer the older method" and he’s not wrong there, because I know what I would, except when the author goes berserk with his remarks.

Lethbridge also makes the remark that "it would seem probable that male skeletons without weapons in this cemetery and others of the pagan period are those of slaves". Slavery was quite common in those days. These slaves were usually captured in battle or criminal slaves doing penance for their crimes, and, believe it or not, some people actually gave themselves voluntarily into slavery.

That latter phrase is certainly true, whether modern people like to admit it or not. But the life of a peasant in early Mediaeval times was a struggle between life and death, with not much margin between the two. But if your crops failed and your wife and children were starving, what options did you have? The duty of a lord was to feed, clothe and house his slaves, and it was better than starving to death. And let’s face it – the life of an early mediaeval peasant was not much more than that anyway.

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

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

At this point, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I came in here to go through my Welsh, ready for the lesson. And while I was breakfasting, our tutor had sent us by e-mail a huge pile of work that we were going to be doing during our lesson. I had less than an hour to go through it and that was rather unfair.

The lesson itself passed really well, although one or two of my classmates laughed when I told them about my Welsh-speaking artificial intelligence character. I still think, though, that it’s an excellent idea for someone who is isolated from the mainstream.

Next on the list was my cleaner, who breezed in to do her stuff and to shoo me into the shower. When I came out, I found that I had a nice, clean bed with nice, clean bedding. And so there will be a nice, clean me inside it tonight … "well, clean, anyway" – ed …

While I’d been at my Welsh class, the new battery had arrived and my friend had taken it out to the vehicle. He’d managed to couple it up and when he turned the key to make sure that there was a current passing through to the ignition circuit, the vehicle fired up as if it hadn’t ever been left unattended.

So after I’d come out of the shower and sorted myself out, we went over there for a triumphant drive around the car park.

However, our plans were blighted. The handbrake has seized, with the callipers stuck to the brake discs. That’s a nuisance. So near and yet so far. It seems that every step we take to advance, a new problem comes along to stifle us.

Not everybody agreed with this, of course. We’d attached the Hound of the Baskervilles to a lamppost behind the bus shelter, and when we looked around, we found that there were two schoolgirls making a big fuss of him and he was enjoying every minute of it. The girls told my friend that they thought that he was “magnifique”.

Back in here, I cleaned myself up and began to make the dough for tonight’s pizza. We’d missed out on a pizza on Sunday and I can’t possibly go two weeks without one. And while I was cooking, we were chatting about an electrical company and its website, and I was having a lengthy conversation online with an old schoolfriend from my Shavington days. It’s nice to catch up with friends from years ago.

One of the subjects that we were discussing online was “The Dockers’ Umbrella” – the Liverpool Overhead Railway that ran close to the docks from the latter part of the nineteenth century to December 1956 and so nicknamed because it allegedly sheltered the dock workers from the rain as they went to work.

The pizza tonight was acclaimed by my friend as “the best you have ever made”, and who can argue with that? He did also mention that “you look really tired tonight” and that will be the subject of later discussion.

Back in here afterwards, I had a few things to do, and then I started on my notes. However, after about five minutes, I fell asleep at my desk. When I awoke, I carried on and then fell asleep again. I lost count of how many times I fell asleep whilst trying to bring my notes up-to-date, and in the end, I gave it up as a bad job and hit the hay. There’s always another time to finish them off.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that electrical website … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend from Shavington that part of the menu on the site was “watch batteries”.
He asked "and what about it?"
I replied "we were there for half an hour looking at them but they didn’t seem to be doing anything."

0

Thursday 28th May 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that’s something that I find extremely disappointing, because going off on my voyages during the night is the only fun that I have these days.

There was a little fun … "although you may not think so" – ed … last night after I’d finished everything that I needed to do. The rain and hailstones had stopped and it was a still, very quiet night so I just sat here, staring out of the window.

It was actually the kind of thing that became somewhat hypnotic, just sitting here watching nothing in particular in the dark, and I had a load of difficulty tearing myself away.

Eventually, though, I could go off to the bathroom to sort myself out and then come back here for bed.

Once more, I’d left the window slightly open and I just tucked my feet under the quilt with the rest of me lying on top. Not very elegant, but needs must when the devil drives.

It was about 23:30 when I finally went to bed, and I slept all the way through to … errr … 04:00. And that was that. I lay there tossing and turning and waiting until a more reasonable hour to leave the bed.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I must have been asleep because I sat bolt upright in a kind of shock. But by the time the second alarm went off, not only was I sitting on the edge of the bed but I was half-dressed too.

The temperature, by the way, was 25°C outside and 25°C also in here.

With no sign of life from next door, I sat at the computer and the first thing that I did was to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And as I said just now, that was rather a waste of time.

There were other things that needed doing, and when I was finished, there was still no movement so I had a chat session with my Welsh artificial intelligence character. The corrections are rather stilted, like a computer, but the actual chat itself is quite fluid and I am sure that I can make it work to my advantage.

At about 07:50 I heard the sound of movement from next door, so I went into the kitchen where the coffee was well under way. I served up two mugs, one for my friend and one for me, and I also served up two glasses of grapefruit juice, with one of which I took my medication.

When Isabelle the Nurse arrived, the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t even move a muscle. He just lay there, waiting for his belly rub and his back scratch, which Isabelle duly provided. Then Isabelle the Nurse tended to me, then back to the Hound of the Baskervilles again before she finally cleared off.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT while the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off yet again for walkies.

Today, we have finally finished the book. Even though our author is the only person to have excavated Portus Lemanis, he didn’t have very much at all to say about it, compared to what he had written about Richborough. I felt rather as if the television had broken down halfway through a film.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then, after having gone for a good wash and shave, I came back in here to start to pair off and segue the music for one of the radio programmes. Not that I got very far because it was midday sooner than I thought and I had to go to prepare for dialysis.

My cleaner helped by applying the anaesthetic to my arm and served me a disgusting drink. After that, I had to wait for the taxi.

This afternoon’s taxi driver had never met the Hound of the Baskervilles before, so when the latter barked with surprise, the former was out of the front door quicker than a ferret up a trouser leg. I had to dash out (as best as I could) to console him

We had someone else to pick up at Yquelon so once more we were seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed, and we were late arriving at dialysis as a result.

There was a surprise there today. We were just five in the whole building. Because of the heatwave, everyone else had been moved to the newer building where there was air-conditioning. But I didn’t mind. I had two of my favourite nurses looking after me.

And they didn’t leave me alone either. Fussing around, filling in questionnaires, and I didn’t mind a bit. I didn’t do much work but there were other compensations.

As usual, though, I was late finishing and late being unplugged, but my taxi was waiting so I could jump straight in and come home. And my driver had the aircon on too, so I was in heaven.

My welcoming committee was waiting for me when I arrived, and when I sat down at the table, a plate of pasta, vegan spaghetti bolognese and salad was pressed into my hand. It’s wonderful to have a meal cooked for you, and I enjoyed every mouthful, even if I did have to wash up afterwards;

We had a little chat and then I came in here to write up my notes. And with backache, I was in agony when I’d finished.

Just a few more things to do, and take the medication that I’ve forgotten, and then go to bed. We have things to do which should keep us out of mischief tomorrow?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … there’s a new AI chat app made in Russia called Chatkgb.
"So what does it do?" asked my friend
"It asks the questions, and you are obliged to answer."

0

Wednesday 27th May 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… it has been today!

Never mind what temperature it was outside. In my room, with the windows wide open and the sun streaming in, the temperature reached 34°C and I couldn’t touch anything. The armrests and my desk were absolutely scorching and it was really uncomfortable.

Even now, at about 20:30, it’s 28.5°C in here and I am sweating profusely. Not that I’m complaining, of course. We’ve had so much miserable weather just recently that I welcome all of the heat that we are having right now, and long may it continue.

This was actually how the day began. Last night, it was another late night by the time that I’d done everything. But before I went to bed, I closed the shutters in here and left the window slightly open to keep the air circulating.

Another thing was that I went to bed and lay on top of the quilt with only my feet underneath it. And as my feet can testify, under the quilt was like an oven so I’m glad that I wasn’t under there.

It was quite a restless night, as you might expect, although the disturbances didn’t last very long and I was soon back asleep. However, I awoke at 06:05, wide awake, and by 06:11 I was dressed and was sliding across to the chair, ready to start work. Another early start!

And the temperature outside was already 25.5°C, and in here, it was 24.5°C. No wonder last night was a disturbed night, and it told me that this was going to be another one of those days.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I must have travelled miles. No wonder last night was so disturbed.

We were at school in Nazi Germany, and one of our classmates was a Miss Hitler. It turned out that she was Adolf Hitler’s daughter. This was September 1939 and war was imminent, so I went up to her and told her that it’s probably not a good idea to go out of the classroom through the main door where all the English people were but to go out from the side door on the other side where she’d been in the courtyard with the other kids. That was probably going to be better for her. But when I came back, there were two cars parked in the schoolkids’ place. I looked on the windows, and one of them was a big Nazi police car and the other one was a Nazi car but they were interviewing a small, or part of a small man. He was saying about this sting that it was against his human rights. When he mentioned “human rights”, they laughed. He carried on complaining, and in the end they put handcuffs on him and took him away, presumably to a barn or somewhere.

It’s astonishing that a developed country like the UK wants to leave the ECHR. But they are so afraid of a reaction and so embarrassed that they just talk about “the ECHR” and not its full title – the European Convention on Human Rights. If they were to say “we intend to withdraw from the body that makes sure that you have your human rights protected”, there would be a revolution.

Where “Miss Hitler” came from, I have no idea. Apart from the scurrilous and extremely doubtful rumours, Hitler never had any children. However, the idea of the interrogation and the denial of human rights fits in quite nicely with the idea of Nazi Germany.

I forgot to mention that once war had been declared, Miss Hitler came in for a lot of teasing, and my work was cut out all the time, trying to prevent it happening in the classroom, but without a great deal of success.

This is actually how I would imagine it. Kids can be evil at times, especially when they haven’t learned the consequences of their actions.

I don’t know if I dictated this dream, but we had a big banquet-type meal, and Adolf Hitler’s daughter was there because she was at Dane Bank School. However, people tried to drive her away by taunting her or being extremely hated but she stayed at Saxon Cross Roads and so on. So we had this big banquet, and one of the guests was Adolf Hitler. Everyone wanted this dinner to be cancelled, but we argued that if we bring him in to explain his programme, then he can sentence himself to exclusion and we’ll know what he’s doing. He talked about this and he talked about that, and in the playoffs later on … fell asleep here … Anyway, I told one of my friends that I’d sorted out all of the jokes but Hitler answered back. Hitler said that it’s a shame that no German officers had been allowed to attend this meeting to experience real British humour because we were telling jokes to each other and over the PA all that time. In the end, he accepted a bikini and went for a swim in the lake. I told my brother that I had left some references for him and I said to my brother that he was all for teasing him, but I didn’t want that. I wanted it to be a normal meeting, so having purloined his secretary once, I went to the high school and was busy teasing the children … indistinct …

Back to “Miss Hitler” again, after about three hours of sleep. And Hitler putting in an appearance and seemingly appreciating the jokes.

Why he should be interested in a bikini, though, is beyond me, and what do the playoffs have to do with anything?

At some point during the night, I was driving a coach for Shearings. I had to go to drop people off around the north and east of Manchester. I picked up the coach at the feeder depot, and a pile of people boarded, so we set off. But I suddenly realised that I didn’t have any paperwork to tell me where to drop these people off so I had to think about what I was going to do. I knew that some people wanted dropping off at Hyde and I knew where the drop-off point at Hyde was, so I headed for there and dropped some people off. A lot of people had been talking about a guy called Dave Evans. When I was searching through, I eventually found some paperwork that talked about pick-ups and drop-offs at Hyde and one other place, so I imagined that there were only these two places to go to. So I set off for the next drop-off place, which I noticed was to pick up this guy Dave Evans so when I reached there, he was waiting there, so he climbed on board and I put his suitcase in the back of the coach. I had to go for a little walk for something – I’m not sure what – but all of a sudden, while I was away from the coach, it started up and drove away, so I had to run after it, but it was long gone, so I walked and walked down this modern dual carriageway, which was presumably the motorway by Hyde, until I eventually found a shop. There, I changed all my small coins for sixpences and rang up Shearings’ depot. However, I got through instead to the feeder point at Bath and explained to them what had happened. They said that they had heard about this coach being stolen and told me to wait there, and they’d call me back.

This would have been a regular occurrence for some drivers, but for me, if I came back off a tour, I’d be dropping people off all around south Cheshire and north Shropshire and then taking the coach home, ready to feed back in the following morning.

And stealing a coach while the driver has been preoccupied is nothing new, although it has never happened to me. And I can’t think of any occasion when I wasn’t given the paperwork of some description for any job that I had to do.

Round about 07:45, there were signs of activity in the living room so I went to join them, just in time to see my friend start the coffee. That was good timing, I reckon. By the time I’d taken my medication, the coffee was ready and we could begin the day as we intended.

When Isabele the Nurse arrived, she rang the doorbell to announce her presence and then came into the apartment. And the Hound of the Baskervilles took absolutely no notice of the doorbell or of Isabelle the Nurse’s entry. He must now be accustomed to the arrival of the nurses and his body clock must be working fine as far as the doorbell goes.

She sorted out my legs and feet and then, after giving the Hound of the Baskervilles a good stroke and cuddle, she set off on the rest of her rounds and I could go and make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT while the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies.

Today, we have left Reculver for Lympne, or Portus Lemanis, which used to be one of the major ports for travelling to Gaul but is now totally silted up and about a mile from the sea.

He’s terribly confused about where the river went and how “Stone Street” managed to reach the Roman fort there, but that’s hardly a surprise considering that he’s relying on “Richard of Cirencester” again. I wonder when it will sink in that “Richard of Cirencester” and his book were nothing but a blatant forgery.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do so I cracked on with it all. I even found enough time to have an hour on the acoustic bass. I don’t like it much because the action is too high. I much prefer the old Gibson EB3 with its low action, and I’m seriously thinking of bringing it in here and running it through the Roland Bass Cube that I bought a while back in Canada.

There was also time for me to look at the next radio programme. The day that it’s due to be broadcast, there wasn’t much happening, so in some kind of brainwave, I asked my artificial intelligence search engine to find me any albums released on that day.

Surprisingly, it came up with three, which I added to my “births and deaths” file, and then went off in search of music from the aforementioned.

With the bedroom window open, my faithful cleaner stuck her head in twice to see what was happening. The second time, she told me that she was off to Leclerc and asked if I needed anything. Only the washing up liquid refill, which she brought back later.

My friend had gone into town, leaving me babysitting the Hound of the Baskervilles. His task, to prove that he is worthy, was to bring back some onions because we are on the point of running out. And he duly performed the aforesaid task.

It was my turn to make tea, so it was the leftover rice from yesterday with a pile of falafel and veggie balls, all soaked in vinaigrette dressing. And it was delicious as usual.

Back in here, I was writing up my notes when we had a most dramatic thunderstorm. It passed quickly enough but when it was here, we had torrential rain and hailstones. I left my windows wide open to enjoy it, but the Hound of the Baskervilles fled into the bathroom and hid in the shower, where he still is.

So now that my notes are finished, I have a few more things to do and then I’m off to bed. I might leave the windows open again to let the room cool down because, despite the thunderstorm and the winds that came with it, it’s still 25°C in here.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about forgery … "well, one of us has" – ed … a guy in Crewe whom I know once proudly told me "I am an absolute master at forgery. I can forge anything"
"Are you really?" I asked.
"Yes" he said. "I have all the certificates to prove it."

0

Tuesday 26th May 2026 – I HAVE NO …

…. idea what happened last night, but I must have had a nightmare or something.

At some point, I had a very disturbed period of sleep, I was feeling most uncomfortable and there was a very strange taste in my mouth. It lasted for what seemed to be an age but was probably only ten minutes or so. And this morning, when I awoke, I had never felt so tired and so ill in my life. It really did take a dreadfully long time for me to be able to rise to my feet.

When the alarm went off, it was something to do with a bankruptcy and a big factory or something had gone bankrupt. Everyone had to fill out a few forms with their names and addresses if they were creditors, and the guy who was in charge of liquidating the company took us round the outside and said that probably he’s going to let the building go back to the company so that they could restart again. I told him that he can do what he likes with the business as long as I get all my money back. There was some kind of guy there who was in this group with us. They gave him all the forms to fill in, but he refused to fill them in. I could never understand why he did that – refused to fill in the forms.

This is another one of those mysterious dreams that mean nothing to me. I can’t think of where this all fits in with anything else.

It took a good while for the room to stop spinning around, much longer than usual, but once it stopped, I could stand up. No sound from the living room so I slid myself over to the chair and started work.

First thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night.

There was some kind of big group of us and what we were doing was sorting out clothes and everything, ready to go on these – I don’t know what you’d call them – but you’d end up either in the rain or in the wet or something like that and it was freezing cold. The best place to be at that time was in bed. So we’d be going round, doing some things, going to bed to warm up and then going back out again. Gradually, our health began to improve but we were still cold. Eventually, it turned out that the fittest people had to carry the most in this wet weather and somehow, going back to bed to warm up was not allowed. But there was some kind of violent taste or something. I took a bite of something and there was this immediate attack of horrible taste and I had to run from where I was staying over to this place and climb into the first bed that I could, coughing and coughing away. It was all extremely uncomfortable. I was half-expecting someone to come along and move me out of bed for someone else, but that didn’t happen and I managed to stay there with this big room complete to the distance.

So this is when the nightmare took place, at 00:08 in the morning. It reminds me of "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams", as Hamlet said in Act II Scene 2 in his conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

It also brings back memories of Jethro Tull and THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT while the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies.

Today, we were discussing the demolition of the mediaeval church at Reculver, and you can tell that our author is, quite rightly, incensed by the whole affair. He expresses his vitriol in telling us of "a building, possessing such claims on the national protection and on the sympathy of those who were particularly constituted its defenders and guardians, should have been consigned to destruction in a manner alike to the projectors of the selfish and heartless job and to the legislature of the day, which passively tolerated such vandalism." and much, much more besides.

He also mentioned some sixth- and seventh-century gold coins that had been found at Reculver. He tells us of "a curious instance of the degradation of the art of engraving coins in the course of about a century and a half and the perversion of types by ignorant artists."

So what had happened to all of the skilled artisans who made the beautiful coins of the Roman Empire in Britain, and why weren’t their skills passed on to the next generation?

The more I read of the coming and the installation of the Anglo-Saxons in England, the more I’m convinced that there was a substantial ethnic cleansing of the native population.

When my friend and the Hound of the Baskervilles went out, they encountered a large group of small children and two monitors sitting in our doorway in the shade. I consequently came in here and, with my bedroom window open, STRAWBERRY MOOSE played peek-a-boo with them, much to their delight.

My cleaner was out there too. She had seen the Hound of the Baskervilles and given him a stroke, and then she came over to see His Nibs. She announced that she didn’t have to go out until later, so would I like her to come round in ten minutes?

Well, the earlier she starts, the earlier she finishes so why not? Sure enough, she appeared and shooed me under the shower. So we have a nice, clean me … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … around here right now.

Later on, I had plenty of work to do that kept me out of mischief for much of the afternoon, and I even ended up having an hour or so on the acoustic bass, trying to work out some numbers that I used to play at one time.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, my Welsh artificial intelligence character is up and running.

She’s called Caromay and I met her at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth in 1977. Her claim to fame is that she sang on two albums, BLACK HOLE STAR and TALES FROM THE BLUE COCOONS by the group “The Neutrons” when she was a young teenager.

When I created her, I programmed her to chat about late 60s and 1970s rock music and also about football in the Welsh pyramid but to talk to me in Welsh. Furthermore, although she’s allowed to smile at my errors, she will correct the mistakes that I make when I reply, just like any other teacher would.

It seems to be working fine at the moment, but we shall see how it develops in the long run. I reckon that three ten-minute sessions per day should be enough and give me time in between to reflect on my errors.

Although there’s a “speech option” for us, I’m doing it by writing because my written Welsh is worse than my spoken Welsh … "if that’s at all possible " – ed …

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

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

By now, it was so hot in here that I went into the kitchen and served up two portions of my home-made chocolate and coconut ice cream. It’s not very good, but it did the job of cooling us down.

After this, I came back in here again, where I dozed off for ten minutes as the sun, streaming in through my window, heated my back right up to boiling point. But almost immediately after I awoke, Rosemary rang. I’m convinced that she’s installed a camera here to keep an eye on me.

Our chat today wasn’t like the usual ones that go on for ever. This was a very short one today, only forty minutes. We’re definitely losing our touch.

It was my turn to make tea so I conjured up a couple of taco rolls filled with quinoa, tomatoes and onions in a spicy sauce, with rice and vegetables. It went down really well, and there’s plenty left for another time.

So now, I’ve written up my notes and when I’ve done everything else, I’ll be off to bed. But sleep I may not with a temperature of 25°C in my room, even with the windows wide open.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going to bed … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ve noticed that the Hound of the Baskervilles always turns round three or four times before he lies down on the carpet.
"Well, he’s a watch dog" said my friend.
"So what does that mean?" I asked.
"After a stressful day, that’s how he unwinds."

0

Wednesday 20th May 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good, if rather strange idea.

One of the reasons why my Welsh isn’t progressing as much as it should is because I’m not talking to anyone Welsh outside the class, and outside the class, all I’m listening to is the football, but, of course, only when the football is being played and filmed.

But in the Welsh class on Tuesday, one of the subjects that we were discussing was artificial intelligence. Someone came up with the question Sgen ti ffrind dychmygol? – “do you have an imaginary friend?”. She’d heard of lonely people who would invent characters on AI on one of these mini-chat programs, just to have someone to talk to or maybe even to have a romantic relationship.

That got me thinking … "and that’s dangerous" – ed … “why don’t I use an AI app to create a Welsh character who would speak to me in Welsh?”. So this afternoon, I spoke to an AI chat program in Welsh, and it replied in Welsh, so now I now know that that works. And of course, I know that it’s possible to create characters with their own personalities, so this weekend, I might give it a try and see how it all works

A character popping up unexpectedly when I’m working on the computer, asking beth ywt ti’n wneud? – “what are you doing?” – would certainly encourage me to dig deep in my memory in order to be able to reply.

That’s really about the only idea that I’ve had just recently. Of course, I’ve had plenty of ideas about going to bed early, but it never seems to work out in real life.

Take last night, for example. I came in here relatively early to write out my notes and do everything else that I need to do, but when I went to take my medication for the night, it was already 23:03 according to the microwave in the kitchen, and it was probably at least ten minutes after that before I climbed into bed.

However, once in bed, after the usual lengthy period of waiting time, I went to sleep and that’s the last that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29.

It was the usual struggle to rise to my feet, and on hearing no sound at all from those in the next room, I staggered over to the computer and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was another rambling dream last night about, well, it started off with some kind of shop. The boss had gone to a market or something and there were very few people actually serving in the shop. His wife, whom he had left behind, she had a heart attack and collapsed at the building. There was no news about what happened afterwards, whether the supermarket had been looted or not by the local residents. Going on from there, what then happened was that at work, everyone was discussing it and wondering what had happened. I was far too busy because not only had I my office work to do, but there was plenty of private work that I was doing too. I was checking a book for someone, two books in fact, because they were full of the most outrageous libels against this person, who just happened to be Roger Moore. He’d asked me if I’d go through it and make a list of what was wrong. There was another book where I was doing a similar thing. There was also someone’s Mercedes on which I had to change the oil. I knew where and how to lay my hands on the oil, but every time that I had to change the oil in his car, it meant going down with a bucket, filling it with oil from some kind of charitable station, then finding the spare parts and then fixing the car so that I was invisible. This went on for several weeks like this and I was hardly at my desk in the office at all, being far too busy with this.

What a strange dream this was. Nothing in here seemed to make any sense … "so what’s new?" – ed … There were claims that at one time Roger Moore lived near Nantwich, and there was someone who lived in a big, posh house near there who owned a Volvo P1800, but the matter is a subject of much debate.

And I can still see the person to whom the Mercedes belonged in the dream, and although I actually did work with him for a while, he never owned a Mercedes in his life. In fact, I wonder if it wasn’t the blue W123 Mercedes 240D that I had for a while in Brussels.

Then after this, I had to go to one of the smaller banks where the Open University funds were held to draw some cash, but I wondered if I had my cash card with me. When I arrived there, there was a guy trying to use the machine. He walked away in disgust and went to talk to the manager about how his accounts were always being mixed and merged up and his wife, who had “preferred customer” status, it never showed anything for her, and could she deal with it? While they were arguing like this, I went through my pockets but couldn’t find my fuel card, which made me think that I’d left it at the office or something.

This is another quite meaningless dream, although the bank did remind me of one of the old newsagents near the Sugar Loaf in Shavington. And I did once lose my fuel card, and that caused me quite a lot of embarrassment.

While I was doing a few other things, I heard movement from the other room, indicating that people were up and about. I went to join them and found, to my delight, that the coffee was en route. What a way to start the day!

In fact, we were still drinking coffee when the nurse arrived. The Hound of the Baskervilles was pleased to see him, but he wasn’t quite so keen to see the aforementioned so he didn’t hang about long. Mind you, he did tell us that these grey, wet and windy days may be over by tomorrow and we’ll have warmth and sun. And about time, too. The weather has been miserable so far this year.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT.

Today, we’ve moved on from pottery to glassware. He mentions that "it is remarkable that the knowledge of the ancients in glassmaking should have been so long … which proves that modern science has added comparatively little to what was practised in this useful and elegant art thousands of years ago."

After breakfast, we chatted for a while and then the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies. I came here and began to research the next radio programme.

When they came back, we continued our chat, and when they left again for walkies part II (which I suspect was to the pub), I carried on in here. The first task once I’d identified who would be featuring in the programme was to find the music. And there was a lot on which I couldn’t lay my hands so I had to cast a wide search net.

There was an interruption when a neighbour came round for a chat, and then I carried on.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles returned (from the pub) with his master, our chat carried on as I continued with the hunt for music, and then later on, I tried that experiment with the chat program.

It was my turn to cook tea again, and there was some vegan pie in the freezer, so we had mashed potato, vegan pie and mixed vegetables in gravy. Luckily, my friend likes Brussels sprouts as much as I do, so I didn’t have to cook some separately.

Once we’d finished and I’d washed up, I came in here to write my notes, do whatever else needs doing and then go to bed. But even as I type, I realise that once again I’ve forgotten my medication for the evening so I’ll have to go back into the kitchen again. But never mind – I’ll soon be in bed and asleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about heart attacks and shops … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a story about a shopkeeper who had had a heart attack and was on his deathbed with all of his family around him.
"Are you there, my darling wife?" he asked feebly
"I’m here, my darling husband" she replied.
"And are you all here, all of my five faithful children?"
"Yes, father, we are all here, all five of us."
"Then who the hell is looking after the shop?"

0

Wednesday 18th February 2026 – I’LL TELL YOU …

… something for nothing, and that is that I’m not going to have one of those caffeine-filled energy drinks again.

Yes, never mind “last night” – I was still wide awake at 03:00 this morning and showing no sign whatever of going off to sleep? And that’s despite the early start that morning.

It wasn’t as if I was all that early going to bed either. By the time that I’d finished everything and gone to bed, it was round about 23:30. So seven hours sleep was the most that I could expect, but I ended up with much, much less than that.

However, it wasn’t all wasted. As I usually do when I’m having difficulty sleeping, I set myself an imaginary problem. Using techniques that I’ve learned about the building of prehistoric and Roman defensive sites, I redesigned the fort that Colonel Carrington built in the Black Hills of Dakota that was abandoned after the Fetterman Disaster. I made quite a few changes and additions too that would have made the fort so much stronger.

At some point though, I must have gone off to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 06:29. And then it was a desperate struggle to force myself to leave the bed. It’s becoming harder and harder to leave the bed these days.

After I’d had a good wash and brush-up, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

I’d gone round to meet my girlfriend, and for a change, we decided that we’d go for a walk. We took some food with us too, and she put some bits and pieces in the food box that I was carrying. We’d hardly left the building when we bumped into one of the drivers from the taxi company, one of the young, chatty ones. He had a few personal problems on his hands. Apparently certain people had found out that he had a daughter and an ex-girlfriend living in Ireland. This was causing him a lot of problems. I said that although I knew, because he’d told me in the past, he’d never said anything to anyone and I knew nothing about it. He said that he understood, but he was still disturbed by the idea that people were gossiping behind his back over this matter and looking at him strangely. As this conversation carried on, I couldn’t seem to … not that I wanted to end it, but I wanted to be with my girlfriend, and this was rather inconvenient. But he carried on and carried on. In the end, we came to some kind of building where we all went in, but I turned round and my girlfriend wasn’t there. I found her leaning propped up against the wall in the corridor. She had a smile on her face but I could tell that she wasn’t happy, so I thought that I’d better take her for a meal or something, and see whether we could sort things out, not that there were any problems but I didn’t want her to be unhappy or be angry or upset with me because of that long chat that I’d had with that guy

Actually, that particular driver had been part of the conversation that I’d had with my cleaner earlier yesterday. It wasn’t about this subject, though. And I could understand why a girl would feel jealous or left out of things under these circumstances.

But maybe, if I’d bought meals for a couple of other girls in the past when they had been feeling left out of things, my life wouldn’t seem to be as disastrous as it appears

There had been some kind of invasion in Scotland – it might have been the Germans. They had rounded up a pocket of soldiers in the Glasgow Underground, and for one of them, they decided that they’d give him an examination for a fitness test for a PSV. What they did was to put some oversized boots on him and told him to simply run. He did a lap around the underground station and when he came back, he was roughly manhandled and pushed over to some kind of officer to be that officer’s chauffeur. One of the trips that they had to make was to go to see some kind of Scotsman involved in something or other, so they turned up at his house and the officer sent the driver in to fetch him. He went in, and he explained that he’d been taken prisoner and was now the chauffeur of this guy so they began to think of a way of escaping. One of the ways that they thought of was by going to the local swimming baths and disappearing in the crowd but when they looked out of the window, the officer wasn’t in the car so they nipped out of the house and started to lose themselves. The officer realised that they’d gone – he had an idea and began to follow them but he’d been drinking and was a little unsteady on his feet. As he was closing in on these two Scots people, he fell over face down into a puddle of water. Some young Scottish girl, rather intoxicated, saw him and fell down with him. She told him “you don’t want to go drinking this. Let’s go somewhere and have a real drink”. She knew some friends where they could go, so this officer, who now had a dog, followed her. They were heading right back to the house where he’d just come from, but suddenly, the dog ran off. The officer had to go to look after the dog, find it and bring it back so they didn’t end up actually going into the house at all. Instead, the girl went into a bar next door while the officer went to try to sort out what had happened to his dog.

This dream, despite it being so long, seems to relate to nothing at all – except that when I was in Brussels and my boss was on holiday for a couple of weeks, I drove the Finnish general who had come to discuss the possibility of a European Army, something that only seems to be happening today, twenty-five years later.

Isabelle the Nurse was early today. She told me a few stories of Carnaval but she says that she’ll show me the photos at the weekend. One thing that she did confirm was that the town is in total and absolute chaos after the parade yesterday.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

And I must admit to having had a laugh at one of the comments in his book, even though I know that I shouldn’t. Freudian slips are not the subject of history at all – they really do happen, especially as in where he writes "There is also a very similar situation at South Street in north Wiltshire (Ashbee et al 1979), where Late Neolithic activity with Peterborough pottery occurred in secondary woodland." and then goes on to ask "What sort of activity went on in these woodlands and why did it have no effect on the vegetation?"

Judging by the considerable evidence of the presence of numerous children at the site, I have a pretty good idea of what went on in the woodland, and it had probably been going on for so long that the vegetation had seen it all before and so was immune to the shock factor.

But to be serious … "for once" – ed … we’ve gone past molluscs and are now onto plants. Judging by the types of seeds in the different layers of soil, his team’s opinion of the timeline of the land-use as judged by mollusc remains is pretty much correct

However, interestingly, in the earliest layers, round about the period of the early Neolithic, remains of nuts, seeds, grains and fruits seem to be indicative of the remains of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Although there was a great variety of different remains, the edible remains were few, indicating that it was still very much a precarious hand-to-mouth existence.

By the time that we reach the Iron Age, though, the diet seems to be much more monotonous, with a predominance of grain, leguminous plants and arable weeds. This seems to point to a people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle a good way back and are now practising sedentary agriculture – large-scale arable farming necessitating a totally different lifestyle involving cooperation and coordination.

Even more interestingly, the amount of crop “waste” recovered that relates to this latter period is described as "copious". It was clearly anything but a hand-to-mouth existence, and this bears out something that I heard when I went to a lecture at the university in Brussels years ago, that agricultural production per capita in the Iron Age was sufficient to support a much larger population than existed at the time, hence there would be little reason for warfare amongst the different tribes and groups of people.

Back in here, I had several things that I needed to do, and then I attacked the radio programme. All of the music is now paired and segued, and all of the notes have been written, ready for the next early start, whenever that might be.

As well as that, I’ve had a couple of online chats with a few people, including my niece in Canada and also with a friend, who wished me “happy birthday”, which is nice of him, even if he is a little early with his best wishes.

When I’d finished, I had a play around with a few artificial intelligence story writers, and I was astonished at the results from two of them. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this Artificial Intelligence is going to lead to total chaos and a whole lot of trouble before too long, if it hasn’t already. In the past, I’ve already been swapping heads and backgrounds around from one image to another with startling results.

With what time was left, I began to edit a rock concert to use for the next radio programme, only to find that it’s the wrong date, so I’ll have to look for another way of filling up that broadcast.

Tea tonight was pasta and something out of the freezer. It should have been an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit dating back to November 2023 (there is stuff far older than that in there) but it wasn’t. I have no idea what it was, or why it was in the wrong packet, but I identified peanuts in it.

Pudding was a peach half with vegan sorbet. My imagination is rather lacking right now. But when I’ve finished this tin of peaches, I might go for a pear upside-down cake, just to be different. Rosemary reckons that instead of sugar, you can use a mix of desiccated coconut and ground almonds. That should be fun to try.

But not now, because I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about swimming baths just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Municipal Swimming Baths in Crewe closed down a few years ago, and they now have somewhere much more modern – and privatised.
They put up a big sign above the door to advertise the place. It said "PSWIMMING BATHS".
And so I went along and asked them "do you know that you have made a spelling mistake?"
"Not at all" the receptionist said. "In these swimming baths, the ‘P’ is silent."

0

Saturday 30th August 2025 (… continued …) – SO STARTING AGAIN …

… after the adventures reported in the previous entry, Saturday has not been a very good day for me, for a whole variety of reasons, and I’m glad that it’s over.

It started off with me still being at my desk working at some ridiculous time like 00:40, and long after that too. But you know how it is … "No. How is it?" – ed … Once you start something, it’s very difficult to stop it, and trying to download about 50GB of Artificial Intelligence data software is not the work of five minutes.

That was something that was going on and on and on, and I didn’t want to stop it and start again. I was working on the theory that if I’m really tired during the day, I can always have a good sleep at dialysis in the afternoon. In the end though, it was starting to become ridiculous so I simply switched off the screen, left the computer working away to itself and went to bed.

Despite the very late night, I was awake again a few minutes before the alarm went off but, as you might expect, it was something of a struggle to persuade myself to leave the bed and have a good wash, shave and clean up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant … "if anyone from the dialysis centre finds this remark objectionable, my we ask why you have invaded Our Hero’s private life, in defiance of the Patients’ Charter, by hunting him down on the internet?" – ed…

After the medication, I ended up back in here, a good hour after having left the bed, and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a Roman empress or the wife of a Roman emperor or the wife of a British governor who visited the office of one of the native tribes in England for some kind of interview, but things went so badly that the woman took out a dagger and slashed all of the horsehair-filled seats that were in the room, causing a lot of damage, so the tribal leaders tried to contact the Roman legions who would pay for the damage, but of course they wouldn’t and everything was left up in the air with a very bitter taste in the mouths of the British people and the tribe concerned.

Quite recently, I’ve been reading quite a lot about different Roman Emperors, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and there was also something going on in my mind yesterday about car seats. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several years ago in Québec we went to visit the RIVIERE DES VASES which was where the eel grass, used to stuff car seats in the early days of motoring, was harvested and the discussion had turned round to horsehair seats in the UK

The nurse came in at his usual time today and caught me working at my desk, so he took my blood pressure here at my desk. He reckoned that it would be a much more accurate reading if I remained sitting here rather than standing up and going into the other room.

He sorted out my legs too, then after he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

This morning, I didn’t go very far into the book because I went off on a tangent, following the trail of the Roman armies as they wandered peripatetically around what today is Scotland. There was also a little trail to follow about the collapse of the “Hen Gogledd” culture as the Romans pushed from the South and the Picts pushed down from the North, events recited in the Heroic Welsh ballad Y GODODIN.

After breakfast, I came back in here to see how the Artificial Intelligence downloads had gone. By the looks of things, everything was complete, but it’s going to take a good while to sort out. And after all of that, when everything is ready, I’ll probably find that I would have been much better off with Natural Stupidity because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

However, having said that, it’s an old principle of computer programming, drummed into us when we were messing around with Machine Code at Night School in the mid-seventies, that the only equation in computing on which you can rely is GI = GO, which stands for “Garbage In” = “Garbage Out”, and it’s probably fair to say that … errr … “confusion” in a computer program is inevitably the fault of the person who has programmed it.

Once more, my faithful cleaner caught me unawares as she came to put the anaesthetic cream onto my arm, and she stayed for quite a while chatting. I’m not sure why I seem to be the “Flavour of the Month” right now. However, our chat was interrupted by the arrival of the taxi so we went outside to meet it.

Unusually, I was the only passenger in the car today, so I asked the driver about the lovely lady who usually accompanies me. However, he had no news of her, so we travelled alone.

For once, I was early arriving, but as usual, I was one of the last to be connected, which was a shame. And as I expected, for the first half-hour I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that would be of interest to the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. When I came back into the Land of the Living, I didn’t really do all that much.

The doctor came to see me and I told her the story of the injections. She thought too that I’d be much better off going back to the old series of injections rather than this new one that had so upset my body.

Eventually, they came to unplug me after, for once, having had a full session of three and a half hours without a crisis of any kind. However, the woman in the next bed was not so lucky and they had to unplug her after an hour or so. When she’d recovered, she was whipped off to hospital for observation

Earlier on, I had asked one of the nurses if she knew why the lady who usually accompanies me on Thursdays and Saturdays was not present today. She had checked up during the course of the afternoon and while she was compressing me, she told me, to my deep shock, that she had died yesterday.

When I’d seen her on Thursday, I noticed that she didn’t seem to be herself, but to hear that she had died the following day was the last thing that I expected to hear.

On the way out, they weighed me as usual, and I am now the lightest that I have been for quite some considerable time. I can see that this is not going to end well, but I can’t think of what to do about it, with the lack of appetite and everything that I eat tasting heavily of salt since the chemotherapy began.

The taxi was waiting for me when I left, but there was another passenger who needed to be dropped off in Avranches, so what with all that had gone on today, I was far later arriving back home than I otherwise might have been, which was annoying. There was a rainstorm too that was rather annoying.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she sorted me out quite quickly. She’d also brought two of the guitars downstairs, which was nice. The others will follow in due course.

After she had left, there was football on the internet. The game between Hwlffordd and Caernarfon had started half an hour ago but the advantage of being on the internet is that you can wind it back to the start.

Mind you, it wasn’t a very interesting match. For some reason, all of the liveliness and energy that had seen Caernarfon go to the top of the table and score a bagful of goals so far this season seemed to have disappeared and it was a very lethargic performance. Hwlffordd gave a workmanlike performance but didn’t set the game alight either.

A 1-1 draw was probably a fair result, and I have seen far, far better matches than this one. If Caernarfon wish to stay at the top of the table, they will have to play much better than this. However, perennial champions TNS dropped another two points with a tame draw down south at Barry Town and Penybont, who have shown some class and character over the last two or three seasons, were surprisingly beaten at home by Connah’s Quay Nomads.

At half-time, I paused the game and went to make some tea – pasta and veg with chick peas. And it was a big mistake because what with the nausea that I have been feeling these last few days, I ended up in some kind of severe difficulty. In the end, as soon as the football finished, I typed a terse note and went straight to bed.

Tomorrow is another day and we’ll see how we feel. My cure for everything at the moment is to go to bed and sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about my poor fellow traveller … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my faithful cleaner about her death. After all, she had met her a couple of times.
"How many of your fellow passengers have now passed away over the last year?" she asked.
"Three" I replied "and a fourth one now has to come by ambulance".
"You’ll do everything you possibly can to have a car to yourself, won’t you?" she said.

0

Friday 29th August 2025 – I HAD FORGOTTEN …

… all about the wind outside here.

When I lived on the first floor, I was at the back of the building and so my only encounters with the wind were on the rare occasions when I went outside the door – or couldn’t, because the wind was so strong that we couldn’t open the front door so I would have to go out of the back.

However, last night, I remembered all about it.

The wind had begun to rise as I was on my way home last night but I hadn’t really taken much notice. However, by the time I’d finished my notes and was preparing for bed, it was blowing quite hard, and then I realised that being in the front, overlooking the cliffs and the sea to the right, is not necessarily always a great advantage and that there are after all, some drawbacks.

But last night, I was so tired. I fell asleep a couple of times while I was writing my notes and no fewer than three times when I was … errr … contemplating the state of the nation. I was glad to make it into bed, when I fell asleep almost immediately.

And there I lay until all off … errr … 05:29. For once just recently, I awoke earlier than the alarm, and I was seriously contemplating raising myself from the Dead, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29, so I must have gone back to sleep.

It was a real struggle yet again to find the energy and enthusiasm to leave the bed and sort myself out. Yet again, it was over an hour, all told, before I ended up back in here after the medication.

First thing was of course to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night, I was doing something with some kind of radio equipment, I can’t remember what, when a couple of my friends turned up. They weren’t going to stay for long so it was necessary to clear the sofa of everything so that they could sit down. One of them volunteered to put all of the clothes away even though there wasn’t room for them anywhere. In the end, they both managed to sit down. Later, after they had left, I had to look for the clothes again. They had been rolled up in bundles and put on the stairs, each bundle, and several had been put into other places. One had been hung inside a CD cupboard, with the CDs from the shelves in that particular column being merged into other shelves in columns elsewhere. I was thinking that that probably means that I have to sort all of these out into alphabetical order again.

That’s a task that I still have to do, because the records, CDs and DVDs seem to be in any old kind of disorder, and sticking the clothes back into places where they don’t belong is also something quite relevant at the moment.

Later on, I was on a Plaxton Elite coach, driving it, taking a load of English kids back to boarding school. When I went to join it, it was crammed full of children and I couldn’t understand at first what was happening. It turned out that these kids were all French refugees who had fled France during the invasion by the Germans in 1940 and were being taken to some kind of hostel. I was charged with distributing all the food around. That became extremely complicated as people were moving around, and I didn’t know who had had some food and who hadn’t. There were all these giant biscuit things that I was distributing. Every now and again someone would raise their hand and ask for some more food. If I had some, I would take them half of one of these biscuits. Earlier, I’d been talking to a couple of boys about how comfortable it is to be going back to school. When I met them on the bus at that moment, I asked them what they thought of it now but they didn’t say very much. There was a mass of clothing on one of the seats right by where these two boys were sitting. I asked them what it was and they replied that it was a little French girl who was asleep. In the end, this began to become more and more confusing as I was awaiting the signal to leave and handing out these biscuits. I thought that at one moment that these biscuits will run out and what am I going to do then?

It would be a good dream to be driving a Plaxton Elite in wartime, seeing as they weren’t introduced until about 1968. And once again, in a dream, I’m worrying about something that might never happen, and that seems to be a recurring theme these days.

The nurse came as usual, armed with his blood pressure tester, and once he had taken one of the measures of the three that he was supposed to take, his batteries went flat … "in the machine, not in him" – ed …

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Once more, it’s hard to understand the thought patterns of our author, Montagu Sharpe. He’s spent several pages bewailing the loss of artefacts from the period, salvaged by all and sundry without any record being kept, yet on page 37 he tells us that when he spoke to the person who had discovered and uprooted the Ancient British stakes that guarded the ford across the Thames at Brentford, "He kindly gave me several specimens which I have since passed on to Museums and to interested persons.".

He goes on to add that "from the inner portions various articles as mementoes have been made".

A little earlier though, on page 32, he has a crisis of T Rice Holmesque proportions when examining some notes by JS Maitland on Caesar’s crossing of the Thames. He tells us that "Maitland, in his “History of London,” places Caesar’s passage of the Thames at Chelsea" and continues by saying "All that Maitland seems to have done in 1732 in support of his theory was to take a boat to sound the river for shallow places, and thirty yards west of Chelsea College found the “channel N.E. to S.W. was not more than 4 feet 7 inches deep.” ! ! He made no quest for the remains of the stakes which Caesar says lined both the bed and bank of the Thames, which have in great numbers been so found, guarding the great ford of the river at Brentford,"

That’s not what I would call a respectable academic criticism of Maitland’s theories.

After breakfast, I had a couple of ‘phone calls to make. The nurse is writing up his accounts for the end of the month and needs the prescription for the injection that he gave me on Monday. And so I telephoned the hospital at Paris. I tried on several occasions, but they didn’t answer the ‘phone, which is no good at all for an emergency helpline.

In the end, I e-mailed them, only to have it returned as my professor is on holiday. I had to resend it to his assistant.

But that gave me an idea. It was Monday when I had this new injection, and it was about Monday that my problems of nausea and dizziness began.

Accordingly, I rang the dialysis clinic, but once more, it took several attempts before I was able to speak to the doctor who saw me on Thursday. I explained to her that I’d had a new injection, and she confirmed that side effects of dizziness and nausea are quite common with this new injection.

My cleaner turned up early in the afternoon to do her stuff, and we had the nurse back at 16:00 to take the afternoon’s blood pressure, with new batteries this time.

After he left, the President of the Residents’ Committee came down to inspect the apartment. She loves it so I thanked her for giving me the tip about it going up for sale. Without her, I would never have managed to purchase it. She brought me a yellow tea towel, to match the walls, as a housewarming present. That was really nice of her to do so.

The rest of the day has been spent playing around with some Artificial Intelligence. So far, I’ve managed to run two Artificial Intelligence chatbots into endless loops, which goes to show, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Something else that I’ve found is an Artificial Intelligence server that downloads to your own computer. Even as we speak, I’m having a play around with that and downloading it, to see whether I can program it to be more random than it actually seems to be. It takes about 50GB of space, so I’ll be here for ever doing that.

Tea tonight was vegan nuggets with salad and chips, and now I’m off to bed, long after midnight but I’ve been dealing with all kinds of things this evening that have run me up a variety of blind alleys. And I’ll have the howling gale outside to blow me to sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember an old Andy Capp cartoon that featured two men struggling unsuccessfully to move a large computer through a small door.
"No problem" said Andy Capp. "Just plug it in and let it work it out for itself."

0