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Tuesday 9th December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. It’s pointless rushing through everything in order to finish early, because all that it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

You are probably fed up of hearing me say that, given the number of times that I’ve repeated it, but believe me – I’m totally fed up of breaking my neck to be in bed before 22:00, only to wake up the following morning at … errr … 02:35. It’s going beyond a joke.

And indeed I did break my neck trying to finish early. Tea – the other half of the pizza – was all cooked from Sunday and just needed warming in the oven so it didn’t take too long at all to prepare. And with there being no preparation, there wasn’t very much washing-up and tidying to do.

Back in here, struggling desperately (and failing every now and again) to stay awake, I dashed through my notes, which went online at 21:43 and it wasn’t long after that that I crawled under the covers, with the bedroom heater turned up so that I won’t freeze to death like the previous night.

However, the best-laid plans of mice and men and all of that. There I was, wide awake at 02:35. There was no chance of going back to sleep, no matter how I tried, and I couldn’t make myself comfortable. At one point I was seriously thinking of leaving the bed but instead, I just lay there in a kind of semi-conscious daze until the alarm went off.

As is usual these days, it took a good while for me to summon up the energy to head into the bathroom and sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen to sort out the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had my old Ford Escort estate and I was in Northwest Scotland, wandering around the surfing paradises there. I had someone else with me. We were looking at everything that was going on and just walking along the beach. The beach was beautiful, but there was some kind of haze although it was cold, well, not cold but not that hot either. The islands offshore were all shimmering and glimmering in the haze. The guy with me pointed to the one nearest to us and said that he didn’t remember that being there. I said that as far as I was concerned, I remembered it from the previous times, but I thought that the one next to it was new. They were all chalky islands, like a chalky peninsula that had been sliced by the tide and the waves. We walked along this crowded beach, and for some reason, I slipped and fell down the beach. I managed to stay on my feet, but he came down to see how I was. I told him that it was one of those inexplicable things, but I was sure that I’d torn a ligament. I had to scramble as best as I could up to the previous level where we were walking. We’d been looking at those islands and they had all been painted white with lilac roofs, and he was looking at the statistics for them. He said something like there were one hundred and seventy-eight houses and one hundred and ninety-three people plus thirty temporary accommodations. I was thinking that it would be nice to have some kind of holiday or break in a small house on a little island like that somewhere.

In the mid-seventies, I often used to wander aimlessly around Scotland, but mainly in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van. And I did once go with a friend.

However, in this dream, I imagine that it’s the houses on the island that are painted white with lilac roofs, not the islands themselves.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on the wind and she was impressed with my Christmas tree and my Christmas lights. I’m glad about that, because I’m impressed with them too, almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

She sorted out my legs as usual and then with a cheery wave, she carried on with her rounds. I made my breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we didn’t go very far, because I was sidetracked down a blind alley. Something to do with an old railway station led me astray and I wandered off – I suppose you might say “down a branch line somewhere”.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then go for the lesson. It passed quite well again today but I don’t know why. However, it’s all very well learning the stuff for the actual moment, but remembering it ten minutes later is what is causing me most of my problems.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner came along and caught me by surprise. She’d bought my vegan butter from the supermarket and now she’d come to help me into the shower. And I needed it too – the help as well as the shower.

Although it takes a lot of motivation to force me into the shower, I always feel better afterwards and today was no exception. I wish that I could have a shower more than once per week but that’s not really possible

My cleaner and I had a nice, lengthy chat afterwards as we sorted out the medication, and I even played doctor for a few minutes while I was examining some of the boxes.

After she left, I came back in here and worked on one of my radio programmes. That’s now as complete as it can be, with the extra tracks chosen. All that is needed for it is the text for the extra tracks writing and dictating, which I can do tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in tomato sauce, followed by the last of the coconut soya dessert with a couple of biscuits. I’ll bake another cake tomorrow, if only I knew what to make. I’ve run out of ideas.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my appalling memory … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once mentioned it to Nerina, and she took the mickey by saying that I had a teflon brain.
"Teflon brain?" I asked.
"That’s right" she replied. "Nothing sticks to it."

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

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

And that, dear reader, explains why I was sitting at my desk working at 03:30 this morning.

Last night, I’d hit the hay at about 19:30 or thereabouts after my totally exhausting day at the Centre de Ré-education. Having a day like that after two days of chemotherapy is not doing me any good at all, and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless giving me all of these exercises to make me better if the effort is going to kill me.

Surprisingly, considering how dead I was feeling earlier, it took an age for me to go off to sleep. But once I’d gone, I stayed gone and an earthquake wouldn’t have awoken me. But at 02:27 we had another one of these “sitting bolt upright” awakenings that I sometimes have.

Despite all that I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep so after an hour or so, I raised myself from the Dead.

We started off with a foot-fest. There had been some matches in the Welsh Cup last night and the highlights were now online.

And how I laughed as TNS – perennial winners of just about everything – were leading 1-0 against Cardiff Metropolitan with just five minutes to go, only to concede two quickfire goals and go out of the competition.

It was even funnier later when Connah’s Quay – perennial runners-up – playing away at second-tier Llandudno, went down and out 2-1.

What with other results today, we have to go back to 2002-03 to find a Welsh Cup winner who is still in the competition.

After the football, I made a start on last night’s blog entry. I was so exhausted last night that there was no possibility of me doing anything. Eventually, the entry went online and then I had to do the stats and the statistics that I also hadn’t done yesterday.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. I was in the north of Scotland somewhere. There was a kind of canal that had been dug artificially from the sea. There was a ferry boat, one of these small, flat ferry things moored at the ferry terminal along this canal that sailed out across to an island just across a short length of sea. I was there in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van waiting to be loaded on, and a tractor appeared. He had something in the bucket at the front and something in the tri-point hitch at the back. The ferry guy told him that if he wanted to cross over to the island, he’d have to hire a trailer in order to take his things onto the ferry. They couldn’t go like that. He said that he would have to go back to pick up a trailer as he only lives at the top of the hill. The ferry guy said something like “it will be in the next price band” when he comes back so “to tell whoever was here that it’s agreed to pay twenty-five bob to go across”, which was presumably the fare for the current price band where we were. Then I was beckoned onto the ferry. There was a weird chiming noise in the distance, and the ferry guy said that that was the local church bells ringing the time. Then, there was an even weirder one almost straight away. He pointed to some tower on the horizon and said “that’s the town clock, that one is that’s striking now”.

Several ferries of that nature have had the pleasure of my presence. Mainly up in Scotland (and mainly in Bill Badger) but more than just a few around the coast of Nova Scotia.

Later on, I was with my niece’s youngest daughter and someone else. We were in my apartment in Granville. We decided that we’d go out for a meal so I collected my crutches and we set out towards the town. We hadn’t gone too far when I realised that I’d left my sac banane behind with my wallet in it so my niece’s daughter volunteered to run back. But then she pointed out the fact that I was in fact wearing it so we carried on downtown and came across a canal again where there was a boat heading up the canal from the sea. We came into the centre and came into a restaurant. It was 22:00 now and we weren’t sure whether it was still serving, but they ushered us to a table. It was an extremely posh affair and we were surrounded by waiters. I said to my niece’s daughter “we’re actually outnumbered here” to which she laughed. They kept on insisting that we had wines and that kind of thing whereas sparkling water was fine for me. Eventually, they poured a sparkling water for me and left the menus. I had the vegan menu, so there was a kind of stuffed tomato that looked nice. For the main course, I was hoping to have a salad. There were pages and pages and pages of different types of lettuce and different types of dressing. I asked the others what they were having, and they made some kind of suggestion but it didn’t ring any bells with me. The third person with us stood up and went over to a different table. She looked at it and came back, saying “that’s a lovely table over there”. My niece’s daughter said “well, we’re here now”. But the other person replied “but I want to go to sit at that table” but my niece’s daughter ignored her and so did I. We carried on looking through the menu and there were still these pages and pages and pages of different lettuces and different dressings, and I couldn’t really find anything else.

There’s no chance of me being in another restaurant. The last time that I was in one was an absolute disaster and I shan’t be doing that again. Besides, my appetite is all to pot these days. However, who was the third person? That’s a big mystery.

After a visit to the bathroom, I went into the kitchen to make my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and to take my medication.

Back in here later, I sat down in my chair and that was the last thing that I remember until the nurse came at 08:30. Not that that is any surprise. It was an early start.

The nurse gave me a lecture this morning. I mentioned my ongoing dispute about the hours that they expect me to be available for treatment and he was most unhappy. He thinks that I should be grateful for all of the effort that everyone is making towards my eventual recovery and accept everything with a smile.

But that’s the difference between me and the medical profession. They want me to spend all of my life having treatment and I want some quality of life.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast. That included the two croissants left over from the last batch that I made and, warmed in the microwave, they were just as delicious.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

Some of the things that she writes are appalling, and I shudder to think what today’s World would make of them. The female Afro-Caribbean servant of one of the officers’ wives had been scared almost to death by an attack on the fort by the Native Americans and was refusing to go outside. The solution proposed by the officer’s wife was "to flail Laura into subordination by the help of a trunk strap.".

She asked the author to go to help her, and she did! And judging by the style of her writing and her description, she quite enjoyed it too.

Mrs Grummond told us at one stage that her "father was a slave-owner, but one of the better kind.". If the treatment of Laura is an example of the treatment meted out by one of the “better kind”, what on earth must the treatment have been that was meted out by one of the bad kind?

After the breakfast; I had a job to do. I sorted out all of the dry fruit that I need for my Christmas Cake, weighed it, chopped it into smaller amounts and mixed it in a large glass bowl. Having done that, I made a marinade of rum essence, brandy essence, lemon juice, orange essence and vanilla essence in water, added it all over the mix and stirred it well in.

It’s now in the fridge, all soaking in, and it’ll stay there like that for at least a week.

This afternoon I made a start on writing the notes for the radio programme that I’ve been preparing. It was a slow, laborious effort and I’ll have to finish it tomorrow.

We broke off for the football – Caerfyrddin v Colwyn Bay in the Welsh Cup.

Caerfyrddin are in the second tier and Colwyn Bay are in the Premier League, but with all of the cup upsets this weekend, a shock result might have been on the cards. However, Colwyn Bay ran out 3–1 winners without too much difficulty. They were always one pace ahead of the home side.

Tea tonight was two taco rolls with cheese, tomato and mushrooms followed by ginger cake and chocolate soya sauce. And now I’m off to bed, cough and all, because my cough has suddenly come back.

But seeing as we have been talking about the football on Friday night … "well, one of us has" – ed … the grandstand at Maesddu for the Llandudno v Connah’s Quay game was full to capacity, except for one empty seat.
"What’s with the empty seat?" asked one of the stewards
"I bought it for the wife" said the man sitting next to it "but unfortunately, she died."
"Well, couldn’t you offer it to one of your friends?" asked the steward.
"I did, but they couldn’t come" he replied. "They are all at the funeral."

Tuesday 18th November 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I’m off back to Paris.

The Neurology department of the hospital where I go has summoned me to attend, some time in late January (I can’t remember the date right now), so I wonder if it has anything to do with the scan that I had a few days ago.

If it is, then that’s good. But if it isn’t, that’s good too because there can’t be too many people looking at my nervous system. The more the merrier as far as I’m concerned, provided that they all agree on a course of treatment.

After all, it is a treatment that I’m hoping to have. If there’s any kind of possibility of improving my mobility then I’ll take it, and with both hands too.

It might even enable me to go to bed earlier too. Midnight these days is the new 23:00 and I reckon that I’ll be struggling to meet that kind of deadline too on certain days.

Last night though I was in bed just before midnight and was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until about two minutes before the alarm went off when I had one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have.

Despite being awake early (ish) it was still a struggle to find my way out of bed before the second alarm and into the bathroom before the third one. I had to rely on all kinds of determination to drag me out of bed.

But having washed, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Once again we had an alarm going off at 04:20. I was with some Native Americans at the time discussing health arrangements and medical examinations with them. We were considering how that kind of thing was going to work. My brother was there. He saw the vehicle that I was using, which was an old A60 van. He asked from where I’d had it. I told him that it was a hire vehicle. He thought that it was a great machine and he’d have to look out for another one. He’d try round all the Native American corporations to see who had one etc

And I remember nothing at all about the alarm going off. But I did own an AUSTIN A60 VAN in the past. He was called Bill Badger and we had a great many adventures together over the couple of years that I owned him

This dream continued afterwards and we were giving various Native Americans some kind of medical check. We had guides and tables to help us so we were puzzled when one girl turned up who seemed to be taller than the others but whose weight seemed to be far less than any that we had recorded to date. We had a look in our notes but there was nothing so we resolved to weigh her again only this time totally naked and without her dictaphone and music player around her neck (…fell asleep here …)

The second part of this dream – when I say that it “continued”, then according to the timestamps there’s just over an hour between the two parts. And this is another dream of which I have absolutely no recollection at all. But I clearly have Native Americans on my mind, what with reading Samuel Hearne and Jacques Cartier. And weighing is a procedure that we have to follow at the Dialysis Clinic, both before and after the procedure.

Then there was a football match taking place. I was watching from a balcony of a sports centre or something like that. The first thing that I noticed was that all the players of one team rushed towards the linesman to berate him for something. As they wouldn’t calm down the referee began to hand out yellow cards. As they continued, he sent them all off. I asked the other team, which was the Midland Bank, what had happened. They said that apparently every time their goalkeeper had been involved in a collision with one of their players the referee had given a foul against the goalkeeper. And then this ball, no-one was convinced that it had gone out of play except the linesman so there shouldn’t have been a throw-in but the linesman insisted and that’s why the other team was so upset. But while I was talking about this to someone i was reading through my e-mails. I’d had one from one of my friends on the Wirral. It was from the wife of the partner saying “now that the husband has a job on the new Radio Monte Carlo …” and that rang a bell with me because someone else whom I know as a DJ had begun to work for RMC so I wondered what was happening there, whether they were recruiting or something.

Sometimes I wonder what referees and linesmen see that I have missed, and what I have seen that they have missed. I’m sure that at times, the referee is refereeing a different match to the one in which he’s standing in the middle and which I’m watching. But working for another radio station where things are more challenging and more is expected would be exciting. Local radio is great but it does have its limitations. I’m ready to take on the World!

Did I dream that dream about our neighbours in Shavington? … "no you didn’t" – ed … I was on my way back home in Shavington, going down Vine Tree Avenue and they were standing outside their house? The first thing that I had to do when I went in was to move a settee outside. I could manage that fine on my own but when I was halfway through it the neighbours came round and began to chat but I carried on moving this sofa. I had it outside and I was going to stick it in the garage. Mrs Neighbour then came out for a chat. She watched as I opened the door of the garage – it was an “up and over” door and I stood this settee up on its end so that I could manoeuvre it in. She was astonished to see everything that was in there including the two cars parked one on top of the other – one was the green Princess. My brother was there too. He had this old rickety bike but there were one or two good things on it. I took that from him and threw it into the garage and pulled out another bike that was much more modern and generally in better condition but needed a good overhaul and service and two new mudguards. He could take the mudguards off the other bike. I told him that he could have this other bike but if he hadn’t done anything to it in a couple of weeks they were both going down to the tip. Mrs Neighbour was astonished by all of this. Later on I was an an autojumble. I was walking around and I saw stalls selling badges, all kinds of things that were of interest. Then I came across a stall selling rear light fittings. He had all the little strips of colour that I needed for the Mark III Cortinas so I enquired about them and he told me the price. They really were reasonable so I said to whoever I was with that I’ll be back here some other time and bring some money with me because there’s loads of stuff here that would be of interest to me. This other person shook their head and said “well, Eric, I just think that you are simply accumulating more kinds of old junk for all the good that you are going to do”.

“You are simply accumulating more kinds of old junk for all the good that you are going to do” – And there’s a lot of truth in that. My life is full of all kinds of half-finished projects that will never ever see the light of day. There’s a fortune stashed away in my barn and in my warehouse if only people will realise the value instead of hurling it into a skip. But anyway my brother made it into a dream yet again, and so did some neighbours whom I last saw in 1970 and haven’t ever thought about for a moment either before or since that date.

It’s Isabelle the nurse on duty for the next seven days so things will improve here I hope. She has many more interpersonal skills and is a much better conversationalist. But she didn’t hang about this morning because she had plenty of blood samples to extract, which is no surprise.

Once she’d gone, I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. And Samuel Hearne has now arrived safely back at the Fort, but not before experiencing yet more horror and depravity.

His group, now numbering almost 200 people, all heading for the Fort to trade their skins and furs, when they stumble across a small party of strange First-Nation people. Being only a small party, his larger party "robbed them of almost every useful article in their possession"

And worse was to come. His party"joined themselves in parties of six, eight, or ten in a gang, and dragged several of their young women to a little distance from their tents" and what Samuel Hearne goes on to describe cannot be imagined.

Hearne remonstrated with his party, only to be told "in the plainest terms, that if any female relation of mine had been there, she should have been served in the same manner".

In the past, I’ve read several third-party accounts of Hearne’s voyages and read several summaries, and not one of them has ever mentioned the cruelty and depravity about which Hearne writes, other than the massacre of the Inuit at Bloody Falls.

Back in here I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. And once again it passed quite satisfactorily. Although it doesn’t seem like it, I must be able to concentrate a lot better than I have done in the past. I just wish that I didn’t have this teflon brain where nothing sticks to it.

As usual, it’s a late lunch when I’m having my Welsh class, so there wasn’t a great deal of time afterwards. Nevertheless I attacked the radio programme notes that I had dictated on Saturday night that hadn’t been edited, and now they are all ready for use.

Strangely though, when I dictated this batch a few weeks ago, the running time was 7:05. Today though, for some reason, they are 7:36 – exactly the same notes. Now there’s a mystery if ever there was one.

There was a break for hot chocolate of course, and the finishing off the editing took me up to teatime.

Taco roll again, with more refried beans. I’ve run out of tomatoes so I had just mushrooms with onion and vegan cheese with the refried beans, and that worked too. There’s enough refried beans left over for one further meal and then that will be that, which is a shame. Refried beans was top of my list of things to find when I went to Santa Fe in 2002 and I’ve enjoyed every mouthful of the very limited stock that I’ve been able to find elsewhere.

Pudding was more home-made chocolate cake with strawberry soya dessert. There are two more tubs of soya dessert in the fridge and I can’t remember what’s in them, but I bet that it’s just as nice.

So later than ever, it’s bed-time ready for tomorrow which is shower day.

But that dream about the football referee reminds me of the boy at work who asked for the afternoon off to go to his uncle’s funeral – on the day of the Cup Final.
Later on, that afternoon, the boss was at the Cup Final and who should he see but his young employee watching the game from the terraces
"I thought that you said that you were going to your uncle’s funeral" roared the boss, angrily
"But I am, Sir" cried the boy. "I am"
"What do you mean" asked the boss
"Well my uncle is the referee" said the boy "and he’s just awarded a penalty against Manchester United"

Sunday 7th January 2024 – WHAT A WAY …

… to spend a Sunday – all doped up and nowhere to go.

Yes this morning they gave me some more sodium – sodium sulphide this time – but in liquid form. “Here – drink this!” and so I did, and it’s disgusting.

No hallucinations, so no Zero, Castor or TOTGA to keep me company, but it didn’t ‘arf knock me for six and I was flat out for a good part of the day.

It was rather unfair, because I was awake quite early – ridiculously early for a Sunday in fact. And there’s tons of stuff on the dictaphone too as you’ll find out in a minute.

One of the nurses came by. "If you need any help in the shower, don’t hesitate to ask". To which I took no notice.

But when the second nurse came past and repeated the same phrase, it was "Okay, okay, I get the message. I need a shower."

Mind you, it was nice under the shower. I really did enjoy it.

After breakfast I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I’d been living a kind of extremely nomadic life … "no surprise there" – ed …. It wasn’t that I was broke either. I had plenty of money. I was living in the attic of a folk club where I had to climb up a whole series of strange steps to haul myself up through into the top so all my post was being directed to my eldest sister. She forgot to deal with some of it for a while. It turned out that I’d had the option on a house for which I’d signed and for which the bank was arranging a mortgage but she didn’t give me some of the letters which meant that the option had expired so I wasn’t going to have that house after all. That was extremely distressing to me. At the same time I was driving around in BILL BADGER my old A60 van. It had no tax on it and I’d already been stopped twice by the police. It had no insurance on it either and they had noted that. I’d also driven through a speed camera at one time faster than I ought. I was living a temporary, nomadic life and none of this had been taken into account anywhere so one day I would be called to account, I’d have all these things on my driving licence. I’d have 9 points and with another 3 points I’d lose my licence. I could see that it wouldn’t be long before that happened, having these 9 points all together and then having to go carefully for all this time and in the meantime having the van MoT’d. I could see that all of my life at the moment was falling to bits. Nothing was going right and I had all kinds of problems. I was just extremely distressed by all of it.

And that’s not an unusual state of affairs in my dreams – and in real life too, is it? Nothing going right and the wheels dropping off everything all the time

I forgot to mention that at one point I had to climb into my attic at this folk club. There were plenty of people there. Sitting at the foot of the stairs was an old guy with 2 children. I thought that one of them was a girl so I said “excuse me, miss” but it turned out to be a young boy. That was extremely embarrassing too.

There was a young boy rather similar to Jimmy Clitheroe, very tight with his money and always trying to find some more. There was some kind of party that he had to attend, which involved spending £5:00 to go. He was keen to go but there was an argument downstairs at the door when someone who appeared to be drunk said that he was a representative of the Co-op or something. Jimmy Clitheroe pushed him out and closed the door, but the pane of glass broke. Everyone else was broke too. One old man who was there was complaining about how hard up he was. He’d gone through his accounts to show that he was broke, rang up the glazing company and gave them the measurements for the window. When asked about the payment foolishly gave his own bank card number. This boy Jimmy Clitheroe was quite pleased about this because he’s got away without paying anything but his mother had learnt what was going on. When it came to giving him his pocket money for the next week she handed it out and said “here’s you pocket money minus £1:00 for the old guy who had to ring up etc an here’s another £1:00 for the house for the inconvenience”. That meant all his pocket money and he didn’t have any money to go to visit his friends at this dance so he couldn’t go … fell asleep here … what I meant to say that everyone thought that he would be unhappy about it but instead he remembered the song about “one wheel on my wagon”. He went off singing that. That seemed to make him a lot happier about the situation.

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few right now, I don’t actually fall asleep. I am asleep when I dictate these notes – something that years of practice has enabled me to do. What happens is that slowly I drift off into total silence while I’m dictating and after a few seconds you’ll hear a slow, deep rhythmic breathing,

There was also a dream involving a herd of polar bears being given sledges on a kind of miniature railway to go downhill to the sea. Instead, on their way down they encountered a herd of wildebeest and the wildebeest encountered a couple of humans and you don’t really want to know what happened especially if you are eating your tea right now.

I was round at an estate agents later on trying to find a house. There was one described as “2 bedrooms with study” so I wanted to find out more about it. I noticed that it had a large garden, part of which was lawn etc and the other part was gravelled over as if someone had been parking several cars there. That immediately piqued my interest. There was also a discussion about commercial properties. There was a shopping mall that had been built a long time ago but no-one was quite sure when. Several of the units were empty so people were looking at them with a view to trying to find some kind of clue as to their origin. They seemed to think that it might go back as far as 1890 but that was doubtful. There was one big unit that was empty. It seemed to be the kind of unit that a certain ladies’ clothes shop was seeking so they contacted the shop. They came to see it but it wasn’t really suitable for them. In any case the description of “large sales floor with plenty of storage” didn’t seem to fit. I couldn’t find the storage anywhere. It certainly wasn’t in the basement underneath so I was wondering where it was and how it was controlled or made.

And then I was being interviewed by the police about something or other. They asked about my movements over the last few days. I explained that they were extremely difficult but nevertheless I pointed out two calls to the hospital between the first and the third of the month to which I’d been invited. That was what I’d been doing for a couple of days just recently. It was the First of March until the Third of March and this was about the Fifth of March. He saw that there were several difficulties recording them and asked me if I could transfer them over to my big computer. I told him that it would be put on the big computer in due course which seemed to satisfy him for the moment but to me he was more interested in my notes and records on the computer than he was on this murder in my opinion. He didn’t seem to ask me many questions about the murder at all.

Of course, in real life I was a great deal of use to the Cheshire Constabulary. Almost every day I was being asked to help them with their enquiries.

As I said just now, I’m asleep when I dictate these dreams. But usually when I’m typing them out later I have some kind of vague recollection of them in the back of my mind. Rarely though, I have no recollection whatever, and that one was one of those.

We then had an issue of dark olive green cabs for lorries that had been discovered somewhere in Greenland. These cabs were new and had never been fitted. I was trying to identify them. They looked very much like ERF cabs to me, or maybe Foden cabs but someone seemed to think that they were MAN cabs, and if I posted them as MAN cabs someone would immediately recognise them and claim them as theirs as not having been delivered. I was looking through the internet trying to find identical cabs that had been labelled but I wasn’t having much luck because for some reason the computer kept throwing me out of the page that I was trying to search so I couldn’t actually see properly what the results were of my search on line.

Finally there was an advert in one of these magazines about a girl looking for a companion. Out of boredom I replied. Much to my surprise I found that, mush as she was a bit of a flighty piece, she seemed to be quite nice and what’s more, she seemed to like me very much. We developed quite a good rapport quite quickly. It was while I was running the taxis so I could only see her on Saturday nights but somehow that seemed to fit in with her timetable too so she was there making plans etc on what we’d do on different Saturday nights. She planned a night where we’d go to have a drink or something and end up sitting on top of a kind of cliff somewhere like at Frodsham and watch the stars, which sounded very nice to me as we’d just been for a drink but for some reason we’d had to come home early. Back at home early she was making a drink. There was still a group of taxi drivers there waiting for work to come in, and there was a pile of little children being dressed in winter coats ready to leave. But while this girl was making a cup of tea I was standing right behind her as cose as I could be, holding her by the waist. We were laughing and joking. My elder sister came in and made some remark about us being home early but last week we’d ended up in some farmyard or other for several hours completely up to no good. I didn’t realise that I was being spied upon so closely. That was what I said, but it was all extremely humorous. My elder sister began to chat to this girl as if she was already one of the family. It ended up being quite a warm ambience of the type that we have in dreams every now and again, something that was quite pleasant and I didn’t want it to stop.

Terry came on line for a chat later, to remind me that it’s the anniversary of our visit to the Stade Louis Dior where we stood on the terraces and watched US Granville, who play in the equivalent of the Conference North with a team of taxi drivers, school teachers and shop assistants stuff the Girondins of Bordeaux in the French Cup.

And how Bordeaux were unhappy and completely lost their cool as well. It was embarrassing to watch a Premier League club behave like that.

We travelled many a mile together, Terry and me, and we worked on many roofs.

tt would always be the same story. Terry would ring me up a about 08:00 "are you free today?"
"You have to say the magic words, Terry" I’d reply
"Liz is baking."

And for someone who said how much he hated cats, I’ll never forget how gentle he was with those two feral kittens he found asleep in a tyre in his barn at Le Fournial.

Liz came on line later too and we had a chat for a while which was nice. I also had a chat with someone who appears quite often in these pages, but usually during a nocturnal ramble. That was lovely too but I wish that she’d appear in real life too. As for who she was, I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few names and have a good guess.

The doctor came by but didn’t have much to say for himself. He asked about the perfusion so I told him about the hallucinations, so I suspect that that’s reason for these drinks today.

Apart from that, I’ve had some reading to do. And talking about global warming, I’ve found a paper presented to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Club of Hereford as early as 1867 by a certain T. Curley, CE FGS, discusses the subject and that really is the earliest that I’ve ever seen where systematic global warming has been the subject of discussion.

Not only does he discuss it, he presents some interesting calculations too, some of which I know to be confirmed by other scientists and geographers.

But I’ve also been asleep for much of the time thanks to this witches’ brew of sodium sulphide. During one of my (many) dozes during the day I went off into a dream with a group of young people but I awoke quite dramatically and the whole thing evaporated from out of my mind. Absolutely all of it.

And now that I’ve had my depressing evening meal (I’m glad that I brought these extra food supplies) I’m going to have yet another one of these sodium drinks. So I imagine that it won’t be long before I start to fall asleep and disappear into the Arms of Morpheus. I suppose that I’d better find the bed quickly before I crash out on the ………. zzzzzzzz.

Friday 5th January 2024 – HERE I ALL AM…

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a room at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpetrière in Paris, where I’ve been summoned due to an emergency – they’ve found something in my blood sample from Wednesday that has them in a panic.

So there I was, at 06:00 when the alarm went off, struggling to my feet.

First thing was a good wash, scrub and change of clothes. I might as well look the part, I suppose.

Next thing was to check that I had everything packed. Those bread rolls that I made yesterday evening were good and made nice sandwiches – the food at the hospital is rubbish of course so I need some reserve supplies

Next thing was to unplug all of the appliances and it was in the middle of doing this that the driver arrived – an elderly guy who I’ve not seen before.

He helped me into the car and we set off for Paris. He didn’t go as fast as the younger drivers but we had good luck at Ceen with no hold-ups so we made very good time.

There was even time to make a pitstop halfway between Caen and Rouen, and a mug of coffee is always welcome. I treated the driver seeing as he’s doing al the work.

Our good luck ended at the Porte d’Italie exit of the Boulevard Péripherique where there was a gridlock the like of which I have never seen. IN the end we went back on the “prif” and took the next exit. But as a result we were late arriving and I had a very concerned phone call from the hospital wondering where we were.

Anyway, I’m now installed in my little room here on the second floor, still with no internet which is a shame, and the food is rubbish, as I expected so I’m grateful for my emergency supplies.

But at lest I’ve managed to make the heating work, which is something, I suppose, and under supervision I managed to walk 6 steps without my crutches, which is something of which I can be proud.

But what a celebration hey? Me, who would think nothing of walking though the night from Chester to Hankelow, all almost 30 miles of it.

They had four tries before they could take a blood sample, and three to fit a catheter in my arm and once the catheter was in, they began the perfusion.

There was a combination of three perfusions which gave me the most extraordinary hallucinations, during which Zero, Percy Penguin and my old LDV van made their appearance.

The LDV van I remember well. After 2 Transits I had the LDV van for a couple of years and was the first of the vans that I had that would keep up with modern traffic with its 5-speed gearbox.

It blew up the engine not long after I had it so we bought a Maestro diesel for £50, swapped the engine out and received about £350 for the bits of Maestro when we sold them on the internet.

It then lost the clutch going round the Boulevard Péripherique one night and I had to drive it 300 miles with no clutch, even starting from a standstill on a couple of occasions.

What had happened was that, with it being a hydraulic clutch, the clutch slave cylinder had fallen off and was just hanging on by the hydraulic pipe. The bolts on the door hinges where the same size and same thread so I pinched a couple of those as a temporary but permanent repair.

Then a brake pad separated and we lost the asbestos pad part of it. I had to drive it home through the Brussels traffic with no brakes and in the days before internet marketing it took quite an effort to have a pair sent from the UK.

The handbrake cable then snapped on it, so we had no handbrake but what killed it off was the little trail of rust inside the back of the van.

There was this little streak of rusty water running down the inside wall of the van so I climbed inside to look.

At first I couldn’t see where it was coming from but when I twisted myself round, with my hand on the roof, the whole roof lifted off on one side. The joint between the roof and the side wall had rotted away and I had a big roof rack on the roof and I’d been carrying all kinds of heavy equipment on it.

So that was the end of the LDV. You couldn’t drive that on the road in that condition.

Next van was the ex-Telecom Ford Escort diesel. And how that brought back all kinds of memories of my travels with BILL BADGER. It was exactly the same kind of van and I found myself doing exactly the same things.

That was a vehicle that I’d bought because of the 1.8 litre diesel in it, which I wanted for one of the Cortinas. But it surprisingly passed an MoT even though there was a pile of things wrong with it.

But I had a year’s use out of it and it did a few miles too, and then along came Caliburn.

And there’s just time to transcribe the dreams from the night before I go to collapse in my nice comfortable bed. There was a load of folk music going on last night probably related to what I’ve been listening to just now. The music seemed to have affected everyone. At one particular moment I went into work and there was someone stuck in a folk music loop singing folk music songs. I happened to mention i( to his superior who became extremely upset and began some kind of enquiry. Many years later the same thing happened again. There was all this folk music. Some people were listening to it of course, concentrating and so on. I was enjoying it very much bu at work the big boss came and began to ask me all kinds of questions like “did I feel mentally unstable?”, “did I feel that I was being a difficult person?” etc. I couldn’t understand what was happening. He said something about starting work. I replied that as far as I was aware that has never happened at all. He asked “what about this incident?” and brought up the one about folk-dancing early in the morning. Of course I was totally bewildered because I didn’t remember things like this. I wanted to know why this folk-music thing had suddenly become so important to so many people for what seemed to be reasons that seem to be completely detached from what the music actually represented etc. I was just totally bewildered by it all.

Later on there were 4 of us who used to hang around together. One was a boy from school whom I came to know quite well. We’d agreed to meet in Sandbach for the fair at a certain time but it was a very informal, insincere kind of agreement. Anyway I went along and, sure enough, there were some people there so I walked back to Crewe, found some plants and walked back. And there I met my friend and some other guy of our group so we began to chat. They were surprised that I’d been here twice but I said that I wanted to make sure that the festival was going so I was here early. The place was crowded with people. I needed to go to the bathroom but they told me that the bathrooms were filthy here and I wouldn’t appreciate anything at all of those. Nevertheless I wandered over that way to go for a look but the alarm went off.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … hospital I’m told that despite already having had a couple of examinations with one of these electrode machines, there’s another one planned for during the night in another building, one that goes into things and greater depths.

Once they’ve done that, they’ll have a better idea, but I suspect that they know already, and I have an idea too. In May 2021 they discovered the cancer in my kidneys and I underwent an operation to remove the tainted bits – and it also removed bits of another part of my body, to my eternal regret. My betting is that it’s come back to whatever kits of my kidneys are left.

What’s your bet?

Sunday 17th December 2023 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

… exhausted.

And not just the usual fatigue from which I seem to suffer but I’ve been on my feet for 5 hours without a break and without even a moment to sit down, starting from 15:15

Things aren’t finished yet either. I have my packing to do and my sandwiches etc to make before I can go to bed. And then I have an alarm call arranged at 06:00.

This was the last thing to which I was looking forward, this early morning trip to Paris, but it has to be done and I have to make the best of it.

What didn’t help matters was that, surprisingly, I didn’t have a very long sleep tonight. Although it wasn’t until 09:45 that I raised myself from the Dead, it was something like 02:00 when I went to bed this morning so it was hardly anything like the usual Sunday lie-in.

There were the radio notes to dictate, a play around on the guitar to do and a few other bits and pieces before I went to bed.

And it was a mobile night too. There was quite a lot of stuff on the dictaphone so I must have gone quite far. I was playing with a rock group last night, me, a guitarist and a drummer, accompanying a female singer. We were preparing for a concert. I had my notes. For some reason the other guy had some note for my sister which he’d given me in a notebook which I’d put underneath the bus. My guitar was underneath the bus too. I was busy having a think about trying to organise myself ready when the singer suddenly appeared and began to performance. The first song was “Rock and Roll Hootchie Coo”. The other 2 musicians began to accompany her but I couldn’t find my bass. Eventually I remembered that it was underneath the bus so I pulled it out from underneath. Then I couldn’t remember how to play it. I was just standing there miming something or other thinking to myself “how on earth am I going to play this?” I couldn’t remember.

Next, wee were making a radio show, but it was a radio show with a difference. The artists had to sing their actual song down the telephone so that they could be recorded in the studio and the programme assembled. I made out a running order of people etc whom I wanted to take part, contacted them all. Of the 10 people or groups who were assembled one guy refused to take part. he didn’t actually say that he wouldn’t but he just never turned up until we were well under way, and then he kept discreetly to a corner hoping maybe that we wouldn’t see him. But it was awful. I had to do about 10 takes for whatever I was doing and so did 1 or 2 other people, the order became completely and utterly confused, things were being recorded in all kinds of different ways. In the meantime the young guy was still keeping out of everyone else’s way in this room while the rest of us were at the telephone singing our songs. Then we looked around and noticed that he’d gone. One of the teachers came over and asked us why we had only 9 instead of 10. We explained the situation about this guy but he replied “why don’t you go to fetch him back?”. We replied “he lives in Tarporley. That’s a long way away to go to come back again”. As I was wandering away I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my keys. I began to look for them but couldn’t find them and had another panic attack about the keys.

Then I had another girlfriend. There was something to do with Chester. Whether she was at the college in Chester and I was in Crewe I don’t know but I ended up going to see her, walking home and then going back to see her. It was all becoming extremely complicated. The question of a car came up. I explained that I would have to buy a car, it would have to be something rather more modern and I don’t know where the money would come from. She offered me a mug that had about £500 in it. Of course I couldn’t accept it. We had a little dispute about that. I ended up talking to her friend about it and the story about Chester came up. There was also something about a load of entries being written in the margin of a piece of paper. I was rubbing them out one by one as I checked them off but I can’t think what this was supposed to be about and where it was involved. There was also a feeling running through my mind that maybe this girl didn’t like me as much as she perhaps ought to but I dunno. She was also at one stage checking some grammar for a letter than she was writing. She was asking me questions . For some reason I was replying with Welsh grammar and words. She asked “what’s the word for this?” and I’d reply to her in Welsh. It was all just so confusing

And I did have a girlfriend for a while at Chester College too. One of the rock bands in which I played bass and sang topped the bill there in 1975 at a Students Union event and in the audience was a girl whom I knew from school and with whom I’d had a brief adolescent fling. She was a student there.

After our performance she came over for a chat and one thing led to another. And, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … once you actually make a start, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

On one occasion the steering box seized in the van and it was off the road for a while while I tried to find one (I dug one out of a vehicle abandoned in a hedge on a farm in the end) and so to go to see her I’d catch the bus from Nantwich to Chester.

There were several occasions when I walked back home all through the night to my squat near Audlem, all 20-odd miles of it, arriving just as dawn was breaking. In those days, walking that kind of distance was never ever a problem.

It all came to a halt when she came home from College for Easter. Her parents actually knew me from “elsewhere” and they made their displeasure quite evident.

But anyway, that dream was surprisingly accurate in parts.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, I was back out with the rock group again but I can’t remember very much about this at all except that the floor to this building was of cracked marble times. It looked really nice and ancient. Somehow words were passing from one end of this great hall to the other end underneath the tiles and coming out where the tiles were missing or had been worn away. It was an interesting phenomenon that impressed quite a lot of us.

I’d also been on my holidays. For some reason I’d gone to Ilkeston where I’d watched a football match between Ilkeston Town and someone else. I developed quite a rapport with Ilkeston’s goalkeeper and couple of fans so I stayed on for a week to watch a few games. Then I hit the road and ended up in Scotland. There was a Scottish 2nd Division match taking place between Alloa Athletic and someone else which might have been Morton so I went to see it. It was pretty agricultural. As I was walking back I bumped into a girl whom I knew with whom I’d been on a night school course once. She had an arm in plaster. We began to chat, chat about the game at first. “Did I call this game ‘entertainment’?”. I replied “for Scottish 2nd Division it’s not bad. I’ve seen worse than this”. A couple of her friends from work came to join her. They all began to talk about work things. The Department of Work and Pensions was mentioned and 1 or 2 other things. I began to feel left out of the conversation, which was only to be expected. This was another one of those dreams that went on for hours and hours, and when I awoke most of it evaporated immediately.

There was another dream at some point where a herd of migrating wildebeest ran into a couple of prides of lions at a river crossing. You don’t really want to know any more about this, especially if you are eating your meal right now. But interestingly there was even a pile of chimpanzees joining in with the carnage at one particular point.

After I’d awoken I had something of a slow start to the day (which is no surprise) and then attacked the radio programme for which I dictated the notes last night. It took longer than usual to edit the notes because, as seems to be the case these days, I made something of a dog’s breakfast of it and there was a lot of editing to do.

By the time that I’d added in the eleventh track and the notes that do with it, I had over-run by 8 seconds but I always include phrases in my dictation that I can edit out without changing the sense of anything or interrupting the rhythm.

Having finished that, I went into the kitchen and began to work.

First thing was to make the dough for a small loaf with which to make my sandwiches

Second thing was to make the dough for the biscuits. And following the recipe, the dough was far too wet for what I wanted so I heaved in a handful or two of oats and put the mixture in the fridge to cool down.

Thirdly, I made my chestnut stuffing. Unfortunately it ended up without chestnuts in it because the packet of chestnut that I had had evidently been hanging around here for far too long so they ended up going the Way of the West.

Instead, I had to make it with some ground almonds, extra breadcrumbs and some various kinds of oil

After my lunch I’d taken out a lump of frozen pizza dough and it had been defrosting. So next I kneaded it, rolled it out onto my pizza tray and put it on one side to prove.

The biscuit dough, I rolled it out, dusted it with flour and cut it with my 50mm biscuit cutter so that I ended up with about 40 biscuits.

While they were baking, I assembled my pizza and when the biscuits were done, the pizza and the stuffing went it.

While they were cooking, I washed everything up and cleaned the kitchen.

Once the pizza and stuffing were cooked (and the stuffing does actually smell like stuffing) the bread went into the oven while I ate my pizza.

Now I’m off to make my butties and pack ready for tomorrow The car comes for me at 07:00 and then I’ll be gone. Until when, I don’t know.

The internet in the Neurology department was dreadful. I don’t expect that it will be any better in the Haematology department so as usual, it will be just brief notes typed on the ‘phone using a mobile hotspot, and I’ll update everything when I’m back home.

Whenever that might be.

Thursday 7th December 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… telephone call this afternoon.

"Mr Hall. Your appointment on 19th December is cancelled"
"And why is that?"
"We want you to come on Monday 18th December instead. And bring your jammies because you’ll be staying for a few days".

The appointment on the 19th was with the Cardiac Unit but this stay is with the Haematology Department. So things are definitely pushing along from that point of view. They did say “the beginning of the New Year” but events are unfolding quicker that I expected.

Getting out of bed wasn’t unfolding as quickly as it has done just now. It took me about 20 minutes to raise myself from the Dead this morning. But even so, I was still sitting at my desk working at 06:20, 40 minutes before the alarm went off

After I’d had my medication I came back here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I awoke with a really bad attack of cramp in the middle of a dream about events taking place in a village and so forgot most of this dream. It concerned certain goings-on in the village and in some localities. Some localities were only known by their informal name and there were many other names for some of these places so if someone had a secret about one of these places and it was known by its proper name no-one would ever find it. This was a question of these secrets that needed to be discovered. There was one thing that was very interesting. It was something concerning a girl’s bikini. I noticed in a house as I was passing through it doing something or other, that on top of a shelf in the sewing room was one of these mannequins that is used for adjusting clothes. There was a girl’s bikini on there. I was wondering whether this was in fact that particular girl’s bikini. Of course the easiest way to hide something is to hide it in plain sight and not draw anyone’s attention to it.

And then there was a plan to build new railway headquarters in Crewe. I was asked if I would like to supervise the overall control of the project. With nothing better to do I agreed and called for all the paperwork. I received a large box with almost nothing in it, no plans, no nothing. When I asked for it I was told that it was all arranged by photographs. That was the modern way of doing things these days. I thought that it was one of the most crazy things I’d ever heard. It’s quite simply not possible. And they hadn’t even sent the photographs in this box. A couple of days later someone from the Home Office came to see me and began to talk about the project. he asked how much they’d agreed to pay me. I said “they haven’t agreed anything”. He was surprised and said “you ought to be paid”. I answered “I thought that that was your job to pay me. These instructions came down from your department that I was to oversee it. I wasn’t told to contact the project managers for payment. The instructions came from the Home Office so I imagined they they would pick up the bill”. I told him about the complete and utter miserable state of affairs of this big box with almost nothing in it.

At another moment there had been a huge issue about some kind of property boundaries in the centre of a small town somewhere. I had a total feeling that it was all wrong. After a huge, lengthy investigation and battle I finally discovered that I was perfectly correct and that land that had been in dispute in the town centre was actually mine and I could move into it. It made me extremely happy because first of all I could park my car somewhere. I went for a walk after this with a girl friend of mine to celebrate. We came round a corner and in a yard was an axle that I recognised immediately as off a BMC half-ton van. I looked up and they had one attached to a crane that they were just going to winch off somewhere. I went to have a word with the guys to tell them that I’d been looking for one of these for years. Why hadn’t he told me anything about it? Of course, I had had BILL BADGER for a great length of time and travelled miles with him. The discussion then came round to a BMC FG pickup with a damaged cab and we talked about that. I explained that there was nothing wrong with it and the cab can be replaced on these anyway. We began to talk about Bill Badger again and those kinds of days back them.

I had that half-ton van for several years and went miles in it. But one of the rear leaf springs broke and being a very obsolete vehicle I couldn’t find another one. I had car springs on it for a while but the slightest load sagged the rear right down and after an uncomfortable moment with some of Cheshire Constabulary’s finest I decided that it was time to move it on.

When I awoke I was in bed but the cleaner had just come into the apartment bringing me a big mug of really hot coffee. I told her to put it on the kitchen worktop, wait a couple of minutes and I’ll be ready. I’ll come in and drink it. Then I awoke with cramp again.

Later on I had been at work all day. In my spare time I’d been doing something else. When I’d finished I’d gone to my University night classes and didn’t return home until 23:30. There was some bricklaying that needed doing so I began to sort out a few bricks prepare some stuff to mix some cement. My mother who was sitting around with her feet up and the other kids who were just sitting there playing around all said “you aren’t going to start work now, are you?”. I replied “this job has to be done. All you lot have been doing is sitting around here all day doing nothing”. My mother said something about the kids being delicate or something. I replied that they were all just bone-idle and that she was the woman who had made them. Whatever it is that her kids have turned out to be is a reflection on her more than anything else.

Actually, my University experience was nothing like that. It was usually a ‘phone call at 03:30 “My Hall, we have to go to Dusseldorf (or Bielefeld, or Berlin, or Den Haag or somewhere else like that)’
“Very good, Sir Brian. I’ll be round in half an hour”
And then into the boot went a flask of coffee, a pile of sandwiches and my course books. And while he was entertaining visiting dignitaries, putting the World to rights and dining on lavish slap-up dinners I was curled up on the back seat of the car on a draughty corner of a freezing military air base with a sandwich and a mug of coffee poring over a course book

When I was trying to do my degree it was one of the most crucial times in Western History in modern time and I had the misfortune to be associated with someone rather pivotal. We didn’t have a break for 18 months.

It meant that I wasn’t able to complete any of the practical work. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall that I had taken a week’s holiday to go and do some water sampling of a river. I’d hardly put on my wellingtons before a group of people flew a few aeroplanes into a couple of buildings, all leave was cancelled and we were recalled to work.

That didn’t just put paid to the practical work for that part of the course, it put paid to the exam too.

A couple of people have suggested that I ought to write a book about that period of my life. But it’s one of those situations where if the first impression isn’t published posthumously, the second impression certainly would be

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed there was also something somewhere about me being in Canada with my niece’s husband (but it wasn’t him). I was making a pot of tea and when I was rinsing the teapot in the sink it fell apart in my hands.

Next stop was the radio programme. I’ve chosen all of the music, some of which was complicated, and then I paired it off and wrote notes for some of it

There was an interruption – yet another phone call. This time it was the ergotherapist. She’s going to come to visit me here on Monday afternoon, inspect my apartment and suggest ways in which my life could be improved.

After a good wash and scrub up the car came for me and we went down to the Centre de Re-education.

And how the mighty have fallen! If it was depressing yesterday being taught how to go to bed and how to get up, today was even worse. Can you really imagine that it’s necessary for someone at my kind of age to need lessons on how to put on my socks?

The ergotherapist had noticed something with one of the muscles in my left thigh and she had a word with Severine, who spent our session working on that muscle to try to free it off. Not that it worked very much.

There are three lifts in the Centre de Re-education and two of them were broken down. As a result it was chaos trying to leave the building. In the end I climbed up the stairs and by the time that I was halfway up, that was me done for the rest of the day

Back here I bumped into my cleaner as I entered the building and she helped me up the stairs into my apartment.

The doctor rang me too. He’s already sent off the demand for the taxi to Paris but I wasn’t going to tell him to cancel it – at least, not until I have something in writing from the hospital.

But I’d told him that I was running low on medication when I’d written to him so he’s going to come to see me on Tuesday to check me over before he issues a new prescription.

And then I came in here and crashed out.

Tea tonight was something from the European Vegan Burger Mountain, with pasta and veg, and now that I’ve finished my notes I’m knocking off. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … all of this remedial treatment is al l very well but if the journey is killing me off it’s all pointless.

So right now I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow if the weather is better, and that’ll wear me out as well.

This weekend I’d better tidy up the apartment ready for all these visits next week. I seem to be in demand right now. It’s not usually like this, is it?

Sunday 5th November 2023 – MY CHOCOLATE AND COCONUT …

… biscuits with a hint of orange flavouring are absolutely excellent and I’ll make some more like that another time too.

And I’m glad that something went right today because not much else did.

For a start, I had another miserable night and it wasn’t until 11:30 this morning when I finally left the bed. I did mention last night that I needed a really good sleep.

Actually, I was in bed rather later than intended last night. After I’d dictated my radio notes I was on the point of going to bed when Alison came on line for a chat. And while I was chatting to Alison, my niece in Canada appeared too.

It’s really quite strange, this telepathy thing. I’d just been typing in my notes about making biscuits when up popped my niece – “here’s a lovely biscuit recipe that I found”.

And if I’d have had any peanut butter and maple syrup I’d have made them today instead.

It’s not the first time by a long way that there has been such telepathy. Nerina and I certainly had it and I’ve experienced it with other people too.

So after I awoke this morning, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And there was a huge pile of stuff on there, including a recurring dream that appeared a few times during the night. There was a party going on at someone’s house and a game of cards had been organised – a game of bridge. I’ve no interest in a game of bridge so while they crafted a scorecard to keep a late arrival happy I pretended to be dummy and that suited me fine. They wrote up the scores bearing in mind the fact that I hadn’t played, to which I had no objection. While they were playing I was wandering around. People were chatting about their medication. I noticed that one of the people here had a huge pile of medication but it was just a big lump of stuff so I sat down and began to sort it out into different types. I ended up in the end with a range going right across the table of all different types of medication. I tried my best to have it arranged in “morning, noon and night” too. I can’t remember now any more about this but it was another one of these dreams that went on for ages.

And then there was a big group of us. We’d been out somewhere and were on our way home. I was in BILL BADGER my old A60 van. We pulled up at a motel to stop there for the night. We ended up sleeping in a variety of rooms, 2 each to a room. I had someone whom I didn’t really know who seemed to be a reasonable guy, an older guy, rural type. The discussion came round to talking about ghosts and spirits. Just then I went into the bathroom but the sudden noise in the bathroom which was connected to the next room made the occupants in that room jump wo we had quite an exchange of conversation about spirits and ghosts etc. When I came back into my bedroom there had been some kind of issue about keys. I didn’t actually have my keys with me. I was convinced that I’d left them in the ignition but when I’d looked earlier they weren’t there. I remembered that I’d changed my trousers so the keys were in the pockets of the dirty ones. Now I wanted one of my mint sweets that were in the van. I found my keys, and with more teasing about ghosts being out there waiting etc I set out. When I reached the van what there was was a huge baker’s oven, the type with probably about 6 shelves. For some reason I opened one of the shelves. It was packed full of all kinds of strange food, a type that I hadn’t seen before, wrapped in portions. I was scratching my head wondering “what’s all this food about? What is it? Who is it for?”. I’d seen nothing like this in the past.

But that did remind me of an interesting court case where a woman was put on trial for having obtaining money by false pretences. She had been holding “seances” to attract visiting souls and charging fees for attendance, whereas the “visiting souls” were actually her friends pretending.
One of the witnesses gave his occupation as “Customs and Excise Officer”
“Testing spirits?” asked prosecuting counsel
“Yes” replied the witness “but not the type of spirits that we are discussing at the moment”.

There was something going on in a house about preparing for an operation. What first caught my eye was a row of cats all spread out across the top of the back of a settee watching a TV programme. The discussion came round to this operation. I volunteered to be one of the first to be treated, on the grounds that the quicker you start, the quicker you finish. That’s not like me at all. Usually I wait until the last minute before volunteering for something like that, especially something rather groovy and here I fell asleep)

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I am actually asleep when I’m dictating my notes, but in cases like this, when I refer to “falling asleep” what I mean is that everything suddenly goes quiet and then I can hear myself snoring.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed another group of us had gone out for a meal, a sort-of pizza evening. All 8 of us were sitting round a table. They began to bring out the slices of pizza. Depending on what pizza you ordered, you ended up with 1, 2 or 3 slices before anyone else was served. Some people were well on their way with their meal but others hadn’t even begun. The conversation came round to houses. I was talking about my house but I hadn’t realised that everyone else was from the UK. They began to ask me questions about my house. I explained as best as I could but it was just making the situation more confused. In the end someone turned round and said “I thought that you lived in France”. I replied “I do” which puzzled everyone even more. In the meantime my meal still hadn’t arrived. There was some kind of greasy-type things, crackers that were being passed around. I grabbed a box of those, sat down and began to eat them because by this time I was starving and I wasn’t sure when I’d receive my pizza. The conversation carried on and I began to talk about my little apartment in Granville.

One thing that I had forgotten about the previous dream was that we were staying the previous night in someone’s house before this meal. It was a Sunday morning and I’d left the bed to go to the bathroom. Just then my bedroom door opened. It was the woman of the place where I was staying, wondering if I was OK. I asked her what the problem was. She replied “it’s 16:00 and you’ve been asleep for 14 hours”. I explained about Sundays, how they are Days of Rest etc but I don’t think that she took it seriously. She was extremely concerned that I hadn’t shown any sign of life until just now. I think that she was rather offended that I’d chosen to spend all my time in bed asleep instead of coming down to mix with everyone else in the house at some reasonable point.

I was back in the dream about the pizzas later on. everyone else had gone to visit one of these 19th Century workingmen’s villages of the type built by philanthropists to house the employees in their factories. This was a village out in the countryside. After the factory had closed down years ago the village had fallen into ruin. Gradually people had been slowly restoring it. A group of us went. I remember having my breakfast with a family with 2 children, talking to them. Then I went off for a wander around the village on my own. It really was quite interesting because the original buildings were marked with the fact and buildings subsequently built mere marked as being later editions. It was clear that although a lot of it was in very poor condition some of it had been rebuilt quite nicely. There was an enormous amount of potential in this place. I began to wonder whether there might be some kind of small cottage for me to buy. By now I was actually running, pushing some kind of trolley in an effort to keep fit. I overtook the people with whom I’d had breakfast but I carried on running around the village like this looking at the shops – there was a good array of shops, even a fish and chip shop – and looking at the stone buildings. I was absolutely enthralled by the whole place and the possibilities that existed here.

At one point while I was wandering around that village I came across a car accident. 2 cars had collided. One of them looked quite bad but I’m sure that it wasn’t as badly damages as it looked so I began to measure things up to see whether it was safe to be on the road. The father of the 2 children began to ask me “why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that?” but the wife kept interrupting him saying “leave him alone to deal with it. It looked as if he knows more of what he’s doing than you do” which offended her husband quite a lot.

Of the vehicle that had come off worst in the accident I’d had part of the floor up, measuring the chassis for deflection. The guy asked in an exasperated tone why I was actually doing that. His wife told him again to keep quiet and let me continue with my work as I clearly seemed to know what I was doing

That took me right up to and beyond lunchtime so my porridge and cheese on toast was rather late today.

This afternoon I made a start on one of the radio programmes and then wandered off to make my biscuits. However, just after I’d sorted out the ingredients Ingrid telephoned me.

It was Ingrid’s birthday yesterday so I’d telephoned her but she was busy so she called me back today. And we had a Rosemaryesque chat that went on for 68 minutes, mainly about our illnesses.

The chats that Ingrid and I have are actually really quite interesting. We usually start off in French until someone can’t remember a word and then we switch to another language and we end up usually rotating through English, French, Dutch (Ingrid) and Flemish (me), quite often one person speaking in one language and the other replying in a different one.

Dutch and Flemish are very similar languages by the way, and if you know one you’ll understand the other, in the same way that a Londoner will understand Scots English and vice versa

Actually Ingrid was one of my two choices to come with me to this wedding in Michigan next weekend – the other being Rosemary after our success in the Arctic in 2019. But of the only two people who might be free, they are both too unfit to travel.

And that’s a shame because even though I’m not supposed to say it, it’s my favourite relative who is marrying and I would move heaven and earth to be there with her. But I can’t go on my own – my week in Belgium in September proved that.

So back at the biscuits. And a standard mix of 10/8/4 of flour and oats/butter and coconut oil/sugar with a generous helping of ground almonds, desiccated coconut, orange essence and vanilla essence and there we were.

While all of this was going on I’d had a dollop of pizza dough defrosting and when it was ready I made myself a pizza. Delicious as usual but I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I run out of my vegan cheese.

In between everything I finished off one of the radio programmes and so the first task tomorrow will be to finish off the second one, and then start the next after that.

The nurse should be coming tomorrow too in order to discuss my Covid injection with me. So I’d better hurry up and go to bed. I’ll have to have a good wash before he comes too. But at the moment, the shower is out of bounds.

And I’ve only just realised something – and that is that I must have just come in here out of the kitchen without using my crutches. Fancy that!

Sunday 18th September 2022 – THERE’S A NEW …

… kid in town today. Or new boat in the harbour, something like that. Someone whom we haven’t see before.

Her registration number begins with “BR” so that tells me that she comes from Brest down in Finisterre and that’s a long way away from here. Her name is Cotes De La Manche and was launched in 1997. she arrived in port from Antifer at lunchtime today.

She’s not a fishing vessel but an Oceanic Research Ship and travels out and about into the inner ocean monitoring the environment and has been recently involved in research into the effects of the cable that will connect the proposed offshore wind farm near Paimpol to the mainland.

What I was doing during the night was researching into the effects of a rather strange sleep and I’m still not sure about what happened.

It was rather a late night because having done everything that I intended to do, I watched a few films and the like on the internet until about 01:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

What was strange about that was at 08:38 I awoke. and it wasn’t just a brief roll-over or something like that, I was actually wide-awake. There was even a time when I was debating whether or not to raise myself from the dead.

Nevertheless, wiser counsels prevailed and I stayed put. Eventually I went back to sleep and leaving the bed at 11:25 is a much more valid proposition as far as I’m concerned on a Sunday.

After the medication there wasn’t all that much time do do anything until lunchtime. Porridge, cheese on toast and plenty of coffee went down really well. And there’s still some cheese left for tomorrow too

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to fins out where I’d been during the night. I was back on board a yacht again last night. I had a certain time during which I could be out by I kept on over-running it and being late. Sam said that they reminded her of a pop group whom she’d seen where they had gone on to warm up for the main act when they’d been asked but they stayed on for so long that the main act only had time for 4 numbers. I recalled seeing a group like that as well. I wondered whether she and I had actually been at the same concert.

And then I’d just been in the filthiest office you could imagine. There was oil everywhere and I do mean everywhere. I don’t know how the women working in it could possibly have managed without running away. It was awful. A whole group of us had gone there. I’d met up with Danny Jackson (a taxi proprietor in Crewe whom I used to know). Someone had repaired a hydraulic jack for him and were proudly showing it off. I thought to myself that this jack isn’t going to work. There’s no pressure in the seals for a start. He was outside doing something on a car so I took this jack outside to try to jack up my van. I had BILL BADGER at the time. It started to lift it up and the seals gave out and slid back down again. When I started to jack it up I noticed that one of the rear wheels of the van was in an awful slanting position. I hoped that it was just an effect of it being off the spring rather than something broken or warped, something like that. There were some stuffed animals there as well. I know that he had one so I brought it out to him. He wasn’t paying any attention to it so by the time that I finished I took it back inside. Then he was asking for it and someone said “Eric had one”. I replied “no, that was yours. I brought it out to you but you didn’t want it so I took it back”. He gave me a little lecture about moving his possessions so I thought that it was good that I hadn’t told him about the jack. I was hoping that this animal thing wasn’t going to be covered in oil. It was at that point that we all started to drift home again. I can’t say that I wasn’t happy to leave.

Later on I’d alighted from a bus or train or something and was walking up a hill to some kind of place. There were some people coming up the hill behind me whom I recognised. When I went round the corner and higher up there was a queue of people. I remembered that I’d been on holiday with them once before. They were all ready waiting to sign in at this place and so was I. I could hear them talking. One of them was asking “who shall we invite to come with us?”. They suggested a few names. If they suggested my name, which was unlikely, I’d refuse and tell them “well you’re all far too noisy for me. I’ve come here for the quiet life”.

At some point even later on there was something going on with a sailing ship. Many people including me were of the opinion that all of her rigging and tackle should be replaced because it’s over a certain number of years old. It doesn’t last for ever but the company was exhibiting the ship regardless. Of course people were climbing about in the tackle and if the tackle broke this would cost everyone a lot of money so we couldn’t understand why they weren’t doing it.

That took me up until it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk

And I didn’t even go beyond the threshold of the building before I had to grab hold of the camera.

The cold hand of doom that fell upon me as I left the building was another Nazgul that went flying by. A two-seater Nazgul too, the pilot having picked up a passenger back at the blast-off point in the field by the cemetery.

In fact there were probably a dozen or so Nazguls out there this afternoon having a flutter around. The wind had died down a little from the last couple of days and so it was much safer for them to be up in the air today than it might have been when the gale was blowing.

And before I even made it right across to the wall, there was a zodiac that I noticed out in the bay.

At first I thought that they might be fishermen but when I enlarged the photo back here later I could see that they were just sitting there, having a concentrated contemplation of the activities that might or might not be going on onshore.

Even more bizarrely, after about 10 minutes they moved off several hundred yards along the coast and stopped again for another contemplation.

No idea what they were up to but it smelt rather fishy to me. However, when you live just a few hundred yards from a Fish Processing Plant, everything seems to smell rather fishy around here.

And eventually I did actually make it over to the wall where I could look down onto the beach.

Quite few people down there this afternoon, although given how nice the weather was this afternoon I was expecting to see many more down there than I actually did.

Of those who were actually down there, some of them were having a little paddle about in the water and some had even gone for a swim in the sea.

This is presumably the swansong of summer, until everyone dresses up as penguins and goes for a run into the sea on Boxing Day.

Something else was moving around just off the Ile de Chausey and I’d been keeping an eye on it.

It was large and white and after a couple of minutes of reflection I realised that it was heading my way so I took a photograph of it.

No prozes for guessing who it was. When had a closer look at it I could see that it was in fact Belle France, the newest of the Ile de Chausey ferries, surrounded by all other kinds of water craft.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d go for a walk around the medieval city walls today to see what was happening there, so I set off through the crowds of people. It seemed that everyone was up here on the path today instead of down there on the beach.

One of the things that I have been saying rather a lot just recently is that with one thing and another, Summer seems to be coming to an end.

Nothing underlines that so much as this photo here. You’ll see that the crown of the diving platform has now been removed from its concrete pillar and the changing cabins on the Plat Gousset have been taken away too.

It’s no surprise that the cabins go into store once the crowds go home and they are no longer required. We’ve seen some terrific storms coming in there in the past and the cabins wouldn’t last long. You’d come back next Summer and find nothing but a pile of matchwood

Nothing else much going on this afternoon down at that end so I pushed on through the wilderness that used to be the Square Maurice Marland on my way home.

There’s a lovely pile of freight down on the quayside this afternoon.

A load of dumpers and other stuff presumably destined for a dealer in the Channel Islands are lined up by the fence waiting to be taken away.

Judging by the colours I first thought that they might have been “Kubota” equipment but they seem to be carrying the name of “Rusa”, which as far as I know, is an Indian control equipment company so that doesn’t sound as if it’s correct.

And this was where I suspected that there was something different in the port because I didn’t recognise the array of antennae just to the right.

After everything that we had seen yesterday flying around, up to this point we hadn’t seen a single aeroplane here in the vicinity, except for something miles out in the Baie de Granville.

However as I wandered away through the Square we heard the familiar droning of one of our old friends. The red powered hang-glider had been having a run out this afternoon and was now on her way home.

From down here it looked as if there was only one person aboard, so presumably it as simply a training flight or a flight to clock up the hours rather than a run out to see the sights.

There were however some strange sights to be seen elsewhere around the port.

These two refrigerated vans were parked with their rear doors opened back-to-back with each other as if they were exchanging loads. But with the driver of one of them sitting quietly in his cab, I was obviously missing something.

The last time that we saw a van parked on there with some rather bizarre goings-on around it, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it ended up in the water. Mind you, it had been there much longer than these two.

Several months longer, in fact.

On the way back home I went a new way, across the lawn behind the church.

Previously I’d seen this little gate and room in a bank of earth built right up to the base of the medieval city walls. This is exactly where I would expect the town’s armoury to be built, where there would be no chance of a stray cannonball striking it.

The construction of the walls began by the English in 1440 during the Hundred Years War, and extended and modified considerably over the next couple of centuries, so I can’t say when this room was constructed.

However by the late 14th Century the use of explosives in artillery was well-established. It wasn’t long afterwards that explosive shells of some primitive description took to the air so some protection to the entry to ensure that a shell didn’t hit it, such as might be provided by the church behind me, would be required.

After lunch I took the last lump of dough out of the freezer and it had been defrosting for a few hours.

later on this afternoon when it had defrosted I kneaded it out and rolled it. They I put it in the pizza tray to proof.

When it was ready I assembled it, remembering the olives this week, and put it in the oven to cook

It turned out quite nice again, and with not putting quite so many onions on it this week, seemed to taste better too. It goes quite well with fresh tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and olives.

So now that that’s out of the way and I’ve written my notes I’m going to bed. I have a radio programme to do so I need to be up and about early.

It’ll probably take another long, exhausting session to complete it. Sometime between 4-5 hours seems to be par for the course but I wish that it could be done quicker.

And sometime as well I’ll have to think about doing 2 per week as my stock is slowly exhausting itself as I take a week off here and there.

But that’s not this week. I’ll have to make plans for that another time.

Wednesday 13th April 2022 – GUESS WHO …

… has a broken kneecap? And for a fourth time too.

The first time was when I went head-over-handlebars on a motorbike when I was 16. The second time was when I slid a motorbike on a greasy road when I was 19 and the weight of two people and the bike itself (a 350cc Triumph) fell on it. The third time was skiing in Scotland when I was in my 20s – and I drove BILL BADGER, my old A60 van, home again.

As for when I did it in the fourth time, all that I can think of is that it was when I had that fall and broke my hand just before I went off on my transatlantic trip across to the High Arctic on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR in the summer of 2019.

But taking a couple of years to manifest itself (it collapsed last spring, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) is some going.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I had a lie-in this morning. Not that I intended to but at 07:30 – and at 08:00 – I couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to leave my stinking pit. 09:25 was much more like it.

Having had my medication, sorted out the mails and messages and organised this week’s musical playlist on the computer, I had a listen to the dictaphone. And there was tons of stuff on there too. I’d had a busy night. No wonder I was in no hurry to leave my stinking pit.

The night started off with a huge long rambling dream about refugees. Again I had them with me and I arrived at a railway station. There were rooms above so we took a room above there. We had to carry all of their possessions up into the room above. That meant 4 or 5 trips in the lift to do it. There were all kinds of things happening – there was some objects still stuck in a lift from someone, I kept on bumping into all kinds of old schoolfriends while I was doing it, there was interaction with authority, one of those things that just went on and on and on while we were trying to move these refugees into this room. I’ve missed out most of it I think but the interesting part was of course all these people from school who kept appearing every time the lift either went up or went down and the doors opened. There would always be someone whom I knew waiting there. One person in particular was there once and also other people

So I had these refugees trying to get them into the upstairs room at this station passing by loads of people whom we knew. Some wanted arguments, some wanted help. I had papers from the Red Cross and had to show them. We were going up and down in this lift moving their stuff into this little room. The dream went on like this for ages. We met so many kinds of people and friends and one or two other people who helped us on our way but the farther we could get away from Vienna or Germany or wherever it was the better

My brother had bought a car, a Ford Cortina estate over the internet. A Mark IV model but he said that it was grey so we imagined that it would be the colour of my father’s old one. He was sitting down trying to work out how to get out and get it because his timetable was so full, he was going here and going there, he was having to work something else. In the end it was going to be several weeks before he could get it so I said that I would go for it. It turned out that it was near Foinavon that’s not the name but it’s on the railway line over Slochd Summit so that rules out Forsinard so of course the Inverness train is the place to go. I checked on the timetables, found the correct train and set off. I had to change at a big station to catch one of the stopping trains that went up the Highland line. The train pulled in and I checked with the guard that there was a local service coming up behind. All the doors closed and I thought that I’d missed the opportunity to leave the train but the door was opened from outside so I had to fight my way out. I found myself on some kind of temporary wooden platform which was just framework and no flats. There were people balancing awkwardly on there trying to enter the train and I was trying to alight. Other people who had already alighted were trying to work out how to go down to the main platform. I had to point them the way. This was a scene of total chaos as everyone who alighted from this train onto this wooden framework or whatever was trying to fight their way down to where everyone else was down on the main platform. I was thinking about all the things that needed doing, that I hoped that the car had enough fuel as it was getting late and I imagined that most places for fuel would be closed round here. I’d have to go to Inverness or Stirling or somewhere to fuel up and I hoped that everything else would be OK. I could imagine 1001 things that could go wrong between me picking up the car and brining it back home again.

I don’t know how this one started but I was working in the American embassy doing something, running errands. There was some kind of issue with the Russian desk in this large building and the Russians suddenly started firing loaves of bread over to the Americans. I caught a few and stored them up but they were coming over more and more and more. Eventually there was a pause so I walked across the hall to the Russian desk, found their senior officer, thanked him very much for sending all the bread to me but I told him that I now had enough fresh bread that I needed so if he wanted to send me any more could he make sure that it was frozen so that I could keep it in store. This was greeted by stunned silence throughout the building. After I had said my little piece I walked back to where the American desk was. I was beckoned over to the desk of the Ambassador’s personal secretary. She said “don’t you ever do anything like that ever again” but she was laughing and so was everyone else. I imagined that although i’d been told off, that everyone else was really quite sympathetic and really quite pleased that I’d gone out there and confronted them over it.

We were a big group of teenagers last night wandering around the streets of Crewe. I can’t remember how this worked out but we ended up at the house of a girl to do something. Her mother came to the door and in the end she fetched this girl. We were all around the back having something of a laugh etc. This girl was being quite chatty and quite friendly. Then it became time for us to leave so I asked her for her ‘phone number. She was possibly playing a game and in the end ended up trying to give me her father’s ‘phone number. She said that she could always remember it because it was 8 over 6, the 6 numbers at the end. Of course I immediately told them what it was, which was 675000 (which of course it isn’t). She gradually warmed a bit and in the end asked me for my ‘phone number. I didn’t have a card on me so I had to borrow a card off someone else, try to write my number but we didn’t have a pen that worked. In the end she decided that she would ‘phone me so that I’d have her ‘phone number and she’d have mine. That was what she did. But all of this took ages and there was much more to it than this but I can’t remember now. It was another one of these dreams that slowly developed into something extremely warm and pleasant and the type that I would want to carry on for ever. I awoke in a night sweat, which I haven’t had for a good few months. “I wish that this could have gone on for ever, this particular dream” I said into the dictaphone, so being able to talk like that while I’m asleep shows you exactly what kind of effect it had on me.

But low-flying loaves of bread as well? As I have said before… “and on many occasions too” – ed … what goes on during the night is much more exciting than anything that happens to me during the day these days.

To take me up to shower time I had a play with a few more photos of the High Arctic 2019 and I wish I could remember the name of the hill on which the flagpole is erected at Dundas Harbour on Devon Island. All that I can think of, and I know that it’s not correct, is the painter Samuel Gurney Cresswell who sailed to the High Arctic as Lieutenant with James Clark Ross and then with Robert McClure.

If I had to pick one of my favourite Arctic explorers he would be up there somewhere, not the least for his quote “a voyage to the High Arctic ought to make anyone a wiser and better man”. Well, it didn’t work for me, as the events of the last few days of my 2019 trip bear witness.

After a shower and a weigh-in (and I’ve lost 600g) I had lunch and then cleared off with Caliburn to the physiotherapist. It’s my last session with her today as she moves on to pastures new. She’s fixed me up with a colleague, but I bet that the new girl won’t be anything like as nice as Sonia. She can massage my clavicles any time she likes.

The trip to Avranches was complicated today because of all the roadworks and road closures. I ended up having to meander through the countryside and then it took me a while to find the centre. And when I found the centre, to find the building where I needed to be.

The scanning machine was made by General Electric, one of my former employers, so I knew that it would be good. And eventually they shoved me through it.

The doctor came to see me afterwards and told me about my kneecap, and also the fact there’s some cartiledge damage too. She’ll send a report to my GP who I’ll have to go to see in due course, but I have to be aware that surgery is not ruled out

There was an Intermarché next to the clinic so seeing as it’s been a few years since I’ve had a good look around inside one, I popped in. But there wasn’t anything there much that interested me. I bought one or two bits and pieces and some frozen peas and beans, and that was my lot.

Then I had to fight my way back through the roadworks. And it was good to give Caliburn a decent run-out this afternoon.

Tea was a taco roll (seeing as I had bought some this afternoon) with the left-over stuffing from yesterday, with rice and veg and it really was nice. But I have plenty of mushrooms left so it looks as if it will be a potato and mushroom curry for tea tomorrow.

So a broken kneecap now. Whatever next? At the rate that bits are dropping off me these days I’m at the stage where I’m afraid to go to the toilet.

In fact I haven’t felt so nervous since I was standing in a toilet next to Shakin’ Stevens but that’s another story for another time.

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today but I’ve felt better and accomplished more today than I have done for quite some considerable time.

And it wasn’t the coffee at midday that fired me up either because I was well on my way long before then.

In fact, I was once more up and – well, not exactly about but up nevertheless – before the third alarm.

Last night I had my cars dotted around in 3 or 4 lock-ups or buildings in this old factory place. I was waiting there because we were all about to go off with Adventure Canada again. People suddenly started leaving, swarming off to the reception area so I followed them. i was chatting to a load of people about the Arctic, saying how much I liked it, listing all the times that I’d been. People were really impressed that I’d been so often. When I got towards the meeting point I could see Jerry there. I asked “what number am I, Jerry? I don’t know and I can’t find a list and I can’t think”. He had a look and replied “Eric, you’re n°71 – you have a long time to wait yet”. I went back to my unit and was sorting through some wheels. There was one that matched THE A60 VAN THAT I HAD YEARS AGO so I went to put that back in the back of the vehicle. There I was thinking that I was short of wellingtons but there were about 5 pairs and various other pairs of shoes, loads of other stuff like that in the back of the van. It was all looking pretty good in there with all the stuff. Then the thought occurred to me that when I’m called I’m going to have to take a Ford Anglia with me – a 100E model but I would never ever get it through the personnel door. It would be absolutely impossible to get it out through the vehicle door because there was so much stuff in the way. How was I going to do that? Would I have to get the vehicle out sideways on its side and slide it through the personnel door? Would it fit? I was busy thinking about all of this and I awoke in a fever.
There was another voyage last night too, this one involving an old sailing ship, something like Marité. I knew that there would be some kids on it but that’s pretty much everything that I can remember now. I can’t remember anything else.

And having done that, I actually excelled myself by dealing with another batch of the arrears and we are now down to single figures.

Having dealt with that I did a little (only a little) tidying up and then had a good look over my Welsh notes ready for my lesson.

There were just three of us at class today so it was pretty intense and fast-paced. And to my surprise, not only did I manage to keep up with it, I found that I could remember much more than I thought that I did.

This afternoon I cracked on with the radio programme and that’s actually finished now. I missed out on one of my guitar sessions but I would rather finish the programme and worry about the guitar rather than the other way round.

There was the usual break mid-afternoon for my walk around the headland.

There were quite a few people out there enjoying the walk, and the brats were there orienteering too. There’s also a big change in the chantier navale too. The Ten Green Bottles that were hanging on the wall in there have now reduced themselves to Five.

But strangely, while that was the situation in there, there was nothing much else going on involving boats. The fog of yesterday had lifted somewhat, so at least I could see that there was nothing out there at all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a while ago I posted a photo of a strange van that has been transformed into a mobile home, with an advert on the side seeking a (female) companion to accompany the owner on his travels.

The van is now back and the adverts (slightly differently-worded than before) are still on the side and the rear door. Here’s clearly not had much luck in his quest.

Back here I finished off the radio programme and then had half an hour on the guitar before tea.

Tonight I made falafel with steamed vegetables and vegan cheese sauce followed by some more of the apple crumble. That’s almost all gone now. Tomorrow will see it off and as I’ll be baking more bread on Thursday I’ll make a rice pudding for a couple of days.

This evening I went out for a walk and my usual runs, and ran slap bang into a young-adult orienteering competition, followed by a group of people having a late-night conducted tour of the walls.

All of this rather cramped my style and while I managed my three runs, the photos that I took didn’t come out well enough. The ones that I wanted to take, I couldn’t as there were too many people in the shot.

It’s rather early now and I’ve already finished what I wanted to do. i’ve not had a day like this for quite a while. I know that there will be a downside to all of this but I hope that it won’t be for a while.

There’s a lot of catching up that I need to do.

Wednesday 27th February 2019 – DESPITE MY …

… early night I took ages to go off to sleep. And when I did, being wide-awake at 04:45 was not what I actually had in mind.

I did manage to go off again to sleep at some point but much to my, yours, and everyone else’s surprise, I was up and about before the final alarm went off.

There had been time to go off on a voyage too. I’d been out driving in one of my own vans – that might even have been Bill Badger, my old A60 half-ton van. There was something about extracting digital images off kerbstones so I had a little electrical kit that could do that and I was driving up and down the streets doing it. At one point, there on the street corner was a girl called Carolyn (it’s amazing who appears in my travels) whom I knew probably about 35 years ago and who I encountered quite by chance under strange circumstances 10 years later. She was much younger than she was when I knew her, and dressed in a fashion that would have been inappropriate for the house, never mind standing on a street corner. I was having difficulty extracting these images, to which she replied that the electricity was usually turned off at midnight. I explained that it wasn’t midnight as yet and carried on, but with no result. In the end I decided to move on, but I told Carolyn that I’ll drop by later to see if she was still there.
A little later I was in my room – or, rather, not my room in Davenport Avenue. I was wrestling with a couple of different computers (as usual these days) trying to make sure that all of my confidential files and open web pages were just on one computer being run off just one web browser so that I could close down all of my searches and research in a hurry if some unauthorised person came too close.

We had the usual morning procedure of course, followed by a some what later breakfast – a bowl of porridge and some orange juice.

Interrupted by the sound of crowds assembling on the car park of the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs. No idea what’s happening there.

And while we’re on the subject of breakfast, that reminds me – apart from a coffee at the football on Saturday night I haven’t had a coffee now since the Tuesday morning that I was in Leuven.

Once I’d done what needed doing, I settled down to work. And haven’t I been a busy boy today?

I’ve amended all of the blog entries all the way back from 13th December 2018 to the 1st November 2018.

Not only that, I’m a long way down the text database for November 2018 too.

When I have finished that, whenever it might be, I’ll be starting on October. So you can see – I’ve hardly been idle.

For lunch, it was yet another beautiful day so I went to sit on my wall.

I was going to say “with my butties” but I forgot to defrost some bread from the freezer.

So in the end I took the little bread left over from the weekend and a packet of crisps that needed eating, and watched the fishing boats unloading at the quayside.

That wasn’t all of the action down there either.

Down there at the bottom end of the commercial harbour is our old friend Thora. She must have come in on the morning tide from Jersey.

Loads of merchandise all around the crane, presumably awaiting loading. But I couldn’t see any of the crew around there at all. Presumably they have all gone off for lunch too.

Over the past week or so I’ve been telling you all that it’s soon to be Carnaval, and I’m going to be locked in up here for the weekend.

But I shan’t be alone.

The public car park outside our premises is being transformed into a mobile home park full of caravanettes as all of the grockels turn up to come and pollute the atmosphere again.

But why should I complain? It’s activities like this out-of-season that keeps the town ticking over for the rest of the year.

And that’s why I’m here.

There was the usual mid-afternoon walk too.

The day really was beautiful and the sea was gorgeous and a nice deep blue colour.

It was one of those days here when it really was a pleasure to be out and about – me in just a sweater (and trousers too of course) in late February.

My little walk took me around the headland of the Pointe du Roc.

At the bungalow round by the lighthouse and the coastguard station, there was a lorry there. This brings back many happy memories of my time in the Auvergne.

No mains drainage there of course, nor here, apparently. The tanker is here busily pumping out the contents of the septic tank.

Presumably to treat its 75mm gun with Dettol.

The air was very calm and still, but there must have been a long rolling sea coming in right across the Atlantic with some terrific force.

You can tell that by the power of the waves as they break on the angle of the sea wall down there.

It’s quite surprising really, comparing the wind speed with the force of the water.

While I was watching the waves, we had another one of our residents returning to the fold.

There must have been a ferry trip out to the Ile de Chausey today, because she turned up back here on the end of her round-trip while I was out there.

I was feeling rather envious, because this would have been a marvellous day to have gone out for a sale, and I suppose that with Carnaval, the tourist season is starting up.

And I missed out the chantier navale today too, didn’t I?

It’s quite busy in there today. We have the yacht in there of course, and Armor halfway through its respray down there.

The modern little fishing boat is interesting too, by my attention is drawn to the big wooden boat of some description in the centre of the photo.

I wonder what that is and what they are doing to it. I shall have to go for an investigation.

We saw yesterday the workers repairing the flashing around the roof windows of the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

It looks as if they might now be finished. They were busy loading up a lorry with all of the left-over building stuff.

Presumably the container and the machine will be leaping aboard too and disappearing off into the sunset some time soon.

I’ll probably find out tomorrow.

When I returned, I got on the ‘phone again.

I tried another tack with the bank, going in through the soft-underbelly. Not for nothing do I have friends. And about 15 minutes later, they discovered a way that might help me out and which will really upset the Worst Bank In The World.

Back to work with the text database, and then a stop for tea.

While I was finding my crisps, I found a pack of tortilla wraps, so I made myself a pile of stuffing with kidney beans and had a couple with some pasta.

I was stuffed too. No pudding or anything, so I’m doing my best to cut down my appetite. It will probably help if I keep on drinking as much liquid as I am right now.

But then I’ll have my water retention issues.

On my evening walk around the walls, I almost flattened a pedestrian skulking in a dark corner with an obviously secret cigarette.

But apart from that, not a soul. No matter how nice and pleasant it was out there.

Well, not quite alone. Minette was sitting on a car bonnet taking the air and enjoying herself. So I gave her a good stroke and came home.

I’m off for an early night now. Although it’s Thursday, I’m going to be doing a good shopping round.

No sense in going out on Saturday. The town will be heaving with tourists, the streets will be blocked and I probably won’t be able to get out at all.

Do it first before it’s too late.

fishing boat coming in to unload port de granville harbour manche normandy france

yacht speedboat granville manche normandy france

Sunday 23rd September 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that I have given endless amounts of grief to all kinds of Border Patrol, immigration and security services in the past, and on occasions too numerous to enumerate.

And so I take my hat off to Officer Allen of the US Immigration Service who saw me today at Bridgewater, Maine today. If every Immigration Officer were as friendly, courteous and helpful as he, travelling from one country to the next would be an absolute pleasure.

Yes, I’ve been out and about on my travels today. But it was touch and go at one point.

What didn’t help was that, despite it being Sunday, I forgot to switch off the alarm and so that’s guaranteed to get me off on the wrong foot.

I was in the middle of the High Arctic too, doing a guided tour in, of all things, Bill Badger, the old A60 van that I had in the 1970s. When the tour was over, two people – a couple – came over to offer me their services and while I took down their details I knew that I wouldn’t ever be using them, for the least of the reasons being that there are only two seats in the front of the van.

With it being early, I loitered around for a while and then when others started to move around I joined in, had my medication (I’ve found it now) and a coffee.

We all poured out of the house where Amber’s boyfriend was waiting for us, and we shot off down the road to the border. I need a Green Card to cross over, and so I had my pleasant encounter, and then off to Presque Ile in Maine.

It’s my custom when I’m here to treat everyone to Sunday lunch so the Oriental Pearl Chinese buffet was the place to visit. They all tucked into the buffet while the chef made me a vegetable stir-fry with rice.

Next stop was Marden’s.

That’s like Noz only bigger and with more stuff, and many of the tools in Strider have come from there in the past. But today, I bought nothing. Strider and I won’t be going far so I don’t need much.

Back here I hit the wall again and I was gone. Three hours this time, and isn’t this becoming ridiculous? I dunno where I’ll be going with all of this and if I don’t sort myself out soon I won’t make my bus back to Montreal on Friday night.

But later on I came round and surprisingly, had a new lease of life. I could even manage a sandwich. George was back from Winnipeg so he came round and we all had a chat.

But now I’m off to bed. I need to be on the road tomorrow and I have a lot of things to do.

But first I need a good night’s sleep.

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

No sooner had I settled down than we had a rainstorm. And while it might not have been as intense as the other night, a rainstorm it most certainly was. And it went on and on and on until I never thought that it would end. Certainly, for four hours it kept it up because I remember looking at the time when I went out in the middle of the night to check that the stream right by my tent wasn’t going to burst its banks and sweep me away.

And that’s a shame too because for once I was comfortable in here. Now that I’ve rearranged the inside of Strider I can actually reach the bed and I pinched the mattress off it and that made quite a difference. And I must have dozed off during the proceedings because I was on my travels again. We needed to obtain some information from a certain guy and the best way to do this was to find someone to impersonate his secretary. She was a small blond who did her hair in a special way with a long pony tail, so we found a girl who resembled her from a distance and who, with a hairpiece, could pass close enough to fool the security cameras. So when this other girl went to lunch we infiltrated our girl into the building, but while she was in the ladies room checking her hair, the real secretary came in and was astonished to see her doppelganger. Our girl solved the problem by knocking the real secretary into next week with a frying pan and that was that.
But later, I was on the move again in my old van (it might even have been Bill Badger, the Austin A60 van that I had for years) with, of all people, my brother. He needed coal and there was just one place to go in Crewe for bagged coal, so off we went. When we arrived there, I was absolutely whacked and so I sent him in while I had a sleep, but anyway he came out to say that there was no coal (I’d heard this conversation anyway). I asked him if he’d asked if there was anywhere else where he could get it but he said that he hadn’t. But he knew where we could go, so I told him that I wasn’t going to mess up my van by putting loose coal into it. He’d also needed to post a letter (price £0:09) but they only had a stamp for £0:08 in there so the sales lady there sold him that stamp and told him to go to the post office and tell them that he’ll post anther letter with a stamp for £0:01 in it, and the’ll accept that. Such weird things as that happen when I’m on a nocturnal ramble, but even in that kind of state I knew enough that it seemed simpler to me to simply stick the stamp for £0:01 on the outside of the letter with the stamp for £0:08 and save the discussion.

And so while you admire the very basic, very primitive and very very free camp site on the outskirts of Greenville, I woke up to an inch of water inside the tent in the bottom corner, which was rather disconcerting but not surprising given the amount of rain that we had had during the night.

Water will always leak in around the zip and so you always pitch your tent with the entrance pointing downhill and you sleep in the uphill bit and even if it does rain in a little you can stay relatively dry. But I’ll go to Walmart, buy some more of these super-duper heavy duty tent pegs that I bought the other day, and stick the big tarpaulin that Rachel gave me over the top next time that the weather looks threatening.

A quick coffee and I was off down the road into Greenville

Parked up here in the town centre, I had a very nice piece of entertainment.

It had been seaplane fly-in weekend at the weekend here on Moosehead Lake, and there were still two left tied up at the quayside. And as I left Strider in order to admire the view, one of them started up, left his berth, and came right across to where I was standing, right by the paddle-steamer Kathadin, which you all saw in 2013 when I was here because, in the famous words of the legendary Jimmy Ruffin, “I’ve passed this way before”.

And so he (the seaplane, not Jimmy Ruffin) did a few laps of the bay in order to warm up his engine to operating speed, and then shot off down the lake.

After a run of about a quarter of a mile he heaved himself into the air and off he went.

And off I went too, to see about this log cabin.

And I was disappointed too. It seems that prices have increased considerably since I was here and what I want has priced itself out of the market. Not only that, many of the items that were included in the price back then are now optional extras and so what looked two years ago like $20,000 on the site all in and delivered is going to end up being twice that, and twice as much work too.

In fact, I can go as far as to say that my journey for the first month of my stay in North America this year has been a period of 30 disappointments. “But smile!” they say. “Things could be worse!” And so I”m smiling – and you know what that means.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Over the road was a hardware store and they are agents for log cabins. Nothing like as de-luxe as what was available back where I’d just been, but then neither was the price, and this looks much more “like it” from that point of view. I’m going to have to give this some further consideration.

Ably assisted by The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav, I left Greenville by the main highway that goes south-east to Millinocket and you can see what a beautiful road this highway is. Very reminiscent of the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Strider, as befits any good ranger, took it in his stride … "ohhh, very good" – ed … and I can see the benefits of having a solid truck with decent all-weather off-road tyres. The Dodges that I used to have wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down here

I had to stop for a minute or two for a gypsy’s, and found myself right by the rapids on the river just here.

This river goes down eventually past Millinocket, and while you’ll see hundreds of timber lorries down the roads here, even as late as the 1930s it’s suggested that they were still floating logs down here to the huge lumber mill down there, even past rapids like this.

If you were with me in 2013, you’ll remember our discovery of the grave of a flotteur de bois that we discovered at the foot of another series of rapids not too far from here.

At Millinocket, I nipped onto the Interstate for half an hour and then took the old road up to Presque Ile

This is another one of those roads that can be classed as one of the most beautiful roads in North America. It’s all up hill and down dale and shows Upper Maine at its beautiful best.

It’s another one of those roads that can only be driven properly on a big old single-cylinder long-stroke motorcycle and a beautiful 600cc side-valve Panther solo would be a pleasure to drive up here. And I deeply regret the one that I missed out on a few years ago.

But that’s not looking too optimistic, is it? That’s right over Presque Ile where I’m going. I don’t fancy camping in that.

And at Presque Ile I had a little success. Walmart did indeed have one of the slimline air beds that I need for the bed that I’m going to need for Strider, and they also had (at just $8:00) a little wooden fold-flat table, the size that you’d have by your chair for your coffee and cake. This is a good size for Strider, to cook on, eat off and use as a desk.

And at the Super Save shop, that has a good vegan range of food, I treated myself to a pot of carrot-flavoured vegan hummus.

It was pitch-black by now, even though it was only 17:00 and suddenly the storm broke. And how it broke too! I wasn’t going to camp in this – not under any circumstances.

And as I left Presque-Ile, the “Budget Traveller” motel appeared in the gloom. $59:95 including breakfast, and I was entitled to a discount on that rate too. I’d had a free night last night and so I wasn’t going to miss out on any of that.

There was a microwave in the room too and so I treated myself to a vegan pizza (I have plenty of my vegan sliced cheese) and that was gorgeous;

But now it’s 20:28 – I’m watching film, but my bad night last night has caught up with me and any second now I’m going to drop ….

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

-1

Saturday 28th March 2015 – I’VE BEEN CARRYING ON …

… the moving round of everything today, despite it being a Saturday.

I’m annoyed though that it’s taking me 10 times longer than I anticipated. I’m nowhere near anything like finished and that’s depressing. Mind you, I did find €2:12 in loose change mixed up in the pile of dust so I can’t say that it wasn’t rewarding. It works out at about €0.25 per hour and you can’t say fairer than that.

Anyway, the two wardrobes up here are emptied and dismantled, and all of the spare bedding has gone downstairs into the wardrobe in the bedroom along with the clothes that were hanging up.

I’ve swept up all of the dust where the wardrobes used to be and moved the desk into that space. That means that the alcove is almost empty and the water tanks can go in there whenever I’m ready to start the plumbing.

There’s tons more stuff to be moved out to the bedroom, and not only that, rearranging things has created piles more rubbish all of its own and all of this will need to be sorted out too.

This is going to take forever.

In between times I went to St Eloy for some shopping. Not to the Intermarche at Pionsat, you’ll notice. And there’s a reason for this. That is that I’ve been noticing a gradual increase in prices there. The fruit and veg are no longer affordable and the quality is going downhill rapidly. I don’t mind cutting down on quality if I’m cutting down on price, or paying more out for better quality, but this is starting not to work. I reckon that ocompared with the prices at the Pionsat Intermarche, I’ve saved about €4:00 on the weekly shopping bill.

At the footy tonight, Pionsat lost 2-0 to Montel Villosanges. No complaints about the result – the Chimps were easily the better side and Pionsat offered very little. The defence was quite rocky, with Matthieu in goal performing heroics to keep the score down, and the midfield and the attack were pretty ineffective. It’s all looking quite depressing.

I was on my travels again during the night. I was with the two guys with whom I played bass in a rock group in the 1970s. We were going somewhere in Bill Badger, the A60 van that I had in those days, and we had a pile of scaffolding to move so we were loading it up on the roof of the van. Ohh happy days!

-2

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: austin A60 van

Tuesday 9th December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Tuesday 18th November 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

Sunday 7th January 2024 – WHAT A WAY …

Friday 5th January 2024 – HERE I ALL AM…

Sunday 17th December 2023 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

Thursday 7th December 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

Sunday 5th November 2023 – MY CHOCOLATE AND COCONUT …

Sunday 18th September 2022 – THERE’S A NEW …

Wednesday 13th April 2022 – GUESS WHO …

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

Wednesday 27th February 2019 – DESPITE MY …

Sunday 23rd September 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

Monday 14th September 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT

Saturday 28th March 2015 – I’VE BEEN CARRYING ON …

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