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LIVE: 26th October 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… at dialysis, I had a session where nothing seemed to go wrong, and it passed this afternoon without the slightest of worries.

On top of that, the médécin de garde this afternoon was Emilie the Cute Consultant, and what could any man want more than that?

In fact, I had an idea that it was going to be a good day today. Although it wasn’t early when I went to bed last night, it wasn’t as late as many have been just recently. And once I was in bed, I went pretty much straight to sleep.

Although I have a couple of vague memories of waking up during the night, I must have gone more or less straight back to sleep because I don’t really remember very much at all until the alarm going off at 06:29.

As usual, it took me a while to rise to my feet, and the first task was, like it always is these days, to go to unlock the front door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives.

The second task was different today. It was to go to stir the chilli mix. It had been in the slow cooker all night, and it still hadn’t boiled at that point, I noticed. Consequently, I put it on “high” to give it a kick start and went into the bathroom to organise myself for the day, including having a shave ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant in case she examines me.

When I’d finished in there, I went back into the kitchen to check the chilli. By now, it was bubbling away, so I gave it a really good stir and turned the temperature down to “medium” and left it for a while.

Back in here, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

We were at some kind of meeting, and there were hordes and hordes of people there. We were sitting in seats and we were all crammed in. It was a really tight fit to have everyone in there and seated. There was virtually no leg room at all. I was sitting right near the back with a group of people around me and we were getting on really well. The final day of this meeting, they were taking everyone off into the city nearby for a sightseeing tour, but it had started to rain, and quite a lot of people had decided that they weren’t going to go, including a couple of our little group, so we were debating what we were going to do. I was interested in one of these girls, so I was wondering if she was going to stay here too or if she was going to go back to her room or whatever, but anyway, I got up and went for a walk around to stretch my legs, and despite the huge meal that we had had earlier, there was some kind of small running buffet where people could make sandwiches and so on. I noticed my Welsh teacher from last year sitting on the front row talking. So I had a quick glance at this food, and they had bourbon biscuits, so despite the meal, I helped myself to a couple of those and walked back to my seat to see what the other people in our group had decided.

Here I am once more with another little group of friends. But apart from that, there’s nothing in this dream that I can readily identify. However, it does have a very familiar ring to it and I’m sure that there’s been something like this happening before, but I just can’t place it.

The presence of my previous Welsh teacher is interesting too, although I’ve no idea why she’s there.

As for the bourbon biscuits, the cheap Tesco ones are in fact vegan, and on several occasions when I was over in the UK, I’d bring back several packets to keep me going. And that gives me an idea – why don’t I ask my chatbot if he can work out a good recipe for me? I may as well try.

… "And as a matter of fact, he did ask, and his chatbot came up with an excellent recipe" – ed …

There was also something else. My friend from the USA rang me and was talking about going to some kind of wholesale shop for things. But first, the story was about his vehicle that had been stolen. I said that it was probably in Canada or somewhere like that, being used by someone else, although I knew where it was, I knew who had stolen it, and I knew the reason why, so I wasn’t going to say anything. This person who had had it had inadvertently put the vehicle’s registration number on line in a blog entry. My friend said that he had looked for the vehicle on line and he hadn’t been able to see it, except for something in Canada, so that gave me a little relief. In the meantime, he said – he asked me if I could look up in a USA directory the way to get from his place to somewhere else in the area. I had to hunt down three or four maps and they were all the wrong ones. In the end, I found the correct one just as he was returning to the ‘phone. He told me that he was going to go to this wholesale shop using the card of someone else. She turned out to be a girl at this meeting with whom I was talking. I asked him how he had met her, and he said that he was at the meeting last year and that was where they hooked up for a while.

It looks as if I stepped back into that first dream later on, but this is another dream that means nothing at all to me. I’m not sure why the car would be involved, why I’d be expected over here in France to look at a map and why a girl in the UK would have a trade card for the USA that she would let someone else use.

I was in the USA last night with my van. I was driving down these roads towards Texas and there was a heavy fog approaching, so I didn’t want to be on the road when there was this heavy fog, so I pulled off by the side of the road, right by a cemetery. I went to have a look in the cemetery, and one of the things that I noticed was a huge monument on a grave, and I read it. It was by some guy who had died in Texas, and on his tombstone was written a quote that he had made, which was “don’t ever go to Texas because all you ever see are headstones and monuments in graveyards”. I walked back and climbed back on board the coach, and there were only two or three people there, so I asked them where everyone had gone. They replied that everyone else had gone to walk up and down a hill. I waited for them all to come back, and I asked the guy in charge where they’d been, and he said that they’d been for a walk along a canal. So I set off and carried on driving, and we were passing through all these small villages that looked very much like English villages. We ended up in a square in one of these places, which was magnificent, with a couple of archways in and a couple of archways out, and a pseudo black and white shop. I suggested to the guy in charge that we stop here and let people photograph for five minutes, so he gave everyone a fifteen minute break for a coffee, and I went to park up my motorbike outside a shop. The guy inside the shop came along and helped me padlock it too with another padlock on another hook. I asked him for a key, and he gave me twenty cents. I wandered off and took a few photos, and when it was time to go back, I went back to the shop. I unpadlocked one end and the guy unpadlocked the other. A third guy came over and asked me about Audis. I told him that they were expensive cars. He wanted to go over and have a look at my van, so he went over and had a look at it, then he went inside and told the passengers that I hadn’t given him a tip for holding the motorbike and that I was probably going to beg them for a tip at the end of the holiday. I threw him off and we set off again in the coach. We ended up by the sea. Someone had said that they could see the sea from where we’d stopped. But here, we came to a very narrow entry and pulled out onto a main road. The guy in charge asked me which way, but I said that I didn’t know because no-one had told me which hotel or even which town I was supposed to be going to. I drove the coach along a bit of the way and the road disintegrated into a kind of woodland. We climbed out of the coach and walked through the woods, and the coach followed us. We ended up at this big hotel that looked more like a hospital. This, apparently, was where we were supposed to be.

This one is the most weird of them all.

If I were to point out every inconsistency in this dream, we’d be here forever trying to explain them. But the most important is how my mode of transport changed from being a van, a coach and a motorbike and then back again, and then there was the image of a self-driving coach taking itself through the woods.

It’s probably best if I were to say nothing and let you try to work the rest of them out for yourselves. Perhaps someone can identify if this relates to anything else that has happened in the past.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, but a little late today. With her oppo taking over tomorrow, I imagine that there has been a rush for last-minute injections and blood samples. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … she has “the touch”, whereas her oppo doesn’t.

While she was working on my legs and feet, she told me of her plans for her week off. At St Malo over the weekend there’s the start of a single-handed yacht race – the Route du Rhum – between Brittany and the Antilles, finishing at Guadeloupe. She’s off to witness the start and to wish everyone bonne route. It’s a race that takes place every four years, and the record time is well under seven days.

After she left, I made my breakfast and while I was eating, I read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

And those of you who were perturbed by all of this mass slaughter of disappearing wildlife that I mentioned yesterday will be pleased to know that the fish had their revenge. Our author tells us that, on the train along the Wye valley near to Llangoed Castle, "you see from the railway the very pool where poor Mr. Holmes was drowned while fishing, in sight of his newly married wife."

When I’d finished breakfast, I went round into the kitchen and tipped a couple of handfuls of peas and a tin of sweetcorn into the chilli mix, gave it a really good stir, and then began to tidy away the breakfast things. While I was in the fridge, I pulled out two small tubs of soya yoghurt, and when the tidying was done, I switched off the slow cooker and tipped the yoghurt in, giving it a really good stir. Now I’ll let it cool down.

Back in the bedroom, I reviewed the radio programme for this week and sent it off to be added into the stream for the coming weekend, and then I set about reconverting into a format that I can use, the music that my chatbot found for me yesterday. And I hadn’t finished it all when my alarm clock sounded to remind me that it’s time to stop work.

So I sorted out my midday medication and a disgusting drink and then began to pack away the travelling laptop, ready to take with me to dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and I’m glad that she was here because one moment, I was sitting on a chair at the dining table and the next moment, I was lying on the floor with a pain in my head where it had apparently collided with the electronic drum kit.

Between the two of us, I managed to sit back into the chair so that I could finish off putting on my shoes.

After my cleaner had left, I did my usual “collapse in a semi-recumbent position over the table” until the taxi arrived. And it was my favourite Belgian taxi driver too, so we had a good chat. We had to go off into the sticks to find another passenger and then into Sartilly for our usual Monday passenger.

And going off into the sticks is no problem for me. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m going to parts of Normandy that I never knew existed until I started travelling with this taxi company.

As a result of everything, we were late arriving at dialysis, but it didn’t matter too much because I was seen more or less straight away and I was up and running by 14:25. It’s been later than that a few times even when I’ve been on time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

To my surprise, especially after the last couple of weeks, there wasn’t much to be extracted, so I persuaded the nurse to wind it up by three hundred millilitres so as to give me a head start for Thursday.

I spent the afternoon watching football. The first game was the rest of Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. From 2-0 down, Airbus won 3-2. This was a Cambian United-sponsored stream, so they had one of their fans commenting, and even he was forced to admit that once Airbus began to play with the wind in the second half, they were by far the better team. Cambrian’s “kick and rush” style of play into a headwind was taking them nowhere.

When that match was over, I watched the whole of Colwyn Bay v Cardiff Metropolitan. Very much against the run of play, the Met took the lead, and when the Seagulls had a player sent off in the thirty-first minute, we thought that it was “game over”.

However, then we had two of the most extraordinary goals that I’ve seen for a while. Defending a corner kick in a swirling wind, a Met player went to head the ball out of danger. The wind, however, swirled the ball round to the back of his head and another gust of wind took it into his own net.

Even worse, a few minutes later, the Seagulls had another corner. Kicking an inswinging ball into the penalty area in the same swirling wind, the ball beat everyone and went straight into the net. So from being 1-0 down, Colwyn Bay had gone to 2-1 even with being a man down.

However, in the second half, the Met had the wind in their favour and they managed to find an equalising goal, although it wasn’t as bizarre as those of Colwyn Bay.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She wanted to know how I was getting on with the immunotherapy, so I explained that I seemed to be doing OK. She said too that she would see what she could arrange about this COVID vaccination, which was nice of her.

While she was there, I took advantage of asking her about the nighttime sessions of dialysis. She explained that it probably wasn’t for me, which is a shame. Firstly, you need to be autonomous, which I’m not. You need to be in good health and not require medical supervision, which rules me out too, and then you need to be able to compress your own wounds, and that definitely rules me out.

When it was time to be unplugged, I didn’t have to wait long, and the nurse came over to me with a nursing student just starting her second year. She’d come on a work placement to dialysis for a few weeks and it was her first day.

However, there was all kinds of chaos going on around me, with ill patients, rebellious patients, and machines sounding alarms all over the place, so I let my experienced nurse clear off once she’d unplugged me and I taught the nursing student how to do a compression … "is there no end to this man’s talents?" – ed …

My driver was waiting for me when I was ready, and I was home by 18:40. My cleaner helped me inside and then stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I made some rice and veg and then heated up a couple of serving spoons full of my chilli in the microwave. That was tea tonight and it was delicious, but I’ll know all about it tomorrow, that’s for sure.

Pudding was more apricot halves with home made chocolate and coconut ice cream, and that was as delicious as usual too.

After the washing up, I portioned out the rest of the chilli into individual servings, and then I had to tidy the freezer to be able to fit them in there. But now, they are quite happily freezing away, ready for use another time.

So now that my notes are written, there are just a couple of other things to do and then I’m off to bed. No Welsh course tomorrow, so I can relax a little.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about nursing students … "well, one of us has" – ed … a student nurse from Crewe went to do her first work placement.
Amongst the things that she had to check that she had brought with her was a red crayon.
"Why have you brought that?" asked her placement supervisor.
"Well" replied the student. "I’m not sure how else I’m expected to draw blood while I’m on this ward."

LIVE: Saturday 24th October 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

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… sitting in here watching the football for the last two hours, freezing my nether regions off.

And at the final whistle, I checked the temperature in here. It was 16°C. No wonder I was sitting here in a pullover and a fleece and still freezing. Consequently, and with regret, I’ve put the heating on tonight, a whole week earlier than I would usually like to.

Still, it can’t be helped. I shall console myself with the fact that last year, it was the 13th October. The previous year was the 27th October. And so it’s not unusual to have it switched on before the end of October.

The reason why it’s suddenly gone cold after the wonderful early October that we had was that the weather has been so darned miserable these last couple of days. Last night, I could feel a chill in the air inside the apartment and I was glad to be in bed, notwithstanding the fact that it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and I lay there without moving for a good couple of hours. However, I soon awoke, thanks to the wind again, and after that I couldn’t go back to sleep again. I couldn’t persuade my lazy self to leave the bed for an early start, and it was only when the second alarm was due to start that I managed to sit up and put my feet on the floor.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … having my feet on the floor is one thing. Being up and about is something else completely. It took me a good few minutes before I found the courage and motivation to stand up and go into the living room to unlock the door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives later.

From there, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day, and I even had a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone, I had a few things to do while I was waiting, and I noticed that during the night, once more, a ChatGPT chatbot had visited my site to look up some information to use as a source for a reply to a question. How many is this now, I wonder?

When Isabelle the Nurse arrived, we talked about the storm that was still blowing, the miserable weather, the damage all through the town and the fact that there are still several thousand houses in the suburbs still without electricity. You would think that someone would have done something about that by now.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Our expert his finished his waxing lyrical discussion about primroses, and now one of the experts from the Naturalists Club is debating the matter with him, stating that he can’t agree. Although I can’t quite follow the argument, not knowing sufficiently about the subject, it’s good fun to watch the experts falling out amongst themselves.

When breakfast was over, I came back in here, but I wasn’t in here for long as Leclerc’s delivery driver came by with my shopping. She dumped it all on the kitchen table and left me to sort it out, which is normal practice.

The frozen food went away first, and then the fresh food that needs freezing. The juice, milk, veg and fruit, etc., went into the fridge or the vegetable drawer under the worktop, then the dry stuff, and finally the tins. There was quite a lot of stuff today – but then again, it’s been just over four weeks since my last order, so it’s no surprise. At least, I have everything that I need to make my aubergine and kidney bean whatsit on Sunday afternoon.

There was time to do a little more work before the alarm went off, and then I began to prepare myself for dialysis.

There was the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and my faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic.

Once she had left, there was no time for me to adopt my usual semi-recumbent position over the table while I waited for the taxi because a couple of people wanted to chat to me over the internet, and that was how I was occupied when the taxi arrived, bang on time at 13:00.

When I opened the front door to leave, the hurricane blowing off the sea was far too much for me, so I persuaded the driver to drive around the back of the building to the fire escape, where I only had a couple of paces to walk.

There was just me today in the taxi with the driver, and taking the shortcut to avoid the gilets jaunes, we were at dialysis at 13:35. However, expecting me to be coupled up quickly is a rather optimistic expectation, and it was 14:35 when I was finally connected up.

Today, there was no question of excess weight or excess time, so things proceeded as normal. However, I had one of the two nurses who do just about the minimum work required, cutting corners here and there, and there were continual interruptions and alarms as the machine complained all through the session about the quality of the connection until one of the other nurses came and did what was necessary to satisfy it.

Once everyone had settled down, I watched the live football match, Connah’s Quay Nomads v Llandudno. Llandudno’s early-season form has melted away and their dismal run of form continues. The Nomads, on the other hand, are on an excellent run, and it continued today as they beat Llandudno 2-0.

Like most clubs in the Novira Cymru Premier League, Llandudno’s problem is the lack of a front-line goalscorer. Earlier in the season, their forwards were making hay against the weaker clubs, but now, their fixture list has become serious, and they are playing against serious, established clubs who can exploit the weaknesses of the other teams.

When that had finished, I watched some of Friday night’s game between two newly promoted clubs, Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. I hadn’t finished watching the match when it was time to go home, so I’ll tell you more about it on Monday evening when I’ve finished watching it.

In between everything, the doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me. She told me that she had been looking at the details of my sessions for the last few weeks and had noticed that the black line (which represents the amount of fluid being extracted at that moment) had fallen below the yellow block (which represents the excess weight over my dry weight) on almost every occasion.

She had come to the conclusion that my dry weight was wrong and that she should increase my dry weight by 500 grammes. That’s a shame because I had come to like the new, trim me. And in any case, the new dry weight may well make a difference to the first extraction, but once I’m at the new weight, it won’t make a bit of difference to any subsequent extraction. Still, she’s in charge and may well know what she’s talking about, even if she does have to use a calculator to divide 3800 by 4.

When the time was up, my nurse concentrated on cleaning the machine rather than disconnecting me. And when she finally came round to disconnecting me, she compressed the wounds for just five minutes instead of the ten that are usually required, and then returned to cleaning the machine again. That’s not really satisfactory, but it’s what you come to expect when she’s working.

This early evening, I was really lucky. I saw my favourite taxi driver, whom I haven’t seen since the beginning of May in the garden centre in Granville. We had a chat for a couple of minutes, and then the driver who was to take me home emerged from the ladies’ … errr … rest room. She was another one of my favourite drivers, and we had a really good chat on the way home.

Back here at the apartment, the gale had started up again, and in spades too, so my driver dropped me off at the rear of the building again. Only a couple of paces then into the building and out of the wind.

My cleaner helped me back into the apartment, and once I was sitting down, she pressed a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt and then cleared off. I didn’t drink my disgusting drink then, but I put it on my little trolley along with a packet of crackers, some vegan cheese spread and an orange. There was no time to make a meal because there was more live football on the internet and it had already kicked off (thank heavens for the “start from the beginning” option on the live stream).

This was Y Barri playing against Hwlffordd in the driving rain and hurricane winds that made this match a total lottery. Y Barri, whose usual tactics are to play with the ball in the air, were bound to be second best to a Hwlffordd side who like to play with the ball on the ground.

And having watched the game, I was convinced that the referee and the two linesmen were refereeing a totally different game to the one that I, the Y Barri staff and most of the crowd were watching. There were several incidents in the Hwlffordd penalty area which, if I had been refereeing, I would have given a stonewall penalty, and the refusal of the referee to consult the VAR cameras made a mockery of having VAR in the first place.

The result was Y Barri lost 1-3, and their early-season form, when they were leading the league for a while, seems to have deserted them, just like it has at Llandudno.

After the end of the game, I began to write up the notes of the day but I almost fell asleep on several occasions, so in the end, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t doing justice to today, so I called it a day, published on line what I had done so far, added a “to be continued” stamp, and made myself ready for bed. I can always finish off the notes tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about gaining weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me that it’s only natural for married men to gain weight.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Simple" replied my friend. "When they are single, they come home, look at what’s in the fridge and then go to bed. When they are married, they come home, look at what’s in the bed and then go to the fridge."

LIVE: Saturday 17th October 2026 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

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… we had yet more problems at dialysis. And just to prove how polyvalent everyone is at dialysis, they were a completely different set of problems than the usual ones. It seems that my whole life is going to be spent encountering these dialysis issues, and when one is solved, we can simply pass on to the next one.

But I don’t understand at all why I seem to have so many problems at places like that. It’s almost as if someone thinks that I don’t have enough of my own at home, like sleeping, for example. It seems that I can sleep perfectly well when I don’t want to, like in the middle of the day, but when I want to, like at night, I don’t seem to be able to manage it.

Last night was a perfect example of that. I was writing my notes up after the football, admittedly at some kind of very late hour, and suddenly, I could feel myself starting to drop off. That was the cue to abandon the notes, post online what I’d done, and go to bed. And then, not be able to go to sleep for ages.

Eventually, I managed to drop off and go to sleep, but it wasn’t for long. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke, but it was definitely in the small hours. I know that I was still awake at 04:59 because I checked the time and debated with myself whether I should get up at that point, but the next thing that I remember was the ‘phone going off at 06:29.

Once more, it took a real effort to haul myself out of bed and off into the living room to unlock the front door ready for when the nurse comes, and then go into the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning. I even had a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

Back in here, I attacked the notes from last night, and I’d almost finished when the early arrival of the nurse confounded me.

While he was sorting out my legs and feet, we chatted about the weather. Apparently the temperature is going to drop dramatically over the next few days, and a proper autumn will be upon us quite rapidly.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Our author is still waxing lyrical about some of these trees, and I don’t suppose that he’ll ever stop. But interestingly, he talks about some fine young chestnut trees in the grounds of one of these stately homes in Herefordshire, and when I went to look it up on the internet to see how things are today, the hall is now in possession of the National Trust, who make some very favourable comments about the chestnut trees that are now one hundred and seventy years old.

Back in here after breakfast, I finished off the notes from yesterday and they are now on line, as you have probably noticed. And then I went to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

I was at a football match last night when the two teams playing, each one having a substitute who played in a reserve league who had never come into the first team. So the first team had their new player in defence and the other team had their player in attack, and the attack players and the defence players of the different teams had to be involved in finding space and waiting to be passed the ball and so on, and then be taught how to control it once they had already received it, because far too many balls were bouncing off them and going out of play and that sort of thing.

This dream about players finding space relates to a certain training session for a certain hockey team somewhere, but that’s yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

In fact, the part about the reserve players coming into the team also relates to the same story. But as that story is something reasonably current, it’s no surprise that it’s coming up now in a dream.

There was some Eastern European guy whom I knew – he might have been Polish or something like that – and he worked as a bacon slicer in a meat factory somewhere or other in the area. He was telling me about his aim to become a motor mechanic. He had this yellow Mk IV Cortina which looked fairly nice but there were a few things that needed doing to it, and he told me that he’d done them. He took the car for its MOT. There was also someone who was going to fetch my injections for me. I was supposed to have two injections, one on a Monday and one on a Friday. I’d had the first two, but for some reason I’d forgotten to collect the next two, so some woman or other, an elderly woman, she had a bottle of the stuff that the first injection used, and she filled the syringe with it and injected me with that. Then I had to take the prescription down to the doctor to explain what had happened and get him to write a new one for the product on the Friday and for subsequent ones. I put them in a brown envelope and gave them to this Polish guy. I went down to the MoT station afterwards, and his yellow Cortina was there, and it had failed on four or five things, nothing very complicated, but I heard that this guy had handed in his notice at work and was going to start being a motor mechanic, working underneath cars in the street, that kind of thing. But seeing the work that he’d done on this Mk IV Cortina and it hadn’t worked, I could see his next adventure ending in tears at some point.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to have a fleet of yellow MkIII and MkIV Cortinas in the past, although I didn’t know anyone Polish like that at the time. And the garage certainly didn’t resemble the garage at the salt mine where my father used to work, so where it was, I don’t know.

The story about the injections is interesting too because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that quite a few years ago, I had to have a series of injections a couple of times each week and had to fetch them from the chemists regularly. That’s how I first encountered these nurses who come to visit me every morning.

I forgot to mention the confusion when I went down to that garage. I’d given all the paperwork for these injections to this Polish guy and put them in a brown envelope. I walked into the garage where his car was being MoTd – at the back of Bedford Street near the old police station. I pulled out and told someone “here’s the envelope”. They picked it up, and it was the wrong one. The second one was the wrong one. The third one was hanging up by a magnetic attachment thing on the workplace by where this Polish guy was working. He brought it over to me and this other guy. We had a look at the paperwork together.

If this is confusing you, don’t worry. It’s confusing me too.

That was all that I had time to do this morning, although I might have had more time had I not crashed out between 10:20 and 11:00.

When the alarm went off, I headed into the kitchen to have my midday medication and my disgusting drink, and then to start to pack the travelling laptop ready for dialysis. My faithful cleaner came down to apply the anaesthetic on my arm too.

After she left, I adopted the usual position of slumping across the table with my head resting on my arms so that I could have a little doze, but that wasn’t for long either as the taxi turned up at, would you believe, 12:40. Not that I’m complaining, of course, because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I arrive at dialysis, the earlier I’ll be home, and that suits me just fine.

However, the best-laid plans of mice and men and all that, we first had to go to Champeaux to pick up someone there to take to dialysis, and then at the autoroute interchange at Marcey-les-Grèves, we ran into a barrage of gilets jaunes. And what annoyed me about that was that there was a warning sign in the centre of the village, just by where there’s a turning that goes through a village called Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize, and from there via a couple of narrow lanes, you end up just four hundred yards from the hospital.

Now if I know that, why didn’t our driver, who has been working for the taxi company for thirty years?

So after using all our powers of persuasion, we eventually arrived at dialysis ten minutes early. And this is where the fun began.

If you want to know whether I had a new nurse or an experienced one today, you only need to look at the plasters that she put on my arm when she took out the needles at the end of the session, and that will tell you all that you need to know. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a dog’s dinner in all my life.

But the fun began when she was trying to plug me in. The first needle, in the lower part of my forearm, went in fine. The second needle, in the upper part of my arm, well, not so fine. She ended up having two tries at it and they both failed. In the end, she had to call for the senior nurse and it was a case of “third time lucky” when she did it. But I now know exactly how a dartboard feels.

Further bad news is that my internet subscription at the dialysis centre has expired. It’s only good for a year and then I have to renew it. And of course, with it being Saturday, there’s no-one on duty at the tech department of the hospital. So, without the internet, I read a paper on Lack of Moral Fibre in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

Apart from that, there were no other interruptions. Not even from Emilie the Cute Consultant, who came into the ward and went to chat to almost every other patient in here, except me, of course. She clearly doesn’t love me any more.

But seeing as we have been talking about the other patients … "well, one of us has" – ed … my favourite patient who is usually in the bed beside mine was brought in this afternoon on a stretcher. Apparently she had developed a breathing problem and, even with a cylinder of oxygen, was having difficulty breathing. I do hope that she’s going to be OK.

Today, the nurse let the session run to the full time, which makes a change, but when the session finally finished, she spent ten minutes cleaning the machine first before she dealt with me, and that was disappointing too. I wanted to be away.

When I was finally free and the wounds compressed and sealed (with the plasters stuck on any old how), I went to weigh myself. And I was actually bang on my dry weight, which is where I should have been those three times before. And the driver was waiting for me – the same one who had brought me – and I was the only person in the taxi too, so I was home at about 18:30.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment where she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt. And after she left, I made some food – a baked potato, peas and carrots and a burger on a bap. It’s been quite a while since I’d had that for a Saturday tea, and it shows that, bit by bit, my appetite is returning.

Football was next, another match in the Welsh Cup, this time between Y Fflint and Caernarfon, a repeat of the cup final a couple of months ago.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint play some nice, tidy football and don’t deserve to be as low down the table as they are, so it was no surprise to anyone when they scored the opening goal after just five minutes.

However, Caernarfon scored an equaliser almost straight from the restart and gradually went on to impose themselves on the game. By the final whistle, it was all on-way traffic towards the Y Fflint goal, with Caernarfon winning 3-1.

So tomorrow early afternoon, we have the final match of our Welsh Cup trilogy when Penybont, third in the Cymru Premier League, leave Bridgend to travel down to the beach at Port Talbot to take on Afan Lido, tenth in the second tier.

When the football was over, I attacked the dictaphone notes, but I really didn’t realise just how late it was. When the waves of fatigue began to sweep over me, it was almost midnight and I didn’t want to be letting it all hang out much later, so I posted on line what I’d written so far, added a “to be continued” sticker and went to bed. I’ll finish off the rest of my magnum opus tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about bacon slicers … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me about the woman from Crewe who went into her local butcher’s and sat on the bacon slicer.
"What happened?" I asked.
"The butcher was most annoyed" she said. "he ended up getting behind in his orders."

LIVE: Thursday 15th October 2026 – TODAY WAS THE …

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… first time at this end of the year that I arrived home in the dark after dialysis.

To tell the truth, it wasn’t really dark, but you could see the headlights of our car shining on the road, all of the streetlights were on, and the moon, a very nice, slender crescent, was shining beautifully.

And not only that, but I was running much later than usual, but that’s because, once again, we had yet more excitement at the dialysis centre this afternoon. However, more of that anon.

First, though, we have last night to discuss – or, rather, this morning – because, once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was more like 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s not so bad in itself, I suppose, especially when you are asleep quite quickly, as I was, but when you awaken at 04:25 and can’t go back to sleep, then it isn’t. I was tossing and turning around all night, and still tossing and turning when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As you might expect, it took me a while to be able to gather up my wits, not that I have many to gather up these days, and stand up ready to move, but once I was up, I went to unlock the door ready for the nurse when he arrives a little later, and then I went to the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis, even to the extent of having a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is on duty this afternoon.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was back working in an office yet again. I was going to be transferred to a different office, so I put in a great, enormous pile of effort to clear all of the outstanding files lying around my desk, and I left it quite tidy. In the new office, I had a room to myself and I was determined that I was going to start from Day One to keep up to date and do everything on the day that it arrived, but there were plenty of distractions in this office – people had these little catapults, and they were sending messages to each other by catapult and so on. I thought that this was going to be a challenging working environment. Someone asked me for a piece of post, so I went back into my room to fetch it. In the meantime, the post had been delivered. There was an enormous amount of files and post and everything all over my desk. I had to sit and think about how I was going to deal with it all. But one thing out of this was that this was in Rotherham, and I can’t remember what I was going to say now.

Apart from the fact that I have no idea what I would be doing in Rotherham, here I am at work yet again. And I’m on the point of leaving – not retiring, but being transferred to a new office. That certainly puts a new twist on things.

However, the “distractions” in the office are nothing new. And as you can see, my best plans about dealing with work on the day that it’s been received and so on appear to count for nothing at all. Things just happen like that so thay they can spite me. I shall have to employ someone to keep my place tidy.

The nurse was early today, which was good news. I wanted to be in advance. The bad news that he brought was that the big data centre place in Africa somewhere where they are experimenting with robots had crashed, so has the internet in a couple of cycle races. I hope that it will be back on for this afternoon.

And I’ve no idea what that sentence above was all about. When I reviewed it in the morning, the only thing that I could suggest was that it was another load of rubbish that I had written when I fell asleep, and later on, I forgot to edit it out, as I usually do with stuff like this.

Anyway, after he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

However, it made for rather disappointing reading, rather like Stanley Holloway’s recital of Marriott Edgar’s famous –

"NO SHIPWRECKS AND NOBODY DROWNDED.
IN FACT, NOTHING TO LAUGH AT AT ALL."

The kitchen was something of a mess after all of the washing up that I’d done over the last couple of days, so I had an exciting ten or fifteen minutes finding a home for everything that was lying about, and then I came in here to start work.

There was the radio programme to deal with. It’s going to be late this week after the chaos of the first couple of days, si I can’t afford to be idle. Some more music needed to be chosen, and that’s all done now. It’s now all been reformatted, re-edited, remixed, paired and segued. I even began to write the notes for it, but the alarm intervened before I’d gone too far.

The alarm is the signal for me to go into the kitchen and begin to prepare for going to dialysis. You might think that it’s rather sad or silly to have an alarm to remind me, but seeing how often I’ve drifted away into sleep sitting in my chair, with no warning at all, it’s something of a necessity.

So I had my midday medication and my disgusting drink and then began to pack away the travelling laptop to take with me. My faithful cleaner came along and sorted out the anaesthetic for my arm as well.

After she left, there were still one or two things to do in the kitchen, and then I assumed my usual position of being slumped over the dining table, head resting on my arms.

And there I was, miles away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, when the doorbell rang, and I awoke with a terrific start.

As I suspected, it was the chauffeur to take me to dialysis. She was a few minutes late today, but as well as that, we had to go to Kairon-Plage to pick up someone else and then to the aqua-gym at St Pair sur Mer to pick up my usual Thursday passenger.

However, my chauffeur today was another candidate to replace my favourite chauffeur when she retires next year. This one drove like the wind and I actually arrived just one minute late. And she was the second driver to take me on the diversion via St Pierre Langers and not the usual way by Lezeaux le Carrière.

Here, we had a disaster. Today, according to the scales, my body contained the most liquid that I have ever had, and that depressed me enormously. I really don’t know what’s going on with my body right now or where all of this liquid is coming from.

The nurse calculated that I had to stay for four hours – four hours at maximum force – so my response was “well, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish”.

It was 14:35 when I was finally up and running and I could settle down and watch the football.

The first game was the rest of Penybont v Y Barri. It was 1-1 when I left it, but as the game progressed, Penybont took control and it finished 3-1. Y Barri had none of their recognised strikers playing in this game, and the players whom they had on the field were unable to break down Penybont’s resolute defence.

In any case, Penybont’s play was technically much better. I really don’t know what has happened to Y Barri since they were top of the league for several weeks at the start of the season.

The following game was Llansawel against Connah’s Quay Nomads. And let’s be honest, no-one can play technical or skilled football on the Old Road pitch.

The game was pretty much a lottery. Llansawel missed a penalty early in the game but managed to score later in the first half. The Nomads came back into the game and scored two goals, but the match finished with Llansawel laying siege to the Nomads’ goal, throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at it, but with no success.

The doctor interrupted me in mid-game – the new doctor who has only just started there. And we had an interesting conversation –
Our Hero – "I’m surprised that you never came back to ask me how the antibiotics that you prescribed for me a couple of months ago – the ones that I told you that they had tried before and didn’t work – worked to cure my cough."
Doctor – "was it me who prescribed them to you?" – that’s the kind of remark that inspires confidence in a new doctor.
Our Hero – "yes, it was."
Doctor – "so how did they go?"
Our Hero – "just as I told you that they would before you prescribed them. They didn’t work."

And then we had the usual disaster. My nurse today, the same one whom I had last Saturday, the one who does just enough work to get by – came along and said “I’m going to cut short the session today …”
“No you aren’t” I replied. “There’s an order from Doctor X saying that I have to stay until I’m down to my dry weight, even if I have to stay all night”.

This led to an argument that even involved the above doctor, but in the end, my persistence and stubbornness won the day. However, I’m convinced that between them, the doctor and the nurse hatched a cunning plan because when I weighed myself later, I was two hundred grammes above my dry weight, so somewhere along the line, the intensity of the machine had been turned down.

You might wonder why I’m so insistent about this, but the simple answer is that if I leave here “overweight”, the amount of overweight will accumulate, session by session, until the amount is unmanageable and then they’ll have to resort to drastic measures. And I’ve had enough drastic measures at a hospital to last me a lifetime, and plenty more besides, thank you.

So we were hours late when it was all over, but luckily, my taxi was waiting so I could go straight home, and it was 19:40, the latest that I have ever been, when I arrived back here, hence the streetlights and the moon.

My cleaner helped me back into the apartment as she usually does, and when I was sitting comfortably, stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

There was no posibility of me making tea at this time of evening, so I grabbed some crackers, some of that nice vegan cheese spread and an orange and took them into my room while I checked the computer for messages, etc.

When I was finished, I began to attack the notes for today, but as I said earlier, I fell asleep before I finished them. And for a while too. When I awoke, I was fit for nothing … "nothing new there" – ed … and so I went to bed. I’ll finish my notes off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about doctors and prescriptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was this new doctor, fresh out of medical school, who had this confrontation with one of the hospital’s patients.
He came in and said "doctor, when I came in here two days ago and you examined me, you wrote out a prescription to say that I had to take one of those pills every day for the rest of my life."
"That’s right" said the doctor. "Is there a problem?"
"I’ll say!" he said. "The chemist has only given me six!"

LIVE: Monday 12th October 2026 – MY COTTAGE PIE …

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… is delicious, even if it isn’t made with real cottages. That was an excellent recipe that my chatbot found for me, and if he knows any others as good as this one, I shall pick his brains again.

However, no matter how nice it was, I hope that it makes me sleep better than last night. I ended up in bed much later than I had intended, and although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long enough. I awoke quite early on – I’ve no idea of the time because I didn’t look – and after that, despite everything that I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was still awake, but even so, it still took me a good few minutes to leave the bed and stand up.

The first port of call was at the front door to unlock it ready for when Isabelle the Nurse arrives, and after that, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and to have a good scrub up. And even a shave too, in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me at dialysis this afternoon.

Back in here, I checked the dictaphone to see what was on there, but there was nothing much, so I found a few other things to do until Isabelle the Nurse breezed in.

Today, we talked about my cottage pie, or Hachis Parmontier as they say around here, and a few other things too before she parted off on her week’s break, where planning the installation of her Halloween decorations seems to be Priority Number One.

After she left, I made my breakfast, and as I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

The commissioner is talking today about the Bower Oak close to Croft Ambrey. He tells us that "It should be called ”The Lovers’ Oak,” from the romantic scenes that have occurred there. Few trees have left more indelible impressions on young memories."

It beats me how he knows about “the romantic scenes that have occurred there”. Surely he hasn’t been spying on what goes on there in a dirty raincoat and binoculars? Perish the thought, hey?

After I’d finished my breakfast, I came in here to carry on working for a while.

The first task was to review the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and make sure that it’s good. And it is, too. There are one or two new groups and musicians featuring in it this week to give it an air of something different.

And that reminds me. If you don’t know how to listen to my programme, it’s broadcast HERE ON FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS at 21:00 CET (20:00 UK Time and 15:00 in Montréal and Toronto). And if you miss the broadcasts, there are PODCASTS HERE

After the radio, it was the Welsh homework. We had to write an essay about the plans of a new supermarket to be built in a small rural town, write about the background, the arguments for, the arguments against and what we think. And as usual, whenever I have to write an essay, I fall foul of the word count before I’ve really got going. That has been my bane ever since primary school and, let’s be honest, I’m not likely to change now at my age.

This all took me up to midday when it was time to drop everything and head into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and my midday medication, after which I began to prepare for going to dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up too, to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, not that it does much good really.

After she’d left to go and have her butties before going back out to work, I took the cottage pie out of the oven … "something that our hero had forgotten to do this morning" – ed … covered it with clingfilm and made some space for it in the fridge. It smelt just as nice and delicious as it did while it was cooking.

Yes, tonight I’ll give it a try and see what it’s like, but I’m going to have to work out a way of freezing some of it because there’s far too much to eat in one or two meals. You can’t just slop it into a plastic bag like you can do with a curry or a chilli. Answers on a postcard to …

While I was waiting for the taxi, I adopted the usual position of folding up over the table with my head resting on my arms, but I was rudely interrupted by the doorbell announcing the arrival of the taxi, ten minutes early. And it was “rudely” too. It took me a minute or two to work out where I was and what was going on.

Once I was in the taxi, we had to go to Sartilly for someone else. With the road closed at La Havaudière, we usually go down the road between St. Pair sur Mer and Champeaux, and turn off at Lezeaux Le Carrière to rejoin the main road. However, this driver took me along the coast as far as Carolles and then cut across country to Sartilly. It’s a much nicer road than the Champeaux road, that’s for sure, but it’s a much longer way around, and as a result, I was late for dialysis.

Arriving after 14:00 is one thing, but my nurse, the new young girl with the pet rabbit, was already waiting. There was a lot of preparatory work to do at first, but I was up and running by 14:30, and there are times when it’s been later than that when I’ve arrived early.

And bizarrely, the first puncture hurt a little, but the second didn’t hurt at all, and that’s the one that usually causes all the problems.

Once I was up and running, I had a footfest again. I watched the rest of the Hwlffordd v Caernarfon game, spending most of the time wondering what had happened to the technical skills of both teams as they slugged it out in a midfield maul.

However, I do know why Hwlffordd are stuck low down the table even if they have one of the meanest defences in the league. Whereas TNS have scored 44 goals, Caernarfon 37 and even Trefynnon, propping up the table by a mile, have scored 12, Hwlffordd have scored just 8 and that is simply not good enough.

Mind you, they added one goal to the total at the weekend against Caernarfon, but Caernarfon scored two and that was that, although the penalty awarded for the first goal was … errr … rather dubious, even though it was verified on VAR.

Afterwards, we had Penybont v Y Barri down at Bridgend in front of a big four-figure crowd, the sixth biggest of the season. However, I didn’t finish it all, and so you’ll have to wait for Thursday night for a report on that.

But it’s really strange. Five, ten, fifteen and more years ago, the league was struggling to have one four-figure crowd per season. These days, it’s having at least one four-figure crowd per week somewhere – usually at Caernarfon, Colwyn Bay and Penybont – and it’s rumoured that Connah’s Quay Nomads are pushing the boat out to drag in a four-figure crowd for the local derby at Y Fflint shortly.

And Bangor City in the second division have had two crowds of over four figures, and there was a third at Holyhead when Bangor were the visitors. Things are definitely looking up.

My foot fest was interrupted by the arrival of a doctor – not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant. He asked me how I was feeling and I replied moyen, or “average”, so he asked me what I meant, so I replied “not good but not bad”. So he asked me “is there anything else I can do for you?” but I replied “no”. That was the depth of his examination.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he doesn’t seem to be interested in his job, and I often get the impression that he’d much rather be elsewhere.

The snacks have changed at dialysis today too. I no longer have my coffee and orange juice. The coffee is still there, but the only other thing that I can have is a fruit purée. I suppose that I’ll have to make the best of that. Still, it’s all free, so I have no grounds to complain or to moan about it.

When the session was ended, which made a change to arrive at this point and not have the session cut short, the young nurse with the rabbit unplugged me quite quickly, but I had to wait for the taxi driver. But it didn’t matter. It was one of my favourite drivers and she’s taken me to Paris a few times. Travelling with her is “exciting” to say the least, so I know that we wouldn’t take long to be home.

There were two other people from another place nearby who needed collecting, and start as we mean to go on – at the roundabout at the end of the road, she shot round it, cutting up another couple of cars while she was at it, and I was home by 18:40, which makes a nice change.

My faithful cleaner helped me back into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink into my hand when I sat down. After she left, I helped myself to a small plateful of my cottage pie, made with real cottages, and it really is delicious. There’s no doubt at all about that. I shall definitely make a permanent note of that recipe.

Back in here, I came to write out the notes for today, but before I’d made much progress, I’d fallen asleep. When I awoke, I took myself off the bed after I’d posted on line what I’d written, and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow. What kind of failure am I?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about word counts for essays … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a very old limerick that had done the rounds long before I every heard it –
"There was a young man from Japan
Who could never make limericks scan.
He said ‘my old bean
I know just what you mean
But I always try to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

LIVE: Saturday 10th October 2026 – I REALLY MUST …

… pull out of these dramatic sleeps that I seem to be having. They really can’t keep going on like this because they are devastating my life right now and I don’t seem to be able to snap out of them. It wouldn’t be so bad if I were having them in bed where I can enjoy them, but that seems to be the only place where I don’t have them.

The other night, for example, falling asleep while riding the porcelain horse – that really is the nadir of all of this, isn’t it?

Anyway, I eventually went to sleep last night, not straight away like I was hoping. And once I’d fallen asleep, I didn’t stay that way for long. I was soon awake, although I have no idea at what time. It seemed as if I was tossing and turning for hours. I went through the Welsh course question book in my head while trying to go back to sleep, hoping that I could answer the verbal questions from Head Office when they arrive, but no-one at all contacted me with the questions … "and that sounds like a dream too" – ed ….

When the alarm went off, I had to struggle to leave the bed as usual, but once I was up, I dragged myself to the front door to unlock it for when Isabelle the Nurse arrives.

The next stop was the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and even a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me today at dialysis.

Back in here, I carried on with writing up the notes from yesterday, and although I made good and rapid progress … "which makes a change" – ed … I hadn’t quite finished when Isabelle the Nurse put in an appearance. We had a little chat about nothing in particular, and after she left, I could make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

“Famous Trees” is still the topic of conversation today, but there’s nothing of any special interest in there, although the author of the report is trying to identify historical storm damage to some of the oldest trees. He seems to be quite confident in identifying damage as far back as the early-mid seventeenth century and has suspicions of damage even further back than that. But, of course, nothing is proven.

Back in here after breakfast, I finished the notes from yesterday and they went on line. Now I was free to attack the dictaphone notes.

I dreamed that I was walking again without crutches. I had some kind of dramatic improvement over one evening. I’d stayed behind at school one evening to see a few Shakespeare plays being rehearsed. I walked out of there and walked downtown. By now, it was morning, and I really fancied some croissants but I carried on walking and I crossed the river into the town centre. I saw two people eating croissants that made me jealous, that kind of thing, and I can’t remember now. I can’t remember now – it’s just gone. Yes – that’s right – we were in a DIY shop, and I was looking at the greenhouses with the plants in them and tried to price up the greenhouses when one of the servers came up to me and said “you’re our squash expert, aren’t you?”. “Well,” I replied. “Not really”, so he sent a man over to me carrying a small racket, with the strings being replaced by a wooden lattice-type of work. He asked me if this would be any good for playing squash. I replied “no” and pointed him to where the squash rackets were. Then it came down to when we came to the entrance to that shop and we walked past a plate with free croissants on it for the morning, so I helped myself to one and so did someone else, then a third person, and we chatted about that, but I can’t remember now what happened after that.

There’s no doubt in this dream that when I was walking away from the Shakespeare plays and across the river into the town centre that I was in Nantwich, so it must have been my old grammar school where the rehearsals were taking place.

And it’s a big surprise to me that I was watching the play rehearsals. It’s hard enough to persuade me to go to watch a real play, never mind some rehearsals. The theatre – or plays, at least – is simply not my thing at all.

And at one time, I used to play a lot of squash and was even on a squash ladder … "but not very high up" – ed … in a local club in Crewe, but I certainly wouldn’t call myself an expert. When I was living in a van, it used to be how I’d manage to shower regularly. But finding me in a DIY shop was an everyday situation, and there even was one in Montlucon, “Brico Depot”, that used to open at 07:30, and they did have free coffee and croissants for the early arrivals.

The next task was to have a quick look at my e-mails. And I do mean “quick” because there wasn’t very much time. I was amazed at how long it actually took to finish everything off.

And there was an e-mail from Grahame, who had seen my notes yesterday on the two oak trees, “Adam” and “Eve”. Eve was the famous hollow oak at Moreton-on-Lugg, Herefordshire. Struck by lightning in 1839, its shattered upper trunk was later thatched and fitted with a door and stove, serving as the railway station’s booking and stationmaster’s office.

Grahame sent me a photo of “Eve” in its role as station master’s office and booking office at the railway station, where you can clearly see the storm damage and how it has been converted.

If you click on the image, you’ll see a larger … "although not very much larger" – ed … image where you can probably see things in better detail, including the chimney at the rear which is connected to the stove inside the tree trunk, and also the thatched roof that covers the part where the upper part of the tree broke off.

So thank you very much for that, Grahame. And a quick note to all the other regular readers of this rubbish – I’m always pleased to interact with my audience, and “comments” on this blog are now enabled if you have something to say. And if you don’t want to “go public”, there should be a “contact me” feature in the bottom right corner of the screen. Don’t hesitate to use it.

And if you can’t see the “contact me” feature, SEND ME AN EMAIL

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office, the alarm rang to let me know that it was time to head for the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication. Once I’d done that, I began to sort myself and my things out for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up too to apply the anaesthetic to my arm and to have a little chat about nothing in particular, and after she left, I had my usual crash-out over the table in the dining area while I awaited the taxi.

Properly crashed out, I was beginning to have a lovely dream when the doorbell rang, and the dream evaporated immediately. I thought “blimey, that’s early” and it was too – at 12:50, but it seemed that I’d only been there a minute, not almost thirty minutes.

Today, I was the only passenger, so we arrived early at dialysis. However, so had everyone else, so it was still 14:25, almost fifty minutes after my arrival, when I was finally coupled up. And woe is me! I had one of the two nurses who have been there for centuries but do the barest minimum of work to comply with the regulations rather than going very far out of their way.

Once everything had settled down, I started to have a footfest, something that went right on until bedtime, would you believe?

The first on the agenda was to watch the rest of Llansawel v Colwyn Bay from a week ago. It was 1-0 to Llansawel when I left it, and surprisingly, that’s how it finished up. Despite Colwyn Bay’s superior skill and tactics and their lethal strike force of “perm any three from Jack Kenny, Adam Davies, Jordan Davies and Louis Robles”, they were simply unable to break down the resolute Llansawel defence and their goalkeeper, Will Fuller, even though Llansawel were reduced to ten men after an hour.

That’s definitely three points thrown away by Colwyn Bay as they drop to fifth in the table and Llansawel climb further away from the bottom and are now in eleventh out of sixteen places.

The next match, which I saw in its entirety, was Cardiff Metropolitan v Trefelin. Trefelin, second bottom in the table with no wins and just three draws, and the Met, seventh with six wins and three draws from twelve matches, looked like the kind of game where we would be expecting one-way traffic towards just one goal. However, it was rather different than that.

Whatever Trefelin manager Andy Hill had put in his team’s pre-match cuppa, I’ll have a drink of that myself because it seemed to work wonders. Trefelin came out of the blocks at an alarming rate and took the match straight to the Met.

And after eleven minutes, we had a really controversial moment. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday, I discussed the idea of “let’s play it out from the back, lads” and how I reckoned that it was nothing but nonsense. And we had a lovely example of this today.

The Met were awarded a goal kick, so former Port Vale keeper Arron Davies took it quickly and passed it to one of his defenders who was in the goal area with him. The defender, not realising that his keeper had played the ball, picked it up to find a suitable spot to take the kick. Obviously, a penalty was awarded, from which Trefelin scored.

They scored a second later on, and although the Met pulled one back, Trefelin scored a third with ten minutes to go to make the game secure. And that was a surprising result, to be sure.

The third match was Hwlffordd v Caernarfon, but I didn’t finish that, so I’ll tell you all about it on Monday evening.

Having seen and noted the instruction about “letting him leave at his dry weight”, the nurse, despite my insistence, stopped the procedure ten minutes before the end, and for why I have no idea. Consequently, I left yet again at 200 grammes over my dry weight, and I’m getting totally fed up of this.

It’s as if, at the dialysis clinic, I’m talking to the wall instead of to a doctor and a group of nurses. It’s high time that I did something about it, and I know what I’ll do, but let’s see what happens on Monday.

The taxi arrived as I was making my way to the door and as I was the only passenger, we were here for 18:20. There was that much wind that the driver dropped me off at the back door – he can park alongside that so I only have to take three paces and I’m inside, instead of the twenty-five metres round the front.

My cleaner was waiting and she helped me inside and to my apartment, where once I was sitting down, she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I found some of those square toasted biscuit things and took a packet – the last one – into my office along with some of that vegan spreading cheese and an orange. I made myself comfortable and watched the live game of Y Fflint v Colwyn Bay. I’d missed the kick-off by half an hour, but there’s a function “start from the beginning” on the streaming site.

It actually was quite a good game, and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t know why Y Fflint are only third from bottom because they do play some very nice, tidy football and Jack Flint, their goalkeeper, is one of the best in the league.

They conceded a goal in the twenty-sixth minute but that was the extent of the scoring. Colwyn Bay could and should have had a few more, except for Jack Flint, but Y Fflint couldn’t get a shot over the goal line. A really good and lively striker would make a world of difference to this team.

By now, I was thoroughly exhausted as a result of my dialysis session, and although I made my best effort in writing my notes, I’d written about 300 words before sleep finally overwhelmed me. When I awoke, I posted on line what I’d written so far and went to prepare myself for bed. And what should have been an early night turned out not to be so after I’d fallen asleep yet again while riding the porcelain horse.

When I eventually fell into bed, I didn’t even have time to make myself comfortable before I fell asleep, and that was that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about trees … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me if I knew how many trees I’d cut down in the forest on my farm in Virlet.
"One thousand three hundred and forty-seven" I replied
"How do you know that kind of figure exactly?" he asked.
"It’s easy" I replied. "I keep a log."

LIVE: Thursday 8th October 2026 – WE HAVE HAD …

… another day of disputes down at the dialysis centre, as some people totally fail to understand exactly what “stay connected up until he’s down to the dry weight” really means, and want to shut down the procedure with ten minutes and one hundred and fifty grammes still to go.

“Is it me?” I wonder, or are there really some people who just can’t understand a plain and simple instruction?

My body is a bit like that sometimes. It can’t understand a plain and simple instruction either. All I wanted it to do was to act like the previous night and let me have a really good sleep until the alarm goes off, but no such luck. I was in bed quite late last night and it took me an age to go to sleep as well, but I awoke, probably with the wind, as we had a gale blowing outside, at whatever time it was – I don’t know, but whenever it was, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there, tossing and turning, until the alarm went off at 06:29.

For once in my life, I was actually up and about quite quickly because I had a lot of things to do. I went to the front door and unlocked it, and then I went into the bathroom to organise myself and have a good scrub up. I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d gone to during the night. Unfortunately, I hadn’t gone very far.

Last night, we were doing something with a couple of teams in the Cymru Premier League or the Cymru North League. I remember that Drenewydd was one of them. What we were doing was trying to work out some kind of either a handicap for the scores or some kind of adjustment in respect of their league positions. But Drenewydd, who were currently third in the table, were not very happy about this, and their manager had all kinds of things to say to us about the situation while we were doing it.

As it happens, Drenewydd are lying third in the Cymru North table. But this dream is, I reckon, all about the forthcoming match on Friday night between Trefynnon, adrift at the foot of the table with the unenviable record of just one point and conceding the most goals so far this season, and TNS, way out front at the top and who have been scoring goals for fun just recently. Their 9-0 thrashing of mid-table Cambrian United the other week must make gruesome reading for Trefynnon.

We’ve had a 9-1 result just recently too, and then there’s this campaign by a “journalist” who wants to open up all of the results that have been censored by some of the leagues due to the extremely heavy defeats that some clubs lower down the pyramid have suffered, despite his “article” six months or so ago deploring the heavy thrashings that some clubs have had and how demoralising and embarrassing it must be, etc., etc.

Isabelle the Nurse worked her way in later and dealt with my legs and feet. I told her about my bad night again and she wasn’t all that much help in helping me find a solution. Maybe there isn’t one. I dunno.

After she left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, we’re still carrying on with all of the papers that have been read before the club in the year 1870. There have been all sorts of subjects addressed, but right now, we’re reading a speech by an eminent mushroom expert called Elias Magnus Fries from Sweden, one of the people who were mainly responsible for the differentiation and classification of mushroom types.

None of it is controversial, however, and in any case, I don’t know enough about mushrooms to argue.

When I’d finished breakfast, I stayed sitting at the table because I had some important work to do. My chatbot and I started work on a brand new project the other day, but when I tried to open the relevant file yesterday, I couldn’t find it, despite looking and looking.

It turned out that I’d downloaded an upgrade of ChatGPT onto the big desktop machine, and the installation had installed without deleting or overwriting the old installation, and yesterday, I was trying to open the older version. And files made with the new version are not, surprisingly, backwards compatible with the old version, so the old version won’t show them.

So to cut a long story short, when I opened the new version, the file was sitting there as it should be, and so are the old files too, which are forward-compatible with the new version.

Thus yesterday, feeling full of confidence and reassurance … "the fool" – ed … I went to upgrade ChatGPT on the travelling laptop. That was no problem. I made sure that my Windows shortcut was pointing at the new version, which it was, and then clicked to open it.

And guess what? That’s right. The file wasn’t there. And copying the URL link from the chat that was open on the desktop computer into the laptop’s chat window address bar simply produced an error message.

Consequently, Chatbot and I spent two hours trying different things to make it appear, but nothing worked. Not even rubbing this brass lamp that I have in here.

When the alarm went off, I had to stop and prepare myself for dialysis, sort out a disgusting drink and my midday medication. Once I’d done that, I had to prepare the travelling laptop to take with me. My faithful cleaner came along too in order to deal with putting the anaesthetic on my arm.

After she left, I took up my usual position of “slumped over the table with my head resting on my arms” and slowly drifted away into a nice peaceful sleep for what seemed like all of thirty seconds when the doorbell awoke me.

“It can’t be the taxi already, surely?” I thought, but it was. And when I checked the time with the clock on the microwave, it was 12:58. I’d been asleep for over half an hour.

At first, I was the only passenger, but we stopped to pick up our usual Thursday voyager from the Aqua Gym at St. Pair to take to the other side of Avranches. We had a nice drive in the lovely weather … "it’s still summer here" – ed … down to Avranches, where I arrived five minutes early. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 14:20 that I was plugged in.

When I weighed myself on entry, there was another huge spike in my weight. My calculations were that if I were to stay for four hours with the machine on maximum, it would clear it. The nurses tried to dissuade me, even though they had the doctor’s authority to do it, and in any case I insisted. So we had the “on your own head be it” and they eventually did as I instructed.

There was an injection that I had to have today to boost my immunity system, so my cleaner had fetched it from the chemist the other day, and I took it to the clinic with me. When I saw the doctor (not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant), I told her “here’s a little present for you, doctor”. She wasn’t sure whether or not I was being serious, but when she saw the injection, she took it and put it in the fridge.

Once everything was up and running, I settled down to watch a football match from the weekend – Hwlffordd v Y Fflint.

Even though these teams are near the bottom of the table, they usually play some classy, stylish football. However, that certainly wasn’t the case in this match. Y Fflint certainly tried, but their midfield was overrun by the Hwlfforth midfield. Hwlffordd certainly had the better of the play, and even though they had a player sent off three quarters through the game, they still appeared to have too much in the tank for Y Fflint.

That’s how it seemed, anyway, until the ninetieth minute when Y Fflint’s Joe Malkin glanced a header into the Hwlffordd net. Y Fflint hung on until the end of the game to give them a most unexpected victory.

With staying on for four hours, I could see most of a second match, so I chose Llansawel v Colwyn Bay.

This should have been an “away banker”, but it didn’t turn out like that at all. However, I’ll tell you about the game after I’ve finished watching it.

With about ten minutes and one hundred and fifty grammes to go, the nurse came to unplug me. “Why?” I asked.

“We can see that this black line, which shows us how much fluid there is to collect, has grounded out. So now, all we’ll be doing is taking out your normal body fluids”.

“You heard what the doctor said,” I replied. “I can’t leave until I’m down to my dry weight”.

And then we had a big argument about it all. In the end, they telephoned a doctor who basically said “let him do what he wants,” so I stayed.

Even so, I was still 200 grammes over my dry weight when I left, and that was so disappointing because I’ll just have to take it off on Saturday along with everything else that has accumulated. But it really is bad news when I have to fight with these people.

What made things worse was that there were two nurses around my bed while I was being unplugged, and they were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. It was hardly polite, as were some of the comments. Not that I was upset by it, just bewildered as to why it was happening.

The taxi was waiting for me as I came out of the building, and as I was the only passenger, we could go straight home.

When I arrived at … gulp … 19:20, my cleaner was waiting for me to help me into the apartment. That was just as well because as the evening drew on, it was quite cold. And it’s soon going to be jacket-wearing weather in the morning and evening, I reckon.

Once I’d sat down, my faithful cleaner bunged a disgusting drink in my hands so that I didn’t forget, and then went up to her apartment.

After she’d left and I’d drunk my disgusting drink, I went to make my tea – some more of that potato salad that I made the other day with some ordinary salad and a spicy burger. It was a strange meal, but there were bags of protein in it, and that’s what I need.

In here later, I began to write out the notes for the day, but once again, found myself asleep on my cjair later on with my notes only half written. I posted them on-line with a “to be continued” stamp and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow morning.

Before going to bed, I went for a ride on the porcelain horse and at one point, I almost fell off. Then in the bathroom and trying to stand up after sitting on the chair, my hand slipped off the freezer and I smashed my head really hard on the fridge door as I almost fell. I really was in no fit state to be around, so I was glad that I had decided to go to bed. I wasn’t safe anywhere else.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my cleaner … "well, one of us has" – ed … she told me when I arrived home "there was a report on the TV about a 75 year old guy who was stopped by the police for going at 157 kilometres per hour (about 95 mph) in an area with a 90 kilometre per hour (about 55 mph) limit."
"Really?" I asked. "He was probably afraid that he would be late for his own funeral."

LIVE: Monday 5th October 2026 – I AM REALLY …

… convinced that the people at dialysis … "or some of them, anyway" – ed … are pulling my leg or taking the mickey. We’ve had yet another showdown about the length of the sessions.

More of this anon however. Let’s start at the very beginning … "♬ a very good place to start ♬" – ed … and go back to last night. By the time that I’d finished everything and crawled into bed, it was just a few minutes past 23:30. So much for my early night;

And it all went worse after that. I awoke a few hours later – don’t ask me what time – and after that, I didn’t go back to sleep at all. I just lay there, tossing and turning, all through the night.

When the alarm went off, I was still awake, but be that as it may, it was another desperate struggle to rise to my feet. And it wasn’t just a lack of motivation either. I had to wait a good few minutes for the room to stop spinning round before I felt able to stand up.

Having unlocked the front door for the nurse, I headed back into the bathroom to organise myself for dialysis. Except that I forgot to have a shave this morning. Whatever will Emilie the Cute Consultant think of me if she sees me this afternoon at dialysis?

Back in here, there was nothing on the dictaphone from last night, so I went to find myself something else to do. But there wasn’t very long in which to do it because the nurse turned up at 08:04 this morning, and that’s early.

While he was sorting out my legs and feet, he was telling me some more stories about Saturday’s fire in the restaurant in the town centre. Most of it, though, is pure gossip and speculation, so I’m not going to repeat it in a public forum.

After he left, I made breakfast (and my new loaf is wonderful) and while I was eating it, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’ve finished talking about fungi now and were discussing extremes of weather. And one example caught my eye – the entry for 1816.

"1816. July was unusually boisterous and wet.
Aug. 31. Accompanied by a fall of rain of nearly three inches in two days. A tremendous gale of wind visited Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, and other northern towns. Much damage done to shipping, and many vessels lost at sea. This was the diastrous harvest time previously mentioned."

This corresponds with the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Sumbawa, in Indonesia, in April 1815, the most powerful volcanic eruption in modern times. It led to 1816 being called “The Year Without a Summer” as crops failed and extremes of weather battered the World.

Back in here later, I had this week’s radio programme to review, and when I was satisfied with it, I sent it off to the studio to be fitted into the stream for broadcasting on Friday and Saturday nights at 21:30.

Having done that, the next item that needed my intervention was my Welsh homework. I called up the page, copied and pasted the questions onto the computer, checked that they were appreciated as being quite the careful and faithful copy, and then began to answer them.

When I’d answered them, I checked with my chatbot to see if I was on the right lines, and once he confirmed that everything was as it should be, I sent them off. That’ll give our tutor something to think about.

There was an interruption when the telephone rang. A neighbour called me to ask if he could come to visit me sometime. We agreed on Wednesday morning at 11:00. Then he telephoned me again five minutes later to say that he’d forgotten about an appointment on Wednesday, so could he come another time? As long as I’m here and I’m not in my Welsh class, he can come when he likes.

But what with neighbours coming to visit, the possibility that I’m going to have a friend here for a week and all of that, I seem to be quite popular these days. I’m not sure why, though. Do I owe you any money?

It’s not as busy, though, as it was last year. I shall have to remind a few more people that it’s open house for whenever they want to come to stay.

When the alarm that reminds me that it’s time to prepare for dialysis went off, I wandered into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication and then began to pack the travelling laptop to take with me. My cleaner turned up too to sort out the anaesthetic for my arm.

After she left, I waited for the taxi, in my usual “slumped over the kitchen table, head resting on my arms” position. And I began to have a lovely dream and remember saying to myself that I really must remember this, but then the doorbell rang and the whole lot evaporated immediately, and that was that.

At first, I was alone in the car, but then we had to pick up a guy at the hospital as well as my regular companion from Sartilly, as a result of which we were a little late arriving.

Not only that, but several people had arrived together just before me, so I had to wait until 14:25 before I was finally connected up.

My plan was to sit quietly and watch a football match but my dialysis machine had other ideas. It was constantly ringing up errors, and that brought the nurses a-running when the alarm went off. I hardly had any peace at all.

Nevertheless, I did manage to watch Airbus UK Broughton v Trefelin, after a fashion. This game was played between two of the newly promoted sides, and what different sides they were too. Trefelin were more “kick and rush” whereas Airbus played some really good, technical football. The final result, 3-0 to Airbus, wasn’t a surprise to anyone.

It seems to me that Airbus have managed to suss out this Premier League, and while they are never going to win the championship, they have what it takes to avoid relegation, but unless Trefelin can find something magical from somewhere, it’s going to be a long, hard season.

In the middle of all of this, we had a confrontation. One of the doctors … "not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant" – ed …came to see me. She asked me how things were, and so I launched into my tirade about the last two sessions and how disappointed I was.

Of course, it wasn’t she who had made the decisions – she wasn’t on duty – so she only knew what was in the records.

First of all, I complained that whatever had gone on had gone on without my knowledge, and I thought that that was shameful. That surprised her because, apparently, every patient has the right to know what’s happening about his treatment.

Secondly, on Thursday, I’d made the decision to come home at the right weight by staying for four hours instead of three, and coming home 700 grammes over my weight, as I did last Thursday, was, in my opinion, a waste of forty-five minutes of my time when I have better things to do at home.

She couldn’t really find an answer to that. One thing that she suggested was that there wasn’t enough time even with four hours to take everything out. They are limiting my extraction to 950 millilitres per hour because of my low blood pressure. But leaving my blood pressure aside, which has been low like this for twenty-odd years, what with everything that’s pumped into me during a session, there were three thousand eight hundred millilitres to take out last Thursday, so that was exactly right – and I realised that the end of the World had come upon us when she – a doctor of medicine – had to use a calculator to divide three thousand eight hundred by four.

After much argument and discussion, we agreed that I should be leaving at my recognised dry weight, even if I have to stay there for a week to do it.

And having made such an agreement, the dialysis breathed its last, ten minutes before the end of the session with 200 grammes still to go, so I was unplugged, under-extracted and overweight. It wasn’t my day, was it?

The taxi was waiting for me when the dialysis was over and I was able to head for home quite quickly, especially as I was the only passenger. However, we ended up being stuck behind a service bus between La Havaudière and the roundabout at the ring road just outside Granville, and the bus was crawling along, stopping to drop off and pick up passengers all the way round and we couldn’t go past.

Eventually, we arrived at chez moi where my faithful cleaner was waiting for me. She helped me into the kitchen, and when I was sitting down on a chair, she stuck a disgusting drink into my hands.

After all of my exertions at dialysis today, I didn’t at all feel like cooking anything, so I grabbed some crackers and some of the cheese spread, and an orange for pudding. And when I went to spread the cheese on my crackers, I found that it had gone off. It’s really not my day, is it?

In the end, I started to write up the notes from the day, and I was pushing on quite well but the next thing that I knew was that it was almost 22:00 and I must have fallen asleep in mid-page at some time previously.

At that point, I was in absolutely no state at all to carry on working, so I posted what I had written, added a “To Be Continued” stamp and went to bed. I’ll finish everything off tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about things breaking down … "well, one of us has" – ed … two young Russian conscripts walk to the Ukraine front line and surrender to the Ukrainians.
"Our lorry has broken down, we’ve no more fuel, and we’ve been abandoned. " they said.
They are consequently taken prisoner, but one of the Ukrainians is a mechanic. "There’s no-one about" he said. "Let’s go and see if we can salvage it."
The Russian prisoners lead the Ukrainian patrol to the lorry, and the mechanic gives it a good examination.
After half an hour, he announces "the fuel pipe has come off and all the fuel has drained away. There’s a hole in the sump that has drained out all the oil, the cam belt has snapped, one of the tyres is punctured, the starter has fallen out and there’s a leak of water in the radiator."
"A leak in the radiator?" asks one of the Russians. "I can’t remember doing that."

LIVE: Saturday 3rd October 2026 – ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS AFTERNOON …

… in dialysis today. But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I’m going to do my best not to fall asleep in dialysis again so that I can keep my eye on what’s going on behind the scenes.

Another thing on which I wish that I could keep an eye on is what’s going on with my sleeping patterns. Anyone who checked my blog between about 22:00 and midnight and then went to check it later will be bound to be confused by what they read.

Round about 21:30, I fell asleep in the chair here, and when I awoke at about 22:00, I just posted on line what I’d written to date and added a “TO BE CONTINUED” sticker to it.

Before I fell into bed, though, I went for a ride on the porcelain horse, and when I came back in here, I found that I was wide awake somehow, so I finished off the blog, overwrote the “TO BE CONTINUED” sticker and posted the completed entry on line.

And then I fell into bed and went straight to sleep.

At some point during the night, I awoke again and was tossing and turning around for what seemed like an eternity, trying to go to sleep, but without any success. But I must have managed it at some point because I was dead to the World when the alarm went off at 06:29.

We had the usual struggle with ourselves to leave the bed, and then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out. While I was there, I had a good scrub up and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night.

There had been something in the news about adoptions. There was a family from Preston who had adopted a boy from a Preston children’s home, and a couple of other people who had done the same thing too. There was even someone who had taken an abandoned child from a children’s home with a view to adopting him, and escaping to Vietnam. That had me thinking about whether, as a single man, I could adopt a child too. So I went away from here and had a think about it and then went back to the office to talk to them. It was only later on that I realised that I was living in a one-bedroomed apartment, so if I did adopt a child, then where would it sleep?

There’s certainly some mileage in this dream. Some “friends of friends” have recently adopted a child from a local children’s home, and that’s what has probably inspired this dream. And then adopted child and Vietnam has a story behind it too, but it’s another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

As for adopting a child, I’m quite ready, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to adopting a cat, preferably a female cat. And it’s true that I only have a one-bedroom apartment, so adopting a child would be out of the question, even if I were not ill.

Then I was at work, and it was a Sunday morning and there was plenty of overtime to be done to clear some arrears. I went in and there were quite a few other people in as well. There was a guy sitting next to me, and suddenly, a pile of people’s files turned up on my desk, so I asked him if they were his, and he said that they were, so I put them onto his desk somewhere and began to make myself comfortable. A girl came in extremely late, and everyone cheered her, so she came out with some story about having been locked in somewhere over the weekend, and how would we have liked it? We said that, well, we were certain that we could have rolled up our sleeves, done something and swam to somewhere. I began to look at everything on my desk, and it was a complete and utter shambles, so what I had in mind was to leave quietly on Friday and not go back to the office.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that these dreams of being in work after my retirement date and threatening to walk out without notice used to be a regular occurrence, but they seem to have died off a while back. However, as I said the other day, they are slowly making a comeback.

And the untidiness of mine in the office is nothing new at all. I was always like that, wherever I was and whatever I was doing.

We’d gone skiing somewhere in one of these big resorts. The car that we used was one of these big Transcontinental Vauxhall estates. There were five of us in this car, and the amount of stuff we’d brought with us was astonishing. After we’d packed, for example, I found my old ski boots and all kinds of things like that, so when we arrived in a town near the border to be inspected by the police, we were fully loaded and it took quite a while. I found later that we’d brought all the books with us from home, all that kind of thing. We went skiing, and then we decided to put our chalet up for sale. Someone in the town responded immediately, so we had to do a lot of clearing up and tidying up before we could let him in. When we let him in, he was big and he was active, bouncing around, and we were busy trying to put our ski things away and stack these books somewhere. We ended up stacking them against the wall next to the fireplace. I found a camera that didn’t work because the batteries were flat in it, all kinds of things like that, and getting them into my bag was going to be complicated. Someone came up to my girlfriend and asked me about the car. Before we were leaving, someone else came up to us and asked about the car. My girlfriend didn’t know much about it, so I told him. He said that he was really impressed with the amount of luggage we had in there. He cancelled an order for a new car so that he could buy one of these Transcontinental Vauxhall Estates.

In case you’ve forgotten what a Transcontinental Vauxhall estate looks like, there’s one HERE. It’s the beige one, SPU903M. Strangely enough, of all the cars that I’ve ever owned, I’ve never ever had a Vauxhall. The closest I ever came to one was having a Bedford CA van for a short while.

However, in the past, we never went to any fashionable ski resort, except that I went once with an Italian girl to a ski resort in Italy. Most of the time, we went to the unfashionable ones, although when I was driving coaches and we had no work for a few months after Christmas, I’d go to ski resorts in Eastern Europe such as Romania and Bulgaria. I even took Percy Penguin with me once.

The nurse turned up as usual, and while he was dealing with my legs and feet, he gave me the same warning as my cleaner did yesterday about the festival down in the port and how it was total chaos.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, we had another little chat about geology, and then we returned to fungi, with a discussion about fairy rings. Maybe the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would have been interested in joining in the discussion. It’s a shame that the subject wasn’t “fairy boots”, otherwise it would have given me a good opportunity to drag Lee “I’m a prostitute” Pottymouth into the discussion. He’s not put in an appearance in these pages in an age.

When breakfast was finished, I had a few things to do, after which I intended to work on reformating the music that I’d downloaded the other day. However, in the end, I ended up having an on line discussion with someone about music that went on for quite a while, discussing mainly folk-rock songs.

And when the chat finished, I was so fired up that for the first time in a couple of years, I picked up the acoustic guitar and played CAREY by Joni Mitchell and MOONAGE DAYDREAM (I don’t know why) by David Bowie. I was surprised how much I’d forgotten, and also how much it hurt afterwards.

At midday, I went into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication, and then I began to make myself ready for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up too to put the anaesthetic on my arm too.

After she left, I hunched up over the table and let myself relax, with my head resting on my forearms. I was once again just about to drift off into a really nice dream when the doorbell rang. I looked at the time and it was 12:58 – I’d been away with the fairies … "although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … for just over half an hour.

There was no one else to pick up en route so we arrived at dialysis a few minutes early, despite the chaos around the port today. However, it made no difference because there was a queue of people in front of me, and it took until 14:25 to be plugged in.

Once everything was up and running, I had to wait until 15:30 for the football to kick off so I found one or two other things to do while I was waiting. However, I must have crashed out somewhere along the line because I awoke with a start at 15:27, just three minutes before kick-off.

The match that I’d chosen today was the basement clash between Rhydaman and Trefynnon. This was a real six-pointer, as both sides had yet to record a victory, and they needed to start winning soon, as the rest of the table was cutting them adrift.

As you might expect, this was another game played at a hundred miles per hour with both teams going at it hammer and tongs. And its opening was certainly dramatic – Johnny Evans missed a sitter of a free header when surely it must have been easier to score, and then straight from the goal kick, Trefynnon roared up the field and scored to go in front.

Then we had goals disallowed for offside, balls hitting the post or being cleared off the line, until Johnny Evans, in the fortieth minute, scored with a delightful lob from outside the penalty area, right over the head of the Trefynnon goalkeeper.

It went from bad to worse for Trefynnon when in the fifty-sixth minute, Rhydaman scored a second goal to take the lead. From then on, Trefynnon threw everything they had at the Rhydaman defence, but to no avail and Rhydaman took all of the points.

That was a shame because I thought that Trefynnon had the better of the play, but they are deep in it now after that.

And spare a thought for Cambrian United. For the second away match in succession, they conceded nine goals. And they are one of the better promoted teams too.

This was when I noticed something rather bizarre. When I’d begun to watch the football, there were fourteen minutes after the final whistle before the end of the session. However, despite there being over fourteen minutes of stoppage time in this game, there was still half an hour to go, and I wasn’t finished until 17:55.

From 14:25 to 17:55 is three and a half hours, not the three hours that I’m supposed to have, and when I weighed myself later, I was still four hudred grams over my dry weight. Mind you, I did notice that the chief doctor, he who doesn’t like me chatting up the nurses, was on duty again today. He spoke to several people in the ward, but kept well clear of my bed.

When I was outside, I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi but I was once more the only passenger. Nevertheless, it was 19:15 when I finally arrived home.

My cleaner was waiting for me, sitting on her mushroom outside, and she helped me into the house and gave me another disgusting drink.

After she had left, I made myself a small plate of pasta and veg tossed in olive oil, garlic, black pepper and vegan cheese. And delicious it was too, especially as it was followed by a peach yoghurt.

Back in here, I had things to do, and then write up my notes. Now when I’ve checked the stats and backed up the computer, I’ll be off to bed. It’s horrendously late tonight … "or this morning" – ed … but I don’t care. I’m aiming for a lie in tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about people sitting on mushrooms and other bizarre things … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man walked into a doctor’s surgery and began to speak to another man sitting there.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
"I have the biggest piles the World has ever seen" he replied.
"Is that why you’re sitting on that giant bean cushion?" he asked.
The man replied "look more closely."

LIVE: Thursday 1st October 2026 – WHAT A TOTAL …

… disaster this afternoon at dialysis was. Anything that could have possibly gone wrong did so, and in spades too.

Not that it was much better last night. It was almost midnight when I finally made my way into bed, and six hours and thirty minutes isn’t a long time in which to do very much, even if you go to sleep straight away, as I did. I wondered actually whether I would at first, with a streaming head cold and coughing, fit to awaken the dead, but a menthol and eucalyptus sweet cleared everything up long enough for me to drop off.

Not that I was asleep for long. Once more, I awoke at some kind of strange, early hour and couldn’t go back to sleep for ages. Whether I did at all is a debateable point – I was definitely awake when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As usual, it was quite a struggle to raise myself to my feet, unlock the front door and than head to the bathroom. There, I had a good wash and scrub up as well as a shave too, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but to my dismay, there was nothing on it. That was rather disappointing.

Instead, there were plenty of other things to keep me busy until the nurse arrived. Today, we were discussing faults and shortcomings in the dialysis system, not that we’ll ever put it right ourselves sitting here.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’ve moved on from fungi and we’re now talking about the fossils of some giant prehistoric prawns, how they caught their prey and all of that. I’m glad that I didn’t live a few million years ago and had to confront one of those.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I looked at my database to see what the programme next week will be all about. And as it happens, it will be a concert. All of the music that I have that belongs here totals one hour, one minute and twenty-nine seconds, and it’s not possible at first glance to cut it down by three minutes to fit in any speech. I had to be rather imaginative and creative, and now I’ve made one minute and forty-seven seconds for a speech, and I can cope with that.

When I’d done all that, there was even time to begin to write out the notes, and my friendly neighbourhood chatbot has even found some nice anecdotes for me to use. There’s no doubt that with enrolling my chatbot as a research assistant, I’m saving hours of time.

When the alarm went off, I headed into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication, and then began to organise my things for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up too to apply my anaesthetic onto my arm and we had a nice chat for a while.

After she left, I slumped over the table in the dining area and let myself disappear into my innermost thoughts, and just as I was beginning to settle into a nice dream, the taxi arrived.

We were ten minutes early setting off but we had to go to Sartilly to pick up another passenger at the old people’s home. He wasn’t ready, so we had to wait almost twenty minutes. As a result, I was late arriving at dialysis and had to wait until 14:20 to be plugged in.

Whatever has happened these last few days, I don’t know, but I seem to have set a new personal record of fluid to be deducted today. Even at four hours, there was only just enough time to eliminate it with the machine going full-tilt. I really don’t know what is happening right now, because nothing really has changed in my food or drink input. Even the energy drink that I had yesterday was in place of the late afternoon’s disgusting drink.

As a result, I persuaded them to make the session four hours and I sat back to watch the football.

Today, it was the rest of Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon. I’d left this match with it being, surprisingly, 1-0 to the Met but I didn’t worry too much about it – especially when the Met had a player sent off after thirty-four minutes.

After that, it was an endless procession of balls into the edge of the Met’s penalty area and Caernarfon did everything they could to score.

That was how the second half went at first, but after an hour, a calamity! On one of their rare breaks upfield, the Met were awarded a penalty, from which they scored to make it 2-0.

After that, Caernafon brought on every attacker they could in the place of several defenders and bombarded the Met penalty area, but they couldn’t get the ball in the net until the eighty-sixth minute, when they made it 2-1. When it came up to ninety minutes, there was eight minutes of stoppage time and it was all one-way traffic, with Caernarfon still unable to find an equaliser until in the very last couple of seconds, Zack Clarke found the net to equalise and break the hearts of the Met.

So much for the legendary, unstoppable firepower of Caernarfon that put nine past Cambrian United last weekend.

That was really what I call a frustrating match, just like a game that I saw of TNS a couple of seasons ago, where they needed to score a goal but spent ninety minutes camped around the opposition penalty area with no-one being brave enough to put a cross into the box.

After that, I had a few things to do to take me up to the end of the session, with the blood pressure alarm ringing every thirty minutes, bringing the nurses running.

And this is where the disasters began. Firstly, I overheard the nurse and the doctor, the chief of the building who doesn’t like me. It seems that he’d told the nurse to diminish the extraction. However, he didn’t have the courage to tell me, which I found deplorable, and now I know why the nurse turned the display panel from facing my bed to facing the other way.

They may as well have left the extraction as it was and shortened the time – as if I have nothing better to do than to spend my time hanging around there and leaving with seven hundred grams extra that will mean that I have to stay there an hour later on Saturday.

At least the taxi was waiting for me when I exited the building, but the bad news is that we had to go across town to the clinic to pick someone else up, and one of the roads was under repair, so we had to go all round the Wrekin to get there.

The driver went to search for the passenger, but there was no trace, no matter where and how hard she looked. In a desperate last throw of the dice, we tried the ophthalmic surgery, and that was where we found her.

However, she had a prescription to be filled, so we had to drive around Avranches until we found a chemist’s that was open and then back round the Wrekin and head for home.

After dropping off our passenger, it was 19:40 when I arrived home, and I don’t think that I’ve ever been as late as that.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and gave me a disgusting drink. I didn’t feel like cooking at that time, so I grabbed one of the bags of lentil crisps that she bought for me yesterday, and delicious they were too, especially when they were followed by a nice, ripe and juicy plum.

So now, having written my notes, I’ll do what else needs to be done and then I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about fossils … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone told me that there was a college in Somerset that trained up local people to dig for fossils.
"What are they called?" I asked.
"Arrrrh-chaeologists."

LIVE: Monday 28th September 2026 – IT HAS BEEN …

… a fairly uneventful day today. So much so that I had to struggle to think of a dramatic way of opening today’s entry, but in the end I couldn’t, so that was that. Instead, I’ll just stroll on in a chronological timeline until I have a marvellous fit of inspiration.

And so to begin, I didn’t have the early night for which I’d been hoping yesterday. Although it was before 22:30 when I went to bed, it wasn’t many minutes before it. And although I was soon asleep, it wasn’t for as long as I had hoped.

At some point, and I’ve no idea when it was, I awoke. And then I tried to go back to sleep, which was not as easy as it might have been. However, I did notice something bizarre. I can sleep quite well when I’m lying on my left side and even better when I’m lying on my right side, so those are the positions for which I try to aim.

However, when I tried that last night, I’d wake up again a short while later to find myself lying on my back, and that’s a position in which I can never go off to sleep. And thinking about it, I’ve been spending far too much time lying on my back instead of on my sides just recently.

At some point, though, I must have gone to sleep because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from my slumbers.

We had the usual battle of wills about standing up and heading to the bathroom, and I think that it was only the possibility of meeting Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis that drove me onwards, having first remembered to unlock the front door. And in the bathroom, I had a good scrub up and a shave, “just in case”.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened last night.

There was someting last night about me having to fill in some kind of form for something. But when I had the copy back, I noticed that quite a lot of the text that I had written had been removed. There was a note in its place saying “text removed by editor as being too long and not to the point”. I then tried to remember what it was that I had written, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember what I’d written that had been removed.

Strangely enough, I do have a form that needs completing this week. But the bit about having the text removed reminded me of what I had written last night about Kent. That, I suppose, was also too long and not to the point of whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual. It’s her last day today before her week’s rest, so I wished her good luck. She replied that she’s probably going to need it because it’s raining outside right now.

After she left, I made breakfast (and my new bread is delicious) and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Luckily, they finished talking about that gruesome parasite and have moved on to discuss the flora of the Clee Hills and the Longmynd. And in discussing autochthonous plants, he notes "At the Miocene period, or, more strictly, at its dawn, a temperate clime prevailed within the Arctic circle. Poplars, planes, and lime trees grew within twelve degrees of the Pole, and so have beds of the same fossil plants been found in North Greenland, where now an enormous ice cap covers the whole country, leaving only a narrow slip of land free from ice in summer."

When I was in Greenland in 2018 and 2019, I can promise you that it was nothing like as bad as that. I wondered what his opinion back in 1871 was about global warming, but I didn’t have long to wait before I found out.

Just two or three pages further on, we have "Mr. Croll, who attributes the changes of climate marking the different periods of the tertiary epoch to periodical variations in the eccentricity of the earth’s elliptical orbit, tells us that for the last 60,000 years eccentricity has been very small."

Back in here afterwards, I reviewed the radio programme for this coming weekend and sent it off for insertion in the stream, following which I reformatted the music that I need for the programme that I’ll be preparing. When that was all done, I even managed to re-edit a couple of songs that have gone into the folder to await my further instructions.

At 12:00 my faithful cleaner came in and sorted out my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi. He was late today, and we already had one person in the car. We had to go to St Pair for a third one and then down all these little country lanes where our driver drove as if the hounds of hell were after him. We ended up being three minutes early at dialysis, despite how late we were running earlier.

Today, I was honoured with being placed in a single room, so I was either going to have a medical examination or the head doctor was going to come and give me … "yet" – ed … another lecture about chatting up the nurses. But it was also the farthest possible bed away from the front door. They really are making me work for a living around there.

And being early, I’d arrived at about the same time as everyone else, so I had to wait for a while before they came to sort me out. Although it was the same nurse as Saturday – one of the newer ones – the connecting up was much less painful and I was up and running by 14:20.

At first, all I wanted to do was to sleep – I don’t know why – but I livened up after I’d had my 15:00 coffee and orange juice, so I began to watch the football.

Today’s match was between two of the newly promoted clubs, Cambian United from Andypandy … "he means Tonypandy" – ed … in the Rhondda Valley and Llandudno.

Both these clubs are doing reasonably well and seem to be managing to keep up with the established mid-table clubs, which is more than can be said for some of the others, so I was expecting it to be a good match.

And I wasn’t disappointed either. Both clubs went at it hammer and tongs right from the kick-off and it ended up being one of the best matches that I’ve seen. Plenty of blood and thunder, plenty of skill, plenty of aggression. What really surprised me, though, was that Cambrian roared into a 4-0 lead after forty-seven minutes, and that was a long, long way from representing the balance of play.

In the second half, Llandudno had a change of tactics and managed to claw three goals back, but ran out of time at the end. Still, I’m not complaining at all about the game.

There was also time to watch the first twenty minutes or so of Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon, and I’ll tell you more about that game when I’ve seen the rest of it.

Although I’d seen Emilie the Cute Consultant on my way in, I was right in thinking that the big white chief would come to see me. However, we just talked about the implant in my arm and the pain that it was generating when I was plugged in. He said that he’d have a chat with the nurses about trying a different method.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not the way that they do it that’s the problem. It’s because the implant itself is damaged, as I have been told on many occasions by the doctor who gives it the six-monthly examinations.

When my time was up, I was unplugged quite quickly while my taxi driver was waiting at the door to my room. It was another one of my favourites, so we had a really good chat all the way home, like we always do. She told me all about her holiday in Brittany and how hot it was. But luckily, the campsite had a pool, so she, her husband and her two kids spent every day sitting in the pool to keep cool.

Funnily enough, I’d been thinking for several days that I hadn’t seen her for a while, but she had come over to chat with me the other day while she was on ambulance duty, and now she had come to take me home.

We were home quite quickly, and my faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt once I’d sat down.

After she left, I added the vegan cream into my curry and gave it a good stir. Then I made some rice and veg and helped myself to a ladleful of curry. It really was delicious, and there’s plenty left to freeze for later.

Back in here, I began to write up my notes, and I was doing quite well ar first. However, this huge wave of sleep came out of nowhere, and as it passed, it took me with it.

When I awoke, I was totally incapable of carrying on, so I posted on line what I’d written up to then and went to bed. The rest can wait until tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about parasites … "well, one of us has" – ed … Donald Trump was arrested and placed in a filthy parasite-infested cell.
"That must have been awful," said a news reporter "Trump having to share a cell with parasites in it."
"I know" replied his colleague. "I felt really sorry for those parasites."

LIVE: Saturday 26th September 2026 – SOMEONE ELSE HAS …

… now said how much better I’m looking these days. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve seen her, the taxi driver who used to live down the road from me in Brussels when she was young, but she actually made a point of coming over to see me after she and her oppo had put their patient out of a stretcher onto the bed.

There have been quite a few people who have said that just recently, and it is nice of them, and you have to admit that so many different people can’t all be wrong, but I just wish that I actually felt like it.

Having said that, I suppose that I ought to feel like it because I had another one of those rare nights when I was actually in bed before my curfew time of 22:30, a time that I go beyond with monotonous regularity.

As for what happened after that, I really have no definite memory. I might have awoken once or twice during the middle of the night, but I wouldn’t like to say so for definite, and I was certainly asleep when the alarm went off.

As usual, it took me a good while after that to find the enthusiasm to stagger to my feet and head off to the bathroom to sort myself out. And while I was in there, I had a good scrub up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night.

I was somewhere in the Balkans last night and we were fighting a revolutionary war against whoever had taken over the state. One of the things that we had was this huge St Bernard dog. Whenever there was any firing or shooting in the neighbourhood, the dog would rush off to try to join in, so we had to restrain him quite heavily. Then we saw the peace treaty that had been drawn up between the country’s militia and our regional militia. There were many, many people with us who didn’t agree with it, so it might be of some use or it might be not, and it might only apply to that immediate area rather than to a wider area, so we decided that we’d test it. We went down in one of the vans and that told us that this peace treaty was to be enforced in our area too, so we trained the dog, and we had it so that it could intercept coded messages and decode them. But it would only be for half an hour or so and then we’d lose this doggy shredder tool for ever.

Although I’ve been in the Balkans on a couple of nights in the recent past, there doesn’t seem to be anything in here that relates to anything that has been going on just recently. A couple of weeks ago I was reading something about the Greek resistance in World War II and the civil war afterwards, but there was certainly no mention of a St Bernard dog anywhere, and no-one had a van.

But the idea of a doggy shredder is a very interesting one. We shall have to try that out on the Hound of the Baskervilles.

There was a lot of us on holiday in Austria. We were staying at someone’s property where they ran an agricultural repair business. The guy who ran the business had just had an operation on his arm, so he wasn’t able to do any heavy maintenance tasks on other people’s vehicles, so his wife, when someone came, she was turning them away and telling them to come back. He had a great deal of difficulty doing this, so he was accepting jobs for two or three weeks hence. The boss of the organisation actually had a camera to film people working in his office to make sure that they were doing the right kind of work. Of course, everyone protested but he still kept them. There was a girl who was the loudest complainant, but the boss said that she spent a lot of time talking to her boyfriend. She said that she does it on a streaming service that runs in parallel with her work so that it doesn’t interrupt her work at all. The boss began to become really heavy on this subject, so I had to intervene. I said that surely the acid test is how much post she has left over at the end of the month. He just threw down his tea towel and marched off. In the meantime, a dumper had pulled up outside. It was one that needed repair and he had seen it a week ago and had put it off until today. And when it came in, it was in no state at all … fell asleep here … As well as this, we’d been skiing. The guy in the dumper asked us if we’d been skiing around here, so we said yes. He was surprised because he didn’t know that there was any snow, but we’d been having a really good time. I’d met this young girl, and she was one of these young girls to whom you could give a tickle and she’d laugh, that sort of thing. I happened to quite like her, so I was lucky enough that one day I managed to take her out. We ended up having a kiss and a cuddle before I took her home. After that, I noticed that she’d cooled off a little and wasn’t so tactile as she had been. When I gave her a tickle, she didn’t do anything, but when the boy sitting next to her did, she laughed. I thought that he’d obviously managed to put himself between the two of us. I thought that that was really a shame because I’d like to get to know this girl better.

There were loads of bits missing from this dream. I remember having a big, full A4 binder, as full as my Welsh one, and having to take certain papers out of it because I imagined that the garage guy would be asking me to fix the machine, the young girl was dressed in a black skirt and black jacket, and there was another, older girl there dressed in a green top and blue skirt.

But there’s plenty of mileage in this dream. Yesterday, I’d been listening to A CHRIS ISAAK CD which includes the song WRONG TO LOVE YOU and that presumably has triggered something off, and it does remind me of one particular skiing trip when we used to go to Aviemore in the early-mid seventies.

As I said, the folder relates to the Welsh folder from last year and the year before that I’ve just put away. As for fixing the dumper on behalf of that garage guy, it wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve had to do that in the garage of someone else.

The area of Austria where we were is that near the Czech border, which we have visited on several occasions in the recent past, and the operation on the arm causing him not to be able to work – an operation on the arm (having an implant inserted for dialysis) is one of the reasons why I haven’t played the guitars for a couple of years.

Turning work away is another thing that I could never do, no matter how inconvenient it was. And there’s plenty more too in that dream, but if I were to start to write it out, I’d still be here in the morning before I finished.

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

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

Hurricane Isabelle the Nurse blew in rather later than usual and treated me here in the bedroom where I was working. Apparently, a previous client had held her up for fifteen minutes and she had two patients programmed to meet her down at her office almost imminently, so she was interested in shaving as many minutes off her appointments as she could.

After she left, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast, and while I was eating it, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, we are reading about the Rhipiphorus Paradoxus or “wasp nest beetle”, whose larvae are parasites of the wasp larvae. This is really not my sort of thing at all, but if I keep on reading, I might actually learn something, and isn’t that why I’m reading all these books anyway?

Back in here, there were a few things that needed doing, and then I had to search around for all the music that I need for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing next week. I needed to track down some music for five of the artists who will be making their appearance, but I managed that before I had to go to make myself ready for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner came too to apply the anaesthetic on my arm, and after she left, I had to wait for the taxi. Not that I had long to wait because the driver was here ten minutes early. And as I was the only passenger today, she had me there by 13:30.

And there, I didn’t have to wait long before I was connected up either. I was up and running by 14:05.

No-one bothered me at all today except the nurses who came running every half an hour when the blood pressure alarm sounded. No doctors or anything. So I could watch the football in peace.

We started with a match from several weeks ago, a qualifying match in the Welsh Cup between Evans and Williams v Port Talbot Town. I managed to see just over half of it before today’s matches kicked off.

My choice this afternoon was the basement clash between Y Fflint and Rhydaman. This was a match that both clubs needed to win if they were to have any chance of hauling themselves out of the mire at the bottom, so I expected them both to be going at it hammer and tongs.

And I was right too. Y Fflint played the nicer football – much nicer, in fact, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … but Rhydaman had the best of the early chances, hitting the woodwork when it was easier to score and also having a goal disallowed for offside.

Y Fflint really do play some nice football, though, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … and it really is a mystery why they have had such poor results. What they haven’t had in any of their matches is a fair share of the luck.

However, all of that changed this afternoon. An over-hit kick upfield from the Fflint midfield found Rhydaman’s goalkeeper and central defender in a helpless tangle as they both went for the same ball, leaving Y Fflint’s centre-forward with the easiest of tap-ins to open the scoring, and a few minutes later, the Rhydaman goalkeeper dropped what should have been a simple catch right at the feet of the Fflint centre-forward, who thanked him very much for the opportunity to score again.

And later in the game, while Rhydaman were throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Fflint defence, a quick clearance out saw a Fflint midfielder run the whole length of the pitch and slide the ball past the stranded keeper for a third.

Y Fflint have been threatening to give some club a right doing-over, but while 3-0 is not actually the score that I had in mind, it’s good enough to be going on with. And it really was an enjoyable game to watch too.

And just a mention about the crowd who saw Penybont come from behind to beat Airbus UK Broughton. It was the fourth-highest crowd in the history of the Cymru Premier League, and if that’s not an achievement, I don’t know what is.

The taxi was waiting for me when I went outside afterwards. It was the same driver who brought me, and once more, I was the only passenger, so I was home by 18:15. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment. When I was sitting comfortably, she shoved a disgusting drink into my sweaty mitt.

After she left, I made the baked beans, chips and sausage that I should have had yesterday, and then had a soya yoghurt and a prune for pudding.

Back in here, I saw the start of the match between Trefynnon and Llansawel, and then I began to write up my notes from today. And now that they are done, there are just a few more things to do, and then my Sunday lie-in. Isabelle the Nurse can deal with my feet and legs while I’m in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about crowds … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time a man squeezed into a crowded lift.
"Ballroom, please" he said.
"I’m sorry" said the woman in front of him. "Am I crowding you?"

LIVE: Monday 21st September 2026 – YET ANOTHER CHAOTIC …

… day at dialysis – just the same (give or take the odd bit here and there) as last Monday, and I wasn’t really in the mood for it, because I’ve had a chaotic day too.

Last night, it wasn’t too far short of midnight when I finally made my way into bed, and the good news was that I was asleep quite quickly.

However, it wasn’t for long, though. I’ve no idea what time I awoke, but as it was pitch-black outside, I’d say that it wasn’t much after 02:30. And once awake, I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable in bed so that I could go back to sleep, but nothing seemed to work.

At least, that’s what I thought, but round about 06:05 I had another one of those dramatic awakenings that I used to have regularly at one point. There was no point in going back to sleep at that point, with all of my appointments today, so by 06:15 I was in the bathroom organising myself ready for the onslaught. I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later.

There was actually something on the dictaphone from the night, as I found out on Tuesday morning, so I’ve added it in here.

There was something last night about me being sent to one of these RAF filling station type of places where people go after they have been injured or after they’ve been sick and their position in their regular flight had been filled by someone else. So I’d been sent to this place to meet up with other people similar to form a crew, and then I suddenly realised that I can’t have done that because I wasn’t born until nine years after the war ended so it’s just not possible for me to have been there.

There actually was a place like this at one of the RAF training centres, although it was hardly a “filling station” in the normal usage of the term. Bomber crews were assembled simply amongst themselves towards the end of their training and they usually stuck together throughout their tour of thirty missions. However, if someone were sick or injured, someone else would be co-opted into the crew and when the original member returned to duty, he would find that his place had been taken. Consequently he’d be sent to the “training centre” where he could team up with other people to form a new crew.

However, I’m impressed that within a dream, I can recognise the absurdity of the situation of being in this training centre at least nine years before I was even born.

Back in the kitchen, I put away the washing up from yesterday and made sure that the place looked nice. After that, I finished organising what I needed to take with me and then had a little snooze hunched over the table while I waited for the taxi to arrive.

The car was booked for 08:15, and my doorbell rang at 08:14. Excellent timing, that was. There was just me going in the car this morning. We had patchy fog all the way, not as bad as my chauffeur said it was when she started work at 05:30 this morning.

We arrived at the hospital bang on 09:00, and she pushed me in a wheelchair up to the hôpital de jour. I know that I have said that I won’t go in a wheelchair, but where I was going was miles away from the entrance and, at this time of the morning, the drivers have plenty of other things to do that accompany me, slowly and painfully on foot.

The nursing auxiliary and the nurse fussed around me when I arrived, and wasn’t the latter relieved when I said I had a chemotherapy port? It made her task so much easier and mine too because I could then type with both hands.

By about 09:40 I was up and running with this stuff to stimulate my red blood cells, and I was told that the treatment would last a little over two hours.

The bad news (at first) was that there seemed to be no internet up there, but I had a ferret around and eventually managed to conjure up something, so I watched LLansawel against Trefelin from Friday night. It was a miserable night last Friday, and playing football in a monsoon on a paddy field wasn’t very encouraging. It was something of a lottery out there and I don’t think that the teams could have been too dissatisfied with the end result.

As for the fans, though, it was no real spectacle. It was a long-ball hoof upfield and another long-hoof upfield in reply. I could count on the fingers of my hand the number of passes that found a team mate. I’m sure that in this weather, they would have been better off playing the ball to feet instead of in the air.

After that, I started Connah’s Quay Nomads v Cardiff Metro. I didn’t get to see much of it so I’ll tell you about it later.

During the morning, I had a visit from no less a person than Emilie the Cute Consultant. She came to see how I was doing and, once more, just like two years ago, she sat on the end of my bed while she chatted. The plan that they have worked out is that because they have still not been able to arrange anything with a haematologist, I’ll have to come here every four weeks for this treatment. And right on cue, the nurse came with my next appointment – Monday 19th October at 09:30.

And it really was nice to chat to Emilie the Cute Consultant. It seems that she still loves me.

Round about 11:50, the treatment was finished and the nurse unplugged me. She said that I had to wait for a while to let my head clear and, in any case, the taxi would be here to take me across the road at about 13:30. Waiting wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought, especially as I was brought a meal – stuffed tomatoes, bread, sliced pears and an apple purée. It was better than the coffee earlier, though, which was served in just about the oldest mug I have ever seen.

Round about then, I began to wonder when the nurse was going to come back to apply the anaesthetic on my arm. There was no sign so I asked the nursing auxiliary, who replied that all of the nurses had gone for lunch. So what are the connections going to be like with no anaesthetic, do you think?

The car turned up bang on schedule and took me across the road. I was there at 13:40 but had to wait until 14:30 to be plugged in. Had I known that the wait was going to be so long, I’d have persuaded one of the nurse there to apply my anaesthetic there and then as I arrived.

The connections were nothing like as painful I was expecting. In fact, I’ve had worse than those even when I’ve been covered in anaesthetic, so I didn’t mind too much.

Once I was finally up and running, I was left pretty much alone for the session. The low blood pressure alarm didn’t ring at all – not even once.

However, I was really feeling tired – I’d had a battle to keep away across the road – but here, I did actually fall asleep, only to be shaken awake by a nurse who was afraid that I was busy pushing up the daisies. And another one of the doctors came to see me to find out how I was doing. I’ve no idea what is the reason for this sudden popularity.

The next match to watch was the rest of Connah’s Quay Nomads v Cardiff Metro. Another game played in a monsoon, it was another one of these end-to-end games, but the Nomads’ class showed through in the end and they went on to win 1-0.

The old guy who was rushed to hospital last week was there today, looking much better. However, it was the turn of a woman this time who began to have problems. All the nurses and doctors congregated around her and in the end, my chauffeur was hijacked to rush her over the road to the emergencies.

They had begun to unplug me, but as everyone was finishing at the same time, I was left until almost last. The nurse came to offer her excuses, but I told her that although I don’t mind waiting, I’d be much happier if they left my machine running so that I could take advantage of the extra time.

Eventually, my chauffeur arrived, the young chatty guy. We had someone else to drop off en route so it was a miserable 19:05 when I finally arrived home. My cleaner helped me into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I made a quick tea – just a little potato salad because I wasn’t all that hungry tonight.

So now, having finished my notes, I’m going to try to have an early night for once.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the hôpital de jour … "well, one of us has" – ed … I overheard two of the nurses talking to each other
"I hear that there’s a case of brucellosis just come in" said the one.
"Oh well," said the other. "It’ll make a change from Lucozade."

LIVE: Saturday 19th September 2026 – I HAD TWO …

… phantom alarms during the night And I know that the first one of them was a phantom alarm because I was awake (at least, I think that I was) when it sounded. But it wasn’t the usual RAUCOUS RATTLE OF BILLY COTTON but more like a series of these wind bells ringing down in the bottom corner of the bedroom where the chest of drawers is.

The second one went off when I was asleep, and that WAS Billy Cotton. It went off at about 04:00 or so because, after I’d been tossing and turning around for quite a while, I saw that the time was 04:38.

So an 04:00 awakening this morning, which, considering that I didn’t go to bed until after 00:30 this morning, hasn’t let me have much sleep at all. It’s a good job that I’m in dialysis this afternoon so, if necessary, I can have a good sleep.

At some point much later on, I tucked myself up in the only position that seems to be able to make me go to sleep. It’s quite uncomfortable, and I usually wake up to find that I’m flat on my back again, but during the latter part of the night last night I didn’t move and was still there when the alarm went off.

This morning, it was more of a struggle than most mornings to rise to my feet, but the lure of Emilie the Cute Consultant was sufficient to attract me into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and even a shave.

Back in here, I found that there was nothing on the dictaphone from last night, but when I had woken up earlier, there were a couple of things going on in my head as if I’d been awoken in the middle of a dream before I’d had time to record it. So, for what they are worth, I’ve written down what little I remember of them.

The first part seemed to relate to someone in this apartment looking for a teatowel. However, I awoke and noticed that they were all in here and I was covered in them, so there was definitely something strange going on.

And the second part took place round about now – towards the end of September (in my head I had the feeling that it was the 22nd of September) – here in France, and I was dressed in my winter jacket, gloves and woolly hat as if it were mid-winter, and other people were dressed for winter too.

There doesn’t seem to be anything at all to connect these two little bits with anything that has gone on in real life just recently. The closest connection that I can make is being up in the High Arctic in mid- to late September when I was certainly in winter clothing – as much of it as I could wear.

There were a few other things to do, and then the nurse arrived to interrupt me. He asked about the Hound of the Baskervilles, so I told him what I knew, and then he began to speak to me in German. My German isn’t as good as it ought to be, but I managed to answer him to a certain degree.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’re still on meteorology, and while I was reading it, I came across this report – "1816 was a very wet, cold season. Wheat out at Christmas, and the head so bad “that it would stick if thrown against a wall.” The season said to be as bad as in 1698."

Strangely enough, that was the only entry for severe weather in 1816, and that surprised me, for in 1815, there was the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, these days part of Indonesia. It is said to be the largest eruption in recorded history and the fallout from the volcanic ash was such that 1816 was said to be “the year without a summer” and “an agricultural disaster” with food shortages, famine and starvation.

Why there aren’t any more entries relating to this period is a total mystery.

Back in here with just two hours to go before I need to make myself ready for dialysis, but I couldn’t think of what to do in that period. It’s not very often that I have a block like that. So on the basis of “if you don’t know what to do, just do something, or anything,” so I wrote chapter ten of my book.

This was going to be the last chapter, but I seem to have let my fingers run away with themselves on the keyboard just recently, so there are at least two chapters still to do, plus the preface and the conclusion. But this has always been a challenge for me – sticking within a word count. You give me a word limit and I’ll go beyond it, sometimes by a country mile too.

When the alarm went off, I took myself off into the kitchen to sort out my midday medication and my disgusting drink. My cleaner duly turned up to sort out my anaesthetic and a couple of other little tasks too, and once she’d left, I had to wait for the taxi.

Not that I was waiting long because it was here at 12:40. We had to go to Champeaux to pick up someone else, and we were at the dialysis centre at 13:30. By 14:10 I was up and running too.

There were no interruptions, apart from the nurses running to deal with the blood pressure alarm every half-hour. Not even a doctor came to see me, so I could watch the football in mostly peace and quiet in my little room.

Yesterday, I mentioned the game between Caernarfon and Cambrian United, so that was my choice. And it was as chaotic as the newsfeed report said it was.

There was Caernarfon’s goalkeeper running the ball out of play, which led to fisticuffs between him and a Cambrian forward that saw both of them sent off. Later on, another Cambrian player was sent off for “denying a goalscoring opportunity”.

Caernarfon’s ten men were far too good for Cambrian’s nine, and it became an embarrassment as the Caernarfon players cut through the Cambrian defence like a hot knife through butter. There were actually nine different goal scorers making up Caernarfon’s total, and if that’s not a record, I don’t know what is.

After it finished, I watched the first half of Hwlffordd v Trefynnon, but once more I ran out of time. I’ll tell you about it when I’ve finished watching it.

When the session was finished, I had to wait a few minutes to be unplugged, and after that, another fifteen minutes for my taxi. But at least, I was the only passenger so I was home by 18:30.

My cleaner was sitting on her mushroom waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment, sticking a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt. After she left, I made some food, just a handful of pasta and vegetables with melted butter.

Back in here, there was yet more football – a Welsh Cup match between Denbigh of the second tier and Trearddur Bay of the third tier. And when you are 1-0 down in the seventy-ninth minute with two players already sent off, as Denbigh were, what would be the betting on a Denbigh win?

It was only then that Denbigh began to play. And how is it possible for Trearddur Bay, with a two-man advantage, to leave a Denbigh player unmarked at the far post? That was one goal back to equalise, and then with two minutes to go, they scored a second.

The game itself was quite agricultural, and even though it’s second tier v third tier, I was expecting far better football than this. But I’ve seen worse on my travels, I suppose.

But I won’t be seeing any more tonight, unless they appear in my dreams, because I’m off to bed. It’s way past my bedtime. But at least (in principle) I can have a lie-in tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about agricultural disasters … "well, one of us has" – ed … an aeroplane crashed in a field and the local search and rescue brigade dashed to the scene.
They noticed two things – firstly that there was a farmer nearby wiping his hands, and the second was that the aeroplane was Air Force One.
"Oh my God! What a disaster!" exclaimed the brigade leader. Then he turns to the farmer and asks "where are the survivors?"
"There weren’t any" replies the farmer. "I just finished burying them"
"Even Donald Trump? Surely he must be alive at least!"
"Well, he told me that he was, but you know what a big liar he is."

LIVE: Thursday 17th September 2026 – IT’S ALL EXTREMELY …

… quiet in here tonight. And that’s because I’m on my own. Round about midday, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off to the car and the last time that I saw them, they were heading due east somewhere, in the general direction of Munich.

It was really lovely having company. After all, I’m not used to it. and as I said to him … "the friend, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed … it’s open house here, and he and his sidekick are welcome to come here any time they want and can stay as long as they like.

Especially if he continues to make the coffee like that.

And I was ready for a mug of coffee this morning. I was in bed at something like a reasonable time, and although the wind was blowing, it didn’t disturb me that much and I was soon asleep.

However, round about 04:00, there was an enormous gust of wind that awoke me dramatically, and I wasn’t the only one to be awakened because my friend told me later that the Hound of the Baskervilles had awoken him round about that time, so something had obviously scared him … "the Hound of the Baskervilles, not the friend" – ed …

Once I was awake, I found it hard to go back to sleep and I tossed and turned for hours. However, at some point, I must have dozed off because the alarm awoke me.

And for once, I failed to beat the second alarm, dismal failure that I am. I just couldn’t unstick myself from the bed and I don’t know why. Consequently, I was quite a while late starting work this morning.

The first task was to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

During World War II the Chinese had decided to co-operate with the Allies against Japan, so they had sent radio signalmen on board many of the Allied ships. Those ships flew a white flag with the letter "G" on it. Someone made some remark about the one on his boat, saying that he was wearing some kind of flowing kimono or something like that in luxurious silk. Of course, we were sitting there thinking that he’s not going to last five minutes like that.

Being on board a ship would be nothing to bother me, although I have no idea where the Chinese man in his blue flowing kimono comes into it all.

Then this dream changed to something else. I was with a colleague from work and we were in Czechoslovakia or somewhere, and I was living there, and it was very similar to that one about Poland or Czechoslovakia the other week. We had to go to see someone, so another one of the workers picked me up and drove me all the way to Prague for this meeting. It turned out in effect that there was only going to be two of us, a young person from the other side. We had this meeting in what used to be a railway station, and we were chatting really about not very much at all. Just as the meeting was ending, this guy said that he’d forgotten to give him something. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a hammerhead. He said that that had fallen off someone’s Land Rover the other day. I mentioned a name and asked “it’s not him, is it, because he’s only just bought a new one?” but it wasn’t. Anyway, what happened next? So we made ready to go, and I suddenly remembered that someone had given me an axe head to sharpen, so I was busy sharpening the blade on the axe. The person with me was rather frightened in case I hurt myself, so he held my elbow. That led to an argument because you can’t sharpen anything if someone is holding your arm.

We’ve been spending a lot of time in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic just recently. Wishful thinking on my part, obviously. But the name that I mentioned was someone related in part to where I used to work.

Sharpening the axe head is also an interesting situation to contemplate, with someone trying to stop me carrying out my plans, which seem to have been infiltrated. It’s a nuisance, isn’t it?

The nurse came along for his final German lesson, a final big hug of the Hound of the Baskervilles and to sort out my feet and legs. And then another Welsh lesson, big hug, etc., before parting.

The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off on yet another walkie, and I made breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today’s subject is columnar ice, and that set me off on the trail of William Scoresby. He was one of the earliest of the “ice-masters” who worked the whaling ships in the Davis Strait and places like that in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. He gave a great deal of advice to the Admiralty about his experiences in the Hugh Arctic, especially concerning the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, but it was usually always rejected because he was a “civilian” and “the Admiralty knew best”, even if no Royal Navy sailors had ever set foot in the places where Scoresby had been.

His book, “Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery”, IS AVAILABLE ON LINE and as of this morning, is available in my own little digital book collection to read at a later date. I can see that I shall have to take my laptop with me when I go, in order to read all these books at my leisure. I hope that they have charging points down below where I’m going. Would I need an international adapter?

Back in here, there were a few things that needed finishing off, and then I started to make a couple of plans for things that I need to do over the weekend. However, proceedings were brought to an abrupt halt by the alarm reminding me that I need to prepare for dialysis. When you think about it, it’s bizarre that I have to set an alarm to remind me, but it’s not a case of “I might forget”. It’s just that with having this tendency to fall asleep at strange times and in strange places, I don’t want to be asleep when the taxi comes for me.

In the kitchen, I had my disgusting drink and midday medication, and my cleaner came to put the anaesthetic on my arm. However, as you might expect, she spent more time saying goodbye to the Hound of the Baskervilles, who was on the point of leaving.

After everyone had left, I waited for the taxi – not that I had to wait long because it was here at 12:42. There was already one passenger aboard, and we had to stop at the Aqua-gym at St Pair to pick up our usual Thursday passenger. Consequently, we arrived at dialysis early, not that it did me much good because so did everyone else, and I had to wait until 14:20 before I was up and running.

Once I was finally on my way, I could watch the football. Today, it was Trefelin, near the bottom of the table, against Penybont, third from top. And it was not, as you might expect, another “men against boys” encounter, but Trefelin pushed Penybont all the way and the latter had to work really hard for their 1-0 victory. Trefelin’s defence was excellent, except for that one lapse of concentration that cost them dear.

After that, we had the first half of Llandudno v Caernarfon. Llandudno, another newly promoted side, has adapted well to the level of skill required in the Premier League, and when I ran out of time watching the game, they were down 1-0 but by no means out of the contest and had, in fact, looked the better side.

There had been a few interruptions during my session. For once, the blood pressure alarm sounded only once or twice, but the most important was the doctor, telling me that she’d arranged this Hôpital de Jour thing and I should be expecting to hear from the hospital quite soon about it. And as she was walking away, my telephone rang. It was the hospital telling me that I had to be there on Monday morning at 09:00.

Blimey! Things are moving fast!

Half an hour later, the nurse came to give me the details of the appointment and said that she’d arranged the taxi to pick me up and the one to take me to dialysis afterwards. What a day that will be!

The nurse who was on duty was the one who is … errr … more relaxed about her working methods and, for some reason that I have yet to understand, switched off my machine a good five minutes before the end of the session, despite my protests. Every gram or millilitre that they can squeeze out of me is important.

Not only that, but she didn’t come back to unplug me for ten minutes so she may as well have left it running.

My taxi driver, the same one who brought me, was waiting for me, but we had to go across to the hospital to pick up someone else going to Granville so it was about 18:30 when I arrived home. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and helped me into my apartment, where she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I began to think about eating but I couldn’t face cooking anything tonight, so I had some crackers with cheese spread, followed by one of my nice, juicy plums. And it was so juicy that I’d better eat the rest quite quickly.

Once I’d dined, I began to write out my notes, but as usual, the dialysis had been a little too much and I couldn’t stay awake. I ended up posting on-line as far as I’d reached and went to bed. The rest can wait.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the High Arctic… "well, one of us has" – ed … there was a radio programme in Canada once discussing global warming, the retreat of the ice and the migration northwards of the species who live on it.
However, the programme was more concerned with the polar bears who were migrating south into human-inhabited zones hunting for food.
Part of the discussion concerned the odd handful of polar bears who migrated south, and then back north again, then back south etc., as if they couldn’t make up their minds.
"There’s no particular worry about those" said a panellist.
"Why not?" asked the presenter.
"They are what we call the ‘bi-polar bears’"

EPIC HALL

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

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