Tag Archives: b36 torshavn

Thursday 3rd August 2023 – YOU CAN TELL …

… what kind of night I had last night simply by looking at the dictaphone and counting the number of times I dictated something. We actually reached double figures, and it’s not every day that that happens.

Furthermore, I was actually up and about before the alarm went off too.

Only by a matter of a handful of seconds, it’s quite true, but nevertheless, it still counts. When I opened my eyes and saw that it was 06:59 on the fitbit I thought that I may as well make the effort.

One thing’s for sure is that I won’t be up early tomorrow. We had football tonight – Hwlffordd v B36 Torshavn in European competition.

1-0 down from the first leg, they rode their luck all through the first half and with half an hour to go actually managed to score a goal that made the score equal over the two legs.

The game went into extra time but Torshavn scored what can only be described as a “controversial penalty” to knock the Welsh side out. Manager Tony Pennock was quite right to be incensed but I notice that he kept very quiet about the penalty that I and the commentators would have awarded against his team earlier in the game to which the referee waved “play on”.

The post-match interviews were quite entertaining. Pennock came out with a few comments that reminded me of Ron Atkinson and his famous quote of “I never comment on referees – and I won’t break the habit of a lifetime for that prat!”

Centre-forward Ben Fawcett, who scored Hwlffordd’s goal, reminded me of Jim Finks, one-time coach of the New Orleans Saints gridiron team who once famously said “We’re not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating”

So with extra time being played, the game didn’t finish until long after 23:00 so it’s going to be a long night tonight.

It’ll be just like today when it took me an absolute age to actually start work – after a very late morning coffee.

And the first thing that I did was to sort out the music for the next radio programme. That took much longer than it ought to have done.

One thing that took the time was that I had to track down a certain track that I needed. In this programme, whenever it will be broadcast, we’ll be celebrating the birthday of a rather obscure musician.

Her partner plays a major rôle in our radio programmes and she actually wrote the words for one or two of his more rare songs and played keyboards on a couple. We can’t actually celebrate her birthday without playing some of her music.

While I was at it, I wrote the text for some of the music that I’ll be playing and I’ll write some more tomorrow. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, I might have two radio programmes to prepare on Sunday.

And then there was the dictaphone. And I couldn’t believe the amount of stuff that was on it from the night. I was at the football last night. The town where I was living was a small French town roughly the size of Granville but in the interior down south. They were playing a game of football. I went along to watch the match. There was a lot happening that I’ve forgotten but something that sticks in my mind was that I was chatting to a group of people some of whom were young girls, schoolgirls or whatever. At one point the ball came over our way. I got off my chair and went to pick it up to throw it back in but then I found that I had real difficulty getting back to my feet. When I did, some girl had sat in my chair. I made some remark about it. She said that she’d sat in there first. I thought “never mind”. There was a couple of empty chairs around here and there so I took one of those, sat next to them and continued to watch the game. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

When the alarm went off I awoke with a real start. I was in such a deep sleep. I didn’t know where I was for a minute. When I looked round I thought that the cleaner was here. She was trying to tell me that she has to cut down her hours because one of her family needed help. I was trying to get my head round all this information. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 04:00 and I’d obviously dreamt the alarm somehow. That’s really surprising. It sounded so real too. It goes without saying that there was no cleaner here etc, just me waking up spontaneously for no good reason so I turned over and went back to sleep. I really couldn’t believe it.

Then a surprise for a friend of mine. We’d heard from a restaurant in St Malo that a well-known brand of gravy actually contained animal products. I went to make further enquiries and discovered that it was indeed true. I swapped a meal of greasy sausages and things like that for another kind of meal but I can’t remember what the other meal was now. I’m having a real problem remembering my dreams at the moment. I don’t know why that is.

There was another dream where I was having to see a heart specialist. He’d given me an appointment at 08:10. I went to see him and was there early. There were a couple of other doctors’ surgeries in the same place. One woman came in to sit down. Someone else came in, probably a doctor because he went into one of the side rooms. He then came out and began to talk to this woman about Patagonia and going to have an operation done there. That immediately appealed to me. I began to think about life in Patagonia, how I would go there, how I was going to travel, what I was going to do. I was all building myself up in this dream for a trip to Patagonia on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

We were wandering around a place in rural Spain. I wanted to go to use the bathroom. I set out to find it. I went past a guy who had a box. He had 4 small logs in it. Sitting across the logs was a French bread pizza. He was trying to light the logs presumably to cook his pizza so I told him what a wonderful thing it was. He didn’t understand so I tried to say it in Spanish. He still didn’t understand me. Everyone with me asked me what I was doing so I explained. I found the bathroom and walked in. To my surprise it was just a communal room with about 6 WCs in it, no partitions or anything. You just sat there or stood there in full view of everyone else and did what you had to do. There was no blushing or anything like that from anyone except from me of course.

That was actually the first time that I’ve had a dream in Spanish.

There was a sequel to this dream as well. A young Spanish boy whose father went to discipline him. He suddenly had a huge pain in his groin that doubled him up. He was rolling around the floor in agony. While this was going on his son was there. This pain didn’t ease off until the guy decided that he’d change his mind about punishing his son. Once he’d made that decision the pain stopped

There was also something about a football match in Spain. While the father was doubled up in pain the opposition team grabbed hold of the football and tried to take a quick free kick and roared off down the field before the referee stopped them and brought them back. It was those two new players from Hwlffordd, Crossdale and the other one … “Owen” – ed … who were doing this.

There was something about cricket too, trying to explain it to a new player about how he could learn the game by watching so when his team was in he’d be out there and he could watch what was happening, then get himself out and come back in, then prepare to go back out again when his team was in, all kinds of stuff like that, this particular dream that I can’t remember the fine details now

And finally there was another dream that I’ve had before. I was with Nerina who was on a bike and I was on foot. We were chatting as she was cycling. We were in Stoke on Trent and came to a steep hill. Something had happened that she had done something that had not been the kind of thing that I would do. People had believed that we had separated. Nerina had strung them on a little. When we came to the steep hill there was a short cut for people on foot so I took it and she continued along the road. She fell in with one of these people who then began to ask her questions about what she was up to. When the short cut re-joined the road we joined up again. By now I was running up the hill and she was cycling. There was a couple of people standing on the pavement ahead of us, one of whom I recognised. A car that was coming up the hill suddenly mounted the pavement and hit these 2 people knocking them flying and drove off again. By now we’d all arrived at this particular point and we tried to ask one of these guys what exactly had happened

It’s no surprise that there was no time to do anything else other than this. There was tea of course, a leftover chili sin carné that was as delicious as ever, and then I dashed in here for the football.

Now the game is over and my notes are finished, I’m off to bed. I’m nipping into town on the bus tomorrow for a little shop and then I’ll probably be flat out asleep in the afternoon recovering from the effort.

That assumes that I wake up in time to go to the shops. Another night like last night and I won’t wake up for a week.

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Thursday 27th July 2023 – THERE WAS ANOTHER …

… football match tonight.

Hwlffordd, after their heroics last week, were away in the Faroe Islands playing B36 Torshavn.

With 6 Albanian, 1 Latvian and 1 Afghan international in their side and a fairly successful history in Europe it was always going to be a struggle for Hwlffordd and when they were 2-0 down with 30 minutes to go, that looked as if it was going to be that.

But late in the game, during what was probably their only serious attack during the entire 90 minutes, to everyone’s surprise they managed to score a goal – being in the right place at the right time with a lucky ricochet in the penalty area.

So all is not lost. They are still within touching distance for the second leg back in Wales next week. And who knows? It’ll be most unlikely if they manage to pull it off but stranger things have happened.

And stranger things have happened too. Like I seem to have had a reasonable night’s sleep. It took me a while to go to sleep, even though I was in bed early, and I don’t recall waking up until about 06:30.

After waking up I somehow managed to go back to sleep again and had to fall out of bed when the alarm went off.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages, it took me quite a while to go wind myself up and start work, and today I’ve spent much of the day in Canada back in 2017.

So far, I’m somewhere down the Trans-Labrador Highway on my way to Goose Bay.

Part of my trip involved having a read of the controversial AP Low’s book written at the end of the 19th Century. He explored the Interior of Labrador on behalf of the Government of Newfoundland and of Canada, missed much of what was important and drew a rather inaccurate map that led several explorers to their deaths.

On the subject of maps, I’ve been having a close look at a hand-drawn map by a Moravian missionary called Reichel who visited the area in 1872.

What’s interesting about his map is that he draws on it the location of all of the isolated cabins, who lived in them and whether they were European, Inuit, Innu or Métis. It’s the closest thing that there is to a Census of Labrador in the 19th Century.

There was also the dictaphone. I was in North America. We’d been to see someone in a Social Security department about some Unemployment Benefit or National Assistance etc because my partner was unable to work and neither was I. We were in this waiting room. Eventually my partner was seen and was told that she’d have to go to Mexico so we set out for there. We ended up in a waiting room in a Government office there that was 10 times worse and 10 times more crowded than anything in the USA. She had a ticket with a number on it. It was all extremely chaotic. We were talking to a couple of people, one girl in particular who kept on being called to the front then having to come back to chat to a couple of her friends who were there. I made a joke to my partner “it seems that the response to when you’re being served is that it’s always going to be next time, you’re the next one”. She didn’t understand what I was trying to say and asked me to explain. Of course it’s very difficult to explain a joke like that. We were sitting there in this crowded, uncomfortable waiting room, waiting to be called to the desk. It looked as if we were going to be there for ever.

Later on there was the dream where I was being tortured by that guy dropping rocks on my head somewhere or other. Every now and again there’s a dream that I don’t write out because of its gruesome nature but this one was so distressing that I couldn’t even bring myself to dictate it. And that’s not happened more than a couple of times in the whole of the 20-odd years that I’ve been doing this.

It makes me wonder if this was the reason why I had one of the worst night-sweats that I’ve ever had.

Some of the time was also spent crashed out on my chair again and I’ve really been doing far too much of that just recently, especially as this was one of the better nights of sleep that I’ve had.

Tea tonight was some of those Chinese whatsits with vegetable fried rice, delicious as usual, and then I had to rush to watch the football.

Now I’m off to bed hoping for a good night’s sleep again. I’m going into town tomorrow, on the bus as it happens, but I reckon that I’ll still be flat out on the chair in the afternoon. I’m rather fed up of all this.

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