Tag Archives: back-up

Friday 4th April 2025 – THIS BLASTED NEW …

… phone isn’t ‘arf complicated!

My previous telephone was made in 2016, according to the serial number, and it took a while to figure out but once I’d understood how it functioned, it was all quite straightforward. But even though I’ve had a smartphone for eight years (March 2017 in fact) and know much more about them than I ever did before, setting up my very first one was child’s play compared to this.

Yes, my faithful cleaner has been at it again, queueing up outside the ‘phone supplier’s at the end of lunchtime to pick up my new ‘phone, for which I am extremely grateful, but I bet that she isn’t after all of that.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. It was actually a surprisingly early night last night – 23:25 when I crawled into bed. And it would have been earlier too had I motivated myself to finish the notes and to do the backing up without being distracted.

But anyway, once in bed I fell asleep quite quickly too. But not for long. As seems to be typical after a dialysis session, I had another turbulent, perspiration-laden night, even though it was fairly cold.

Eventually, I awoke, and stayed awake too without any possibility of going back to sleep. And after lying there for about fifteen minutes and thinking to myself “why don’t I show a leg and raise myself from the Dead” the alarm suddenly went off and Billy Cotton’s RAUCOUS RATTLE beat me to it. There I was – if only I had been two minutes earlier, I could have recorded another “early start” to make my statistics look good.

So I wandered off into the bathroom for a good scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was discussing things and life on board the space shuttle or the space station with a group of like-minded young people. We had a really good time. There was a string of characters known as an “Ouf”, there were massage sections and bed sections, dietician sections and you could even pick and change the modules that you were studying so that you would have a better choice of seeing more lectures. I chose the four principal ones of mine, Welsh, History, Geography and Geography and twenty-one other days afterwards to make up a full twenty-four-hour period that I could use for consulting just about everything including the Oracles at Delphi.

What was it that we were saying … "well, one of us was" – ed … the other week about my dreams making no sense at all? But going to see the High Priestess of the Oracle at Delphi, if she could tear herself away from chatting to Apollo, would be interesting, to say the least.

I was staying in a hotel with a group of people. We were on an excursion or tour or something. The last few days had been really beautiful weather so when I awoke at 05:00 I looked out of the window and saw the clear sky with no sun and decided that I would rise up. I prepared myself, washed myself etc and went downstairs and went outside. I went to my car to pick up a book. My car was parked right outside the door of the hotel. I found my book and thought “well, I’ll sit down here and read my book in the sunshine”. A few minutes later some of the girls who were on our trip came waling back but they had obviously been up early too. As they reached the front of the hotel they shouted up a few words to one of their colleagues who shouted something down again. They then said that they were going to go for a walk. They looked up at where my room was and shouted my name, saying “Eric, do you want to come for a walk with us?”. I replied “yes” from the car right behind them and the girls must have jumped about three feet in the air when I spoke from behind them. We all had a quick chat while I found my shoes ready to go for a walk.

The local town rang me up in the middle of the night as well. They wanted to write a feature on my recording studio at home and talk about some of the people who had been there. We made an arrangement etc so they came round. A few weeks later I was waiting at the ferry for something. The ferry that came in didn’t have half of the cars on board that it usually had. I went to have a look and it was full of these books, leaflets or magazines about the recording studio that I have in my home. I thought “this is completely exaggerated”. In the meantime I was at a folk concert. Several of the musicians were playing and one particular group had this awful habit that I detest of inviting their friends up on the stage to join them. They were telling a story about how three years ago someone local to them who they knew well had picked up the guitar, and now he’e going to play his first song to the public. He played an up-tempo rapid style arrangement of “Amazing Grace” which quite frankly was the worst song that I have ever heard from the stage in the past

Both those dreams have some kind of connection with my trip home from dialysis on Thursday. My taxi driver was formerly the manageress of a spa and massage parlour and we were having a good chat about that sort of thing on the way home. I told her about MY LEGENDARY STAY IN RENNES LES BAINS when I was hot on the trail of the Cathars and the legendary, if not mythical trail of the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau. That was of course, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I nipped out for a Sunday afternoon and didn’t come home for three weeks.

But going back to the story of the taxi driver, we wer so engrossed in our chat that when her data head shouted out vous êtes maintenant près du zone de dépose – “you are close to the dropping-off point”, she really did jump into the air from her seat. I saw her.

However, if that version really is the worst song that I have ever heard being played on a stage, it must have been dreadful. I will never ever forget BILLY DRE AND THE POOR BOYS across whom I had the misfortune to stumble when I was photographing the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Canada. Billy Dre had the letter “I” missing from his name and “poor” definitely summed up the musical talents of his boys.

The nurse didn’t hang around long this morning, but it was long enough to ask me who was going to do the renovations of the apartment downstairs because, as you might expect "I have a friend"

After he left, I could have breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK. But not for long because as usual, I was distracted.

He made reference to the works of Matthew Paris, a thirteenth-century chronicler whose “Chronica Majora” is considered to be the first authentic attempt at creating a historical record of the British Isles. All the previous ones, such as Bede’s History, are full of myth, legend and polemic.

What also makes Paris’s work more interesting is that it’s littered with all kinds of personal notes, anecdotes and recollections that make if of much more value than a terse historical catalogue of events.

Our author, George Clark, makes reference to a translation in English, undertaken by an obscure country vicar, of the “Chronica Majora”, something for which I have been looking because my Latin isn’t up to all that much these days, and now that I know that a version exists, albeit made in 1852-84, I set off on its trail. And after much searching, I’ve tracked down all three volumes and they are now in the (long, long) list of books to read.

Back in here I set about a task that I had been meaning to do for ages, and that was to clean-out the back-up drive of redundant files from the radio shows. There’s no need to keep the music or the sound files except for the programmes not yet broadcast. All I need for the ones that have gone out are the completed programmes and the project files.

Next, I transferred over the project files and programmes for the ones that I have done since I last backed up, and blow me if I haven’t ended up with less space on the drive than I had before I started. I’m going to have to buy another 4TB disk for the back-up array and split the back-up into two.

We had the telephone to sort out next. I’d printed out the paperwork last night before going to bed, and my faithful cleaner sallied forth to the mobile ‘phone shop to wait until it opened.

And then she called me on the computer, (which would have been a lot easier for me to answer had I plugged the microphone in) with a pile of technical questions, and the shop assistant wanted to chat to me too. However, in the end all was good and she could leave with my telephone.

Back here, I set about the onerous task of configuring it.

First of all, there’s no SD card. It’s all on the internal memory (of 128GB) so it’s not just a case of swapping over the SD card. It’s possible to clone a new phone with the data and settings of an old one if the operating systems are the same. Not only that, but it involves downloading an app.

First of all then I had to fit the SIM card. And that wasn’t straightforward either but now it works. I downloaded the app onto the old ‘phone and then onto the new one, configured the Bluetooth settings and let it do its business.

Most of the stuff came over so I had to plug the new phone into the computer to copy the remainder over from there. And that wasn’t easy either because not only did I have to configure the ‘phone, I had to configure the computer too. Apparently USB linking isn’t supported on new ‘phones so I had to “persuade” it

Eventually, I could make the connection (and it took hours) and copy them over. But while I could see “my files” in the file manager, the directory that I had created, the ‘phone sounds wouldn’t identify them. Apparently personalising your ‘phone to that extent isn’t officially allowed either, but as you might expect, there’s an app available in the app store which I had to download onto the computer, check it for viruses and then load it onto the ‘phone and set it up.

It’s still not all set up as I would like, but the compass works, and so I identified Spica out of my window, now that “Skymap” is fully operational

Another issue has also arisen that came out of my cleaner’s visit to the telephone supplier. ADSL connection is ending in 2027 and everyone should be on fibre-optic by then (as an aside, I had fibre-optic in Belgium in 1997). However, where I live is in a historic building, part of the Patronym de France – the “French National Treasures” – and we aren’t allowed to deface the building. Knocking holes through the walls for cables is classed as defacing it.

And so I’ve been tracking down how to apply for fibre-optic and once I had a link I mailed everyone in the building of whom I could think, and we’ve all applied. We’ll let France Telecom and the Batiments de France fight it out between them. But we have all agreed, that if Batiments de France refuse to allow the work, we shall take out a procès against them. Internet and ‘phones these days are considered to be as essential as water, electricity and sewage connections.

In between all of that, I’ve been Woodstocking. My 6.5 minutes of notes has now grown to almost 17 minutes and I’m not even a quarter of the way through it yet. I have a feeling that I shall be having a lot of sleepless nights in the near future as I wade through this

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, vegan salad and vegan nuggets followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake and soya dessert, and then it was back in here to carry on and fight the good fight with the new ‘phone, write the notes and do the backing-up.

Now I’ve done all that I intend to do today, especially as it’s no tomorrow. So I’ll do the statistics, the backing-up and go to bed ready to carry on tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subject of new telephones … "well, one of us is" – ed … I can remember when Zero had her first mobile ‘phone back in the day
The ‘phone rang and she answered it, and was chatting away for about 20 minutes before she hung up
"20 minutes?" said her mother. "That was a short ‘phone call for you. Who was it?"
"I don’t know" replied Zero. "It was a wrong number."

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Friday 14th March 2025 – A TAXI CAME …

… to pick me up at 15:30 for a medical appointment at the hospital in Granville at 16:00.

That was the first that I had heard of it. No-one had ever said anything to me. The taxi driver therefore telephoned the hospital, who confirmed that they had nothing down for me today and so the taxi driver left.

The burning question of the hour now is not O’Rafferty’s motorcar but who is turning round and round in circles waiting for a taxi that is not going to arrive to take him to a hospital appointment that he is likely to miss.

Something else that was confirmed today was the snow at Caen last night. Isabelle the Nurse’s husband had to go to Caen yesterday morning and he encountered it. It wasn’t just half a dozen flakes either but a proper snowfall. Several photos of the coverage have circulated around the internet as a result.

If it had snowed early this morning I would have seen it, because when the alarm went off at 07:00 I’d actually been up and about for an hour and a half, and awake for a lot longer than that.

That was after another late night too. Not feeling in the least tired after dialysis I wandered around through cyberspace and came across a match between Wales under-21s and Iceland under-21s that I’d missed. Even though Wales played for a good proportion of the match with just 10 men, they were never seriously under pressure and while a 1-0 score doesn’t look very convincing, Iceland never looked like scoring. The one chance they had, they needed a hand (observed by the linesman) to push the ball over the line.

So in bed at 00:30 and I took an age to go to sleep. But by 04:30 I was awake again, wide awake too, something that seems to be quite common after a dialysis session. By about 05:30 I’d given up any hope of going back to sleep and with plenty of things to do, I arose from the Dead and went about my business.

Plenty of business too. First of course there was the bathroom, and then the medication. And back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And despite the short amount of sleep, I had actually been out and about. I was back in work last night. Before that, I’d been to Shavington and was taking a load of rubbish to the tip. Someone whom I met on the way who worked there asked me if I could take hers and her grandmother’s. I fitted everything into the car and went off. For the next day at work I didn’t see this particular girl for a while so in the end before I went home I thought that I would go into her room and mention it to her. I knocked on the door, opened it and went in. The room was in total darkness. You couldn’t see anything. I asked “is anyone there?”. A voice from behind the desk said “yes” but it wasn’t the voice of the person whom I was expecting to hear. Anyway she put on a light so that I could see her. I said “I think that I have the wrong room. I was looking for …” and then I couldn’t think of the name of the person. I had to try to think of someone else’s name. I came out with a name and she replied “there’s no-one of that name working here”. Then I realised that the name that I’d mentioned was that of someone who used to work there but had left. I thought that this meeting isn’t going very well at all. Then she began to put on a white dressing gown type of robe or something. It looked to me like one of these Japanese martial arts suits. I asked her if she was going to be doing some martial arts, and she smiled but didn’t say anything

It beats me why I spend so much of my sleeping hours in Shavington. We moved there in 1956 and my earliest memory is sitting on my mother’s knee in the cab of the lorry that took us there, going past the entrance to Mount Drive in Nantwich, and we left there in 1970 to go to live in The Land That Time Forg … errr … Crewe. But seeing as we are talking about Mount Drive … "well, one of us is" – ed … I didn’t know where it was of course when I was only two but I do remember my surprise and shock a few years later when we went past it on my way to see my grandparents in Wardle. I was astonished that I had remembered it so clearly and recognised it.

As for dreaming about work, why would I still be doing that?

Isabelle the Nurse was late again but it didn’t worry me because I’d been unzipping files out of storage. There are still plenty to go at but if I do a batch every day I’ll catch up with it.

One thing though, and that is that regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first had this mega-computer in the office I went through all of the old disks that were lying around, copied all of the contents onto the back-up drive and slowly cleaned them out and linked everything up. There must have been one that I missed because I found a huge batch of files that had never been merged. I ran a batch-processing duplicate file detector through it and disposed immediately of 1.2GB of duplicated files.

Isabelle the Nurse didn’t have much to say for herself apart from the bit about the snow, and she was soon on her way, leaving me to make breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

A lot of ground was covered today. We started off talking about “cohabiting customs” and I admired his quaint way of expressing himself when it came to delicate subjects. When talking about the Arunta people, he tells us that "The father, de facto, is not father according to the ideas of the Arunta people. He is at best only one of a group of possible fathers according to the practices of the Arunta people."

Of the Semang people, he quotes a book that says that "Semang women are common to all men" but also quotes a Victorian-era observer of the tribe who rather delicately says that "I have not had an opportunity of personally judging"

While we’re on the subject of the Semang people … "well, one of us is" – ed … he tells us that "it often happens that a little [clan] or even a single family uses a form of speech which is differentiated from other dialects to be practically unintelligible to all except the members of the little community itself".

That’s not just true of the most primitive tribes in the Borneo and Malaysian jungle. A conversation between someone from Cornwall and a Geordie, or a Jock and a Scouser will have the same characteristics – but maybe it simply underlines his point and is not a very flattering tribute to the inhabitants of those UK regions.

After this, we moved on to discuss the migration of tribes, something that we mentioned yesterday. He is at a loss, as I am, to explain how it is that a society such as the Romano-British and all of their technical achievements, that we discussed several months ago, was wiped off the face of the country to an extent that, for example, it took 1,000 years for metal-smelting to even approach Romano-British standards, if it wasn’t wiped out by extermination, and how it is that the Nordic settlers of Greenland could be wiped so completely from the island that there has never been one single trace of Nordic DNA found in contemporary Inuit skeletons if the Inuit had not summarily dispatched the Nordic Greenlanders wherever and whenever they encountered them.

In explanation he quotes Max Duncker who, in his book,”History of Antiquity”, asks "How could the conquerors mix with the conquered ? How could their pride stoop to any union with the despised servants?". The answer to that question may be found on the plantations in the Southern United States in the 18th and 19th Century. According to an Artificial Intelligence search engine to which I have access, "By 1860, approximately 10% of the enslaved population in the United States was of mixed race. This significant percentage reflects the scale of sexual exploitation and resulting mixed-race births."

Back in here I attacked the notes that I’d recorded last Saturday night for the radio programme and that took a lot longer than intended because the new edition of sound-editing program that I use that I had downloaded was doing all kinds of weird things. I wasn’t the only one complaining about it either and a new improved version was distributed in a hurry and that seems to be so much better.

But I tried an experiment. In my best “radio voice”, cutting out the slips, errors and breaths, I’m speaking at something like 17 seconds per 300 characters. I quickly ran up a character-counting utility and a spreadsheet function and worked out that what I had dictated should have run, in its cleaned-up form, to eight minutes and thirty-four seconds. When I looked at the end of the edited sound-file, it was exactly eight minutes and thirty-five seconds.

The next time or two I’ll do this again and see if it remains constant. If so, this will speed up the process by being able to do the whole lot at one go rather than having to do an extra track to fill the gap later.

So by lunchtime the programme (apart from the extra track) was finished. I didn’t stop for lunch but carried on and made a start on my Woodstock programmes. By the time that I knocked off, I’d not only chosen all of the music, I’d even found, downloaded, converted and remixed most of it, even one or two tracks that I thought that I’d never ever find

That included a stop for my cleaner, the disgusting drink break and to talk to the taxi driver. I do have a lively, busy life (I don’t think).

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, salad and veggie nuggets followed by date bread and soya dessert, delicious as usual.

Very shortly I’ll be off to bed and hope for a good sleep. It’s hard to believe that after so little sleep I’m not really all that tired. But with dialysis in the afternoon and Connah’s Quay v Llanelli in the Welsh Cup, anything can happen.

But while we’re on the subject of paternity … "well, one of us is" – ed … little Johnny goes to his father and says "daddy, last night I had a dream and it was that you are going to die today".
Obviously, the father is really upset all throughout the day and is a very relieved man when he finally goes to bed.
Next morning on his way to work, he meets his neighbour. "I had a really bad day yesterday" he said. "My son had a dream and luckily it didn’t come true, but I was worried all day."
"You should worry" said his neighbour. "The guy who lives in the house next door to yours had a heart attack and died yesterday morning."

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Saturday 1st February 2025 – I REALLY MUST SHUT …

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

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday 30th January 2025 – ANOTHER FOUR HOURS …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Friday 18th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again.

So much so that not only am I going to have tomorrow morning off (apart from bread-making and doing a machine-load of washing) but I actually had a couple of hours off this afternoon too.

In a mad, fit burst of energy I had all of the work that I intended to do today finished by hot chocolate time and it’s nice for once to be in a position where I could just lounge around.

It’s not as if I was in bed early last night. It was another late night, midnight in fact, when I hit the sack. But something remarkable happened, or didn’t happen, as the case may be. I slept all the way through to the alarm.

No awakening, no drenching in perspiration either. It really was a deep sleep. But that means that it’s not the dialysis that’s causing the problem. It must be something else, and I wonder what it might be.

So when the alarm went off I crawled out of bed and went off into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up. Then back in here to find that the internet was down.

Not to worry. There were plenty of things that I could be doing. Like transcribing the dictaphone notes. I was out driving a taxi around Sandbach last night. I could hear all of the confusion in Crewe by listening to the radio and thought to myself “in a minute I’ll be mixed up in that” but a voice came over the radio when I told them that I’d finished my job, and that was to go to Sandbach Hall and pick up a couple of passengers to take them to Northampton. I thought “that’s sounding good”.

Yes, I’d often go to drive the taxi that we had in Sandbach, just for an evening’s peace and quiet away from the stress. I always drove it on a Thursday night because there were the weekly accounts to do and sitting at the station there waiting for the trains to come in, I could crack on and do them. But I had a few decent fares from there on a couple of occasions. Never quite made it to Northampton but Coventry once one Sunday afternoon.

When I’d finished that I decided that I’d perform a full back-up.

The last one that I took was in September last year and since then I’ve been backing up every night on the memory stick that lives in one of the USB ports

The situation here is that I have the big powerful machine with a 1TB SSD that is the driver disk, and a 4TB drive that is the data disk. And then there’s an array with several hard drives in it that constitutes the back-up disks. That all works very well so let’s hear it for the array

… "Hip, hip array!" – ed …

There are several external drives that I use for the more specialised back-ups and then there’s the 128GB USB stick in the back of the computer where I back up my data at least every night, and more often if necessary.

The nurse came to see me while I was in the middle of it all. He changed my bandages and when he finished, asked me “can you put on your socks on your own?”.

These socks are actually elasticated and very difficult to manage, and also I can’t bend enough these days with all of my problems. But I asked why he wanted to know.

The answer is that he thinks that in a week or two’s time I’ll no longer need the treatment to my legs and if I could put on my socks myself I wouldn’t need the nurses round every morning.

Sounds like a good plan to me so I reckon that after my shower on Wednesday I’d have a try. Anything if there’s a possibility of a good lie-in on a Sunday morning again.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading the report of the Naturalists. We’re discussing primroses, cowslips and oxslips, not that I have any interest in botany, but I was interested to see the lecturer discussing treatment that was novel in 1867 but is commonplace today, and how flowers have evolved over the last 150 years or so.

He went on to say how putting manure on your primroses and cowslips improves their quality and, rather quaintly, goes on to extol the benefits of what he calls “street scrapings”. Yes, the horse-power back in those days came from real horses.

Back in here I carried on backing up until I’d finished, not having noticed that the internet was back on.

Once I’d finished another good job I started work,, finishing off the radio notes

My cleaner came early today. She decided that as it was a lovely day she’d go to join the crowds at the pèche-à-pied this afternoon so she’d come at lunchtime.

For the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, I live in one of the best shellfish-producing areas in Europe, if not the World.

In principle, all of the beaches and rocks are let off to concessions who have the right to exploit what they find there. That right goes from high water-mark down to the low water-mark.

However, we also have some of the highest tides in Europe and about a dozen times per year, the tides are such that they go out beyond the low water mark. And when that happens, it’s a free-for-all on the very low part where everyone can rake up what he can, as long as he obeys the limits about size and quantity.

So she’s off with her bucket and grattoire and she’ll be OK as long as she shares her catch with her friends. After all, you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

While she was here we chatted about this idea that I have about trying to put on my own socks. She’s not sure how I’m going to do it but she’s willing to see what I can do and how I do it.

And to be honest, so am I.

My salad butty at lunchtime used up the last of the bread and so tomorrow morning I’ll have to make some more. I’ll also have to set a washing machine off so even though it’s going to be a day of rest, I’ll still be busy.

Liz and I had a little chat which was nice. It’s been a long time since we spoke to each other

But anyway I finished off all of the notes for this programme that I’d been preparing. The music that I’d selected ran out at just over 53 minutes and I’d been keeping a careful count of the text that I’d written and I’ve calculated that it will run to 7 minutes and 12 seconds.

It’ll be great if it does because there won’t be much at all to cut out once the soundtrack has been edited.

After the hot chocolate I uninstalled a program that had been causing me problems and reinstalled an earlier version, only to find that I was having the same trouble.

That was when I discovered that I’d inadvertently changed a setting on the program that I’d deleted, that the version that I’d re-uploaded had remembered. A flick of a switch changed that and now I’ll have to uninstall that program and reinstall the new one again.

Tea tonight was vegan salad, chips and vegan nuggets, followed by apple cake and coconut-soya cream

So now it’s bedtime. so I’m clearing off, ready to fight the good fight tomorrow, and I hope that you like my Robinson Crusoe impression

When my cleaner was in I told her that today I was going to do my impression of Robinson Crusoe.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Well" I replied "all of his work was done by Friday too"

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Thursday 12th September 2024 – I CAN’T EVER FORGET …

… my friend’s daughter who, on being told that what she was going through for the first time at 11 years old was what she’ll be going through every four weeks for the next forty years, stormed upstairs in a fury and slammed her bedroom door in a fit of pre-teen angst .

And now I know exactly how she must have been feeling, after having gone through what I’ve gone through today and knowing that I’ll be doing it three times per week for the rest of my life.

They said that it would make me feel better, but I’m hardly running around like a spring chicken right now.

“It takes time” they tell me, but how much time do I have?

Not enough last night, apparently. I eschewed a trip out around Central Scotland with one of my groundhopping friends and was in bed relatively early. And asleep quite quickly too, which seems to be becoming a habit these days.

However I awoke not long after 06:00, and couldn’t go back to sleep. By 06:45 I had totally given up the idea and was so wide awake that I arose from the Dead a good 15 minutes before the alarm, not something that happens every day.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, changed my undies and washed the previous pair in the sink. I must keep on top of things otherwise it will all let go and I’ll have no idea where I am.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was an athletics meeting taking place, a World Championships of some description. I was working as a driver. At one stage I had three people in my car, a couple of girls and a guy taking them from one place to another venue. One of them was actually talking about staying illegally in the UK because he had no passport or his passport had expired. The story he was telling was how he was staying with his aunt and how she had left sounded so fishy that it was unbelievable, the type that you hear every day from thousands of people, exactly the same. He was asking about going to Canada and whether he’s receive asylum there. The Canadian girl was very suspicious and was giving very guarded answers. It was all extremely complicated. When I reached my destination I unloaded my three passengers and stayed to listen to the news. They were talking about them on the radio saying that they’d absolutely loused up the first leg of their athletics tournament and so they had been sent away somewhere off-campus to a private room out of the way of the media where they could rebuild their confidence etc ready for the second round of the event. The radio was saying how this was a good thing to do in the circumstances of these three people. But I was listening to these stories and was just extremely suspicious about them all. I was sure that there was far more to it than just a simple “take them out of the public eye for a couple of hours”. It was one of the most suspicious things that I’ve ever encountered

And believe me, in my life I have encountered a great many suspicious things. I have had something of a chequered life in a couple of previous existences and one of these days I might actually say something about it. However, I have to be mindful of the fact that the UK is one of these countries that has a very minimal Statute of Limitations.

And then we were discussing the situation at Celtic where the manager had left, a new manager had come in and there was a lot of turbulence around there with players openly talking about leaving the club. One of them was interviewed on TV and was discussing it. It turns out that another one was released over twelve months ago and has yet to find a new club. I said “surely he can find a job working on a building site or something like that and play part-time to keep fit. I could find him a job tomorrow”. I told him of a job that I knew was going. Whoever it was to whom I was talking was some elative of his and said “I want him much fitter than that. He’s 29”. The discussion continued and it was extremely interesting that I’d dreamed that Rodgers had left Celtic and they had a new foreign manager

So why would I be interested in Brendan Rodgers and Glasgow Celtic? It’s not the usual kind of topic that is forever on my mind. Not at all.

The nurse came in to see me later to apply my puttees (which fell down later). She gave me the copies of my prescriptions that she’d photocopied and also gave me some other paperwork that the clinic wants to see. She wanted to tell me what was going to happen but I didn’t want to know.

My faithful cleaner had been past too and dropped off the unused injections for me to take. Apparently they put a blood-thinning product in the mix when I’m being dialysed so they’ll start with my injections, so as to use them up

After everyone had left, I made breakfast and read my book on ROMANS IN BRITAIN.

We’re discussing Roman Roads at the moment but I’m thinking about the camps at Caersws and Caerhun that we’ve seen on those aerial maps.

When our author was writing his book, it was 1923, a long time before the advent of aerial photography and aerial mapping, something pioneered by Sidney Cotton (inventor of the “Sidcot” flying suit), whose steps we stood in IN NEWFOUNDLAND, when he came to the UK in the late 1930s.

So we can see these things quite clearly thanks to Cotton and those who followed in his footsteps … "or vapour trail" – ed …, but these people in 1923 when they were writing these books had no idea of aerial photography, so what they were able to discover and identify is really quite astonishing.

After breakfast I had to telephone the bank in Belgium. There have been payment issues with a card and I ned to check. But it wasn’t any use. According to the bank they don’t have any marker at all on the card and it should work fine.

We shall see.

What was left of the morning was spent backing up the big computer onto the memory stick on my keyring, and I ran out of time because the taxi came early for me.

There was someone else to pick up and then off we set, two passengers and the taxi driver from Hell, to Avranches. If they give me a blood pressure test as soon as we arrive they’ll have a shock.

When we arrived, there I was struggling along on my crutches so they took me to the cubicle the farthest away from the door.

They slapped a few anaesthetic patches on my arm and then we went through a pile of paperwork and forms. Then they gave me an injection and I closed my eyes as they did what they had to.

All I did was to lie there in bed. They had all the windows open and the air conditioning going full tilt and I was freezing. So much so that I couldn’t concentrate on any work at all – and that’s something that I’ll have to sort out.

Instead I read the report of Colonel Carrington about life at Fort Phil Kearny, which was permanently under siege by the native Americans and the site of which WE VISITED IN 2019. Now THAT’s what I call an interesting document.

There were also times when I drifted away with the fairies and on one of my little trips Roxanne came to see me and I remember distinctly kissing her cheek.

They eventually uncoupled me and I had to wait around for half an hour while they checked that the joint would close correctly. And FINALLY I could go to the bathroom – and not before time. And with my puttees around my ankles.

There were three taxi drivers waiting in the foyer so I asked "who’s drawn the short straw?" and one driver knew exactly what I meant.

We had another person and so the return trip home, much more sedately this time, went via the Centre Normandy to drop him off.

My cleaner was waiting but she stood and watched as I hauled myself up the stairs without help. It’s a struggle, but it works.

There’s no bread so I made another loaf. And in a wild fit of enthusiasm I made a jam roly-poly.

That was easy – make half a bread mix, after it’s risen, roll it out flat and rectangular, coat it with Jacqueline’s lovely home-made jam, sprinkle some desiccated coconut and raisins, and then roll it up, sprinkle with icing sugar and bake it in the other side of the oven while the loaf is a-doing.

While all that was going on I made tea – a burger from what’s left of the European Burger Mountain with pasta and veg done in tomato sauce

But now I’m off to bed and I’ll tell you tomorrow how the bread and roly poly have come out.

However, I started this entry today talking about repetitive tasks. And that reminds me of a Trades Union meeting that I attended years ago to discuss new work proposals
"We have agreed" said a negotiator "a 10% pay-rise, an extra week’s holiday, a Christmas bonus, and as from now on, we only have to work on Wednesdays"
"What?" howled a discontented voice. "Every bloody Wednesday?"

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Sunday 25th August 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was the best that I’ve ever made.

And having made some good ones just recently, that is certainly saying something.

In fact, all in all, it was rather a good day today, helped by the fact that I had something like a decent sleep last night.

It might have been after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed but it was before midnight. And with a lie-in until 08:00 promised, that meant that at long last I was in line for a eight-hour sleep. And how I’ve needed one of those after all of the events just recently.

After I’d finished writing my notes last night I had some dictating of the radio notes to do. And after dictating the notes for the additional tracks for the two programmes that were half-prepared, I found that … errr … that was all. As far as dictation goes, I’m bang up-to-date at long last.

There are half a dozen or so programmes that need the notes writing, so that gaps in the sequence are filled in, but that aside, I’ve now prepared programmes up to 25th April next year.

If I can keep ahead like this, or even maybe extend the distance at which I’m in advance, I’ll have a nice head of programmes to keep going after I shuffle off this mortal coil.

And so at 23:45, having managed not to knock myself or cut myself or bleed anywhere, I crawled into bed, wrapped the quilt around me and that was that.

With the alarm set for 08:00 it was a big disappointment to awaken at 07:20. But even though I couldn’t go back to sleep there was no danger of my leaving my stinking pit at that time of morning. as the old song goes,
"REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLING SPENT
IT MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED
THE SAD OLD DAYS THEY CAME AND WENT
GIVING WAY TO FRUITFUL YEARS"
and while you’re at it, listen to Glenn Cornick’s magnificent bass line.

So at 08:00 I arose from the Dead and headed off to the bathroom. And at 08:20 I was washed and dressed and back at the computer listening to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were having an expensive meal at a hotel. There were quite a few of us and we were on several tables. The boss seemed to be micro-managing the meal, telling people what they could eat and what they couldn’t eat, which was extremely annoying, leading to quite a lot of confrontation. When it came to the dessert, one of the desserts was “profiteroles”. There was a plate of eight mixed profiteroles and there were eight people at each table. When the server began to deliver the food he turned round ad said “huit profiteroles” and pointed to one of the tables. I heard someone at the table say “why is he allowed to choose the dessert for us?”. They said “there are eight profiteroles. Can you not choose your dessert. It makes no difference that he said which dessert this table could have. He’s nothing to do with this table”. Basically, we were told “this is what we were going to have, and like it!”. I stood up and told the server to take that away, come back here to interview each one of us and find out what each one of us wants”. He became extremely aggressive so I took two paces towards him, he took two paces towards me so that was it! It was a confrontation that had him in the end running away through the kitchen and outside with me chasing after him. I thought to myself “I’m going to get him organised and then once I’ve sorted him out I’ll be coming back here and getting hold of the boss to tell him what I thought of all of this” because I was now in one of these fighting moods that actually take quite a lot of stopping.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream where I’ve really been enraged. At one time they were a regular feature, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I thought that I’d calmed down since the last time and that it would be permanent. But it’s obviously not to be. However, I’m continuing to be impressed that I can remember big and complicated words, like “profiteroles” for example, when I’m asleep. And not being too afraid to speak my rather colourful mind when it comes to addressing my boss is a regular feature that occurred more than once in the real World too.

Isabelle the Nurse was quite chatty this morning and we had a lengthy chat about nothing whatever while she sorted out my legs. She was telling me that it was the annual Melon market today. I can’t say that I’m too disappointed to miss it.

While I was making breakfast afterwards, my former neighbour who is now in a Home ‘phoned me. I think that she wanted her morale pumping up because she doesn’t seem to be coping too well with her new situation. We chatted for about 15 minutes and I hope that she felt a little better afterwards.

After breakfast we had football – Stranraer v Elgin City. And that was a game of two halves if ever there was one. It finished 1-1 but the first half was all Elgin on the attack and the second half was all Stranraer.

There has never been such a dramatic change in a game. I don’t know what Stranraer’s manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it.

Later on I tacked the recordings that I’d done before going to bed. They are now edited and the programmes are completed.

While I was at it, I had a look at the back-up. There’s a big USB key permanently in a USB slot in this computer and I back up to it at least once a day. It’s pretty nearly full now but there’s a lot of stuff on there that’s superfluous so I went through and weeded out everything that has since been overtaken by events

Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting music – soundtracks and the like – that I’ve downloaded to the computer. I’ve been going through it this afternoon, converting it to an acceptable format listening to it and chopping up some of it into sound-bytes.

There are tons to go at that have been collected for quite some time so this is a long-term project but I have a feeling that it’s a losing battle. I seem to be downloading it quicker than I can process it.

Something else that I did was to go one better than Dave Crosby – maybe because I had the ‘flu for Christmas. Although I’m not likely to be looking in my mirror and seeing a police car any time soon.

The pizza was, as I mentioned, totally delicious. The dough was really light and fluffy and this new vegan cheese that my cleaner found the other week seems to melt better than the last stuff.

So let’s hope that she can find some more of it for next time

So running rather late yet again, I’m going to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight on Monday.

But while we’re on the subject of haircuts … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was the story of the one-legged man who went for a haircut at the barber’s.
The barber unfortunately snipped the man’s ear and the man began to complain
To try to ease the tension the barber began some light-hearted chat. "I don’t think that I’ve seen you here before …" he began
"You haven’t" said the man. "I lost this leg in the War"

0

Sunday 21st April 2024 – AND SO TOMORROW …

… or today, if you are reading this posting on Monday, I go for my appointment with Destiny

This is when we’ll find out of this three months of medication cocktail has done any good.

Mind you, I can tell you that without having to go all the way to Paris at great expense to find out. There has certainly been a change in the situation, but it isn’t for the better.

Not that it’s any surprise really. With a illness that’s so rare that there are no records and no approved treatment everyone is just groping blindly in the dark and the last time that I tried that I had a thick ear off Percy Penguin

What is going to be interesting though is to find out what their Plan B is. They’ve had three months to think of one so I’m sure that there will be something simmering away in the background. At least, there better had be and I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t.

There was a change last night as well from the previous night, in that I actually managed some sleep.

For a change I actually managed to be in bed early but even so I couldn’t go to sleep. There was far too much on my mind, and on other places too.

However, to my surprise, there was something on the dictaphone and that was unexpected. There was something going on about toothpaste last night. Each person was given their own little cardboard box with their own little tube in it that was for them and them only. I’ve no idea why that would be the case or what it was all about.

No explanations were forthcoming either as it doesn’t seem to relate to anything at all. Just one of those mysterious things, I suspect.

After a stroll down the corridor I came back to bed and that was that until the alarm went off. I finally managed a deep, satisfying sleep and the only thing wrong with that is that there wasn’t enough of it.

No blood pressure – as I said yesterday, there’s not really much point. Instead I went into the living room for my medication with, instead of my usual half-litre of flavoured water, just enough water to swallow my tablets.

And that’s all that I’ve had to eat or drink today. Honestly. I’m working on the principle that the less stuff that goes in, the less stuff will want to come out, and that’s an advantage on a 4-hour car drive tomorrow morning when I’m not feeling too well.

The nurse came round and saw to my foot and my puttees. He thinks that the wound on my foot is ready to face the fresh air but if I’m off to Paris in shoes and socks on Monday I’d rather leave the plaster on so that there’s no friction rubbing it away.

After he left I came back in here and vegetated for quite a while. These 08:00 starts on a Sunday are killing me when I’m used to a long lie-in and a start that’s considerably later than that.

But eventually I managed to summon up enough energy to make a start on sorting out the European Paper Mountain and looking for what I need to take with me

And having found what I can (because there’s still plenty of stuff missing) I packed my backpack. I’ll take what I’ve found and we’ll have to invent the rest as we go along.

There was football on the internet this afternoon – the last weekend of matches of the regular season.

We were treated to Aberystwyth v Pontypridd United. Pontypridd are already relegated due to certain off-the-field issues, but Aberystwyth had to do better than Colwyn Bay would do against Barry Town in order to stay up and sent the Bay back down.

To everyone’s surprise, and probably theirs too, Colwyn Bay beat Barry 1-0 with a goal scored near the end of the game, but by then it was too late. Aberystwyth had already put three past Pontypridd and never looked in any difficulty.

We had the same scenario last season with a dramatic great escape on the final day and as I said then, if Aber had played for the rest of the season with the panache that they showed today they wouldn’t have been in this trouble to start with

It’s tough on Colwyn Bay on their first season in the Premier League but they were miles off the pace even on Day One when Caernarfon put 4 past them and the Bay were lucky to get nil, but the gulf between the Premier League and the second tier is immense.

Rosemary rang me for a chat at the end of the afternoon so while I was preparing a back-up memory stick to take with me, we put the world to rights. Just a short conversation today, only 57 minutes.

So now my puttees are washed and hanging up to dry, my bag is packed and my back-up is prepared, that’s my lot. I’m off to bed.

The alarm is set for 06:00 and the car should be here at 07:00 and then we’ll see.

And I hope that the taxi is on time. He was late on one of the other times that we had to go early like this
"You should have been here at 07:00" I told him
"Why?" he asked. "What happened?"

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Saturday 9th December 2023 – MY CHRISTMAS CAKE …

… now has its marzipan cover.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look very pretty, but it’s for eating, not for exhibiting at the Royal Academy. And in any case, it’ll be a different proposition tomorrow evening when it has the icing on it.

Sean’s advice to fill up the obvious depressions with lumps of marzipan before marzipanning over the top seems to work because it actually does look quite level now, although I’m the first to admit that I have a lot to learn when it comes to marzipanning.

However, as it’s only the second cake that I’ve marzipanned, I’m quite pleased with how it’s turned out.

The acid test will be tomorrow when I try to ice it. That should be something that will sort out the men from the boys.

But pleased as I might be with my marzipanning, that seems to be the only thing that did go according to some kind of plan today.

Once again I was wide awake at 05:00 and couldn’t go back to sleep. By 05:50 I was up and about having my medication.

For a change, I knew what it was that awoke me this morning. We’ve had high winds for most of the week but yesterday everything calmed down and it was nice to go out in the sun to the shops.

This morning though, the storm broke again and we were being lashed by the wind. It was the rain smashing against the bedroom window that awoke me

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Somewhere in late 1940s London someone had stolen a rare stamp from a bank vault and had managed to evade the police who were pursuing him. He eventually made his way back to where the guy who had commissioned him to steal it was situated. He was there with another guy. The robber explained how come he’d managed to do all of this. They guy who commissioned him said “now we have to go back and enter the vault in daylight”. The robber couldn’t understand why on earth anyone would want to do that but the guy said that it was important to lay some kind of trail for the police. After a great deal of convincing they set off. By now I was attached to this party. We were walking through the streets. Coming towards us was a group of people going to a club. They guy who’d organised the robbery recognised them. At one time he’d been the owner of a club and had barred these people. He was expecting some kind of trouble in the street but they walked straight by. They went to the place to which they were going but couldn’t go in so came back. This was when some kind of confrontation arose between the organiser of the theft and this group of people. Someone suggested calling the police so at that moment one or two of the other people and I discreetly detached ourselves from the group and slipped away. We went around a corner and were somewhere in South-West London where there were 2 or 3 Underground stations very close to each other. A couple of other people with us, one of whom was Katherine Ayers, disappeared and left me on my own. I was suddenly aware of the fact that I had to return to the North of England somehow. I’d need to take the Tube and change at one of the stations to catch another Tube that would bring me to either Euston or another station that would take me North. This ended up with the kind of confusion that we’ve had in several dreams in the past when I’ve been wandering around London Tube stations either trying to find people or to find the correct train – back once more in that situation.

Later on I’d been out for a drive in Strider. We’d been going through the Appalachian Mountains on the border between New Brunswick and Québec. I thought that I’d better fuel up at a petrol station as they were very few and far between around here. I came to one where the next one was advertised as being 60 kilometres away so I fuelled up here and wished that I hadn’t when I saw the prices because I’d been doing very well up until them. Suddenly I awoke with the most enormous start and the whole of the rest of the dream disappeared

After that I must have gone back to sleep because I was at work. It was coming up to Christmas and I was planning to leave to go into retirement but things just kept popping up and I couldn’t ever get round to handing in my notice. I could see that come Christmas I’d just walk away without telling anyone and never go back. Everyone else was preparing for Christmas. One guy was asking me for the recipe for Simnel cake saying that the cake that I’d made for my birthday was really good etc. Eventually I managed to tear myself away to go home. I should have had things to do that evening but I decided that I wasn’t going to. I thought that I’d ring up Nicole to see if she fancied going ice skating or swimming etc but for some reason I couldn’t get through. I ended up back at home. There was talk about moving. The place was an absolutely despairing tip with all kinds of things lying around. I decided that I’d make a start and went through my workshop. All the little scraps of wood that I’d been saving for projects, I bundled them up and wondered if someone would like them for firewood or kindling etc. My mother then turned up and said that Cécile fancied fish for tea. How would we cook it? I told her to cook it in a bechamel sauce with a dash of lemon juice. The idea of Cécile having fish is crazy. She is as much a strict vegan as I am.

The idea of me tidying up and throwing things away shows you just how much of a dream this must have been. And Cécile eating fish too is something that would only ever happen in a nocturnal ramble.

This morning I spend several hours de-duplicating files that are in one of the back-up drives that is in the desktop array. Another 24GB of files had bitten the dust by the time that I’d finished.

For an hour or so I had a play around on the guitar and ran through a few numbers on my playlist just to keep in practice.

This afternoon I attacked the Christmas cake. There was some marzipan left over from last time but it was rather brittle so I used it to fill in the depressions once I’d kneaded it, and then used the fresh stuff that I’d bought the other day to do the job properly.

It looks rather strange, with the marzipan being in tricolour but as I said, once it’s iced it won’t make any difference and it will still taste just as nice.

And then the rest of the afternoon has been spent working on the notes for the photos from Canada 2022. I’m currently riding around the mouth of the Baie des Chaleurs and down the Straits of Northumberland on my way to Bathurst and Miramichi.

There’s still a very long way to go though. I can’t believe how slowly this train is travelling. For a developed country, what is left of Canada’s passenger rail network is an embarrassment.

Tea tonight was a baked potato with salad and one of those strange veggie burgers, made with real veg. They are really quite nice and I’ll be disappointed when they’ve all gone Noz was very kind to me with its bargain offers of strange vegan food and it’s a shame that I can’t go there any more.

The advantage is that it will encourage me to do more in the experimentation line.

On the list of things at which I want to have a go is bread-crumbing and battering. Battering is a question of flour and milk so there’s no reason why I can’t try that with plant-based milk but I shall have to have think about bread-crumbing.

Google might be our friend here and so I typed in “Breadcrumbing” – and had page after page after page of websites talking about stringing someone along in a pseudo-relationship and nothing at all about cookery. I’m clearly light years behind the times.

Tomorrow I have fruit buns to make, pizza dough to make and a Christmas cake to ice. There are radio notes that need dictating before I go to bed so there will be a programme to do too. It’ll be a busy day so I’m glad I had a rest today.

My new scales came today and I had to go downstairs to the post box in the entry to pick it up this evening. One of my neighbours was in the hall and we had a chat. I bet he was wondering what was going on.

Going downstairs was interesting because my slipper fell off so I resolved that issue by throwing it all the way up to my front door and went barefoot. And the climb back up froze my feet but it was surprisingly much easier than it has been just recently.

There’s no reason for that really. I don’t think that it’s the exercise. Maybe it’s because having sat around all day, I wasn’t tired. Or maybe my legs were lighter with no shoes on.

But whatever it is, I’ve given up trying to fathom it out. I’ve already crashed out half a dozen times today, sometimes quite definitively, so I’m going to have a hot drink and then dictate the radio notes before going to bed. I wonder what time I’ll awaken tomorrow.

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Friday 24th November 2023 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… expect, having decided not to go to the shops this morning in case the garage came to pick up Caliburn, they didn’t turn up at all.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, this is par for the course. Only I can do things like DRIVE 500 MILES TO VISIT AN ISOLATED ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE and find it closed for the season, or load up Caliburn to go to the dechetterie and pick the only day in the month when it is closed.

And in 2022 where I booked 4 nights in a hotel in Montreal to find that the only day that the train to the east left was on the third night

That’s the kind of thing that crops up all the time and regular readers of this rubbish are used to this by now.

Having said that, it was really just as well that I didn’t go because I really didn’t feel like it. It was another horrible night where it took ages to go off to sleep and when I did, I had another incredibly mobile night.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the kitchen, to find that I was actually feeling rather more steady on my feet today than I have done just recently, and I even managed 4 steps without leaning on anything.

It might be Severine’s exertions that are working, or it might be my nocturnal exercises with the elastic band wrapped round my ankles, or it might just be my imagination.

After the medication and checking my mails (and I’ve had authorisation to have a taxi for Paris on Friday next week) I had a very slow start to the day and it took a while to wind myself up ready to start. We were on board a ship again last night and every time we’d go ashore I’d always sit with the same person, another guy. On this particular occasion we all lined up ready to climb into the boats to take us ashore. I sat down in a good place but the guy walked straight past me and went to sit down next to someone else. In the end I had either a girl or a woman sit next to me but I was more interested in listening to what these other 2 guys were doing. They were having a tremendous amount of fun talking about Queen Victoria as a painter, cracking jokes with each other etc. One of them was having a go at painting and everyone was crowded around having a look. All of a sudden, even in the dream, I felt really lonely and alone.

Liz once asked me a good while ago if I ever felt lonely, living as I do. But in fact I don’t actually live alone. The advantage of having a split personality is that there’s always a group of me living inside my head and there’s that much noise going on that I’m certainly not lonely.

But in actual fact, the alternatives to being lonely are probably worse. “he who travels fastest travels furthest” and “he who travels fastest travels alone”. And I’ve certainly covered much more ground alone than I otherwise would have done.

The only time that I have really regretted being on my own was at times such as strolling across the Little Big Horn battlefield or standing on the top of South Pass, or visiting the Norse Furdustrandir on the coast of Labrador and there was no-one to share the experience with me.

But of course, had I had someone in tow before I set off, I wouldn’t have ever arrived at anywhere like that. I really ought to have had a daughter. Castor enjoyed my little stories when we were alone together on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR late at night.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bedroom we were all discussing what we would be doing on a particular evening at home. Almost everyone had various plans but it ended up that I would be there with my 3 younger siblings at home wo we were trying to work out what we would be doing about a meal. I tried to find out whether there was any food that needed collecting because sometimes there was but the food that I could have picked up coming back from Percy Penguin’s I’d picked up the previous day. There were 1 or 2 things from other outlying farms but it was quite out of the way to go. They did ask me if I’d go out there to pick it up but for some reason I said that it would be difficult. As they were leaving my parents turned to me and said “you’ll be OK organising this meal for the other 3 won’t you? And you’ll be paying”. That was the first news that I heard about it. They had never ever discussed the payment with me for a single minute until they had some of their feet outside the door.

And then I had exactly the same dream half an hour later – word for word.

Later on I was seeing on some kind of basis a girl who had the same name as one of my regular visitors, but it wasn’t she . A third by began to hang around occasionally. I’d invited the girl back for a meal and I’d cooked something but the guy showed up. Out of courtesy I gave him some food. He asked for something but I only had a little so I said “you’re eating me out of house and home aren’t you?”. He replied “it’s not my fault. I didn’t ask to come for a meal”. I replied “you asked to asked to hang around with this girl. What did you expect?”. In the end it ended up in one of these arguments that we had. I said to the boy “there’s only one person who can decided who the girl goes out with and that’s the girl herself” and I went off to clear the table. About 30 seconds later he said “it looks as if I’m stealing your girlfriend” and walked out of the room with her. After she left she stuck her head back in the door to say “if you see (something) belonging to me you’ll remember to give it to me won’t you? You will still keep looking for it, won’t you?”. I answered with a very non-committal “yes” and carried on clearing the table.

Some of my plants are going to miss my layered kitchen but I’m going to have it remodelled as I can no longer walk up the steps. One of the plants was an adopted plant that came from a level kitchen anyway so it wouldn’t have too much trouble readapting but the others will probably find it difficult because the steps in the kitchen are completely beyond me now. It’s high time that I had the floor and everything put on the level. And what that has to do with anything I really don’t know at all.

There was another dream too. We were on holiday. I was with a girl but I can’t remember who she was. There was a variety of older couples. There was a very young girl there with a much older man. He was disabled. We formed the opinion that she wasn’t looking after him correctly. She seemed to be a nice enough girl but there was something about how the reaction between the 2 of them didn’t seem correct at all. When we travelled to this particular hotel we could see that the old guy was having a hard time but the girl didn’t seem to be particularly concerned all that much. Next day we were going somewhere and the girl appeared on her own. She tagged onto our little group of people. We didn’t really say all that much to her but when we climbed out of the coach to go on the way back to the hotel we began to chat. We asked about the guy and she gave some very non-committal answers. I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was trying to ingratiate herself with me for some reason but I wasn’t really sure why. As we climbed up and down the steps across this entry to go to the hotel I shouted out to my girlfriend “all those in favour of a coffee say ‘Aye'” and the girl shouted “Aye” too. I had no idea exactly what was happening but there were some things about this situation that just didn’t seem right to me at all.

That’s just another one of a whole series of strange encounters that I’ve had with strange people. 25 years ago I had an e-mail from a girl. “I’m a clandestine from Myanmar here in Brussels with no papers at all. I think you can help me”.
My biggest default has always been my curiosity and that has led me into a pile of difficulties and problems in the past but nevertheless, I responded.
We met up in Brussels and she got into my car. A beautiful young Oriental girl, probably early 20s at most. Perfectly manicured hands, perfectly coiffured hair, designer denim jacket with matching jeans.
If it looks like a rat and walks like a rat and smells like a rat, then it’s a rat. There’s no way she’d fought her way through the mangrove swamps on the border between Myanmar and Thailand

She played me along for a while and I played her along for a while but she eventually grasped the message that whatever she wanted from me she wasn’t going to get until I in my turn had some answers to a whole host of difficult questions, and that was something else that fizzled out.

There was another complicate dream about a girl who lived on a model housing estate that wasn’t quite finished. She had a pet that might have been a dog. As she travelled a lot she relied on one of the neighbours, a young guy, to feed the dog for her. On one occasion that she’d been away something had gone wrong about the dog food. In the end the guy had only ended up making meals for the dog for 3 days instead of 7. It led to quite a few complications, not only for her and the guy but for a few passers-by who heard their discussion. That’s all that I remember about this dream but it did go on for hours and hours and at one point I remember sitting on the kerb overlooking this housing estate eating a meal that I suspected was dog food.

There was something to do with a Prisoner-of-War camp. There were civilian internees, of which I was one, who had to go to the camp during the day but were allowed home on parole at night. On one particular occasion I was one of the last ones to leave. There were 2 women who had come there but were both ill in bed. By the looks of things they weren’t going home. The female commandant grabbed hold of me and began to give me things, festooning me like a Christmas tree. There were all kinds of stuff that apparently these women had brought that needed to go home. I couldn’t understand how I was supposed to carry all of this but she said “things like the Hoover here you can pull by the cord and it’ll follow you”. In the end, being in no position to argue, I shook my head and set off to catch the bus back to where I was staying. There were all kinds of complications about bringing these things into the lift. The Hoover snagged on its cable around a step, it was left out of the lift when we went in and the doors closed. There were all kinds of extreme difficulties through which I was going, trying to move these things while these 2 women were just lying there in bed doing nothing while I was doing all of this and upsetting everyone else who was trying to share a lift with me, waiting at the entrance to this building while the door opened. I can’t ever remember feeling as frustrated as I did about this

And that used to be a regular feature during my nocturnal voyages too.

Having dealt with all of that (which took much longer than it ought) I attacked the radio programme. And despite several occasions when I went off with the fairies I actually finished all of the notes. That leaves me tomorrow afternoon for starting my Christmas baking because I’m shopping in the morning.

With some time left over I carried on going through one of the back-up drives in the array on the shelf and made another pile of space.

Tea tonight was a delicious sausage, beans and chips. If I’m not careful I’ll be running out of sausages in due course. That batch of vegan sausages that I bought in Jersey is delicious but I won’t be able to buy any more. Beans though are no problem. Ric and Elaine bought me some last year and Liz and Terry bought me a pile this summer when they came over.

So I’m going to bed now, ready to fight the good fight in the shops at St Nicolas tomorrow. I need some mushrooms for my pizza on Sunday and a few other bits and pieces too.

And then I’ll have to think about an order from LeClerc. At the moment I’m doing Ok for supplies but I’ll never be able to find anything when I really need it.

Ordering my shopping is just like waiting for the garage to come for Caliburn, really.

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Monday 20th November 2023 – MY BLACK TREACLE …

… came in the post today. 3 tins of it. And so this weekend I’m going to begin to soak my fruit ready to make my Christmas cake and Christmas pudding.

And when I went to arrange the treacle on the shelves I found half a tub of molasses left over from the last time I baked a molasses cake. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s high time I made an inventory of exactly what I do have here.

The black treacle wasn’t the only thing that turned up in the post either. My food processor arrived.

When I lived in Belgium I had one of these magic wands for making soup and took it with me to the Auvergne but once I established myself here I bought one of those 4-in-1 kits for making soups, whipping cream, grinding and chopping nuts etc.

However they aren’t made for the kind of work that I would like to do and after a couple of years I burnt out the gears on the grinder. I bought another kit but that’s even more lightweight than the one that I had and I noticed that that’s becoming decidedly flaky.

Liz and I had a good chat on the internet about food processors a couple of weeks ago and she gave me a few ideas and suggestions. And as a result the food processor arrived – a proper heavy-duty machine – and I’ll have hours of fun with that.

The only problem is that it’s quite big and I don’t have the room to store it right now. And that’s the big problem about living on my own. Had I still been living with my family I would have had plenty of suggestions about where to stick it a long time ago.

The actual difficulty is that although there’s probably room on the top shelf in the kitchen, I can’t reach it and I can no longer climb up my stepladder.

It’s actually quite interesting ordering this kind of thing from the internet. It’s all very reminiscent of life “out west” on the prairies and high plains of the USA in the 1880s and 1890 when the Man from Sears would turn up on his horse at an isolated farm and sit for an hour going through his Sears catalogue with the farmer, taking orders.

And then 6 months later the freighter would turn up with his covered Conestoga or Studebaker wagon with the supplies – always assuming that he hadn’t been robbed by bandits or killed by marauding native Americans.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we actually came across the remains of a Conestoga wagon not too far away from one of the historic sites of confrontation on the North Platte River in Wyoming when we were there in 2019.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr …. apartment I ended up going to bed quite late last night. And there was hardly anything on the dictaphone because I hardly slept a wink during the night – and after my long Sunday too. However at some point I was at the Centre de Re-education last night and they were changing my rota again. This time they were fitting more and more things to do into my times with the various girls. It was becoming more and more complicated. Some of the things I couldn’t possibly do, like to walk unaided for 14 minutes etc. It began to become more and more complicated and I couldn’t see at all how it was going to work out.

When the alarm went off I hauled myself out of bed and went off for my medication. And then I had to track down some information and print it out to take with me when I go out tomorrow – if they don’t cancel my sessions again.

Much of the morning was spent on the telephone. There’s some work to be done on the stairs and in the lift in the building and there’s an engineer coming to the building on Thursday. All of the members of the Residents’ Committee are are either at work or away and everyone else is not really up to this kind of thing so it seems that I’ve drawn the short straw and I’m going to be Consultant on behalf of the residents.

God help them!

Then the treacle and the food processor came and I had to sort out those, and make plans about where I’m going to put everything.

The rest of the day such as it was has been spent working on one of the hard drives in the back-up array and I’ve cleared out about 80gb of duplicate files, and there’s still plenty to go at. This is going to be a never-ending project, I reckon.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, as nice as usual. And I still haven’t worked out what it was that I forgot to include in the mix last week.

Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form, then there’s the Centre de Re-education and my meeting with the Social Services. After all of that I’ll be exhausted and I’ll probably sleep for a week but at least people are taking an interest in my and my health issues.

No-one could ask for any more than that.

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Saturday 28th October 2023 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, there wasn’t anything on the dictaphone from the night and that’s not something that happens every day. I must have had one of the deepest sleeps that I’ve ever had.

Mind you, I didn’t go to bed until after 04:00. I was quite wound up and stressed out after my travels yesterday.

What I used to do in the old days when I drove taxis was that when I would finally return home I’d go out for a good run to tire myself out

That wasn’t anything that I could do after I married because I never had the time to unwind but when I moved to Brussels and was chauffering, I would go out running again. And I must admit that I was sleeping better after I started running yet again after I moved here.

Of course, all of that is well in the past now.

As I expected, the phone never stopped pinging during the early morning but I tried my best to ignore it. Nevertheless I abandoned all hope and staggered to my feet at 11:40.

Today, I’ve been quite busy. For a start, I’ve had to back up the main computer with all of the amended files that accumulated on the portable computer while I was away at Ice Station Zebra. And there were several hundred of those. It took ages.

There were several discussions on the phone and the internet too. Rosemary rang me and we had another one of our marathon chats. Liz and one or two other people sent me messages but the most surprising, and one of the most welcome, was a chat that I had with someone with whom I usually only have interaction during the night when I’m asleep.

We had football too – TNS v Y Bala. And as you might expect, it was more a case of “when” rather than “what”. The fact that Y Bala held out for 35 minutes before conceding was something surprising.

TNS scored a second too but Y Bala held out until the final whistle. And that was a much better effort than the last time that we saw TNS play Y Bala, when the latter team folded up so dramatically in the final few minutes last summer.

Sure enough, TNS are on their usual relentless stride to the championship with no real opposition from anyone.

Many people think that it must be pretty boring with TNS winning everything every year since the money came into the club, and whether or not that might be the case, the fact is that the race to catch up has improved the quality of the matches and the quality of the players dramatically.

In recent years we’ve had 4 full Welsh internationals, several under-21 internationals, a Zimbabwe international and internationals from Malta, New Zealand and one of the Caribbean nations plus many more besides. There was nothing whatever like that 10 years ago.

Tea tonight, later than usual, was chips (potato and sweet potato) with salad and one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like so much.

So bedtime now, and maybe if I’m lucky I’ll go on a wander about again during the night. I missed my night-time voyage.

Tomorrow I have pizza dough to make and then maybe I’ll have to start work again. I’ll have to do that some time.

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Monday 23rd October 2023- I MADE IT …

… in Paris, and I have to say that if I in a cowslip’s bell were to lie I’d probably be more comfortable because there’s no heat in the room.

There was no heat in my apartment this morning either – I’ve not switched it on as yet – but with solid granite walls 1m20 thick, it’s not as important as it would be in some of this jerry-built modern stuff.

And as usual, even though I’d set the alarm for 05:20, I was up and about by 05:00. I always have a bad night when I have to be up early and last night was no exception. I hardly slept at all.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone however. I was in the witness box in Court for some reason, and the subject of Percy Penguin came up. I found it very hard to convince everyone that it was just something to relax and to sit there in the quiet, the reason why I wanted to see Percy Penguin. I had to do everything that I possibly could to try to avoid being rearrested or imprisoned etc while at the same time being frank and open to the Judge. I wasn’t sure how to go about doing it.

Later on we’d been to Nantwich shopping and decided that for once in our lives we’d take a taxi home. Someone in a Ford Cortina estate came to pick us up so we piled in. When we reached where Smiths was in Nantwich by the church the driver stopped to fuel up. Two shots rang out. We don’t know where the first one went but the second one went through the roof of the taxi and hit my mother in the head. The ricochet hit my youngest sister. Immediately, a crowd gathered. I was absolutely appalled so I left the car and shouted at the people “for God’s sake have some dignity and let my mother die in peace”. When the ambulance arrived I took my sister out of the car and tried to clean the blood off her etc. She was crying and really upset. I felt absolutely helpless because I hadn’t any idea at all what to do or what I was going to do.

When I awoke I had another one of those thirsts that you could photograph. I ended up drinking two large mugs of my patent blackcurrant, honey and lemon drink. You can tell that we are approaching winter if I’m back on that.

Next task was to make some sandwiches and to finish the packing. I had planned to have a shower but I didn’t fancy trying to climb in and out of the bath while I’m trying to keep to a tight schedule.

Instead, I had a good strip-down wash and was ready when the car came for me.

On the face of it, it was a good idea to have a car to take me to Paris, because I really couldn’t do it on the train. Not at all. Whether it will be a good idea if I have to end up paying for it is another thing entirely

But the downside was that the car was a SEAT and it had done my back in before we even reached Caen.

The journey went quite well with just one or two hold-ups, and we stopped for 15 minutes for a coffee and pit stop

At the hospital I was shown to my room without even having to check in. And then we had the usual pantomime about trying to fit a catheter in my arm. 2 nurses had a total of 5 goes and it’s still not done.

Next task was to be shoved through one of these Stargate time tunnel things. I had to walk much of the way there and back, which upset me, and then they had to have three goes at passing me though the machine as apparently I was moving my head too much.

Back here again and another nurse had 3 goes at my arm before she could finally take a blood sample.

A couple of doctors have been to see me and discuss my treatment plan, and they have confirmed that my health is deteriorating. They don’t think that I could withstand another series of perfusions and in fact they suspect that that’s why the hospital in Leuven has stopped doing them and has been relying on Aranesp injections

The food is rubbish as usual so my neighbour, who is in Paris this week and popped her head in to see me, says that she will bring me some bananas

So now that everything is finished and the computer is backed up with the latest copies of the files, I’m going to bed. I’m tired after my exertions today and I’ve already crashed out twice, but it’s more to do with the fact that it’s the only way that I can think of right now to keep warm.

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Sunday 22nd October 2023 – I WASN’T ACTUALLY …

… far wrong with what I said yesterday. Much of the morning was taken up with a very lengthy exchange of correspondence with someone about a task that needs to be undertaken in the near future.

It’s a task that might involve me spending a lot of money, but it’s not something that I can do myself and the sooner it’s done the better. And in view of the travelling involved that I won’t have to do, I will probably end up saving money in the long run too.

And so it’s very important that the issue is very clear and unequivocal – hence the lengthy discussion.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I dictated the notes for the final radio programme in this backlog, had a listen to them, binned them and then started again.

As a result, I was in bed later than I intended.

Nevertheless, by 09:30 I was up and about and sorting out issues here and there. And then I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of race going on last night. It involved me dressing up in some kind of clothing as if for Halloween… "it’s called drag racing" – ed. I was being chased down some stairs by a little girl. When I reached the bottom, I’d run round the corner and then back up the stairs, reach the top, run around the corner and then back down again and so on. I was in front of the girl and she raced after me. This went on for a couple of minutes when suddenly she stopped running. I hadn’t noticed until I suddenly appeared on the landing at the same moment that she was there. That was the end of the game. I was convinced that she had cheated. It was really quite an uncomfortable moment. The conversation carried on about something else. It ended up being some kind of prize-giving for novels. Some guy had written a novel that was quite in-depth technically and longer and even changed into fifth gear but the one that won was another that was not so complicated and only had four gears. This was something else that caused a great deal of controversy during the night about why the winner was not so technically advanced as the one that came second.

There was also another kind of fancy-dress competition. It involved dressing up in clothes that we already had and then some kind of parade around where they would choose the winner. For some reason or other, even though I had a complicated outfit that it took a while to fit into and looked really good it didn’t come as high as another dressing-up outfit that wasn’t as good as mine and had been done much quicker. Of course, as you can imagine, I was extremely disappointed that my work wasn’t worth any more than the teacher had given me.

later on I was on Crewe railway station waiting for my train, an old 2-coach multiple unit. Someone was complaining about something and I couldn’t understand it at first. It suddenly clicked for me that there had been a change of the time of the train. The usual train that we caught to go to work was leaving 5 minutes earlier. I had to scramble around the station and onto the correct platform. Instead of going to sit in my usual place on the train I sat right at the front. When I boarded the train there it was actually quite crowded and there were very few seats left. One seat was next to some kind of woman whom I recognised so I went to sit there. I was hemmed in by this woman and three other people. They were all speaking Welsh and began to talk in Welsh. They were actually doing their Welsh homework ready for the lesson. Much as I didn’t like at all where I was sitting, I reckoned that a presence like this, doing the same kind of course that I was and willing to discuss it like this, these people have to be worth knowing. Maybe I ought to do my best to catch this train again.

And then I’d been doing something down in south-west England. On my way round I’d passed a small fishing village in a little cove on the border between Devon and Cornwall. Checking my plans for the return, I saw that I’d have to wait for a day or two before coming back but there was a bus that left that village that would bring me home. I thought that it sounded like a really good plan. I made arrangements to book myself on this coach back. I went to hire a car for the weekend, which seemed to work fine with no problems. I went to pick it up. On the way out I talked to the guy in the movement control at the door, saying “I now have this car for 48 hours. See you when I return”. He replied “no – you had this car booked for yesterday and today”. I replied “that can’t possibly be the case – I’ve only just booked it”. This led to quite an argument. In the end he agreed that I could leave with the car. I wasn’t happy about leaving because I had the idea in my mind that once my back was turned he’d forget about altering the booking and I’d end up having to pay a hefty excess charge for not bringing the vehicle back during the day on the Sunday

Finally, I’d gone to Algeciras for something and was standing on a high cliff. I could see all down the African coast in the mist. I could see the mountains of Africa in the distance and all the boats coming through the Straits of Gibraltar. There was one of these high-speed catamaran ferries coming up. We reckoned that it had come from Morocco heading into port. There were loads of ships too. The people with me decided to walk back into town but I was so mesmerised by what I’d seen that I just stayed there and watched the view.

And so compared to last night it was quite quiet.

After that I’ve been sending off requests for brochures. We’re talking about a chairlift in this building to go up the stairs to where the lift begins and my cleaner had collected a few adverts from various companies. My task was to arrange for some brochures to be delivered.

Later on after lunch I attacked the radio notes and eventually ended up with a completed radio programme. That’s taken me up to 10th May next year and now I can crack on with some more.

You’re probably wondering why I’m so far ahead with the programmes. The answer is that I’m never sure when I’m no longer going to be able to prepare any more, for obvious reasons.

And then of course, we could always have a repeat of last year when I spent 13 weeks in hospital without any possibility of preparing any more while I’m away.

On the subject of hospital, I packed my bags for tomorrow morning and wrote a few letters. Finally, I backed up the computer onto the portable USB stick that I take with me on my travels

Tea was another delicious pizza, and now I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow morning I have to be up at 05:20 at the latest and I’m not looking forward to that. And then I’ll be having a week of being torn apart.

As for when I’ll be back, I have no idea. I have been told to “set aside a week” but that could be anything from “back home the same night” to another three-month stay.

But I shall just be glad of a rest. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

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Saturday 2nd September 2023 – YOU PROBABLY WON’T …

… believe this (or maybe you will, I dunno) but this afternoon and evening I have wiped off the various hard disks that are running at the moment from this computer a total of over 600GB of duplicate files.

That’s not all either because even as I’m typing this I’m coming across more files that I can delete so i’ve no idea how much free space I’ll create by the time that I finish.

That is, of course, if I ever do, because I’ve been at this project and off since August 2021 when I began to upload the contents of ever hard drive that I’ve ever owned that is still working.

And seeing as I bought my first PC over 30 years ago and always kept the hard drives when I dismantled them, you can imagine how many I have.

It’s now quite late so I’m hoping for a good sleep and a nice long lie-in in the morning, something that I didn’t have today.

Struggling to my feet when the alarm went off was quite an adventure and I still wasn’t feeling much like it when Caliburn and I hit the streets.

Noz was a big disappointment today because there was nothing of any interest in there.

However I struck it lucky in LeClerc There are some really nice but expensive vegan burger and vegan sausages that are well out of my price range but they had some on special offer in the Clearance range so I stocked up.

Something else that I bought was a set of cheap pyjamas. If I’m going into hospital sometime soon I’ll need a pair. I don’t like these hospital ones.

On the way home I went via the Biocoop. I need to make some more hummus and I don’t have a lot of tahini. They don’t sell that in LeClerc

Back at home I sorted out the freezer and packed away the stuff that I’d bought. The freezer now really is quite full but at least it’s full of stuff that I can eat. I’m not going to be short of interesting meals for a while now.

Armed with my coffee and my cheese on toast, I came back into here to sit down where I promptly crashed out, not that that’s any surprise given how things have been just recently.

When I eventually awoke, that was when I began to crack on with the duplicate files. There are a couple of handy utility programs that help here but the files still need to be sorted and filed away by hand first and that’s what takes the time.

Tea tonight was chips (potato and sweet potato) with a vegan salad and burger in a bun, made with my own home-made dough in the air fryer.

Following that I had my chat with Rosemary – quite a lengthy one as I suspected. She’s going to see a specialist at the end of the month and wanted to have a chat about it.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. One of the dreams involved a brawl between players at a women’s football match with a few despicable scenes that concluded with one player slamming another one’s head against a wall and a table on several occasions really hard. The noise of the head hitting the wood etc in my dream was awful, it really was.

There was another dream of which I can only remember bits. I was going to a rock concert somewhere. When I’d arrived or was on my way there I’d met these Hells Angels, I suppose. One of them took me under his wing a little. I can’t remember much about it but I had to change my clothes, ending up getting completely dirty working on a motor bike. At the end of the concert I had to leave of course. That guy said that he’d run me home. I thought that with all the beer he’s drinking and breaking wind it’ll certainly be uncomfortable on the back of his motor bike like that. Then I began to change my clothes. Then I realised that I had the model of a church or something that I’d built to exhibit somewhere. The whole idea was quite controversial so why don’t I ask this guy, seeing as I’m on his right side at the moment, whether he’d like to be a bodyguard for this model while it was being exhibited. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember any more than this, which is a shame.

Did I dictate this huge long dream about writing a thesis? … "no you didn’t" – ed. I kept on being interrupted by all kinds of people. There was a deadline by which it had to be done. Not only that, I was staying in a hotel in the Pigalle. All of my possessions were there. The day was drawing on. When I finally finished I had to send it off. Then I realised that I had no conclusion so I had to think of a good one. The conclusion ended up not being very good because the final photo of my thesis was a group of people fighting. I had somehow to tie my conclusion to that. Then I still had to go to the Pigalle to pick up my affairs. I’d told them a while ago that I’d be another hour when they asked. I thought that at this rate it’s going to be another one of these things where they’ll take my possessions in charge and that will be that. There was then a queue of people all waiting to use the computer to send off their theses. Everything seemed to be going wrong. There was much more to it than this too but I can’t really remember the earlier parts of it

So having finished, I’m going to bed. And not before time either. Tomorrow I have some hummus to make and some tidying up to do ready for next week. Work is beginning to pile up yet again and I need to crack on and do it.

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