Tag Archives: bad night

Monday 7th April 2025 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

… short session of three and a half hours at the dialysis centre today. Even though I wobbled a couple of times and crashed out for five minutes, I made it to the end

But seeing as we are talking about crashing out … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was in a different bed today where I could see everyone else in the public ward. And without exception, everyone else crashed out shortly after their machines were set under way. That doesn’t make me feel quite so bad now about crashing out.

Something else that we very nearly had this morning was another early start. Despite not going to bed until late, I was awake at about 06:40 and was debating whether to raise myself from the Dead – I’d even put the light on – when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE beat me to it

It’s quite surprising that I was awake so early because I didn’t go to bed until after 01:00. I’d finished my notes, the statistics and the backing up well before that but as usual something came along to disrupt me and I can’t remember what it was right now. It was probably a very good concert and I’ll always postpone bedtime if something decent comes round on the playlist. … "Actually, you were designing kitchens" – ed …

But once in bed I fell asleep quite quickly, but only for a short while and then we were back on the turbulent, somewhat mobile nights.

Whatever it was that awoke me at 06:40 left no impression on me whatsoever. It wasn’t the bin lorry, and it wasn’t the hot food delivery to the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs either because they both turned up when I was awake and trying to summon up the courage and the energy to leave the bed.

Billy Cotton made up my mind for me and his rattle certainly is raucous coming from this new ‘phone. No-one will sleep through this, that’s for sure

In the bathroom I had a good wash, scrub up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant and then went for my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and no-one was more surprised than me to see all of the stuff thereupon. When I switched on my computer there was a message “you must go to full-screen view for this” it said, so I pressed on the full screen and there was a humanoid figure, a female one. Apparently I must have been trying to manoeuvre some of the limbs during a 3D exercise or something and somehow I’d become distracted and closed the window before I’d finished what it was that I was going. Now that I was in this full-screen I could read all the notes and see which would be the best way to resolve the issue with which the error message was dealing.

It goes without saying that in the middle of the night I didn’t actually switch on the computer. But manoeuvring … "PERSONoeuvring" – ed … the limbs of 3D characters is something that I did quite often when I was working in 3D down on the farm.

Then there was that I had to put a fascia panel across underneath the fridge and the model initiative size before its transform so that I know where everything should be

This of course makes no sense at all, but then what does? As we have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … There are all kinds of rubbish that comes to the fore during my nocturnal rambles … "and not just then either" – ed … But the fascia panel reminds me of something that I saw when I was looking at kitchens. A plinth of wood to cover the feet of the units, four metres long by about ten centimetres wide, will cost me €39:00

Later on I had another visit during the night. I was actually in hospital. At one stage in my life I’d fathered a child with someone but the relationship didn’t stick and the mother and I went our separate ways. I was in hospital last night and into my room came the sister of this girl and her mother and my little daughter who was about three or four with a couple of other small kids. I chatted to them all because I liked them. My daughter climbed onto my bed, standing there having quite a long chat about her birthday, what she’d had for her birthday, what she was going to do with her birthday money and everything like that. It was a lovely dream.

It’s a question that I’ve often been asked – "do you have any kids?" and my response is always the same – "none that I know of – no-one has come knocking on the door yet". Nerina didn’t want any kids – we’d had a couple of long talks about that – and that suited me at the time. It was only when Laurence, Roxanne and I set up home together in Jette that I realised just how much fun kids could be, especially girls. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that all kids should be girls, they should be born when they are five and at age eleven they should go into hibernation until they reach eighteen.

And then we were on holiday somewhere. We started off by going in a car and it was evening. We were driving towards Chester and came to Bluestones crossroads and turned right up the A51. We were heading towards the reservoir and noticed that the traffic had stopped so we stopped too. I could see the lights in the distance – this was a huge, enormous queue of vehicles that stretched for miles. We began to think about turning round and going back across country via Worleston, that way. Just then, a lorry came down pulling a bus with it and the bus had all been smashed in. There was another breakdown vehicle behind it pulling something else. Then the police came and told everyone to go back. They had us roll backwards down the hill towards Bluestones again so I let off our handbrake to roll back and all of a sudden rolled at an incredible rate of speed almost out of control. I really had to apply the brakes to make it stop but for that little moment it was frightening.

It was frightening too, I can tell you. I can still see it now.

And finally, I stepped back into that dream again. There was a group of us and we were going on holiday again. This time we were back at the hotel where we had started and a bus pulled up, dropped off a load of people and went again. A few minutes later another bus from the same company, one in Calveley, dropped people off as well. We wondered if this was anything to do with the accident and these people were maybe passengers on one of those buses that had been in an accident and the bus had brought me here. This time we left again and boarded a bus, an old double-decker. I was with two other guys so I grabbed a pair of seats with a free one in front but they all wanted to sit at the back. I looked round but there was no place to sit at the back so they couldn’t really do that anyway. Then we set off and were out doing something and all came back. We’d been through a forest and had been told to be careful in the forest. There were these people gathering the old decayed wood and burning it. One of them was pushing some kind of load and came to a T-junction in the forest path but instead of stopping, they just went straight on and straight through the undergrowth opposite the T-junction. We thought to ourselves “that’s not being careful, is it?”. Then we heard some music, trumpets and trombones. We had a look and it was one of these West Indian marching bands in the forest playing their instruments to entertain the workers presumably. We thought “we’d seen these on the road a little earlier. I wonder what they are doing here”. We came back to the bus and we boarded it. I grabbed three seats but the other two guys complained that they wanted to sit at the back but there was only one seat free at the back so again I wasn’t quite sure how they were all going to manage to sit at the back.

Why there should be a West Indian marching band in a forest in the UK is totally beyond my comprehension. As for the bus though, I travelled on loads of Crosville “K-series” buses, the type that they had before the Lodekka with the five-eater bench seats upstairs and the aisle down the offside. Crash boxes and manual steering, they were wicked beasts and once someone worked out the principle of the cranked axles so that they could drop the floors by a foot and the Lodekkas arrived, they soon all disappeared.

The nurse tells me that I need new compression socks – the ones that I have are wearing out rapidly, he seems to think. So as I don’t go near my doctor’s these days, I set him the task of persuading my doctor to write out a prescription.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’ve finished our guided tour of Dursley Castle and have gone north to Durham. At the moment we’re talking about the history of Durham Castle and at least, the history of these places is interesting, but I don’t imagine that it will be too long before we have the guided tour.

Back in here I attacked the Welsh homework and one of the things that I had to do was to write a review of a film that deals with Crime and Punishment so I chose THE ITALIAN JOB, one of my favourite films. There was a second option, which was to write about famous criminals in your area. I considered that option for a moment but I decided to let someone else write my life story.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and it was a good job that she was early because so was the taxi. It was my favourite taxi driver, back from her holiday and the two other passengers with me in the car with her, we were regaled with tales of her holiday adventures.

The ‘phone rang en route. It was the hospital in Paris telling me that according to the hospital register I’m expected on Monday 5th May in the afternoon so I need my dialysis in the morning. But ominously, they have arranged a session of dialysis for me there on the Thursday. That is ominous. It looks as if it’s going to be a long stay in Paris.

We arrived early at dialysis and had to wait fifteen minutes for them to open the door. I was third to be plugged in and the good news was that I need only stay for three and a half hours.

While I was being dialysed I backed up the computer and while I was sorting some things out on the laptop I came across a book about the ephemeral railway line near where I used to live in the Auvergne. It took forty years to agree to build it, ten years to build and lasted just eight years before it closed down.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came for a chat to see how I was doing, which was nice of her. I mentioned to her about Paris but I’m not going to confirm it until I have a formal summons in my sweaty little mitt.

My taxi was waiting for me when I was unplugged and we had a nice, chatty drive back home. My cleaner was waiting for me and helped me upstairs. And wasn’t it lovely to be back home at 18:35?

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with veg and pasta followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. There’s plenty of stuffing left for the next few days too.

Now I’m off to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow. I need to be on form.

But before I go, one of the things that Emilie the Cute Consultant mentioned was this stomach x-ray that has been prescribed for me at the end of May.
"Why are they doing that?" she asked.
"I’ve no idea" I replied."I imagined that you had prescribed it"
"It’s nothing that I have asked them to do" she answered
"And there I was" I said "thinking that you wanted to see more of me. And let’s face it, once you’ve seen the contents of my stomach there’s not an awful lot more of me left that you won’t have seen"

Friday 28th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke.

And that’s not surprising either seeing as I didn’t go back to bed until 04:15 and I was awake again at 06:50 (you will note that I said “awoke” – I didn’t say that I left the bed).

Last night’s fiasco was enough to put the shakes on just about everything. After my rather dramatic exit from the dialysis centre, coming home and going straight to bed where I was probably asleep before I hit the horizontal position, there I stayed in a state of what I can only imagine was unconsciousness until after midnight.

When I awoke, I was fully-clothed still, with a thirst that you could photograph. Luckily I still have some of that banana-flavoured soya drink that I like that I bought in Belgium (is it really eighteen months ago since my last trip to Belgium?), so I helped myself to a litre of it, wrote my notes and backed up all the files.

After I’d finished what I had to do I still wasn’t tired so I found a few things to do to keep me occupied and then eventually crawled into bed, fully clothed again.

It was difficult to go back to sleep, so I don’t suppose that I slept all that much, and when I looked at the time and saw that it was 06:50 I gave up all hope.

The alarm clock made up my mind for me so I crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom to sort myself out. Then into the kitchen to take my medication and to do yesterday’s washing-up which I had forgotten. I hate going into the kitchen in the morning and finding the washing-up still there.

With nothing on the dictaphone I found some things to do and then Isabelle the Nurse arrived. I told her about yesterday and she thinks that the machine was too powerful for my heart to cope and that caused the dramatic loss of blood pressure that triggered everything off.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still discussing these stone circles and avenues in the West Country. At Stanton Drew he makes the point that while there are circles and avenues that suggest that Arcturus was the target when they were constructed, at 1690BC and 1410BC, he finds that "With regard to this N.E. circle … " – the third one in this series of circles – its strange alignment "… would suggest that the N.E. circle was really erected to provide the alignment, from the centre of the great circle, or from the Cove, to the summer solstitial sun, about the year 870 B.C.,".

Furthermore, "There is other evidence, to which I attach importance, as it deals with a method and policy found in many temple fields in Egypt, that of blocking the alignment of an older star- or sun-cult, which the astronomer priests replaced by their own. The stones of the avenue, of the solstitial N.E. circle I expect once blocked the May sunrise line from the great circle ; judging from the Ordnance map, and remembering the number of stones that have disappeared,"

According to my “wave of invasions” cheat-sheet, a huge wave of Celtic invaders began to arrive in England round about 800BC. They brought with them the Iron-Age “Halstatt” culture and their superior tools and weapons would have overwhelmed the previous settlers. If those previous settlers were pushed west, they would push before them the people who had previously occupied those lands, so maybe they replaced the previous culture of the worship of Arcturus with their own culture of worship of the sun.

What is also interesting is the reference he made to the situation in Egypt where the worshippers of one star arrived and overwhelmed a previous culture. Archaeological evidence lends a great deal of support to this idea, so I’m now interested in plotting, as I said yesterday, a timeline of the worship of Arcturus and seeing if I can follow it through Europe and maybe arrive in England at the same time that the worship of Arcturus seemed to have begun there.

But this is all sounding like my University studies. I’d start by researching something and be so engrossed in what I’ve found that bore no relation to what I’d be studying that I’d go miles off course on a tangent into some other realm that had nothing whatever to do with the subject. I enjoyed what I was doing, enjoyed it very much, but the lecturers didn’t.

His next chapter is actually on “folklore”, but not the folklore what we know. He’s more interested in finding relics of customs that relate to the old forms of worship and how they became tied into Christianity, rather than using them as I would and as LAURENCE GOMME was doing – plotting the migration of groups of people by the relics of the customs that remain in modern society.

After the book, I came back in here and prepared my LeClerc order. And I was really struggling to complete it too. Despite the fact that I haven’t sent in an order for three weeks, I’m not eating as much (or as often) as I did and I was really struggling today to reach the €50:00 minimum order

Times are really bizarre around here. I look at my “usual products” and my “reminder list” and think “I have some of that” or “I don’t need that” or “I don’t feel like eating any of that”. I don’t think that I can ever recall a period such as this that has lasted for so long. I look in the kitchen and the shelf unit is full of stuff.

Once I’d sorted that out, I spent the rest of the day (or much of it) on my Woodstock programme. I now have every song that I need, and they are all re-edited and remixed. Some of the tracks took some hunting down, others had to be extracted from the soundtracks of concerts that I have.

Every song (except one) was actually played at Woodstock by the band or musician concerned, although I can’t use any sound that came from the loudspeakers at Woodstock. I’ve had to use versions from other places.

My cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff as usual, and while she was here the LeClerc delivery turned up. I usually order it for “after 16:00” but he often rings me up to ask if he can come earlier if I’m the only client in the afternoon. I’d rather have it after my cleaner has left but I’m not going to stop him having an early finish on a Friday if he can.

After my cleaner left I had 2kg of carrots to wash, dice and blanch ready to freeze and then back in here Rosemary, back from her break in Italy, rang me up for a chat. I’m convinced that she has a camera hidden in here somewhere to find out when I’m free.

Tea tonight was a rushed salad and chips with some of these vegan nuggets and it was delicious. The chips were cooked to perfection in my air fryer.

Tea was rushed because we had football, Drenewydd v Y Barri. Y Barri needed the win to keep alive their push for the European playoffs and Y Drenewydd needed a win to keep alive their hopes of avoiding relegation.

Y Barri came out of the traps so much quicker and played some nice football and were looking comfortable at 2-0 up. But Y Drenewydd came alive in the last ten minutes and when they scored with three minutes to go, they threw everything that they had into the attack.

Y Barri won the ball and roared upfield with a one-on-one on the Y Drenewydd goalkeeper – only for the Y Barri forward to miss the easiest goal that he could have scored in his life. That spurred Y Drenewydd on and we witness some desperate defending in the final minute and Y Drenewydd couldn’t find the goal that they needed.

Why they hadn’t played like that with the same desperation throughout the game I really don’t know, but now, while they are not mathematically sure of being relegated, they are going to have to find something special from somewhere.

At half-time I did the washing up and then I grabbed a slice of my new orange, ginger and coconut cake to eat for the second half. And it really is as delicious as I thought that it might be. I’m proud of that.

So now that I’ve finished my notes and backed up the computer, I’m off to bed ready for an exciting (I don’t think) day at the dialysis centre.

But seeing as we have been talking about shopping … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m glad that I don’t go shopping any more. It saves unpleasant surprises.

Once I was in a supermarket in Belgium and a woman came up to me and asked me "aren’t you the father of one of my kids?"
That stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to rack my brains and think hard. There was the girl in Morlaix and the other one at that strange house when I was hitch-hiking around Brittany but that was in France in the mid-seventies.
For a whole minute I had to rack my brains about trips that I’d made into Europe subsequently. In the end I gave up.
"I can’t really recall anything" I said, shaking your head.
"Oh, I’m sorry" she replied. "I’m sure that I’ve seen you bringing Roxanne to school. She’s in my class this year"

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."

Wednesday 12th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I checked it.

Not that is any surprise because you don’t dream if you don’t go to sleep, and last night I didn’t go to sleep at all. In fact I didn’t go to bed until 01:25, mainly because I wasn’t feeling tired and I have plenty to do right now so I thought that I may as well take advantage and i might tire me out, but for all the good that it did, I may as well have stayed up and worked throughout the night

So in bed I tossed and turned all the way through to when the alarm went off at 07:00 and then I arose from the Dead with, surprisingly, not much difficulty.

Today is shower day so I just had a cursory wash and then went into the kitchen for the medication, then back in here to begin to watch the highlights of last night’s football matches in the JD Cymru League. I felt really sorry for Y Fflint who were beaten 4-0 by Connah’s Quay Nomads despite playing the best football that I have seen them play for quite some considerable time.

Isabelle the Nurse was late yet again and once more she was in too much of a rush to stop for long. One day I might be able to see the photos of Carnaval but I doubt whether she will ever have the time to show them to me.

Breakfast was next, and then some more of MY NEW BOOK. Today, we are discussing religion and, in an unlikely combination, marriage customs.

Well, not exactly marriage customs because back in the past there was no such thing as marriage. Perhaps I should say “cohabiting customs” but even so, that would be inaccurate because he’s found some tribes where the two partners don’t actually live together but simply meet up on occasion, and "he seems merely entertained to continue the family to which his wife belongs".

We talked a few days ago about Caesar’s report of Britons holding wives in common and as I suspected, he has found tribes of natives contemporary to when he was writing his book who did just that

And that got me thinking. It would be interesting to delve deeper into his theory of simultaneous legends and fables in different parts of the World, and with today’s facilities and science, run a series of DNA tests to see whether there might be any truth in his theory

After breakfast I made a start on the next radio programme and by the time I knocked off this evening I’d finished everything that needs to be done for the ten tracks that I chose, ready for dictation on Saturday night.

That’s despite the usual interruptions, such as midday medication, my cleaner arriving and the disgusting drink break. Not to forget my shower either. That was really nice again, although it takes quite an effort to force myself to climb over the side of the bath. Roll on when I can have a shower in my new apartment downstairs.

Last week I’d used the last of the naan bread dough and so later on I made another batch. And I remembered to put the garlic in it too, which was good news. Chopping the garlic on these new tempered glass chopping boards is so much better than on the old plastic ones too, and they also make nice flat boards for kneading dough too. Ask me how I know.

Tea tonight was of course a leftover curry and naan bread and I do have to say that it was the best garlic naan that I have ever made. My bread-making seems to have improved just recently, and I’ve no idea why. I suspect that it’s that my small water measurer is inaccurate. Things have improved since I’ve been adding more water (according to my measurer) than the recipes recommend.

So now I’m going to go to bed and try to sleep. “Try” being the appropriate word because despite the lack of sleep last night I’m not tired at all. I can’t understand this. Tomorrow is Dialysis Day so i’ll probably sleep during the afternoon, but I have better things to do.

But while we’re on the subject of concubinage customs … "well, one of us is" – ed … this system where the two partners do not live together was recorded among "the Syntengs and the people of Maoshai,"
The author of that particular report asked our author, Laurence Gomme, if he knew the difference between a giant panda and a male member of that tribe
"A comma, I suppose" said Laurence Gomme
"What do you mean?" asked the author of the report
"Well" replied Gomme "A giant panda eats shoots and leaves. A member of that tribe who only visits his partner simply eats, shoots and leaves"

Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But then that’s hardly a surprise when you don’t go to bed until 02:20 and you are up and about by 05:35. And that’s something of a tragedy because if I’m going to have a bad night’s sleep at least I want to be going out and about enjoying it, even if it is only a notional travel.

As you might expect I was hunting down files and data last night and then ended up being carried away by something or other, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are. It was still a very weary me who crawled into bed at about 02:20.

Not that it did me all that much good because although I did go to sleep at one point it wasn’t for very long and in the end I became fed up of doing nothing whatever and arose from the Dead.

In the bathroom I scrubbed up and washed my clothes, and then went into the kitchen to take my medication. Next task was to finish off the unpacking of the food from yesterday and organise the collection of glass jars so that there was room to add some more

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m trying to do away with plastic in here. Over the last few months I’ve been buying my olives in these big glass jars and I now have quite a collection. My range of glass-bottled loose product is expanding quite rapidly because of the extra stuff that I have bought over the last few months as my recipe ideas have expanded and as I try to move everything out of plastic and paper bags into glass jars.

Before I came back in here I tidied away all of the shopping bags so that they weren’t all over the floor. But in any case it doesn’t work. My place is now just as untidy as it was yesterday before my cleaner came.

Once back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe I made a start on unzipping data but was halted in my tracks by the nurse who came to sort me out. He asked me the same questions as usual and so he had the same responses as usual, not that I’m too bothered.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We reached page 123 today and that marks the end of the introductory preamble as he sets the scene for what is to come.

He’s convinced that these strange stories that Julius Caesar reported about the British people being cannibals, holding wives in common and other "odious practices" as he puts it were not actually the practices of the Celts who Caesar met but those of the people who were here and were displaced by the Celts when they arrived.

Furthermore he thinks that he can prove it too and I shall be interested to see how he manages to do it, bearing in mind that if there are no written records of the Celts there are likely to be even less for the people who were here before.

In here I carried on with the extraction of files until my cleaner arrived to fit my anaesthetic patches. She had only just finished too when the taxi arrived. 12:15, 15 minutes early. Not that i’m bothered though because the sooner we start the sooner we finish (in principle).

It was the young chatty driver who came for me today but he didn’t have much to say for himself which is a shame because the time passes more quickly when you are having an interesting discussion.

First in at the dialysis centre I was, and first to be coupled up. Julie the Cook had left a message for her colleagues and they applied the ice pack too before they plugged me in and although it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as much as it has done in the past.

There was football this afternoon, TNS v Hwlffordd. Hwlffordd are pushing Penybont for second place following Penybont’s dramatic collapse of form but TNS demolished them with some ease and the 5-1 scoreline was not flattering TNS at all.

Hwlffordd played some pretty football at times but it was all to no real purpose and they didn’t look threatening at all. For all the distance between Aberystwyth and Hwlffordd in the table and in the style of play, Aberystwyth’s showed much more dogged resistance last week that Hwlffordd did today.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and she said “hello” to me, but that was about the extent of her interaction today. No-one else spoke to me until it was time to be unplugged.

The driver who brought me home was the young girl who brought me home several weeks ago. We were talking about food and I found, to my surprise and to hers too, that we are both vegan. She immediately asked if she could come round for a meal and who am I to refuse such a request?

Mind you, I’ll believe it when I actually see it.

My cleaner watched as I ascended the stairs and once I’d sat down and recovered my strength I had my disgusting protein drink.

Tea tonight was one of those weird chili burgers on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. It was the first time for a fortnight that I’ve actually felt like eating a proper meal.

So there’s some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. I have a busy day of baking and there’s some fruit that needs transforming into juice and purée.

But while we’re on the subject of glass bottles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I used to collect them if they were any good and reuse them for other things. One day I found a really nice one.
It was rather dirty so I went to rub it clean and suddenly a genie appeared out of the neck.
"You have released me from the bottle and now I am yours to command" he said. "Give me 100 gold pieces and I will answer any two questions"
"Blimey!" I said. "That’s a lot of money for two questions, don’t you think?"
"Yes" replied the genie. "Now what’s your second question?"

Thursday 6th March 2025 (cont) – NOW THAT THINGS … .

… are back to normal (well, as normal as things ever could be around here) I can carry on and do what I ought to have been doing, and update everything.

And had I known how things were going to have worked out, still being on my feet (well, OK, on my chair) at 02:00 I would have had an early night instead of being up to all hours watching Stranraer, after several weeks of impressive football, go back to their old, miserable ways and be easily beaten by the bottom club in the league who spent most of the night playing with just ten men.

That was as embarrassing as the defeat aginst Clyde a couple of weeks ago and was really depressing after the last three or four performances.

So anyway I went to bed eventually and had another perspiration-laden night where I was only really half-asleep for most of it.

When the alarm did go off I hauled myself to my feet and headed off to the bathroom for a scrub and even a shave. After all, you never know if Emilie the Cute Consultant is going to be there today.

No medication right now because you also never know if the nurse might actually want to come along and do this blood test this morning and it has to be done à jeun so I listened to the dictaphone instead to find out what had gone on during the night. There I was, lying here asleep and a girl was trying to load some ink or something into my mobile ‘phone so that it could print a document. I tried to pur some fat into it but the fat was in a chip basket thing. Of course, every time you tilted it to pour it the liquid would seep out through the holes so I wasn’t having any success with my cooking last night.

Can you imagine trying to lift molten fat out of a chip pan with the chip basket? I’ve no idea what goes on inside my head at night, but there again, I don’t have all that much more idea about what goes on inside my head when I’m awake.

Later on I was out in North Wales looking for an address. I ended up somewhere beyond Conwy in an area that I didn’t know very well but I couldn’t find it. I ended up on an extremely steep hairpin bend. Trying to walk or cycle up there was extremely complicated. When I reached the top there was a waterfall. The waterfall was where some kind of primitive dam had been that had been broken and the water was cascading over it down into the valley where it joined the main river. There was a main road off there to the right and there was a lot of traffic coming that way so it was complicated to cross the road. I did cross the road but still couldn’t find this address. In the end I saw a map with the shape of where it was and I identified that I should have been four miles beyond Abergele so I had to retrace my steps and try to return across the road on a pushbike was even more complicated with all of the traffic that was coming straight on down the main road. Once or twice someone paused and that was the signal for someone to nip over but I had to wait for a while and found myself in the end with about a dozen vehicles on the central reservation waiting for a gap in the downhill traffic again. Once we set off there were all these vehicles passing so closely and I was then freewheeling down the hill listening to the news about a bicycle race. There were two people in the middle of the road, a man and a woman with bikes and they didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me as I came hurtling down and I missed the woman by a matter of millimetres.

As it happens, I recognise this road too. It’s out of Llangollen heading down into mid-Wales and I was there 20-odd years ago with Nicole when we came to pick up the old LDV. The dam is very much how I would have imagined one of the “Dambusters” dams to have been after it had been blown up. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we WENT FOR A LOOK AROUND the dams few years ago on our way to Colditz and STRAWBERRY MOOSE‘s famous escape attempt.

Incidentally, four miles beyong Abergele up a steep mountainside is one of the Iron Age hillforts to which Arthur Allcroft took us a couple of weeks ago, but there was nothing about any hillforts anywhere last night.

When the nurse did finally turn up he did actually take the blood sample and I knew all about it because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he just doesn’t have “the touch”.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We’re discussing exciting subjects today, such as men marrying their daughters and the young killing off the old folks once they stop being productive and become useless mouths to feed.

He’s actually done some research into this and has found plenty of examples back in history and in more remote parts of the World where those customs were still current when he was researching his book. All I can say is that for someone whose day job was a clerk in London County Council, he had some strange pastimes and hobbies.

However, he has proved a point over which I have been puzzling. If people back in ancient history were so concerned about having useless mouths hanging around eating the produce, the produce must have been so scarce that not even family ties could hold the people together and stop them killing each other. So I remain totally unconvinced by the modern way of thinking that these hillforts were nothing but symbolic. The huge amount of effort that went into the construction of these immense defensive works and the amount of time they had to spend away from the fields or from the hunt, they really must have been scared almost to death by what might have happened had they not spent all that time and effort in their construction.

Back in here later I had a few things to organise and sort out but was interrupted by the telephone. "Is it OK if I come a little earlier, like 12:00?". It was my taxi driver.

What has happened was that last week these new Social Security regulations came into legally-binding force and so this is how it’s going to be from now on – taxis turning up at any time they like if they are obliged to combine trips. Not that I’m complaining because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …, it’s a free service and in any case the sooner we arrive, the sooner I can leave and so I sent a message to my cleaner to inform her.

Poor thing, she had to scramble here to fit my anaesthetic patches and was still here when the taxi arrived – at 11:47. The Sécu has instructed that a timespan of 45-minute either side of the booked time is acceptable under these new regulations and by my reckoning the car was actually 43 minutes early. That’s cutting it fine.

We had to pick up someone else on the way of course, someone who had a hospital appointment for an operation. "As we’re so early we may as well drop madame off at the hospital first."
"She’s going to hospital in Rennes"

When I arrived at the dialysis centre I was so early that they hadn’t even finished dealing with the morning’s patients but Julie the Cook saw me and she quickly finished off setting up my machine (patients have their own individual settings) and I was installed and up and running by 13:15.

She tried a new trick this afternoon. While she was setting up the machine she slapped an ice bag on my arm. And that actually might have helped a little – at least until the effect wore off.

Apart from the coffee, no-one bothered me at all until it was time to unplug me. Julie the Cook had gone home a long time before and one of the others came to sort me out. For some reason I was rather unsteady on my feet at first. It can’t have been low blood pressure because that was OK.

So it was 17:30 when I staggered out of the centre and the taxi was already waiting for me. We had someone else with us to drop off along the way but even so I was back at home by 18:15, much to the surprise of my cleaner

That was when I discovered the catastrophe in here, with the big desktop computer spinning around in BIOS mode complaining “I can’t find any disk with an operating system on it”.

Luckily I had a spare 1TB SSD that I’d dismantled from another machine so I formatted that in a disk caddy with the help of the travelling laptop and set about dismantling the big computer. It’s always good to perform a clean installation every couple of years because you’ll be surprised (or maybe you con’t) at the amount of rubbish that accumulates over the passage of time.

While I was doing that, I actually found what I suspect is the fault. There’s an internal power lead with three connectors for disk drives. The one that was connected to the SSD system drive has a crack in it and what seems to have happened is that the crack has allowed the internals to flex and they have shorted out.

No problem. I just disconnected the internal back-up drive and plugged the new SSD System drive into that connector. I’ll have to order a new power lead from somewhere in due course to connect everything back up on a more permanent basis.

While it was sorting itself out I made a quick tea – just like THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on the table inside a tin".

Back in here afterwards, I settled down and steeled myself ready for what is going to be a very long night

But while we’re on the subject of Colditz Castle … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of that legendary “Two Ronnies” sketch from years ago.
"We’re making a film about prisoners escaping from a camp in Germany"
"What’s it called?"
"The Colditz Story"
"What are you making next?"
"A film about life in a South Wales mining village"
"What’s it called?"
"The Coal Tips Story"
"And after that?"
"We’re doing a film starring Raquel Welch who will be playing the role of an Inuit"
"What’s that called?"
"We haven’t decided yet"

Wednesday 5th March 2025 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine – an absolute marvel, and I’m really pleased and grateful that she’s here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that now that I’m properly settled here on the coast with no prospect of returning home to the farm, I’ve been changing a few things around.

One of the things that I’ve been doing is slowly disposing of all of the plastic that I have and replacing it with glass as much as possible. My plastic chopping boards are looking very much the worse for wear and I have been planning to let them go the Way of the West whenever the next opportunity presents itself.

A couple of weeks ago, LeClerc sent me a preview of the next instore sale that started on Tuesday. They had some lovely tempered glass chopping boards – huge ones too – at just €2:85 each and had I been able to do so, I would have been queueing at the door on Tuesday morning.

When she was here last week I mentioned it to her in passing and talking about how I would have liked to replace my two plastic boards (I have one for smelly foods and one for other stuff).

So today when she came in to sort me out, she produced two tempered glass chopping boards, one black and one white.

It’s quite strange really that it’s the slightest thing that makes such an impression and makes such a difference. I couldn’t believe that I’ve been so impressed by this – even more impressed than I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

Not so impressed though with last night. A late night again and then pretty much more of the same old same old …, difficult to sleep, waking up drenched in perspiration again. The difficulty in sleeping I can cope with, but it’s everything else. However, at least, despite what I said yesterday, if I had another perspiration-laden night when it wasn’t a Dialysis Day, it can hardly be the dialysis that’s causing it.

Nevertheless I was asleep this morning when the alarm went off, doing something with someone else, talking about food, saying that the food, which should be a natural substance and not a processed kind of meal or processed kind of product. Then we were watching something on the television, a quiz game where people produced some kind of extraordinary object and the second team had to try to decide exactly what the purpose of that object was. They had invented some kind of quiz game out of this.

Something else that I can do in my sleep that I can’t, or never had the opportunity to do during my waking hours. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if only I had found someone capable of making some use of all of these marvellous ideas that I only ever seem to have when I’m asleep. I’d be typing this from the deck of my yacht in the Bahamas with floozies peeling grapes and tossing them into my mouth.

It was another struggle to extricate myself from my bed before the second alarm and to struggle into the bathroom. Back in here straight away afterwards because I can’t ingest anything until after the blood test.

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. Apparently at one point I’d just been for a walk through part of Crewe. I went down Mill Street and up Brook Street and up and over the railway bridge in Edleston Road. In fact was walking over the bridge in Edleston Road when I awoke. I don’t know what I was doing and there was no-one else with me. I was just strolling around.

That’s a disappointing evening, walking around Crewe like that during my sleep. I’m old enough to remember when the east side of Mill Street was a maze of cheap, crumbling terraced houses until in the early 60s the whole lot was swept away practically overnight. And as is typical for Crewe, it remained a derelict bombsite for thirty years afterwards until some kind of new development began. I can see the demolished town centre being like that for the next ever so many years.

Later on I was talking to some American woman about some people who had left the USA to go to live over the border in Mexico. I was explaining to her that to actually come to live in the USA and work was quite a straightforward matter but complicated as long as you had the right kind of education, background and qualifications but once you were in the USA changing jobs is extremely complicated and difficult. For many people it’s no longer an option to do so and they begin to look around for other ways of earning their income. At first she didn’t believe what I was saying and pooh-poohed it but gradually she began to understand the point that I was trying to make. She ended up by agreeing with everything that I was saying.

That’s a rare achievement, isn’t it? Having people agree with me like that. But conditions for employment in the USA are quite strict. Even though my niece’s second daughter is married to an American and lives in Michigan, she couldn’t even think about changing her job and leaving her Canadian employer until she’d applied for and been granted a work permit to do so. It took her fifteen months to obtain it.

The nurse came round and told me that he’ll take the blood sample tomorrow. So I’d gone without my morning drink for nothing. There’s no point remonstrating with him about it because it will only give me ulcers. I know what I would like to give him.

Breakfast and medication was next while I read MY NEW BOOK. Today, we’ve been talking about the myths of buried treasure, the myths of open-air meetings and also the ancient Graeco-Egyptian LEGEND OF RHODOPIA. Have a read of that legend and see if you recognise anything in it from your own childhood.

There is going to be a considerable amount of mileage in this book, I can see that. It’s going to destroy a great many of my childhood illusions.

Buried treasure, usually guarded by a mythical monster, is another story with a lot of mileage in it. It was usually buried in time of war and disturbance and his answer to the mythical monster is the threat that the person who buried it made to whoever was watching him bury it. People believed in mythical monsters in those days.

That’s not so far-fetched either. Nerina and I were driving around Brittany once many years ago and came across a garage proprietor who had discovered several ancient French cars from someone’s collection walled up behind a false wall to hide them from the Germans. The person who had walled them didn’t live to reclaim them and there they stayed until the garage proprietor found them.

“Buried treasure” is regularly turning up, buried in haste in the path of invading armies centuries ago, and presumably the owner didn’t live to dig it back up again.

After breakfast I made a start on the next radio programme. I’ve decided after much thought that I’m still going to keep on well in advance with one programme per week to keep up the rhythm, and use the spare time in the week to work on the Woodstock set. That way, I shan’t become bogged down.

Anyway, by the time I knocked off tonight, I’d done everything for the programme except dictating it and choosing the final track. That’s going to be another Saturday night/Sunday effort.

There were the usual interruptions – not a lunchtime one though because my appetite is still very much diminished. There was the visit of my cleaner, the shower and the disgusting drink break, as well as probably one or two other things that I can’t remember right now.

Tea was a leftover curry, except that there aren’t any leftovers. Instead I found a helping of pie filling in the freezer and used that instead. Not one of my more memorable meals, but you can’t win a coconut every time. The naan was delicious though. This batch of dough (of which this naan was the final helping) was an exceptionally good batch.

Tomorrow is Dialysis Day but I’m past caring about it and how it’s going to turn out. I’ll just wander off to bed (late as usual these days) and tomorrow will be another day.

But while we’re on the subject of treasure … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me "my wife is a little treasure"
"Is that so?" I asked
"It certainly is" he replied "and furthermore, I’m not going to tell anyone where I’ve buried her"

Tuesday 4th March 2025 – IT’S NOT THE …

… heating in this room that’s making me perspire during the night, I’ll tell you that. Last night was one of the most perspiration-laden nights that I’ve had for quite some considerable time, but the heating in here was turned down quite considerably. In fact with the temperature being only 2°C outside, the bedroom was freezing.

It’s true that one of the side-effects of my cancer is a nocturnal perspiration and I’ve been having those since 2015, but nothing whatever anything like those that I’ve had over this last couple of months. And in any case, for the moment my cancer is stable, not worsening.

It’s even much worse on the night following the dialysis, and so the only thing that it can be is something connected with that process. They deny that they are doing anything that might provoke it, or that they are putting something extra into the mix, but there’s something definite going on.

So that was yet another restless night where I had a great deal of difficulty sleeping. I’d been to bed late, as usual these days, after taking too much time finishing off everything that I had to do. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, I was awake again shortly afterwards and that was how I remained throughout the night, drifting in and out of sleep.

When the alarm went off I was definitely asleep and it was a struggle to make it to my feet before the second alarm. But into the bathroom I went for a good scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. I dreamed last night that my punctures had burst while I was in bed and there was blood everywhere and someone had to come along to compress it so that it would heal. That wasn’t very nice at all.

That is my greatest nightmare, and we had something similar to that in real life a couple of weeks ago when I found the pillow soaking in blood. But as I said last night when I was talking about dreaming about dialysis, if those dreams are now becoming nightmares, it really is the end of the line as far as I’m concerned.

A little later a friend of mine from University who lives in Germany put in an appearance last night with her husband. They were talking about when they first met all those years ago and how for their first heavy date they actually had to go to London for a health appointment which was quite amusing for them and particularly when her mother warned her about going on this kind of heavy date with boys and young men. They were telling me all kinds of stories about the first time that they slept together and one of them made me squirm because it was horrible.

Actually, I can tell you a funny story about the first time that I shared a particular bed with a certain someone and my old black cat had a fit of jealousy, but as it might touch a sensitive nerve if you are eating your tea, I shall restrain myself. However I shall say that the first time that I took Cécile out was to a funeral in Pionsat, and the first time she took me out was when she was giving evidence in a criminal case in Riom. We did have some really exciting dates.

While we’re on the subject of Pionsat and the Auvergne … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was in the Auvergne walking past a vehicle garage where he was doing repairs and working on all kinds of old cars, mainly Peugeot 203s scattered around for pieces outside. I heard him talking to someone on the ‘phone and then I heard him say “that Mr Hall, he’s the guy”. I was intrigued to find out what he was talking about. I went into the workshop where he was still on the ‘phone talking away so I had a look around. There were a lot of old motor bikes there, Japanese ones from the 1960s and 70s. I was having a look through them to see what he had to try to find something of interest. After he finished his conversation I went over to him and said “so you were bringing my name into the conversation. Now what have I done?”. “Nothing at all really” he replied. “It’s about Wind Turbines and everything. When you have your system all properly working it’ll certainly be something for everyone else to see” so we had a chat about that. I told him that I was having problems with my car and he needs to look at it. He said that he would be able to do that. I told him that if I were to drop it off someone would have to run me back home again. He replied “either that or we could come round and pick it up from your place”. We had a bit of a chat about that.

Strangely enough, I can see the garage proprietor now, and he is a garage proprietor in the Auvergne. But it was someone else’s garage where he was, not his. And that was confusing when I thought about it.

The nurse came round and I gave him some bad news, such as he has to take a blood sample tomorrow. He hates doing them and certainly doesn’t have “the touch”, but it needs to be done even if we both aren’t looking forward to it.

After he left I made breakfast and began to read MY NEW BOOK. It’s called “Folklore As A Historical Science and the author, Laurence Gomme, is going to argue that many, if not most folklore tales have an actual basis in fact, but that the facts were misunderstood by an imperfect contemporary understanding of modern science.

In my opinion, that’s quite likely. The westward spread of the “more advanced” civilisations into the area of a “more primitive” culture several thousand years ago and the skills that they brought with them must have had a terrifying effect on the latter.

We can see that too in the tales of the Norse Sagas in “Vinland”. Just because the Sagas talk about unipeds and other mythical beasts doesn’t change the underlying fact that the underlying events in the Sagas such as the voyages, the encounters with the “Skraelings”, the settlements in Labrador and Newfoundland actually did happen. We’ve found some of the settlements and the encounters with the Norse are preserved in several folk tales of the Mi’kmaq

A reviewer in “Nature” magazine of 4th June 1908 is not however as easily convinced. He states that Gomme "still has to account for e.g. why the cult of Lug in regions so far apart as Leyden, Lyons and County Wicklow, as well as a host of intermediate places"‘ was celebrated simultaneously

But perhaps Gomme didn’t feel the need to explain it because all you need to do, in my opinion, is to consider the westward spread of civilisation as Allcroft and many others whose books we have read recently have stated. Work out at what period in history a civilisation that was in occupation of those places where Lug is celebrated and trace that civilisation back to its starting point. Not only will you then have a good idea of where the cult originated, but when – as in before the civilisation dispersed to the various destinations in the West.

Back in here I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. I was rather disappointed today with that which I did (or didn’t, as the case may be) accomplish. I’m going to have to do much better than this if I’m going to be making any progress. I can feel myself sliding backwards and that’s disappointing.

After the lesson I had a really good think about my radio programme for Woodstock. It’s not going to be as easy as I think that it will. For a start, a couple of the groups were totally unknown and then a couple of acts only ever performed at Woodstock and nowhere else. Much of the information is contradictory too – there are two, three, four and even more versions of the same incident doing the rounds.

However, if it’s not going to be a challenge, there’s no point in doing it. I’ll sort something out though.

Tea tonight was different, vegetables made into a kind-of potato salad with onions, mushroom and something out of the European Burger Mountain, followed by date bread and soya dessert. Tomorrow is curry night and with no leftovers to use up as yet, I shall have to be inventive.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Now I’m off to bed. It’s shower day tomorrow so with a bit of luck there will be a nice clean me tomorrow night.

While we are talking about our Welsh course … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of the tasks for homework in a few weeks is to tell a joke in Welsh. It reminded me of the story of the three Englishmen who married on the same day in the same church with the same vicar, one to a Thai girl, the second to a Japanese girl and the third to a Welsh girl.
During the pre-nuptial interview with the vicar each Englishman said that regardless of current thought and opinion he was going to tell his new wife that her role was to keep the house clean and tidy and to prepare his meals punctually.
A couple of weeks later the vicar encountered the three men and asked them how things were going.
The man who married the Thai girl replied "at first I didn’t see any improvement but after a few days I noticed that she was making an effort and she slowly got the hang of things"
The man who married the Japanese girl replied "at first I didn’t see any improvement but after a few days I noticed that the meals began to arrive and the house began to take on some kind of shape"
The man who married the Welsh girl replied "at first I didn’t see any improvement but after a few days the swelling went down and my left eye began to open a little"

Sunday 2nd March 2025 – I NOW HAVE …

… a complete flapjack and also a complete loaf of home-made bread.

And as well as that, I also have a large bowl of leek soup, mainly in the grounds that at lunchtime I wasn’t at all hungry and there’s no point in forcing food down if I don’t feel like eating it. It will do for tea tomorrow night instead, complete with a fresh bread roll that I also made today.

There were in fact lots of things that I didn’t feel like doing, but what accounts for that is the really miserable, wretched night that I had.

It was late when I went to bed, for one reason or another … "mainly the football highlights" – ed … but I was soon asleep. However, not for long. As I said into the dictaphone at the time, “not long after I went to sleep I was talking to a girl about music and one or two popular musical sayings. I didn’t go very far into that dream before someone walked past in the street blowing a saxophone and awoke me, and that was that”.

And that was it too. Not the noise from the disco or the fairground last night, but a whole series of attacks of the most severe cramp that I’d had for ages. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I was having regular severe attacks of cramp, and last night they were back.

There wasn’t much danger of going back to sleep after that.

Anyway, I stayed in bed until the alarm went off at 08:00 and then had a difficult climb out of bed and into the real World. The nurse came round very early today and caught me in flagrante delicto in the bathroom. He wasn’t happy about being made to be kept waiting but that’s his problem not mine.

After he left I made breakfast, had my meditation and read some more of MY BOOK.

We are still wandering around the South Downs admiring the scenery, something that has very little, if anything at all to do with the “Earthwork of England”.

However, I’m still puzzled over his book, even more so these days. Is it a historical account, a scholarly work of reference, a travel guide for the educated tourist or simply an exercise in prose? When you see flowery phrases such as "your dreams here should be of times and peoples yet earlier than the Roman—of taller warriors clad in skins and armed with stone, and of others harnessed in bronze or helmeted with the horned casque of the iron time, but not of those terrible squat interlopers who made such play with the short sword and the pilum, and carried upon their shields the blazon of the thunderbolt." you begin to wonder what on earth he must have been smoking, and could he maybe pass it round to the rest of us?

Back in here there was the dictaphone. Surprisingly, there was something else on it from last night. I went back into that dream … "presumably the one where the saxophone awoke me" – ed … later on and I was talking to a girl from Crewe, one of the friends of a girl whom I knew. She was actually doing something like being a hairdresser, something like that, and I was waiting to have my hair cut. I recognised her and remembered her name, Jennifer Marie something so I said “hello Jennifer Marie”. She looked at me and said “well I’m going to obviously have to change my name if people start recognising me”. I said “yes, change it to ‘Miss Crewe 1962’ ” which made her smile. Then we began to have a chat about the old days when a group of us used to go to the rock venue in High Street in Crewe. It was a real surprise to see her in a dream.

This is rather interesting because the girl concerned didn’t have a friend of that name, and I knew most of them. They were much younger than we were but used to sneak into the rock music venue to watch the groups on Saturday night – the one where I had that very long and interesting chat with that Dutch rock group “Alquin”. At their age (the girls, not Alquin) they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a bar, never mind a night club full of rockers, but they used to tell their mothers that they were sleeping over at a friend’s and the friend would tell her mother that they were sleeping over at the first friend’s – you get the picture. Then at 03:00 when we were thrown out of the club they would go and sit on the station drinking coffee until it was time for them to “come home after breakfast”. I’m surprised that they got away with it for as long as they did but the downfall was inevitable. For once, I managed to keep myself well out of trouble and well out of the picture because even then, the young, naïve irresponsible me had no doubts at all about how it was going to finish. It’s strange though that it should all come flooding back last night.

After that, there was football to watch, Edinburgh City v Stranraer. Stranraer seem to be on a roll at the moment and it carried on today with a hard-fought 1-0 away win up at Meadowbank. Once again, luck was on their side as they survived a few desperate scrambles on their goal-line,

They were also lucky to have finished with all eleven players still on the pitch after a foul that would have seen many other players in many other clubs and many similar moments taking the walk of shame to the tunnel for the early bath.

Then I’ve been intermittently working. I’ve been sketching out the bones of how my “Woodstock” programme is going to work and it’s going to take some organising too. I have very little live music for the groups and artists who played on the Friday night and not much more for the blues artists that appeared on the Sunday night. As for the rock groups on Saturday, I could fill half a dozen programmes with what I have and still have plenty left over.

No lunch, as I said, but I did make a bread roll to eat with it. It will still be good tomorrow night. It means that if I have another bad time at dialysis I shan’t need to worry too much about tea.

The flapjack was interesting though. I added some coconut oil in place of some of the vegan margarine and it certainly made it sweeter. A little softer too, which was surprising.

As for the bread, in view of my recent successes I went back to where I was right at the beginning and added several handfuls of sunflower seeds. Once more, it rose up light a lift and was as soft as anything that I have ever made. And because it was a full-sized loaf, that was baked in the big oven too after the flapjack.

Jamais deux sans trois as they say around here, and the third thing that went into the oven was the pizza. I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier.

This pizza was another resounding success too and tasted as delicious as any that I have ever made. In fact, my baking seems to have moved up another gear right now. I hope that it keeps going.

But I’m not going to keep going. I’m going to bed, hoping that there are no attacks of cramp or people playing the saxophone.

Yesterday though, we were talking about Carnaval and dressing up … "well, one of us was" – ed …
Today I spent some time thinking about if I were fit, well and able to join in, how would I dress up?
At one time I thought to myself "why shouldn’t I dress up and disguise myself as a suitcase?"
But then of course a touch of realism crept in with ourselves and I thought "now let’s not go getting ourselves carried away here with this idea"

Saturday 1st March 2025 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS.

And a happy St David’s Day to those of you who don’t celebrate it. And my leek soup was delicious. Even better – there’s enough left for lunch tomorrow.

That is of course, always assuming that I’m here to eat it because a few more nights like last night and a few more days like today and I won’t be.

As I expected, last night was another late night. I didn’t hang around at all though so I’ve no idea why I couldn’t have been in bed at a reasonable time.

Once in bed though, I couldn’t sleep. I had a pain in the neck (and I’m not talking about a partner here) that was absolutely agonising and try as I might, I couldn’t make myself comfortable. What with all of the music drifting up from the ball in the town centre and the revellers making their way back to the millions of motorhomes parked all around here, I lay awake for hours and I’m not joking either.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep though and once more it was a very weary, bleary-eyed me who struggled to his feet.

After a wash, I set the washing machine off. And how many times is this now that I’ve had dirty clothes left over after I’ve filled the machine? Either I need a bigger machine or else I need to use the machine more frequently.

Next, it was into the kitchen for the medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here, I was surprised to find some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I seriously thought that I hadn’t been asleep long enough. I’d been out on a night off and had gone to the pub to sit and have a quiet drink. Then I thought that it was becoming late so I’d better set out and head for home. I began to jog and when I reached my house, I carried on running but suddenly realised that I was supposed to be going home, not for a run as I used to do at night, so I turned round and went back to the house but suddenly found myself running again. I had to stop and go back another time. When I reached the house I put my hand on the door to open it and a dog began to bark. Someone said “it’s Eric”. They came to meet me and said “a girl has been to see you” and mentioned her name. I thought that I recognised the name from somewhere as if it was someone whom I knew in Stockport but I suddenly realised that it was a girl with whom I’d worked once. Whatever does she want? “Well, she’s left her business card”. I went in and saw on the table a business card so I picked it up. It wasn’t hers though, but for a guy called Tim Edmonds who works for the Government. “Who’s Tim Edmonds? What does he want?”. My youngest sister asked me “is your car OK?”. I replied “yes. Shouldn’t it have been?”. She looked at her husband and said “I’m just making sure that he has some windows in his car” so that there had obviously been something about windows in cars between the two of them.

When I was taxi-driving when I lived in Winsford I often used to go for a run when I came home at some kind of silly hour in the early morning. I really enjoyed it and it was a really good way for me to relax and unwind. I lost the habit after that when I moved to Crewe but I started running again when I moved to Belgium. After I taught Roxanne to ride a bike she used to chase me through the local park. There’s also a story about my youngest sister, her husband and a window too but that’s yet another story that the World isn’t quite ready to hear.

Isabelle breezed in, hours late because of Carnaval. Today is the defilé des enfants – the Children’s Procession when all the kids dress up as their favourite characters and walk into town accompanied by the brass bands, and they have begun to close all of the streets even at this time of the morning. That’s actually my favourite part of the long weekend and a few years ago I hit the streets with my recording gear and interviewed some of the kids to make a radio programme

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are talking about Burpham Camp in Sussex. And having disputed at great length (as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) the opinion that some of these hilltop camps are “Danish camps” because the Danes wouldn’t build impressive fortifications, he tells us, about Burpham Camp, that "it is safe to suppose that it is not a British work. For reasons as obvious it is not Roman. It has no known characteristics of Saxon work, and had it been such, the church would certainly have been within the vallum. It must therefore be either Danish or Norman. To Norman work it has no resemblance, and the conclusion is that it is Danish.".

So having insisted "that it is not a British work" and "has no known characteristics of Saxon work", according to archaeological excavations undertaken on behalf of the National Heritage List, "the Iron Age promontory fort at Burpham is an example of an inland fort where the natural defensive qualities of the land were utilised and the site was reoccupied as a burh in the Anglo-Saxon period. ".

After breakfast I had bread to make for tea tonight – just a couple of rolls – and then I went to sit down for half an hour for a rest with a mug of coffee.

When my cleaner came in, she found me hard at work. Not only had I prepared all of the veg for my soup, I actually had it all in the pot simmering away and the bread was in the air fryer cooking. Today we gave the anaesthetic cream a try-out and after she left, I carried on with my soup.

The taxi was driven today by my favourite taxi driver but she was late. And then we had to go to pick up someone else but because the roads were all closed because of the defilé we had to go miles and miles out of our way.

It took an age to sort out the other passenger and then we had to go almost to Bréhal before we could pick up the road to Avranches, a detour of about a dozen miles.

As you might expect, I was last to arrive and was even later because there were two emergencies admitted. My appointment is in principle at 13:30, and I wasn’t seen to until 14:45.

By that time the anaesthetic had long-since worn off so I knew all about the connection. And Julie the Cook tried to do it all on her own and failed, and I was in total and utter agony and despair throughout the entire session.

However, I did manage to watch the football. The result was predictable, with TNS, eight points clear at the top defeating Aberystwyth, eight points adrift at the foot of the bale, winning the League Cup.

What wasn’t predictable was the heavy weather that TNS made of it and while Aberystwyth never looked like threatening the TNS goal, a 1-0 win isn’t a safe win by any means. All I can say though is that if Aberystwyth had played with the same fire and spirit throughout the season that they showed today, they wouldn’t be in anything like as much trouble as they are.

What with one thing and another it was 19:45 when I returned home. While all of the police had ringed the town with roadblocks to hunt down drunken drivers, a bunch of drunken teenagers were misbehaving in the street blocking all of the traffic and needed quite a lot of persuasion to move.

When I finally returned home I finished off making the soup and have somehow ended up with two litres of it. That will keep me going for a while, I reckon.

Tomorrow I’ll be bread-making, a complete loaf this time, and flapjack-making. As for the radio programme, Grahame and I have been chatting on the internet exchanging ideas and I’ve decided to make three programmes for my “taste of Woodstock” – one of the Friday to be broadcast on the Friday, one of Saturday and the third of the Sunday, to be broadcast similarly, mutatis mutandis. So tonight and tomorrow I won’t be radioing.

But talking of Carnaval and dressing up, I told my taxi driver to be careful on the way home. "There are several elephants in the town and at Carnaval they disguise themselves by dressing up in black suits and black glasses and pretend that they are the Blues Brothers"
"That’s nonsense" she replied. "I’ve lived in this area 30 years and I’ve never seen tham"
"There you are then" I said. "It shows you just how good their disguise really is"

Monday 24th February 2025 – THEY SENT THE …

… minibus for me again today to bring me home.

It is a free service, I’m well-aware of that, but it’s even more complicated and difficult for me than climbing into an ambulance. Next time I see the driver who thinks that he runs the show I’ll have to have a word with him about it and see what they can do.

My faithful cleaner said that seeing as it’s my birthday today, given the amount of money that I help put into the owner’s pocket, they should have sent a Rolls Royce for me.

That’s right people, another year older and deeper in debt. Seeing the start of another year that, back in the summer, I honestly never thought that I would see. I was in all seriousness preparing my funeral.

Thank you all once again for your unwavering support over the last twelve months. It means a great deal to me to receive your messages, those of you who write to me. Why don’t some of you others drop me a line too?

So last night it was another late night going to bed – just about midnight in fact, and I could have done with being in bed a couple of hours earlier, that’s for sure.

As it was, it was another turbulent night just like a few of the others just recently, and the tempest that began at 04:00 and started to rattle a sign on this building with a noise that awoke me and stopped me going back to sleep was all that I needed.

It goes without saying that when the alarm went off I was already up and about. And I even remembered to shave and to change my clothes too just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there today.

After I’d taken the medication I went to have a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was at dialysis last night lying in my bed watching a couple of the nurses working. One of them was Julie the Cook. She seemed to spend most of her time folding up sheets and putting them away in a cupboard which I’ve no idea why

That’s something else that I could do without. It’s bad enough having to go there during the daytime, never mind during the time when I’m supposed to be relaxing.

There was also something going on where I was discussing the rules of inheritance with someone, leaving money to the first-born which I suppose makes sense if it’s something like a farm but I can’t see what other reason it makes for anything else

This relates to a conversation that I’d had with Rosemary the other day. Inheritance Tax is a hot topic in the UK at the moment but I can’t see why it’s a worry to anyone over here. And then, when you are dead and Inheritance tax is applied to your wealth, you are in no position to worry about it.

Finally I was in Paris with a couple of people and they had been giving me the run-around so we set out to go to Lille or to Leuven or somewhere. When we arrived in the railway station I managed to give them the slip and abandon them. Walking around, I came to the shopping centre which was up 25 flights of stone stairs. There was a large flight of stairs that went up from the street but if you went round the corner into the forecourt of the railway station there was a flight of stairs there which weren’t so many which I hadn’t noticed until today so I set out to work out how easy it was to go up these because there were fewer of them. I did my trick of hauling myself up with my arms. Everyone was watching me and a few people walking up quicker than me were looking at me. I reached the top where there was a convenient handrail for me to pull myself up right outside the door of the flower shop there. I could see the flowers, I could see the shop assistants and everything selling. For some reason or other I was doing something with the coins in my pocket but I don’t know why. But when I’d made it up to the top of the stairs I was really unsteady on my feet and thought for a minute that I’d end up falling backwards all the way down again.

Twenty-five stairs is a familiar number, isn’t it? And having to haul myself up them three times per week at least is something that I won’t ever forget even when (if) I am living downstairs and no longer have to do it.

The nurse was in and out in a flash today. He’s off on his break now for a few days so I suppose that he doesn’t want to hang around. I could make breakfast and continue to read MY BOOK

Today we are discussing contemporary earthworks and he finds a great deal of amusement in some of his colleagues having mis-identified some contemporary slit trench for a Neolithic burial pit. I shall be waiting with bated breath for the omelette sur le visage moment.

Seeing as it’s my birthday today I emulated my namesake the mathematician and did three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … nothing for a couple of hours. I just stirred a few papers round with no great urgency and spoke to several friends on the internet, who had contacted me to wish me well, which was nice of them.

My cleaner, who had popped in earlier for the list of medication, came back with some of the supplies and to fit my anaesthetic patches. Then I had to await the taxi.

Late again leaving, the other passenger in the car was even later so we had to drop him off first, right across town at the Clinic. So I was very late arriving for dialysis.

Not only that but there were six other people who had arrived simultaneously and I was as usual the last. Then we had to run through a handwashing demonstration to waste even more time.

Plugging in was slightly less painful than normal, and then I reviewed my Welsh, although there’s no lesson tomorrow as it’s half-term.

The doctor in charge came to see me. There’s no real indication of anything that might be causing these sweats, so he said.

He did have two items of good news for me and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Firstly, this new dialysis centre in Granville is all systems go and will be open within a year. Secondly, as things stand I would be one of the patients to be transferred there. So that will save me about four hours per week.

While he was there, I tried to negotiate a reduction in hours. My weight seems to be stable right now compared to how it was, so I wondered if instead of reducing the machine’s power they could reduce the hours that I have to spend.

His reply was that it’s not as easy as that but he’ll check the analysis and see what it says.

While I was there I had a video chat with my niece, her husband and one of her daughters in Canada. That was a lovely surprise, one of the many highlights of my day.

When they finally threw me out we had the pantomime with the minibus but I managed to enter it in a slightly more dignified way than the other day. Leaving it is still the same old circus though.

It was a very exhausted me who made it into my apartment and now that I’ve had my stuffed pepper and written my notes I’m off to bed. I’m exhausted. I have all these goodwill messages to answer but that will be tomorrow. I can’t keep my eyes open.

But seeing as we have been talking about my namesake the mathematician … "well, one of us has" – ed … he once told be "I have a completely irrational fear of negative numbers"
"So what do you do?" I asked him. "Is it a serious problem?"
"It’s extremely serious" he said. "So much so that I’ll stop at nothing to avoid them."

Sunday 23rd February 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy again today. Not only have I completed everything that I intended, or, as TS McPhee would have it, I’ve DONE EVERYTHING THAT I’VE EVER SET OUT TO DO, I had half an hour to spare too, and that’s not something that happens every day. And how I wish that it did.

That was despite several interruptions too, because I can’t seem to have a day without something happening to knock me right out of my stride.

Things actually set off with a good start because I’d finished my work and all of the dictating quite early. Although it was after 23:00 when I went to bed, it was before midnight which means, with my lie-in, that I could have over eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

In theory, at least.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m back with my turbulent sleep patterns, and last night was no exception. And following a Dialysis Day, it was a hot, sweaty night too and I really am going to have to find a solution to this

However, for a change on a Sunday morning, I was still in the bed when the alarm went off at 08:00 and although I can remember times when I have felt less like rising from the bed, there aren’t many of them that have been more difficult than today.

After my trip to the bathroom I came back in here because on a Sunday there’s not much time before the nurse arrives. I made a start on the dictaphone notes (of which there were more than just a few) instead.

In midstream I was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse who tended to my legs and then spent a few minutes trying to make his card reader read my health card so that he can invoice the Social Security for his visits. Being someone who is terminally ill, I’m 100% covered for my medical expenses so I don’t have to pay anything.

After he left, I made breakfast, took my medication and carried on reading MY BOOK.

Today we’re discussing dykes and ditches and we’re back on things about which I might know something.

He’s discussing the building of these earth ramparts and ditches that straddle the countryside and I’m not following his logic at all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the discussion from a few days ago where he stresses that invaders wouldn’t build earthworks and complicated defences. They would be the work of the beleaguered defenders.

Now when you build a wall, the purpose of the wall is twofold – one is to hide behind it and the second is to stop your enemy crossing it. To build a wall, you need to find the earth, so you would have to dig a ditch from which to extract it. That serves two purposes too – it means that you only need to build the wall half as high, because the other half of height is the depth of the ditch, and it also makes the defence stronger.

So if you are going to dig a ditch, you would dig it in front of the earthen bank, firstly to make the defence stronger, and secondly to keep your enemy farther from the wall. If you had the ditch behind the wall, it would allow your enemy to shelter behind the wall and you wouldn’t be able to come close enough to dislodge them. So the ditch will be the direction from where you are expecting the attackers to arrive.

Having said all of that, if the Cambridge ditches are to the south-west of the dykes, why does he propose, on page 511, that "they may very well represent the work of some of the earliest of the Baltic immigrants, who, as is now believed, began to make settlements on the east coast of Britain".

Why would the “earliest of the Baltic immigrants” be building these extravagant earthworks when they are the invaders? Especially when he tells us on page 518 he tells us "none of the finer and more elaborate English dykes contradicts the fact that the civilization of the island has moved always from east to west.", which is, I imagine, what the “earliest of the Baltic immigrants” will be doing.

So although I don’t have a clue exactly what his argument is, I shall refrain from saying “neither does he” because you will all be calling me “T Rice Holmes”.

When I’d finished I began to make a small bread roll for lunch. I’ve enjoyed the ones with my soups and the flexibility of an air fryer means that I can serve up one or two without any effort or heating the big oven

Back in here the first task today was to finish the dictaphone notes. I was preparing myself ready to go to dialysis, explaining to Nerina just how painful it was. She didn’t seem to believe it particularly. She thought that I was being a baby. She told me that I ought to do better with it and think more positively. Then she began to discuss operations with me. That’s the kind of thing that makes me squirm and was causing me all kinds of agony in all different parts of my body so I asked her if she would stop talking about it. Eventually she agreed. Later on that night though I was writing out my notes. She asked if I was writing out the story of what had happened early in the day between the two of us. I replied that I was. She replied “that’s fine as long as you don’t write anything personal about me”. I replied “that’s rather difficult to avoid because the fact that you and I were together is something rather personal”.

Actually, I suspect that the nurses are secretly, under their breath, telling me “not to be a baby” but we all have our phobias. But the situation about people in my dreams, I had a discussion about this with someone just recently. I’m not obviously in control of what goes on during the night and so I don’t usually “name and shame” people who appear. It’s bad enough that they know me at all, poor people, without being outed for it. But some people’s association with me is too well-known to be hidden behind a nickname.

There was a plot of waste land opposite out house in Crewe that actually belonged to us. One day I sat down to clear it all out. I removed most of the weeds, bushes and shrubs, and there was a stream that ran through it. When I was upstairs in the bedroom I could see that it was full of big fish swimming around. I thought that it was wonderful. From a horrible, stony limestone surface it gradually began to turn green as I watched it. I thought that with another couple of hours work we’d have a nice lawn over there with a little featured brook running through. I went outside and sorted out a few things. I had an old Ford Thames van … "a Thames 400E" – ed … parked in the street with no tax and no MoT so I pushed that onto there too. In the end it was really looking quite nice and I was quite impressed with it

There actually was a patch of waste land (almost) opposite the family home in Davenport Avenue when we moved there in 1970. And the story of the fish relates presumably to the fish farming from the other day.

Later on I was working in the despatching of the ambulance company. One of the drivers came in towards the end of his shift and said that he had to go to fuel up his taxi ready for the morning. He asked if he could still keep the same car for tomorrow morning. I said that there’s no reason why he shouldn’t but he’d have to let me know what number it is so that I could mark it down on the sheets. He went outside and I heard his car start so I called him up on the radio and asked him to tell me his number but he didn’t reply and drove out. Then I was in the car with him after that. he said that he still had to go to pick up fuel and his car was number 210. I noted “210” on the sheets and he set off. He drove through Crewe down Badger Avenue and up to Bradfield Road at probably 100 mph. Someone pulled out a little further ahead and he said “look at that person there! No respect for anyone else. I whispered to the other passenger and said “said he, driving at 100mph through the town”. We turned onto Bradfield Road and he said “I hope that the petrol station down here is still open”. When we passed over the railway bridge there was a queue of taxis, the biggest queue you have ever seen. he looked at me and said “all of these will be alright for you, Eric” because of course they were Crewe taxis. He swung round and pulled up onto the station with a big line of vehicles but he weaved his way up the inside and went to an empty pump to fuel the car. There was a van next to us. Our driver had a jerry can and went to fill the car and the jerry can. The woman next to us was pumping diesel and it smelt horrible. he said “that’s a disgusting diesel, isn’t it?”. I replied “it’s the low sugar stuff so it doesn’t smoke and clog up your injectors”. he replied “I can’t think why people use it so I repeated that it doesn’t smoke and doesn’t clog up the injectors.

There is actually a petrol station where this one in the dream was situated. But the whole place being saturated in taxis is most unlikely, particularly as many as there were parked around there last night. But despite all that I have said about Crewe in the past, they do stop and fuel up their cars with diesel. There’s not one single driver left in the town today who stops at the stables to fuel up his cab with a nosebag full of oats

There was also a dream where I was with some friends of my own age. maybe we were at school, I don’t know. Someone turned up with some parcels and I wondered what this was all about because it was nearly Christmas. It turned out that it was a girl who had left. She’d sent some of us some presents and one of them was for me. It looked as if it might have been a cake. I thought “this is nice of her”. When I looked at it, it was the wrapping that resembled the cake. When I undid it, it was a board game all about growing your crops, harvesting them and making all kinds of vegetarian and vegan food, which I thought was really wonderful. One of two of the others then received some strange board games from this girl too. I thought “this is a really nice idea. I shall have to try to find where this shop is and investigate it for myself to see what else they had that I could maybe give as presents to other people”.

That game actually sounds quite interesting and I wonder how it could be made to work. There’s an on-line course doing the rounds on OpenLearn about making a game app for a smartphone and I’ve been debating about using my dialysis spells to catch up with a few more short courses. This game app one might be interesting, with this idea as its theme.

I’d been in Northampton and was heading back out towards the motorway with “that” Liz. We’d gone a different way this time to see what was alongside the motorway the other way. We ended up in this town but didn’t recognise it. It was a very modern town with a huge distribution centre for a supermarket, one of the ones in red, right at the end of the main street. We parked up and walked out to have a look round. We asked these two boys the name of the place. They wanted to know why we were here if we didn’t know where we were. We explained that we’d been to Northampton and wanted to go back a different way. He began to ask passers-by “which is the best way from here to reach the motorway?”. He told us that this place was called TW17. He then went to a travel agent’s to ask her where she could send him on a flight while we decided that we’d go for a look around and maybe have a meal. I set off to find the car to park it somewhere better so that we’d have time to eat.

So here’s “that” Liz back yet again. We had someone who sat on a University Committee on which we served who lived in Northampton and we went there a couple of times. But Liz was more of a friend with her partner and she unfortunately sought her release from her difficulties in an extremely tragic way and we never went again. One thing is certain though. None of this took place in Shepperton.

Next task was to watch the football, Stranraer at home to high-flying Stirling Albion, and against the run of play demolish them 3-0 even though a friend of mine from University days plays in goal for Stirling Albion.

And hats off to Robbie Foster. A big, burly, clumsy but quick and powerful centre-forward, out of his depth at this level of football but due to an injury crisis of epic proportions, forced into the side for the last couple of months.

He knows where to be and what to do – he has all of the strikers’ instincts, but he’s just not able to do it. No-one on any football field ever has ever tried harder than him and today he had his reward when he muscled his way into the path of a loose ball and prodded it home

But one day someone is going to give the “man of the match” award to eighteen year-old Josh Lane, forced into goal for the first team for the last few games. A nervous start a few weeks ago but the last few matches he has pulled off some wonderful saves to give his team a fighting chance.

If you are interested in the highlights, you can SEE THEM HERE

Today’s work was to edit a series of radio programme notes that I’d dictated last night, and prepare or complete the programmes.

The first one was a concert that I stumbled upon in Germany in 1981. I’d written the notes the other day and they were the first that I’d dictated.

By the time that I’d finished the editing I was almost four minutes over, but that was part of the plan because there were several short tracks that I could edit out to fit everything down. So one track then went, a pile of applause and other “irrelevances” followed and it all went together quite nicely

There were two “extra tracks” for the two programmes that I’d prepared last Sunday, and I managed to resolve one of them and complete the programme before lunch.

Lunch was a fresh bread roll cut in half and transformed into “cheese and tomato on toast” in the air fryer. And it really was delicious too. I shall do all of this again too.

This afternoon I attacked the remaining programmes and despite stopping to make a full-sized loaf of bread, I finished bang on the moment as the telephone rang. I’m convinced that Rosemary mounted a camera in this apartment when she was last here.

Our chat today was only a small one, just one hour and three minutes. And the most exciting news is that Myrtille the cat goes to sleep under the bed but when Rosemary awakens, the cat is asleep on the foot of the bed. I’ll give it two weeks before they are both curled up together.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no-one I ever knew ever won a battle with a cat.

After a half-hour break I went to make my pizza. And it’s another one of the “best ever made” pizzas. My loaf was perfection itself too . it all seems to be working fine these days. What I think has been happening is that firstly my technique is improving and secondly, I think that my water measurer is inaccurate. If I use more water than suggested in the recipe it works so much better.

So having done all of my work, I’m having a Day of Rest tomorrow. Well-earned too, I reckon. If only I could work as hard as this all the time.

If I had worked as hard as this when I was at school I probably would have had a different path. I had this discussion with Nerina once and she asked me "what would you have done?"
"I would have been a criminal lawyer" I replied
"How far did you go in your studies?" she asked me.
"Only half-way, I’m afraid" I said. "I still have to do the ‘lawyer’ part."

Saturday 22nd February 2025 – I WAS BACK …

… here early this evening which made a lovely change. Mainly because I set out earlier to the dialysis centre. The taxi was well in advance. At least the driver sent me a message to say he would be here early, which is always a good idea.

Unfortunately though, I couldn’t emulate that last night going to bed. That night or two where I really cracked on and had things done early seems to be just an unexpected flash in the pan and I can’t repeat that, much as I would like to.

By the time that I’d finished my notes and done what I needed to do it was well after 23:00 and even later by the time I went to sleep in my nice clean bedding, having found the pillow case that had somehow gone missing from the wash the other week.

It was a turbulent night of the kind that I had when I was going through that cycle a few weeks ago and it was a very weary, bedraggled me that crawled out from under the covers when the alarm went off.

In the bathroom I remembered the sample that they need at the dialysis centre but forgot to shave and change my clothes for fresh ones. Emilie the Cute Consultant won’t be too impressed with me if she’s there today

The kitchen was next, and all of the medication. There’s a lot less than there used to be when I was going through that crisis six months ago, but it’s still an impressive quantity all the same. I wish that I could turn back the clock before my kidneys gave out and I was on just four per day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. And I’d travelled far during the night as well. I fell asleep quite quickly and found myself in the doctor’s discussing phallic symbols with him, I’m not sure exactly why but I wasn’t asleep very long and that’s hardly surprising.

Strangely enough I can’t remember dictating that – or even being awake at all at that particular moment. I thought that I would have remembered something about phallic symbols if it had been going on in my head. It’s not the kind of thing that you forget.

And then Nerina came round to my place of work last night. There was some kind of talk about a Trade Union meeting taking place in Manchester where the Trade Union Executive Committee was having its quarterly meeting. Someone was giving an account. They were talking about how they completed so much work, how it was sometimes quite emotional and how wen everyone went out into breakout rooms the observers were shared out between the rooms so that they could go to see. This person who had been on the Monday was extremely impressed. I was sitting tight up in a corner with Nerina. She turned and whispered to me in my ear “next time we ought to go to see this meeting”. I asked her if she really wanted to go because it was not something to which she had shown any particular interest before, but she was quite adamant about it so I decided that I’d make a few enquiries and see how we could go there. But I was actually with her and the two of us were so close together and so tight up in the corner.

That’s the kind of dream that brought back a few happy memories of former times. As for Trades Unions, I served on the Executive Committee of the Students’ Union at University and held a few other posts as well, such as Chair of the branch of students of Northern Europe. Those were the days after I’d taken early retirement from work and was looking for something to do. However I went back to work later, first covering for someone on maternity leave at General Electric’s training school in Brussels and then at that weird American company where I met Alison

And then it was my birthday so I had invited a lot of people round to my apartment, mostly friends from the University. They were all ages and they really were a bizarre bunch. Then at the end of the night I settled down in the armchair to go to sleep. Liz who was there as well, she settled down in the other armchair to go to sleep. Various other people settled down in all kinds of various other settees and chairs and prepared to spend the night. First thing was that I had to get up to go to the bathroom and come back down again. Liz came with me but she disappeared off somewhere. Gradually one by one other people began to disappear too. I began to wonder where they were going. There was a group of two people sitting on the sofa who suddenly began to awaken and eat chocolates again. A third person went along to sit on the sofa and join in with them. I asked them “is the party starting up again?”.

“That” Liz (not “this” Liz) has featured in several dreams just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. In a fortnight’s time it will be sixteen years since she died. She came from the North-East of England and served on the same University committees as I did. As she couldn’t drive, she used to travel with me from one meeting to the next. Back in 2006 we were on our way from a meeting of the Disabled Students in Bristol to another meeting in Gosforth when we stopped for a meal in a pub near Oswestry, when into the dining room came the very same girlfriend from school with whom I was chatting yesterday. And despite it being 35 years later, you could have put her in her school uniform and she would have looked exactly the same as she did back then at school

Finally, In that dream … "which dream?" – ed … there was a moment when I was in the office. I was wandering around outside in all of the buildings that were there. I came across a woman who was walking around. I was the only person in the office at that time so I wondered who she was. She wondered who I was too so I told her which building I was in and asked her if she knew which one it was. She said that “it’s the one right down there at the entrance” so I imagined that she did. I ended up walking down a corridor where I saw someone else. Then I came into my room where everyone else was. I sat down on the sofa and then had to stand up, but suddenly realised that I couldn’t stand up sitting on the sofa. I had to go through all kinds of strange manoeuvres like leaning my back against the wall trying to push up with my ankles so that I was in an upright position in order that I might be able to stand up and move

That is actually my big fear – falling over, because I can’t pick myself back upright again if I do. When I fell over in an Underground station in Montréal in 2022 a couple of passers-by had to pick me up. It was difficult then, and I have even less control over my muscles today than I did back then. As for the “office”, the image that I have in my head is the hospital in Paris, which is in fact a collection of individual buildings on a campus.

There was more to it that all of that too, but you don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

The nurse was later than usual today and didn’t hang around at all. He didn’t even have time to ring the doorbell from downstairs to warn me that he was here. He was in and out in a matter of seconds.

Not that I’m complaining of course. I could make breakfast and carry on reading MY BOOK

Today we are discussing medieval fishponds and the delights of catching, cooking and eating a nice fresh bream “in its jacket”. In my opinion, he’s welcome to it. Even when I used to eat fish, oily, pungent fish like that was not to my taste at all.

Back in here I sorted out the bills that I needed to pay, dealt with all of that, and then finished off my Welsh homework so that I could have a day off to relax on Monday.

Some time round about then I had the ‘phone call from the driver who is going to take me to Avranches. Would it be OK to come round fifteen minutes earlier?

“No problem” I replied. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish (in theory) and I sent a brief note to my cleaner.

Just as I finished my homework she put in an appearance. Perfect timing, that. She sorted out my anaesthetic patches and then I had to wait for the taxi.

We had to pick up that woman who lives at the back of the dialysis centre and we arrived at the centre at about 13:05 which was rather early, because they don’t open the doors until 13:15.

For a change I was second to be dealt with, which suited me fine. I could settle down and watch the football.

A real bottom-of-the-table clash between Aberystwyth and Y Drenewydd, and it looked it too. Y Drenewydd were quite poor but Aberystwyth were dreadful and on this form they’ll find the second tier rather tough going. They look like a team that is already resigned to its fate.

The manager, interviewed afterwards, didn’t pull any punches about his team’s lack of fight but the problem lies with the club. Four years ago they had quite a strong team but a whole raft of players left and the ones who have come in haven’t been able to replace the quality and it’s been downhill ever since.

Unfortunately I fell asleep after that for a few minutes and then carried on tidying up and updating the travelling laptop.

Early in, early out which is good news and I was back here by 18:45, and I wish that I could do that every trip instead of some of these ridiculously late returns home that we have had.

Tea was a burger on a bap, some red-hot chili burgers that I found in the freezer. Certainly different, and quite enjoyable, especially with baked potato and vegan salad, followed by date bread and soya dessert. And it’s the first time in well over a week that I’ve felt like eating a proper meal.

So now I have things to dictate and then I’m off to bed. Loads of editing tomorrow, bread making and probably a few other things too, if I feel like it. But that’s not always obvious at this time of night.

But seeing as we have been talking about that meal in that pub near Oswestry … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told a little joke and the ex let out a sigh.
"Ohh Eric" she said. "You told me that joke when we were at school!"
"Yes that’s as may be" I replied. "I don’t change the material. I just change the audience"
"That’s why Eric likes travelling with me" said “that” Liz. "I have such a dreadful memory that he tells me a joke one day, then tells me again the next day and because I’ve already forgotten it I hear it again for the first time and laugh once more."

Thursday 20th February 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… the other day when I prophesied how I would be feeling today after dialysis. Not only have I gone back to square one, I have fallen off the edge of the board. I can’t be doing with too many more of these dialysis sessions.

However, I have to carry on for the rest of my life and if it goes like this for much longer, that won’t be too far away.

Last night I was in bed rather later than previous, but not at an unreasonable hour. It was before midnight, at least. However we were back at the awakening shortly after midnight and staying awake for several hours.

And even if I did manage to go back to sleep, I was awake again at about 05:50 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about. No point in staying in bed when I have things to do.

We had the usual routine of bathroom and kitchen, and then back here, the dictaphone was next.

There was a group of us singing that Supertramp song “Schooldays” while there was a radio presenter talking about presenting the song, about what was actually behind it. A couple of people who were with us were quite young and obviously wouldn’t have remembered the song when it came out originally but this was one of those things where I was quite young too so it must have been the first time that I heard it. It was one of these anthem-type singers and there was a couple of other people there too but I can’t remember very much about what they were doing.

SCHOOLDAYS is actually a song by Gentle Giant, but let’s not be carried away by the minutiae. It’s impressive that I could even remember the song seeing as it’s one of the Gentle Giant songs that I can live without.

There were then two girls had stowed away in an aeroplane. They had been arrested and imprisoned there while the ‘plane took off to fly them home. There was a problem there with one of the engines on the ‘plane and the crew was busy doing some work on it in mid-flight. Under cover of the noise that the crew was making to hit this engine with a hammer the girls were chiselling away at the side of the aeroplane to make a hole ready for them to escape when the ‘plane landed. Suddenly the hole gave way and one of the girls was sucked out in the air pressure. She disappeared into nowhere. The other girl was left there just looking at it. She suddenly thought “well perhaps maybe this is the moment for her to escape”. She ended up next falling out of the ‘plane but her clothing was hooked onto a jagged edge and she was there suspended outside the ‘plane, thinking “this is wonderful, I’m flying! How marvellous it is!”. Suddenly her clothing gave way and she cascaded out. She was immediately in a panic about this but realising that there was nothing that she could do she just sat back and admired the view from 30,000 feet. She could see that she was about to hit the water on the edge of the coast just off the beach. The water couldn’t have been very deep. She hit the water and managed to walk away. She was rescued and taken to a local Air Force base where she broke down and had an emotional crisis. She could never concentrate on her career on the Air Force again. She resigned four or five times, her marriage had fallen to pieces with her being in such an emotional state but of course she was lucky to be alive.

Bizarrely, I can see them even now as they fell from the ‘plane. I was a few hundred feet underneath them, looking up. And I can still see the second one as she fell and hit the water. And she wouldn’t walk away from that. The water is a lot harder than you might think, especially if you were to fall from 30,000 feet. I’m not surprised that she had an emotional outburst or two subsequently.

Nerina and I had gone on holiday again, driving around the UK looking at different places. We’d ended up in New York driving around. Then I ended up walking around somewhere. I’d seen an old disused railway line that used to run down to the port so when I was back in New York a couple of years later I went to look for this railway line and began to follow it. I had to cross a street and this street was so, so wide that it took me an age to cross over. There was a lorry coming in the distance and I thought that I would never ever reach the other side in time before the lorry would arrive. It was miles. On the other side I saw a strange-looking building so I went to have a look. As I put my head inside the door a voice said “don’t stand there, come on in”. I couldn’t see anyone who had said anything so I went in. It was like a small community centre with a table tennis table, some comfortable chairs and a couple of annexes. There was a coffee bar so I ordered myself a coffee and went to sit down. Back in the car later on Nerina was feeling tired or something. I was listening to music. She said “you couldn’t put music on your headphones, could you? On the car ‘phone put a track of complete and utter silence so that I could sleep?”. I thought “why not?” so I was busy trying to programme the telephone in the car that it would play the longest possible track which would be called “Silence”.

Crossing this street resembles somewhere where I’ve been in the past, although the road was nothing like as wide as this. I’m wondering if it might have been NEW BERN where the railway does actually run down the centre of the main street. However, in this dream there was a very big green park on the far side of the road.

The nurse was late today. I recon that he was on his bike because he brought his rucksack inside with him. He didn’t have much to say for himself today and was soon gone so that I could press on.

Breakfast and MY BOOK were next. But as far as the book goes, I didn’t read it for long. I had too much to do and in any case, the events of modern times are not as interesting as what I’ve been reading to date, in my opinion.

Yesterday, I said that I’d catch up on correspondence, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I reckon that I’m as up-to-date as I have been so if you are awaiting a reply and you haven’t had it, let me know. The chances are that I’ve forgotten or overlooked it.

Having dealt with that I pushed on and attacked the Welsh homework. It would be nice if I could finish that before Monday, then I can have Monday morning off which would be a nice change.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and then I had to wait for the taxi. And although it was a little in advance, it made no difference because it was running late for another passenger’s appointment at the clinic on the other side of Avranches so I had the round trip

Dialysis was about as painful as normal, and I had the pleasure of the company of the unsociable doctor today. He’s wondering if I have an infection so they took a blood sample and on Saturday I have to take in …. errr … another type of sample.

The Social Security regulations are beginning to bite too. We have a new patient in dialysis today. He lives out in the sticks and used to go to St-Lô but the Sécu reckons that it’s closer for him to go to Avranches. So here he is.

Late in, I was late out too. It was my usual Saturday evening driver who brought me home, pretty much in silence too. I’m not sure why he’s suddenly gone quiet but these days he doesn’t have much at all to say.

Climbing up here was a struggle, given how I’m feeling. And tea was a handful of pasta and veg in a tomato sauce. I don’t have the morale, the courage or the energy to do much else.

So even though it’s really early, I’m off to bed, hoping that the sleep will do me good and I’ll feel better in the morning. That would really be nice, but I doubt it.

But seeing as we have been talking about archaeology … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once asked me "why are archaeologists so popular on these dating sites?"
"I’ve no idea" I replied
"Its because they spend most of their time dating these ancient and unusual ruins"

Wednesday 19th February 2025 – STRANGELY ENOUGH …

… last night was almost an identical carbon-copy replica of much of the previous one.

Awakening shortly after midnight and not going to sleep for several hours afterwards. There’s something bizarre happening right now and I wish I knew exactly what it was. or maybe I don’t. Some questions are best left unanswered.

One of the questions to which I wish that I did have the answer is “how come I finished so early last night?”. It was like back in the old days back on the farm when I would finish everything by 21:30 and then watch a video or a DVD until bedtime.

In fact haven’t seen a film for many weeks, the last time being halfway through LORD OF THE RINGS. But then again, these days I am far more engrossed in my reading matter and it’s probably a more healthy pursuit anyway.

So even catching up on a couple of missed football matches (like the local derby of Llay Miners’ Welfare v Gresford Athletic in the Welsh Second Tier) I was still in bed way before 23:00. And it’s been a good while since I’ve been able to say that.

It seemed to be an age before I fell asleep but it can’t have been that long because at 00:20 I was back awake again. Wide awake too, to such an extent that at one point I was actually up and about. But I soon thought better of it and went back to bed, where I did finally manage to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the World and rising up from my bed was quite the struggle. It really was touch-and-go for beating the second alarm.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen to take my medication and notice that I’d forgotten to fill the water carafe and put it in the fridge before going to bed last night.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I alighted from the bus at Shavington, at the “Sugar Loaf” and began to thumb a lift to take me down to the family home. Eventually, a strange three-wheeled van went past, something similar to a Reliant but with a kind-of fastback rear with two aerials on the back sticking out of the roof. It shuddered to a halt just round the corner so I wandered round there and there was a woman. When I opened the door to see who it was, there was a woman sitting in the driver’s seat carrying a huge bunch of flowers which protruded onto the passenger seat side of the car. I asked her if she could take me to Vine Tree Avenue. She said yes, if I didn’t mind a bunch of flowers on my head. So we set out, and she said “when I saw you there earlier you had a Value Village bag in your hand. What was in it?”. “Probably some flour” I replied. So we arrived and I alighted from the car with my things. There were a few people standing around at the top of the garden. We had a friendly chat. I’d put my things down on the floor while I was talking so then instead of picking up my things I kicked them down the hill. There was a jumper and a bag of something or other that might have been the flour. I was also (…carrying a mug of hot…) tea. I was halfway through kicking these things down the hill when I thought “this is going to be dangerous because if I miss my kick like this I’m going to end up on my face with this hot cup of tea all over me”.

If I’m going to hitch-hike for a trip that I could walk in five minutes I’m clearly doing something wrong. But Value Village is the Canadian equivalent of a charity shop. They don’t have isolated charity shops scattered around here and there in the town like in the UK but one big one where the different-coloured price labels indicate which charity supplied the goods. If you look in my collection of books and CDs you’ll see plenty of Value Village labels. There’s stuff available in Canada that never made it over into Europe and which turns up in a Value Village.

As for me being forewarned about doing myself a mischief, I wish that it was like that in real life. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make mistakes. I just learn a lot of lessons and for some of them I pay a very expensive price.

The nurse was almost human today, and that makes a change. If he keeps going like this he might even become normal by the end of his spell on duty. But he did confirm a rumour that I have heard before – that they could well be opening a dialysis centre in Granville. That would save me a good hour every day at least.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK. We’ve finished the Saxons, passed over the Norse voyagers and moved into the Norman era.

So far, there has been nothing particularly controversial, although I did have a smile when I read his remark that "the Saxons were not by habit builders of military earthworks at all. At their first coming they seem to have made few or none : theirs was not a military invasion but an immigration, and one need no more look for extensive traces of earthworks to mark it than one looks for them in the track of the Pilgrim Fathers of the New England States."

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on our way down to South Carolina and Rhys’s wedding in 2005 we stopped off at ROANOKE ISLAND and went for a look around at the fort (or, rather, its site) of the very first English colonists of North America that the “Lost Colonists” built some forty years before the Pilgrim Fathers.

He further states that "Earthworks, except where they mark a deliberate military occupation like that of the Romans or of the Normans, are the work not of the people who attack, but of those attacked." which will certainly come as news to whoever wasted all that money building all of those stone castles in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth Century.

Back in here afterwards I started on the next radio programme and by the time I knocked off – at 17:30, would you believe, I’d chosen all of the music, tracked down that which I didn’t haven edited, remixed, paired and segued it and even written all of the notes. If that’s not a good day’s work I don’t know what is.

There were several breaks too in the middle of all of that. No lunch, but still a break for the lunchtime medication.

Next was my cleaner and a shower, and much as I need a great deal of motivation in order to make myself climb into the bathtub (roll on when I have a walk-in shower downstairs) I really do feel better for it.

Finally, there was the disgusting drink break. I seem to have quite a collection of these disgusting drinks right now. There’s the anti-potassium stuff and then this protein drink. All of this medication really is a torture.

Having finished work early I relaxed for a couple of hours as a little reward to myself, well-earned, in my opinion, and then went to make tea. A left-over curry with naan bread. Only a half-size curry but I still had to battle with it to finish it all, but the naan was delicious.

So I’ll be off to bed and home for some sleep tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to have a correspondence morning before I head off to dialysis. And see what they have to tell me about anything.

But yesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we were talking … "well, one of us was" – ed … about cutting your losses and starting afresh.
A few years ago I was talking to Nerina about that.
Her response was "I suppose that that explains it"
"Explains what?" I asked
"Why your parents had more children after you" she answered

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: bad night

Monday 7th April 2025 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

Friday 28th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Friday 14th March 2025 – A TAXI CAME …

Wednesday 12th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Thursday 6th March 2025 (cont) – NOW THAT THINGS … .

Wednesday 5th March 2025 – MY CLEANER IS …

Tuesday 4th March 2025 – IT’S NOT THE …

Sunday 2nd March 2025 – I NOW HAVE …

Saturday 1st March 2025 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS.

Monday 24th February 2025 – THEY SENT THE …

Sunday 23rd February 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

Saturday 22nd February 2025 – I WAS BACK …

Thursday 20th February 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

Wednesday 19th February 2025 – STRANGELY ENOUGH …

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