…tea that was tonight. And seeing as I didn’t have anything in mind but instead made it up at the last minute, it was even nicer. I ought to do this more often.
In fact, today has been a reasonably good day, for the most part. Not like last night, where I was once more running hours late … "as you are tonight too" – ed …
By the time that I’d finished everything and was ready for bed, it was once more coming up to 23:30, and I really don’t know where the time goes. But anyway, I finally slid into bed, curled up underneath the bedclothes and went almost straight to sleep.
However, it was a rather restless night and I awoke a few times, usually for no good reason. However, there was one dream that related to all of this.
It was hardly surprising because when I checked the clock later, it was 02:21. So that probably explains it from that point of view – why the alarm hadn’t gone off – but it was so real and so convincing, as a few other similar dreams have been.
When the alarm finally did go off, I was totally flat-out in bed, fast asleep. And it was such a struggle this morning to leave the bed that I didn’t have my feet on the floor when the second alarm went off. So we’ll have to call that a failure.
Nevertheless, I was eventually able to stagger into the bathroom, and then afterwards, I went into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.
Back here, I had a listen to te dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying that back in the mid-70s, I had an Austin J4 van before I had the big Transit. Mine was about thirteen different colours, many of which were shades of green, and it was so rotten that you didn’t need to do anything to take the back door off. It would fall off on its own.
The whole front had rotted away from the chassis, so when you slammed the door (they were sliding doors), the front end would move forward a couple of inches. How it passed its MoT I really don’t know, but I didn’t bother taking it to its next one. It ended up in Barlow Brothers scrapyard in Crewe and I recovered the £25:00 that I’d paid for it.
But we did have a staff magazine when I worked at the EU and I actually appeared in it, but not as an official contributor but as a letter-writer, and my photograph was taken, with me on the Honda scooter that I had at the time. That was the scooter that I taught Roxanne to ride when she was … errr … eight years old.
This seems to be another one of those dreams that’s par for the course. Here I am; I’ve done what I have to do, and I’m becoming stressed out about something that has nothing whatever to do with me. Emptying the house was the problem of my parents, so why am I so concerned about it?
It’s simply that, I suppose, I’m totally unable to delegate anything to anyone else. I become far too interested in it myself to trust anyone else to do things.
The Nurse turned up, happy as Larry, after his week’s break. I told him about the planned removal of the medication to one of the empty drawers, so I hope that he cottons on to it tomorrow instead of having a mad ten minutes panicking.
After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.
Things are coming to a head in Greece as the Frankish control has passed to the Navarese, then to the Florentines, then to Naples and a few other people in between. No-one can seem to keep control of Greece for very long in the fourteenth century.
But what’s worse is that some of the disaffected powers are asking for help from … The Turks, of all people, and the Turks aren’t going to miss an opportunity to install themselves in Greece. The disputes between the various Latin factions are laying the foundations of their own destruction.
Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. The lesson passed really well again, thanks to all of the preparation that I’ve been doing. I should have done it years ago. . But what’s important is not necessarily how much I prepare, but how much I can remember for the next lesson.
And our classmate from Dubai is still there. She still can’t understand the panic in the western press.
After the lesson, I had some tidying up to do, and then, when my cleaner came to do her stuff, she shooed me under the shower. When I came out, she had started organising the medication drawer, and I can’t believe how full it is, with everything that was lying around.
But it’s going to be much better like this, and I reckon that even then, there will be further scope for improvement.
After she left, I made a start on the next radio programme. And now, all of the music has been selected, reformatted, remixed, re-edited, segued and paired, and I’ve even written some of the notes for it. I can finish it off tomorrow, and then I have plenty of other things to do before I start the next one on Thursday morning.
And to tell a little secret, I could have done much more than I did, except that I had a little “relax” in my chair for half an hour in the early evening.
As I said earlier, I had no idea what to have for tea. But in the end, I ended up with a slice of vegan pie with veg, including cauliflower, mashed potatoes and gravy. It was followed by birthday cake and home-made ice cream. Delicious!
But right now, I’m off to bed ready for a good sleep before a hectic day of work tomorrow. I need my beauty sleep – and lots of it, of course.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my letter to the EU’s staff magazine … "well, one of us has" – ed … the discussion was about the comparatively low death rate on Belgium’s roads compared to other countries.
My response was "seeing the amount of smoking that people do in Belgium, most people here die of cancer. It’s only the survivors who die on the roads."
