Tag Archives: battle of nicopolis

Friday 6th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today?

It’s difficult to understand where all of this energy has come from, but it was certainly there today and I hope that it will still be there for the weekend too and I can keep it up.

Last night, though, it didn’t look as if it would be a good day today. Once more ♬ I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied, lost my way and don’t know where to roam ♬ and ended up being quite a bit later than intended going to bed. If I’d rushed, I could have been in bed by 22:30, I suppose, but it was in fact 23:30 when I crawled under the covers.

At least, I went to sleep straight away, which was one thing, but it was rather sad to awaken at 05:00. I could have done with much more than that. A good few minutes were spent deciding whether I should leave the bed at that point but instead, I curled up in the warmth of my quilt and went, surprisingly, back to sleep.

But not for long. I don’t know what time I awoke after that, but the alarm went off a short time afterwards and I tried my best to raise myself from the Dead.

Eventually, I was able to stagger into the bathroom for a good scrub-up and then I went into the kitchen for my medication and hot drink. And DISASTER – no fresh lemons. I had to make do with processed lemon juice, and it’s not the same.

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

There was a huge meeting of some kind of Gamblers Anonymous thing where people were invited to comment on how they stopped gambling. There was one guy who gave a lengthy speech about how he’d managed to stop gambling etc. and everyone applauded him. He was taken as being one of the shining examples of this meeting. Later on, while he was with his friends, they all went off somewhere and left him on his own. It was then that someone else came round to bring him a prize that he’d won when he’d been gambling. It was a huge prize too, and there was no possibility of hiding it. The people who had brought him this cheque decided that they’d take him out for a meal, and they ended up presenting formally this cheque to him in a restaurant where his friends were actually dining at the time. That proved, of course, to be something that was most embarrassing to everyone. Of course, his friends were really angry at having supported him at this Gamblers Anonymous thing. They went over to the table later where he was sitting, or he went over to theirs and they had a most acrimonious argument or discussion about this whole affair.

This was a strange dream. It’s another one that seems to have come out of nowhere, with nothing that has happened in recent times provoking anything like this.

I’d met a girl walking around Granville and I began to chat to her. She was part of a large family whose father had died and they had been evicted from their house where they were living and were basically on the road looking for somewhere to stay. They were heading in the Rennes direction. It turned out that the previous night they’d spent in a hotel just down the road from where I was living, one of these cheap village hotel-type of things. I felt really disappointed that I hadn’t seen her then. After we’d had a really good chat and she had wandered off, I went down to look at the street. I thought that what was this big hotel had been all boarded up and padlocked. There was no possible way in to it, so I didn’t say or do very much. I realised then that she was actually at the house next door because I could see the tables being laid out for breakfast the following morning, so I loitered around there but she didn’t turn up, and neither did any of her family, so I wondered if they had moved on. At some point a little later on, I met her again. She said that they were leaving and were going towards Rennes. I was spending some time chatting to her. She had this very large family and one of the children was underneath my bed, stuffing stuffed toys up underneath the mattress, so I had to chase her away. I was chatting to this girl when this old, strange minibus turned up. She basically said “goodbye” to me, and I felt terribly disappointed that she was leaving. They all crowded into this ancient minibus, one of those that had the luggage underneath the floor, and they set off. I decided that what I would do would be to try to hitchhike down towards Rennes to see if I could catch up with her at some point. So I set off and arrived at Rennes. I was on an airfield when this strange aeroplane came in to land. It nearly knocked down an officer, who made some kind of gesticulation at it, but I thought that he shouldn’t have been walking across the landing strip anyway. I wondered if this was the family arriving, so I ran towards the aeroplane, but it had crash-landed, sticking up with the tail in the air, landing on its nose. There was some kind of riot going on around this ‘plane and the police were called to quell it, which upset the commander of the base because he didn’t think that it was appropriate for the police to intervene in some kind of military affair. But there was a description of the airfield somewhere, and somewhere, people were talking about the different places where the aeroplanes were parked etc, but I didn’t take much notice because I was hoping that this was the ‘plane in which the family had arrived and everyone in it, especially her, were all OK.

And I was going to say that this was another one too, but meeting a girl in the street and staying in one of these shabby village-type of hotels of the kind that you would have found in every French village fifty years ago but are now long-gone reminds me of my hitchhiking trip around Finisterre in the mid-seventies when, in Morlaix, I was staying in such a place, I did meet a girl while I was walking around the town, and we did have quite a chat.

Furthermore, the streets in which this dream took place resembled very much some of the streets in the Quartier St Paul of Granville around which we drove yesterday looking for one of our passengers.

The rest of the dream would seem to be pretty meaningless, especially the part about the airfield and the part about the little girl shoving stuffed toys up underneath my mattress.

Isabelle the Nurse wandered in as usual and organised my feet and legs. She had a little more time today so we had a little chat. She seems to think that I ought to buy some garden furniture so that I can sit outside. And I would, believe me, if only I could lift myself out of it afterwards.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

The period of the Frankish occupation of Greece is coming to an end, due to the marauding Turks, and we’ve been discussing the Battle of Nicopolis when a reinforcing army coming from the West to relieve the besieged Franks in Greece was annihilated by a Turkish army, ending all hopes of salvation for the besieged. The End Is Nigh, right enough.

Back in here, I had things to do as usual, one of which was to send off an order to Leclerc because I’m now about to run out of soya milk. One thing that I really did fancy was a butternut squash because I wanted to make some butternut squash soup for next week, but it had gone out of stock since yesterday, which was a disappointment.

When I’d finished what I needed to do, I attacked the next radio programme and now, all of the notes are written, ready for dictation.

There were several interruptions too. I went to set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. I’m no longer able to hang the clothes up on the airer so I’ve arranged with my cleaner that I’ll do the washing on Friday lunchtime and she’ll hang it up when she comes in on Friday afternoon.

After she’d hung up the washing and done some cleaning, we emptied the top shelf in the wardrobe in here. There were plenty of bags, backpacks and so on, but we also found a large plastic box full of tools, screws and all kinds of similar stuff. I’d been looking for some of this stuff since the day that I first moved in here when I needed to erect the shipping radar aerial but couldn’t find it anywhere. So that’s another box to sort out this weekend.

Rosemary called me for a chat today too. Only a brief one – a mere fifty or so minutes – and, as usual, we didn’t discuss anything of any importance.

With what time was left, I began to prepare the following radio programme. This one will fall on the anniversary of the Day of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and you’ve no idea how many songs I have in my library that include the word “child” or “children” in the title. I could make a really good radio programme with all of those.

Tea tonight was baked beans with cheese, chips and vegan sausage, followed by the last of the apricot halves and some more of my delicious home-made ice cream. Tomorrow, I can start back on my birthday cake and finish it off during the coming week.

But right now, ordinarily I would be going to bed but onto the playlist has come a COLOSSEUM CONCERT FROM 1971. This is a really strange concert, because every time it comes round on the playlist, something dramatic happens. It appeared on the playlist on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR in 2018 when I met The Vanilla Queen, and also in 2019 when Castor suddenly appeared on the scene, and we know how dramatic those encounters were. I was never the same again.

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

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

But before I go and listen to the rest of Colosseum, seeing as we have been talking about Gamblers Anonymous … "well, one of us has" – ed … there’s a similar society for people who suffer from alcoholic issues.
"Is that called ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’?" asked one of my friends.
"Knowing the people whom I’ve met and known" I told her "it’s more like ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’."

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