Tag Archives: billy cotton

Thursday 16th April 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

…. since I had a really decent sleep? Just for once, after all this time, I finally managed to have a really profound sleep and it did me the World of good.

Not that it was early, though. Making tea took much longer than I imagined, and even though I enjoyed it, I had other things to do, for which I could make better use of my time.

By the time that I’d finished writing my notes, taking the stats, backing up the computer and all of that, it was just after 22:00 when I climbed into bed. As seems to be the case these days, it took a while to go off to sleep, but once I was gone, boy, was I gone?

There was one moment when I awoke, for what seems to be the obvious reason at the moment, but I was soon back in bed and asleep almost immediately. I’ve no idea what time it was, but the electric water heater was buzzing so it was certainly after midnight when I let it all hang out.

There was another awakening later, for the same reason, and I was debating whether or not to check the time to see if it was worth getting up permanently, but I was barely back in bed, tucked up under the covers, when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE made up my mind for me.

Considering that I’d only just gone back to bed, it took an age for me to leave it again, but after I’d finally managed to sort myself out in the bathroom, including a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went for my medication. In the interests of my weight, I eschewed the usual 200 ml of hot drink and just washed everything down with a small mouthful of orange juice.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, but to my dismay, I had nothing on. It must have been a really deep sleep, I reckon. So instead, I found a few other things to do.

Isabelle the Nurse came in as usual to sort me out. She was chatting away about not very much at all, and after she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’re in the countryside discussing Roman villas, and apart from a few more “Richard of Cirencester” moments, he’s managed to steer pretty well clear of controversy. But while he was being led up the garden path by the aforementioned, we were being led through the sewers of Lincoln by the archaeologist Charles Roach Smith, who had apparently crawled through them in the past and whose notes were being quoted by our author.

Back in here, I had a few more things to do and then in a mad fit of enthusiasm, which came from I know not where, I attacked the radio programme that I’d started at the end of yesterday. And now, all of the music is reformatted, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’ve even written a few notes. I can finish the rest tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner was late today so she didn’t have much time to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was quite early today and caught me in flagrante delicto with a frozen curry that I’d just taken out of the freezer in the bathroom. I just had to dump it on the worktop, hoping that it would melt quietly, rather than find a bowl for it.

The driver had never been here before, so she was parked across in the car park. Eventually she brought the car round to the entry and we could set off. We had another passenger to pick up at the Centre de Reeducation, but rather than a return to Avranches, from where he had come this morning, it was a return home, so we ended up driving around the obscure corners of Granville.

Nevertheless, at dialysis, I was somewhat early but I was still the last to arrive, so I was last to be connected, as usual.

And there were all kinds of problems there today. As far as I was concerned, they couldn’t make one of the auxillary machines work. Consequently, for about an hour and a half, I was surrounded by people trying to fix it, and I couldn’t do any work at all while they were there. And once again, I spilled some coffee onto the laptop. This time though, I was much quicker wiping it off.

Being the last to be connected, and with all of the other problems, I was last, as usual, to be unplugged. The taxi driver had been waiting a good fifteen minutes for me, so at least our departure was rapid enough, but I was still late home.

My cleaner helped me inside, and after she left, I made some rice and heated the curry that had been quietly melting on the worktop all afternoon, without leaking from its plastic bag, I’m pleased to say. It was delicious, as usual, and filling, so I once more eschewed my chocolate cake and home-made ice cream.

By now, though, it was late and I was totally whacked. I could hardly keep my eyes open. And so I just posted another terse note on my blog and went to bed. And that was that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about problems with machines … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of one of the old Andy Capp stories from the 1960s.
They were trying to bring into a building an IBM mainframe computer but it wouldn’t fit through the door. They had a pile of people around it making suggestions, and trying their best to help, but to no avail.
Eventually, Andy Capp shouted across to them "why not plug it in and let it work it out for itself?"

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Thursday 12th February 2026 – IT WAS HARD …

… today at dialysis. For some reason, there was more liquid to drain off than usual and as a result, I suffered quite a lot, particularly towards the end.

Mind you, things have been building up to this for a while now. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve not been feeling too well just recently, and while the last couple of days might have been better, it doesn’t take much to knock me back to the start again.

Last night, for example, I was on course for an early night and I actually worked quite hard to achieve it, but even so, it was just after 23:00 before my notes went online, and with everything else, it was after 23:30 when I finally went to bed. And it shouldn’t have been like that at all.

And despite the howling gale and torrential rainstorm that was going on outside, I managed to go to sleep quite quickly and I don’t believe that I moved a muscle until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Having been woken up by BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE, it was another struggle to leave the bed and head off into the bathroom for a good wash and a shave. Mind you, I’ve given up all hope of any of the doctors coming to see me, but you have to go through the motions all the same.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was at work and it turned out that they were starting up a new group of people for something or other. The guy who was in charge decided that the person who was earmarked to do the job at first wouldn’t be able to cope so he nominated me to do it. I had to go to the office in Chester, and when I complained, they said “never mind. You’ll still be home in half an hour, won’t you?” which, of course, is nonsense. In the end, I arrived at Chester, relieved the guy who was doing this job and went into the office. There were two people there in bed, as if they were hospital patients. One of them was chatty enough and told me everything but the other one said nothing. I had to ask him directly if he was an Oxford United supporter. Then I made some remark about wondering how his treatment went. The girl who was my assistant asked him outright, but he didn’t reply to that either. I thought that I could see this being a really interesting and riveting group of which to be in charge.

So here I am, back at work again despite having been close to the retirement age in a considerable number of dreams. But I did work in Chester for two years between 1972 and 1974. I loved the city and would have been happy to return.

The hospital situation needs no explanation, but what’s all this about Oxford United?

The nurse was early again and he didn’t stay long at all. He had his big medical bag with him today so I suspect that he’s off on quite a few additional travels today.

It meant that I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

In fact, read all of it because it’s now finished. The final pages show a huge series of photographs that clearly show the hurried nature of the burials in the War Cemetery, and also a series of photos that show the massive nature of the work that he and his colleagues had carried out.

What they have done is phenomenal, and you would never ever believe the scale of the work that they undertook.

Back in here later, I had an important letter to write and then for the rest of the morning, I began to prepare for the next radio programme. I even managed to choose half of the music too. This is something else that I hope that I will finish tomorrow because I really need to have a weekend off.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to await the taxi. The driver was early again today, but seeing as we had to go to Sartilly to pick up someone else, we weren’t all that early arriving.

My sooty food was put into the premises at about 13:50, but I had to wait until 14:25 before I was all plugged in and running. And after that, apart from the nurse asking me if I was OK and also the coffee coming round, I was left to my own devices.

As I said earlier, there was more liquid to be removed this time, so they wound up the machine a little. And by the time that I’d finished, the pain had come back in my foot, and as well as that, I was so exhausted that I crashed out for half an hour.

The taxi was waiting for me so we had a good drive back, listening to a podcast of THE HOBBIT

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 said, I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

My cleaner helped me into the building and after she left, I warmed up the leftover soup from yesterday.

However, I couldn’t eat it all tonight, and another pile of food ended up in the bin. I was doing quite well with meals until then. It looks as if I’m having a relapse.

But anyway, I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the hobbit … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling a friend of mine that I’d given up reading Tolkien’s books just before going to bed.
"Why was that?" she asked. "Was it becoming too much of a bad hobbit?"
"Well" I replied, "it was certainly hobbit-forming".

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Wednesday 4th February 2026 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… issues, I have had a very leisurely day today. And while it might seem that I have not done very much at all, I have probably done even less than that. I was still recovering from yesterday’s efforts.

So last night, having failed miserably to complete my notes, I staggered off to bed indecently early and fell asleep quite quickly.

Surprisingly, given how these things usually go, I remained asleep until all of … errr … 05:20. I must really have been totally dead to the World last night.

Despite trying my best, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep so, round about 06:00, I crawled out of bed and dictated the radio notes for the two programmes that I wrote last week. It was fun, though, to say the least, because somewhere near the end of it all will be BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE. I didn’t quite manage to beat the alarm.

After I’d finished, I went and sorted myself out in the bathroom and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I went to listen to the dictaphone – except that I didn’t. As I’ve come to type up my notes for tonight, I’ve just realised that I forgot to transcribe them today. Eventually though, the following morning, I managed to catch up with the notes.

Back in the USA, the President was having some idea of creating his own version of the Republican Guard that the Romans had. His idea was to recruit a couple of the best soldiers of each ethnic origin of people in the United States, and he would use that as an example of diversity and an example of strength and unity. But as usual, what happened was that when the President sent a call out to his regiments, the regiments took advantage by sending away a couple of their weakest members. When the President heard this, he was talking about raising a punishment battalion and putting all these battalion leaders in it, using it as an example of what happens when you try something as borderline criminal and it fails to work correctly. However, his allies in the French parliament managed to talk him out of doing something like this.

This is obviously no reference whatsoever to a certain president of the USA who created his own force with the express intention of crushing as brutally as possible the ethnic minorities of his country. However, it was a well-known trick in the British (and probably other) armed forces to use any kind of draft whatsoever to move any unsatisfactory member of a unit from their service and into someone else’s.

There was also a dream something like THE GREAT ESCAPE but with Burt Reynolds and Sally Field in it. They were fleeing from the justice as they did in SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and in one particular incident, they had to leap over the edge of a cliff on skis. That’s something that you can do in snow but there was no snow in this particular dream. However, they still managed to make it down to the bottom. But when they were about two hundred yards from the frontier, Sally Field had a fall. Burt Reynolds stayed behind to help her and they were both captured. But then there was an alternative ending to this where they actually managed, or Burt Reynolds managed, to cross the barbed wire fence into a different country and managed to bring Sally Field over just as the sheriff and his posse pulled up on the road twenty feet away. There was some huge debate amongst the sheriff and the posse about whether to cross the border anyway to catch them and bring them back. But this border, it was a road with a ditch and a couple of strands of barbed wire fence. Once you were over the road and ditch and through the barbed wire fence, you were in a different country. Sally Field made it enormously complicated to climb through this fence of two or three strands of barbed wire, but when this posse was roaming up and down the border and no-one was sure whether they were going to cross or not, there were all kinds of instructions going around the town that people shouldn’t go anywhere near the border and keep well within their own side just in case they were kidnapped and taken back across. I was in this Spanish bar or restaurant or something near the border. It was lunchtime, so I went to ask for some patatas fritas. They replied in Spanish, which I didn’t quite understand. There was a queue out for this takeaway place, a typical traditional Spanish place, nothing modern, and I was in the queue for this. When I reached the front, I asked for the patatas fritas. They said something that I didn’t quite understand, so they said in English that it would be seventeen minutes. I said that I’d wait. Then I decided that I’d do something that I hadn’t done for years. I went into the bar place and asked for a cerveza. He said again something in Spanish that I didn’t quite catch, so I asked him to repeat it. He asked “what cerveza would you like?” I replied “I don’t know. What do you have?” He asked “would you like a beer from Sandbach?” I asked “you did say Sandbach, didn’t you?” He replied that he did, so I wondered how on earth he knew that I came from somewhere near Sandbach in Cheshire. But I said that I’d much rather have a Spanish beer.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the plots of the films “The Great Escape” and “Smokey and the Bandit” so I shan’t enlarge on them, but the crossing of borders to seize people and bring them back is a common Fascist tactic by certain countries that have no respect whatsoever for international law.

As for the dream itself, after I retired from work in 2004, I studied Spanish at night school in Brussels for eighteen months before moving down to the Auvergne. As for the beer, the last time I drank any alcohol was in 1994 in Bulgaria when, stranded up a mountain in the snow and fog when the ski lifts closed down unexpectedly, we had to pick our way down from up the mountain into the valley, leaping from crag to crag on skis as Burt Reynolds and Sally Field did. We found a little wayside inn halfway down, and, being so exhausted, we had a rest and a drink, even if the only drink on offer was beer.

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 said, I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

Anyway, Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual. She managed to find me in the apartment instead of off on a medical appointment so she sorted out my feet and so on, and I could push on.

Once she’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

And being now well into the book, I can see why people considered James Curle’s A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE to be "ahead of its time and still the most decisive work published in Scotland covering this period of Roman occupation".

Curle’s book was a masterpiece of precision and accuracy with very little speculation. On the other hand, Mortimer Wheeler, considered by many to be the leading archaeologist of the period, twenty-five years later, has written a book that leaps about from one place to another without any real coherency, and it’s full of assumptions and speculation.

There is page after page after page of what the Romans might have done in Wessex, based on the scantiest of evidence. And in any case, none of it has anything to do with the excavations at the site. It’s all pretty much irrelevant.

We can see that for the period from about 70 AD to, say, 300 AD, the site was empty and being used as farmland, but the whys and wherefores of that are of no interest at all, whether or … "in this case " – ed … not there is any solid evidence to support it.

However, a couple of his comments did lead me on to some more Neolithic cursus and barrow sites, and I was wandering around in cyberspace for a while.

Back in here, I finished off the notes from last night, and one or two other things too, and had a chat with Alison who is not at all well right now. I sent her all my best, and I wish that there was something that I could do for her. It’s terrible when we are both holed up like this.

A couple of other people wanted a chat too, people whom I hadn’t seen for ages and ages. In one of these chats, however, I’m not sure what happened, but another contributor thought that I wasn’t real and I was thrown off the chat site.

Me? Not real? You couldn’t make it up, could you?

There was also a telephone interview with my internet supplier. I’d been asking for a compte-rendu of the failure of the engineer to install my fibre-optic cable but despite several reminders, he’s not replied.

Of course, I can’t go and knock the building about on my own. Firstly, it’s a listed building here and secondly, it’s the responsibility of the residents’ committee to deal with these issues. And without a compte-rendu in writing, they can’t do anything at all. So I’ve arranged for a further survey to take place on Wednesday next week so that he can check the work of the first guy and provide the technical report.

It goes without saying that I’ve invited the residents’ committee and the estate agent who deals with the building, as well as a few others, to attend, to witness the event and to take copious notes. And it also goes without saying that the only replies that I have received are to say that certain people can’t make it. Voting with their feet and heading for the hills, I shouldn’t wonder.

There was time to write some (but not much) of the notes for the radio programme. It was disappointing that I didn’t finish, and that I’m a long way from finishing too, but these things happen occasionally when there’s a combination of different services that arises. I must do better tomorrow – after all, I can hardly do worse.

So with no tea tonight except some crackers and vegan cheese, I’m going to bed ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about forgetfulness … "well, one of us has" – ed … It’s only fair to mention the state of anyone’s memory and the two things that happen when they reach the magic age of threescore years and ten
"The first thing that happens is that you forget absolutely everything you ever remember" I said to a friend.
"And what’s the second thing?" she asked.
"I don’t know" I replied. "I’ve forgotten."

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Saturday 29th November 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

… that tomorrow and all subsequent Sundays until further notice, there will be no alarm call. If Isabelle the Nurse comes along and finds me still in bed, then she will have to sort out my legs while I’m lying there, and after she’s gone, I’ll go back to sleep. I can’t go on like I am at the moment.

What didn’t help was that, after the football, it was a terribly late night. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

There was no difficulty falling asleep either, and there I lay, dead to the World until BILLY COTTON shattered my peace.

Ohhh! How I wish that I could have stayed in bed. I was feeling absolutely shattered. It took a good ten minutes for me to summon up the courage to leave the bed and stagger off to the bathroom.

As well as washing myself, I filled the washing machine with dirty clothes and let it loose while I wandered off for my medication.

In the kitchen, there was yesterday’s washing-up to do before I could do anything else. How I hate waking up to that in the morning, but it gives you some idea of how tired I was last night that I left it. However, once I’d done it, I could make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but there was nothing on it from last night. Not that that’s a surprise, seeing how tired I was. What I did instead was to … errr … crash out on my chair.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise when she arrived. Pressing the doorbell as she does when she arrives awoke me with quite a shock.

After she had given me the final injection of this series, she sorted out my legs and then wandered off. It took me another good ten minutes to be able to stand up and go to make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN and although there was plenty of interest, there was nothing that was worthy of a note in here.

However, our author did put me on the trail of a book written by John Horsley called BRITANNIA ROMANA, written in 1734. It contains information about what was known about the Romans at that time, and also visual descriptions of the remains. Judging by what Codrington has been telling us, a great deal of infrastructure was still standing in Horsley’s day but had disappeared by the time of Codrington.

When I’d finished breakfast, I went to rescue the washing from the washing machine and hang it on the clothes airer. And that almost killed me too, so back in here, I crashed out yet again.

When I came round, at about 11:30, I began to assemble the radio programme that I had been preparing. It took a while, but it’s now finished and ready to go. And so I watched the highlights of Barry v Hwlffordd from last night.

After I’d stopped for my disgusting drink break, I began to make my Christmas cake. And I’ve ended up with two because I made far too much batter. Does anyone want a spare Christmas cake?

It took over three hours to prepare them today, and of course, the week during which the dried fruit had been soaking, and they went into the oven on a low temperature for three and a half hours.

While the cakes were cooking, I made a start on another radio programme. This is another complicated one and is going to take some assembling. Sorting out the music is quite a task and I’ve still not finished that part yet

Back in the kitchen, I switched off the oven and checked the cakes. They are cooked to perfection, and now they need to cool down for a week or so before I can marzipan them, and then another week before I can ice them

But I’m definitely ill and I’m at a loss as to why. I’m totally exhausted, I ache in every conceivable place and I’ve lost all of my energy and enthusiasm. In fact, I’m really surprised that I’ve managed to do so much today, despite how ill I’m feeling.

So ill that, in fact, I made a very small portion of mushroom curry and yet most of it ended up in the waste bin. No dessert either. I just want to go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about baking a Christmas cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … you have to bake it in a fan oven turned to 120° for three and a half hours
When I lived in Crewe, I mentioned it to a local girl who wanted to know the details.
A few days later, I asked her how she had got on with it.
"It was a waste of time" she replied. "I tried what you said but after ten seconds, the cake just slid down to the side."

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Monday 24th November 2025 – THESE LONG SESSIONS …

… at dialysis are quite difficult to bear, but I’m going to push ahead with them all the same for as long as I can, especially if it means that I can have an extra day at home.

By the time that I made it back home this evening, I was totally exhausted, and it was just as well that my tea tonight was already prepared without any intervention on my part.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. By the time that I was finally ready for bed, it was about 23:20 and there have been nights much later than that in the past.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed. I’d no idea what time it was that I awoke because I didn’t check the time as I usually do. But I was contemplating having a quick glance at the time when BILLY COTTON beat me to it; so it can’t have been too far short of 06:29.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to find my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom. In the kitchen, I made my got lemon, ginger and honey and drink to go with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

It’s surprising how much there was on there too, considering that I remember nothing at all. There were different kinds of spraying machines. I counted about three different types, and for one type, water came out of the jets with such force that it lifted the pipework up off the ground. Someone wanted to know the name of that type of thing, and I knew it but I couldn’t think of it. It was something like the Douche Marie or something. I was wracking my brains for ages and I couldn’t actually think of another name by which that kind of machine is called.

Everyone has seen these videos, I imagine, of people holding two Kärcher pressure washers, one in each hand, and being lifted off the ground by the force of the water. It was something like that.

And then I was on my way to a family wedding. I arrived at some different town and was walking through there looking for the place to go. I came across a bathroom so I thought that I’d nip in there and read the time, but it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see what time it was. But my mother was there. She stuck her head in and saw me, and was about to say something but she changed her mind and walked away. After I’d finished sorting out some water, I went into the main room. There was all my family and everyone whom I knew so I simply said “hello, people”, found an empty chair and sat down … fell asleep here … and anyway, so they were sending meals around at some point during all the speeches. My meal came on my black glass chopping board. I thought that this was unusual. There’s a special name for a meal that’s served like this but I couldn’t think of it at the time and I still can’t now.

As if I’m ever likely to go to a family wedding. But why would my black glass chopping board feature in one of my dreams like this?

There was a taxi to go to the station but the taxi was hours late arriving. We were all beginning to panic about this. We’d made enquiries about walking there but I’d have to change partner thirteen times between my house and the station. There was me, my girlfriend, my brother and his girlfriend or wife and we were waiting. Another taxi turned up for someone else so we asked about ours. The driver decided that he would go back to the depot and find out what was going on, and my brother went with him. Just then, our taxi turned up so I shouted to my brother but he didn’t really pay too much attention – he was too busy on the ‘phone. So we went somewhere into the vehicle, but there were some things like some plastic hurdle fences in there so we’d have to fight our way around them to get into the car. For some reason, I sat in the front instead of in the back with my girlfriend. The car set off and after we’d been driving for a couple of minutes, I noticed that my brother wasn’t on board. I asked what happened to him, and one of the girls said that he had decided to run. I thought that thirteen changes of partner was a lot, but it’s bound to be more now. This is making life extremely complicated to reach the railway station on time before the train that we wanted departs.

These dreams of indecision are a regular feature of my nocturnal rambles, but it’s usually to do with my activities rather than someone else’s. And who was the girlfriend? Fancy having a girlfriend in my dreams and not knowing who she is. That’s a sad state of affairs.

There was a film being shown somewhere. I had a friend of mine round and I recommended to him that he went to see it, because it was an extremely classic film. I was away – I had some taxi jobs to do – so I went to pick up a family from a poor area of Crewe and they actually had a copy of the book and one of the kids was taking it with him to read. So off they went and off we went. A short while later, I had to go to take them home. I’d picked up my friend from the cinema in the meantime and when I reached the home to drop off these people, I saw that the boy put this book in the waste paper bin. I picked it up and said that before I go, I’ll mention to the family to see if I could borrow this. We went off somewhere else and while we were driving, I noticed that the book was on my dashboard. I’d mentioned that I was going to ask to borrow it but it looks like I already have.

The film was actually THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, based on A BOOK OF THE SAME NAME written by Erskine Childers. The book is much, much better than the film, even if Jenny Agutter is in the film. It concerns a couple of amateur yachtsmen who stumble across a rehearsal for a German invasion of the UK just before World War I. I actually have a copy of the book.

Ironically, when Childers was serving in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, he carried out many patrols over the area from where the invasion was said to take place. However, he came to a sticky end after the war. An ardent Republican, he was executed by the “Treaty Irish” in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War.

With that friend, he was a guitarist – he wasn’t, he was a drummer – and we were round at my house because we were going to meet some guitarist. There was a concert or gig being played and he’d been looking for a bassist and a drummer. My friend asked what kind of music we’d be playing. I said that according to this guitarist, it would just be basic, well-known twelve-bar standards. He asked whether this person was a boy or a girl, and I said “I don’t really know. I’ve never actually met who it was”. We set off and reached this rehearsal hall and there were several people there. I gave some stuff to whoever was in charge to make a meal. He looked, and told us of four or five things that were missing. So we piled into this car, and had another girl with us and we set off for the shops. I suddenly realised that the Intermarché in Pionsat was much closer so we went to the Intermarché at Pionsat and wandered round, picking up the things that we needed. I noticed that at the till, there was a bin full of reduced stock. I looked in, and there was a huge tin of custard powder there for sale for €3:01. I thought “it’s a long time since I’ve had some real custard” so I added that onto the list too. There we were, with all this food that we’d bought and I thought that at this rate, these rehearsals are going to be over and it’s not really worth going back because it’s taken us so long to do all this shopping.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find a giant tin of vegan custard powder somewhere? I’m having to make do with a sweetened béchamel sauce with vanilla flavouring and it’s not the same.

The nurse turned up as usual, but he didn’t stay long. He goes off on his week’s break this evening so I imagine that he wanted to finish his rounds as quickly as possible. I could then push on with making breakfast.

This morning, I finished MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

In the past, we’ve talked about how certain words in the English language have changed their meaning over the passage of time. At least, I hope that that’s the case here when she talks about the commemoration of the battles up on the Bozeman Trail, saying "It is well the programme was no longer, or I should run out of expletives"

And like the previous Mrs Carrington, she has no sense whatever of irony. She notes, when talking about the area in which the battles took place, that "it is not to be forgotten that the Sioux themselves had stolen it from the Crow Indians" and "many of the Sioux, themselves, were beginning to realise that their occupation had been one of force, and not of inherent right."

Just what, exactly, was the American army doing up on the Bozeman Trail in 1866? Pot calling the kettle “black”, methinks.

She also notes a report from one of the contemporary local newspapers in Sheridan, that "the time ought to come before many years, and will come, if the present policy is carried out, when the Indians will have the same rights and duties as other Americans"

That was written in 1909 and we are still waiting even now for this to come to pass.

Back in here, I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off, and then I spent the rest of the morning revising for the lesson tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and that I had to wait for the taxi. Not only was it running late, due to a weird decision by the controller to insist that the driver took her break in the middle of nowhere, we had to pick up in Donville les Bains and then miles out on the road to Villedieu.

As a result, I was quite late arriving but at least, I was connected up quite quickly without having to wait around.

Or so I thought. One of the needles failed and they had to start again later.

Apart from a brief visit from the doctor, I was left pretty much alone, and when I was finally unplugged, the driver was already waiting for me.

Back here, my cleaner helped me back to the apartment, then after she left, I warmed up the half-pizza from last night. It’s even nicer twenty-four hours later.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover from my recent efforts. And I need a decent recovery because I’m still quite exhausted and I can’t see it ending.

But seeing as we have been talking about invasions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Duke of Wellington was told during the Napoleonic Wars that a prominent group of citizens planned to form a regiment of volunteer cavalry "but not to be sent overseas".
With one of his usual scathing remarks, he replied "except in the case of invasion, I suppose."

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Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days where nothing whatever seems to have gone your way? Well, that’s how it seems to have been today.

Actually, it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and one or two (but only one or two) things did seem to go according to plan, but the rest of the time seems to have been spent lurching from one disaster to another.

There’s no point complaining about last night, because finishing my notes early but going to bed late seems to be par for the course these days and nothing that I seem to be able to do will ever change that, by the looks of things.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly but whatever happened after that was the first entry in this catalogue of disasters.

When I awoke, I had a feeling that there was something totally wrong, so I checked the time. Yes, it was actually 07:10 – some forty minutes after the alarm should have gone off. Did I sleep through the 06:29 alarm and its repeater at 06:33? Or did I forget to set it last night (it should set itself automatically)?

When you consider how loud BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE is, first thing in the morning, it can really only be the latter.

So at that point, I leaped to my feet … “well, not exactly” – ed … and staggered off into the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for my medication. That was when Bane of Britain found that he had forgotten to take his Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D on Saturday

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

I was playing American football last night. We were all lined up on the goal line of our team, and someone threw the ball in from the touchline. It landed almost right at my feet so I fell on it to try to kill the ball. For some reason, the referee didn’t call the ball dead so I had to struggle to my feet, with two or three of the opposing players clinging on, and tried to move it away from near the goal. I managed to make about three or four paces before the weight pulled me down to the floor. I thought that that was really impressive, given everything else happening at the time.

Throwing in from the touchline in Gridiron? Somehow I’m confusing my sports here. It might be possible to do so in Rugby Union, I suppose, but then the ball wouldn’t be called dead in that kind of circumstance anyway.

And then there was something else about being in the kitchen of someone else’s house. They had a large white dog that was always hungry, looking for its food, so they simply turned the door of the cupboard upside-down so that the dog’s food was at the top and the dog couldn’t reach it. After a couple of minutes of sniffing around, the dog suddenly began scratching at the bottom of the cupboard door. It had only worked out where the food was, but it couldn’t manage to open the door. The old man of the house was quite comfortable with this going on, although everyone else wasn’t so much. Then this girl appeared. She walked into the kitchen where everyone was sitting. She said something along the lines that she was feeling hungry, but she had to hurry because she was having to go out. The young boy of the family said “the food’s off tonight”. She wondered what he meant. He told her that her father was fed up of the kitchen not actually making a profit so was rather in the way of putting various restrictions on what went on. The dog was amongst the first people to suffer.

That’s another dream that is totally meaningless as far as I am concerned. Whoever heard of a kitchen making a profit? I wish mine would.

But at least there’s no mention of anything to do with the American Revolutionary War.

Isabelle the nurse breezed in as usual, full of good humour and bonhomie. She dealt with my legs and feet, and then breezed out as rapidly as she had come. I could then push on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Today, we’re discussing the British attack on Philadelphia where, for once, it’s the American dilatory tactics that affect the battle, with the British for once pushing on rapidly.

But Henry Carrington’s writing is sometimes, quite unintentionally amusing because of the stance that he takes. He writes pages about the “looting, pillaging and plundering undertaken by the British Army” but glosses over the “American Army seeking forced contributions from the local inhabitants”

Back in here, I had to prepare my timetable for the Centre de Ré-education and then do one or two other things, but the taxi driver rang me to say that he would be early, so I had to abandon everything in order to make myself ready.

At the Centre de Ré-education, my first appointment was with a physiotherapist who gave me a good in-depth examination in order to work out what programme of exercises would do me most good.

The second one was with with someone from the APA – the organisation that deals with autonomy. She wanted to see what I could do and what I needed in order to continue to live alone in my own property.

My next sessions are organised for Friday, so it’s all going to be really quick.

The taxi was due to come to pick me up at 12:30, but by 13:00 I was still waiting, so I ‘phoned them up. Eventually, the car arrived. The driver had had a breakdown … “he means ‘the car'” – ed … and it had taken a while to fix.

Back here, I could hear the computer in the office making strange noises, but I needed a disgusting drink break and to take my midday medication.

My cleaner appeared shortly afterwards and so I went for a shower. It seemed to be easier to climb into the shower today, which made a pleasant change, and it was beautiful. This shower really works and I’m glad that I had it done.

The washing is building up, due to not being able to use the washing machine until the leak somewhere is fixed, so my cleaner grabbed an armful of clothes to wash in her machine, which was nice.

Back in here, we had the ultimate catastrophe. The computer had ground to a halt and wouldn’t restart. There was just an error message “auto-repair cannot fix this drive”. And that’s bad news because I’d only bought this drive in March this year.

This could, in normal circumstances, be considered a calamity but that’s not so in here.

First of all, I keep the system files on one disk and the data files on a second, so that if one fails, the other one still is accessible.

Secondly, it’s the system disk that has failed, and I still have the previous disk, the one prior to March 2025, that I had put on one side after I’d taken it out. So having found it again (which is a surprise after the house move when I can’t find anything at all), I swapped it back and reinstalled it.

But it’s totally disappointing, and it’s shattered my illusions. The drive that has failed is a 1TB Solid State Drive and because these drives have no moving parts, which, according to their publicity, makes “them faster, quieter, and more durable. This absence of mechanical components means SSDs are less prone to physical wear and mechanical failure”

Well, so much for the publicity

In the middle of all of this, I crashed out yet again with another one of these catatonic attacks followed by actually slipping off to sleep for twenty minutes. I hope that this isn’t going to become a regular feature. I’ll be totally dismayed if it is.

Rosemary rang me later for a little chat. And it was a little chat too – only one hour long today. One of the subjects of discussion was the semi-feral cat that has adopted her and has rapidly transformed itself into a pampered domestic feline. It makes me even more determined to find a cat that will adopt me.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and once more, I left food on my plate. This is all rather worrying because it’s not like me at all and it’s a sure sign that things aren’t as they should be. I’m definitely sickening for something

But I’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I’ve had quite enough of today, thank you very much.

But seeing as we have been talking about my new computer drive … “well, one of us has” – ed … it’s a good job that I can remember my password.
It takes me back to when my brother first had a computer. When setting it up, he needed to create a password so he asked me about it
My reply was “You need at least six characters, plus one capital and also one special character”
So he replied “How about ‘HawkeyeTheLoneRangerThe VirginianMickyMouseBossHoggGandalfParisHermionebecauseIloveher”

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Wednesday 30th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… another wonderful day out today. And I’ve been shopping today again too. It was really pleasant to hit the streets again and I enjoyed it tremendously.

And that’s even after the lack of sleep that I had last night.

In fact, it was after 01:30 when I finally hit the sack. I was quite wound up after all of my efforts yesterday and couldn’t settle down. Instead, I found a few things t do on the computer and had a wander around in cyberspace doing a bit of this and a bit of that. As for “a bit of the other”, I managed to restrain myself.

When I finally made it into bed, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for quite some considerable time.

However, I must have dropped off to sleep at some point because BILLY COTTON awoke me at 07:00.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t as tired as I might have been. I made it into the bathroom and sorted myself out, as far as it is possible to do so, and then went into the kitchen for my medication.

There was a beautiful draught of air coming through the open window (I’d left it open all night). And as I sat there, the sun rose from behind the church and immediately the current of air became warm. I was only there ten minutes too.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and the answer was a predictable “nowhere”, given the amount of sleep that I had had.

The nurse was in full chat mode and for a change it was quite interesting. He also mentioned another one of his friends who had some kind of connection with a building company. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I know all about his friends.

While we’re on the subject of friends … "well, one of us is" – ed … my friend turned up shortly afterwards and we had a good chat as we waited for the builder to show up (late, as usual, but we expected that).

When he turned up, we found that he was quite efficient, quite frank and quite easy to talk to. He made me fully aware (however, I already knew) that there would be no guarantee or promise that his company could start work within my deadline. It was that that impressed me the most.

He’s arranged for an appointment on 3rd June (when I should have possession) to measure up and talk to his contractors. And it can’t be done any quicker than that.

After he left we had breakfast and continued our discussion for a while, tearing apart all kinds of ideas and plans for downstairs.

Eventually, we decided to make the most of the lovely weather and went out to the car – or, rather, we went outside and my friend went and brought the car to me.

Our first stop was at Donville-les-Bains. The branch of my bank there is much easier to access and parking is easier so I went in and drew out some cash – the first time since I can’t remember when. Not that I need it, because I do have an emergency supply here in the apartment and I haven’t spent any in ages – but it’s always handy to have around “just in case”. And I won’t have many other opportunities.

After we left, we went down the hill to the seafront and had a very, very leisurely drive along the coast as we chatted about old times. We saw some wonderful sights, and made quite a few U-turns as our path led up into various dead ends.

We decided to go to Coutances for lunch and my Artificial Intelligence search engine made several suggestions as to where a vegan could eat.

However, I don’t know what France has come to these days.

When Marechal Foch took over overall command of the French Army in 1918 it is said that he said that he only had two conditions – "a free hand with the Army, and two hours for lunch". We arrived in Coutances well before 14:00 only to find that every single restaurant that we tried had closed its kitchen at 13:30

We ended up at the LeClerc supermarket where we grabbed some “Tricatel” food, thanks to a couple of nice serving wenches who took their time closing at 14:30 so that we could just about have time to be served.

On the way back home we stopped at Noz, my first time since October 2023 where I struck lucky with some fabric softener, some coffee, some noodles and a pile of frozen vegan food.

Leaving Noz, we drove slap bang past the place that my nurse had mentioned, so we went in anyway. His friend wasn’t there but a helpful girl gave me several pointers and arranged an appointment for someone to come to see me. There’s no harm in it, I suppose.

On our arrival home, we found that my faithful cleaner had been to LeClerc in Granville and had found my pyjamas as well as more of those curry patties that we had bought yesterday.

For tea I had lasagna out of the freezer, making space to put in everything that we had bought. It’s not ‘arf crowded in there but it all went in, right enough.

Our chat, reminiscing about old times, continued for ages. He showed me some photos of our project in the UK – the “before” and the “after”. The “after” is so impressive and looks wonderful and we will soon be ready to start Stage Two of our project but the “before” photos are horrifying and I was genuinely appalled.

Eventually he left to go back to his hotel ready for an early night as he has to set off for back home at 05:30 tomorrow morning. We had a lovely two days together, going to places, catching up on old times and discussing new times, but what kind of state is this to be in when someone has to drive all the way from Newport in Shropshire to take me to the shops?

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, later than usual yet again. Dialysis tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I wonder if there will be any more feedback from my rebellion on Monday

We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about going down a few dead ends … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of a report on male sterility that was published a few years ago.
A newspaper had laid its hand on the article and the headlines the next day were "Male Sterility – a dead end?"

0

Wednesday 16th April 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about my hot cross buns. They have risen up like the proverbial lift and look absolutely magnificent. It just shows the difference that having an accurate water gauge makes. All these years that I’ve had some very hit-and-miss baking …

Something else that was magnificent last night was the fact that I was in bed by 23:00, for the first time for ages. I really appreciated it too, having blitzed through everything after tea – the notes, the statistics and the back-up et cetera.

As well as that, it didn’t take long to drop off either, and there I stayed, fast asleep, until 06:55. Probably the best night’s sleep that I have had for ages.

When the alarm went off I was awake thinking about leaving the bed early but BILLY COTTON beat me to it. Surprisingly it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy to leave the bed.

In the bathroom I had a cursory wash (after all, it is shower day today) and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had to meet Rosemary and we arranged to meet in London at one of the big railway station termini. She had a rough idea of when she’d be there. I was already in London so I said that I would be there or thereabouts. As the station is so big, I’ll just arrive there and we’ll contact each other by ‘phone or something. When it came time to go I set out on foot on my usual way. I suddenly realised that I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. Just at that moment I was walking past a house when a taxi pulled up. I asked the driver which was the best way to the railway station. He pointed out the way from which I had just come. Down at that end of the road was a dirt track that led through some kinds of fields or common. I asked “surely you don’t mean that I am to go past there?”. He replied “no, it’s a great big main four-lane road”. I realised then where I’d gone wrong – I’d gone wrong a long way before the junction back down the road. I asked “could you run me there?”. He replied “I can’t. I’m finishing work. I live here”. I tried to persuade him but it didn’t work. Another taxi pulled up so I asked him but the first driver told him not to bother – that I was going to walk. I was rather disappointed by the two of them. I set out to walk back and walked probably the quickest that I have ever walked in my life. Eventually I could see the railway station in the distance. There was a big road junction just before it. There were millions of cars milling around there trying to go through, totally ignoring the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossing but people just surged across. Some girl in a car tried to drive through the crowd and the crowd was quite irate. They made something of a demonstration about it. In the end I extricated myself from this mess but still had ten minutes of walking to go and I thought that I was going to be late yet again.

This all rings a bell with me. I’ve walked down that dirt road and across those fields and common before during one of my previous nocturnal rambles, quite a while ago now. As well as that, I can see the railway station now. I was up on the top of a hill, something like Highgate in London. The railway station was on a slight rise across a valley, with its huge arched train shed clearly visible. However, we are once again overwhelmed in confusion and anxiety in a dream. Someone has commented on my anxiety and confusion dreams in the past and suggests that it might be due to stress. All I can say is that if my life now is stressful, what must my dreams have been like 40 years or so ago when I was running my taxis?

Later on I went back into that dream … "which dream is this?" – ed … I was wandering around Crewe near the Square, talking to a friend of mine while I was typing out some notes for the radio. One of the things that I was typing out was the notes of something about the Blues Brothers. At that moment friend climbed into his car and shot off just like the Blues Brothers did. of course, at that moment, a police car appeared. The police car went to block him off on the Square. I could see it all perfectly from my vantage point but my friend’s vantage point was obscured by the old Marks and Spencers building. When he came round the corner there he found himself face-to-face with the policeman. Of course he had to stop, he couldn’t really do anything. The policeman stepped out of his vehicle and the first thing that he did was to close the bonnet of my friend’s car – it was one of these bonnets that hinges from the front, not from the rear. He would often leave it open as he drove around, held only by the security catch

That reminds me of a time 40 or 50 years ago when we were all out late one night (or early in the morning, more like) in Crewe when there was a heavy snowfall. My friend took his car onto the public car park, that was totally empty, and was spinning round doing doughnuts on the slippery surface. What he had failed to take into account that it was right next to the police station. Two constables came out and gave him a ticket for “using a car park other than for the purpose of parking”.

The nurse was in a better humour today and was rather more cheerful than yesterday. However he didn’t stop for long and I could get on and make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

Our trip around the castles of England (and Wales) is turning into a real whistle-stop tour. On some of these sites we aren’t discussing architecture of any type (never mind military architecture) because there are no extant remains, so I’m not convinced of the reason why we’ve even come here.

However, he does make an interesting observation when it comes to Huntingdon Castle. He tells us that "William the Conqueror was at Huntingdon 1068, when he ordered a castle to be built, evidently on the site of the old fortress restored by Edward the Elder in 918. The names in Domesday show how complete had been the removal of the larger English landowners."

We’ve talked rather a lot just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … about the ethnic cleansing that must have taken place as several waves of invaders overwhelmed the native population during the various invasions back in the early days of history and prehistory. So these “larger English landowners” – what happened to them? I can’t see them being allowed to remain, even as serfs and slaves, in the local area where they might command the respect and loyalty of their previous tenants and possibly incite a rebellion.

Back in here I had things to do that needed my attention, and then I cracked on with the radio programme. All of the notes for programme 260227 are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

There was time for a disgusting drink break and to sort out my faithful cleaner when she arrived. And then I had a wonderful shower and found some nice, clean clothes so that I shall look fine for Emily the Cute Consultant tomorrow.

After my cleaner left, I had my second disgusting drink and then I had things to do.

After breakfast I had put some lentils and split peas into the slow cooker and after an hour and the water had boiled, I rinsed them and then put them back in the slow cooker on the lowest heat with some clean water. So after the afternoon’s disgusting drink break I began to plan my lentil lasagna.

First though, I had hot cross buns to make. And here I almost had a disaster. I didn’t have enough vegan butter.

However, any oil is good, as we have proved with our oil cakes, so why not use coconut oil? I made a really good mix of flour, coconut oil, salt, yeast and mixed spices with warm soya milk and melted coconut oil – the correct amounts of liquid – and left it to fester.

While it was festering, I fried a large onion and some garlic in my wok, tipped the lentils and split peas in after I’d rinsed them again, along with a pack of this soya mince in tomato sauce that I wanted to try. In went some tomato sauce and herbs and so on and I left it to simmer away.

The dough for the hot cross buns had risen nicely so I added some sultanas, raisins and some orange essence, and kneaded it all again.

After it had stood for a while and risen again, I moulded the dough into six balls, flattened them and put them on the biscuit tray. I made some thick flour mix and with my icing piper, piped the crosses on the buns and left them to rise again.

While they were festering, I assembled my lasagna and made a vegan cheese sauce that I poured over the top, and stuck it all into the oven.

When it was cooked I put the hot cross buns in and then had a quarter of my lasagne with some vegetables. And it was delicious. Even better, there are three more slices to go into the freezer for another time. It was the lst of the orange, ginger and coconut cake today too. Tomorrow I’ll start on my chocolate cake.

Rosemary had rung up while I was baking so after I’d finished tea and washed up, we had a little chat. Not very long – only fifty-four minutes.

Consequently I’m running really late but never mind – I’m off to bed right now. Tomorrow is dialysis day and shopping order too.

But while we’re on the subject of buns … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me that he had served in the Army in a regiment where the chief cook was Doctor Spooner’s brother.
"How interesting" I replied
"Very interesting" he said "especially when the Germans launched an attack on the kitchen"
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because Doctor Spooner’s brother personally led the counter-attack" he replied. "He went into action with all buns glazing"

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Friday 11th April 2025 – AFTER BREAKFAST HAD …

… finished I cleared up, put the tray onto my little trolley, then my cup and then pushed the trolley into the bedroom where I could finish my coffee while I was working.

And then I had a brilliant idea – “if I want to finish off the coffee while I’m working, why didn’t I bring the coffee pot in here with me when I brought the mug and the tray?”. Sometimes I really wonder what is happening to me and my memory right now. It’s always been bad and became worse after my depressed fracture of the skull in the accident when I was taxi-driving in Sandbach, but these days it’s going even worse.

In fact my whole character changed after that accident. I must have had a brain injury or something and my whole life ever since then became a constant battle against reality … "and still is" – ed …. It took several years to come to terms with my new situation. However, all of that is another story completely, consisting of water that has long-since flown under the bridge.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I really was ill late night after the dialysis. And to prove that I can do it when I really try, I had finished all of my notes, taken the stats and done the back-up and was in bed by 22:50. And by 22:51 I was fast asleep.

Apart from one awakening, before midnight according to a timestamp on the dictaphone, I didn’t move until about 06:50 either. That was what I really call a good sleep. I must have needed it.

While I was debating whether or not to pull my head from out underneath the covers, BILLY COTTON beat me to it and I fell out of bed.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I sent a message to my faithful cleaner about my shopping and my new compression socks, and then I transcribed the dictaphone notes. The first thing that happened was that a girl from school appeared in my dreams last night when I was asleep quite early. I was on the point of inviting her out for a date when suddenly I awoke up and she completely disappeared and took off, taking everything with her.

The first question that went through my mind when I transcribed this was “who the heck was she?”. I wish that I had recorded who she was. That would have been nice to know. All these girls turning up in my dreams and I’m not aware of them. However, awakening just as things are about to become interesting – there goes my subconscious again, keeping me out of mischief. If I am going to be diverted from my evil designs, I’d rather it was me than any member of my family coming along, something that usually happens.

Later on I was out on one of the French islands near the Equator checking vehicle registration numbers. They seemed to be arranged in groups of – two numbers – a number and a letter – two numbers … "numbers like 11-2A-33" – ed … and the plates were yellow with black writing rather like the current French rear number plates.

Why registration numbers of cars on a French island should interest me, I really have no idea. The only French island that appeals to me is St Pierre et Miquelon, the French DOM TOM off the coast of Newfoundland. I’ve told you before … "and on many occasion too" – ed … about the exciting event that happened while I was sailing past there in 2017 across the Gulf of St Lawrence.

And then my Greek friend came round and told me that she was going off on a holiday somewhere. After a little discussion it turned out that she was going on a week’s retreat somewhere in a monastery, a nunnery or something. We had something of a chat. I noticed that she was feeling particularly depressed. After a while we said goodbye to each other and she wandered away. A short while later another girl whom I quite liked came round – the sister of a friend of mine at school. We’d had a little something of an association at one time. She had this sheep that she was keeping in her apartment so we went to look at it. We ended up having to chase it around the apartment and catch it, and had a really good time. We arranged to meet at another moment so I went home. In the meantime, a third friend of mine, who lodged with me for a year once at Expo, was in her little apartment, a tiny place with just a bed and a toilet in it. I went round there and she had a friend with her so there were three of us. She asked “have you seen your Greek friend recently?”. I replied “yes, I saw her earlier”. She replied “well, do you know that she’s gone off?”. I replied “yes, I know. I was talking to her just before she left. She was telling me all of her plans”. This quite surprised my friend in that apartment. She didn’t realise that I’d been talking to her. She thought that she was the only person concerned in this story. She asked “do you know that she has a son?”. I replied “I’m sure that she hasn’t. After all, I’ve worked with her for years”. “Well, she’s talking about going to Paris” to which I replied that it didn’t surprise me because she occasionally had whims like that. She asked me what else I’d been up to. I replied that I’d been herding sheep and began to recount this story with my friend’s sister and hunting sheep around her apartment

My Greek friend was an interesting girl. When I went to work in Brussels the job that I was to take wasn’t ready for me so I worked in the document preparation department where I learned all about desktop publishing, printing layouts and so on. There were about twenty of us who started at about that time and we formed a little group to go ice-skating, the cinema, that kind of thing. Gradually, two by two, everyone paired off and I used to go around with my Greek friend. She blew very hot when she thought that I wasn’t interested but whenever I showed more than a passing interest in her, she cooled off dramatically. I reckon that she was frightened and I don’t blame her. After all, which member of the opposite sex would ever feel comfortable with me around?

The sister of my friend is an easy one to guess. She was much younger than us at school but even so we all knew that she was going to be a beautiful girl. Quite a few years later I was running parcels to Belfast – the only volunteer with a British-registered van to take freight to Belfast in the 1970s but I needed the money – and apart from stopping to watch Stranraer and being arrested at gunpoint by an Army patrol (those two events were not connected), on one occasion I stopped at Galgate just outside Lancaster for some fish and chips and a pint. And who should be serving behind the bar in the pub? She was a student at Lancaster earning some pocket money. Consequently every time that there was a parcel to go north I was always the first to volunteer.

When it came to Easter she had no means of going home so I went and picked her up. We saw each other a few times and then one night I invited her home. Tuppence, my old, anti-social black cat came and jumped on her lap, something that took me totally by surprise as it wasn’t like her at all, and I thought "ahhh – even the cat likes her".. On the way home I told her that I’d like to continue to see her even when she goes back to University and she replied "yes – but you’ll have to get rid of that cat! I hate cats!".

It goes without saying that I kept the cat. She was definitely the Lady of the House and she drove more than just that one girl away. She stood no chance with Nerina though. Nerina loved cats and as soon as she saw Tuppence it was "ohh, a cat!" and she had Tuppence in her arms before the cat had had time to think. Tuppence was the first of our rather large adopted family of felines. I often wonder if Nerina still has cats

There was also something else about being in the Army last night. One of the depots was closing down and they were selling a whole pile of things. I was interested in their lorry but they told me that they wanted £200 for it or something like that and I was unwilling to pay it because I couldn’t afford it. They talked about what vehicles I had and discussed a part-exchange but it wasn’t really practical. Then the discussion turned to motorcycles. They had a Kawasaki. I said “Kawasakis haven’t been imported into the UK yet. You can’t have a Kawasaki”. They replied “oh yes we have, a 1985 model”. That totally surprised me because I thought that we were in the 1950s. When I enquired the guy told me “well, it is 1987 you know”. I thought “well, I thought that it was 1957. We’d just been watching a film on the television in black and white and it was only made a short while ago”. I was expecting that we were in the 1950s but this officer insisted that it was 1987 and they had a 1985 Kawasaki. I didn’t understand what was going on at all.

… "”I didn’t understand what was going on at all” – nothing at all new there" – ed … But it really was a strange dream – being in 1987 but thinking that it was still 1957, not that I remember all that much about the latter year. Even more interestingly, if I really did believe that it was 1987, how did I even know about Kawasaki motorcycles, let alone that they hadn’t been imported into the UK “yet”?

Isabelle the Nurse came by to sort me out and she brought me the necessary prescription for my compression socks.

After she left I made breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. Considering that it’s title is “Medieval Military Architecture in England”, today we arrived at Castle Harlech, which is well and truly on the west coast of Wales.

He’s pointed out hundreds of important factors that bear upon the engineering of the castle from a military point of view during his minute inspection of the civilian architecture, but not once does he give any indication of the purpose or the principle of that particular factor. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that’s disappointing because that was just what I was hoping to find in a book like this.

Back in here I made a start on my Woodstock extravaganza and by the time I’d finished, Friday was finished too. The notes that I have written for Friday run to a massive sixteen minutes and fifty-seven seconds and are likely to increase when I read through them a second time. Friday’s programme now runs out at one hour ten minutes and twenty-six seconds which, for a programme that is supposed to last one hour, will provide its own complications. Even if I remove some songs, the text will increase because I will have to say what has gone and why.

There were the usual interruptions. Two disgusting drinks breaks, my cleaner coming to do her stuff and to sort out the medication, and the postman.

The postman brought two pieces of news. Firstly, regular readers of this rubbish will recall the bread-making issues that I have had in the past. The scientific water gauge that arrived today tells me that 200ml of water in the gauge is showing 230ml in the previous gauge that I used. That means that the previous gauge is under-reading by about 15% and will explain a lot about the shortcoming in my baking.

The second letter is one that I have been half-expecting. My tenant downstairs is asking for an extension of her lease until the end of June. Of course she can have an extension – I’ve never yet put anyone out into the street and I’ve no intention of doing so now. However, workmen will be going in as of the beginning of June to rip out the kitchen and the bathroom and fit the new kitchen and shower room whether she’s there or not, whether she likes it or not, and whether the water is cut off or not. And if the workmen use electricity and water while she is there, there is no possible way of splitting the bill so she will have to pay all of it. I’m not going to revise my plans at all.

By the time that I’d finished everything it was tea-time – air-fried chips with salad and a handful of those tiny nuggets that I found while I was tidying out the freezer, followed by more orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. The cake is nearly finished so Sunday I shall be baking. As it’s coming close to Easter, I shall go for a chocolate cake and see what happens.

Tomorrow is dialysis day of course and the vital match at the foot of the table between Aberystwyth and Y Drenewydd. Aberystwyth are already relegated, of course, but Y Drenewydd, the only other ever-present team in the League since its formation, must win and hope that Llansawel lose against Y Ff lint to give themselves hope for the final match.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight is bedtime when I’ve finished my tasks and we’ll see how things unfold.

But seeing as we have been talking about my visits to Belfast … "well, one of us was" – ed … while I was there, I met an American visitor looking to find his roots.
He was clearly disappointed with what he saw, the violence, the destruction and so on, and loudly exclaimed, to anyone who would care to listen "I think that Belfast and Northern Ireland is the ass-hole of the World"
And some Northern Irishman standing nearby said, in an equally loud voice "if that’s the case, then he must be merely passing through it".

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Tuesday 8th April 2025 – I WAS ON THE PO …

… dium again today in the quiz in the Welsh class. I really don’t know what’s happening to me these days but I seem to be getting to grips much better with my Welsh than I was a year or two ago. Let’s hope that I can keep it up for the rest of the course. We’re so far behind on this one (Unit 11 out of 25) that I reckon that we’ll have another two years to do instead of the one that was programmed for the final course.

Perhaps my improvement was due to the better night that I had last night. I finished my notes, my statistics and my backing-up fairly early and in principle I could have been in bed by 23:00 but I can always find other things to distract me when I’m supposed to be doing something important, and it was almost midnight when I finally made it into bed.

As for the night itself, I remember nothing whatsoever. I must have been dead to the World and slept all the way through until the morning.

When I awoke it was still fairly dark so I was wondering what time it might be. I was giving the idea of looking at the time some serious thought when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE rent the heavens asunder. And so it was probably about 06:55 when I opened my eyes.

It was a struggle to my feet but I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in a class last night working on some kind of project. It was something of a mixture between a maths class, a language class and a logic class. We were going through a text, I suppose, and then we were moved into small groups and we had to discuss certain elements of what we’d been doing. One of these pieces was so complicated with these enormous words in it that it took absolutely ages for us to read it. It was very difficult to understand. Trying to make any headway on this project with this piece of work was extremely complicated. I think that everyone was in despair by the end of it. With five minutes to go before the end of the lesson the teacher said that we would concentrate now on doing something else. The first thing that she did was to ask us the answers to a couple of questions that she’d set before we’d been moved into groups. Of course, at that moment I couldn’t find my papers where I’d written the answers. I had a feeling that this particular lesson had been a total disaster today.

We’ve all had disasters like that in the past – missing out on something really important that has completely derailed a whole series of studies and left us stranded halfway back down the course. I’ve still not really recovered from missing all those weeks of my Welsh course in the autumn of 2022 when I spent two months in hospital in Belgium I used to try to make up for everything by going on a Summer School but dialysis has rendered that almost impossible now.

Isabelle the Nurse put her sooty foot in the door this morning. She’s started her week’s activity today. We talked about having some new compression socks, and it appears that her oppo has overlooked to tell her about it so we started the discussion again and she’ll see my doctor’s secretary to ask for a prescription.

After she left I made breakfast and read more of MY NEW BOOK. Our stay at Durham was very brief indeed and after passing by the castles at Eaton Socon and Ewyas Harold, we’ve now arrived at Exeter Castle.

At the moment, he’s setting the scene and I imagine that in a few days we’ll have the guided tour. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m disappointed by the fact that although he goes to great lengths to tell us what there is or was, he does not mention why they did it. I’d love to know more about the military principles that went into the design and building of all of this.

Another thing that I find confusing is his method of dating. A couple of weeks ago we mentioned the change of calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian in 1752, the loss of 11 days, and the change of the New Year from 25th March to 1st January. Prior to that, it was the custom to date events by what they called the “regnal year” – such as “in the third year of the reign of Richard III” or “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Elizabeth”. However, after 1752 it became the practice to date events by the actual calendar year, such as 2025 or 1939 or 1900 etc.

Not our author though. He’s insisting on using the regnal year to date almost everything, even though it had been out of fashion for 150 years when he started to write his book, and I’m having to exert myself in order to carry out some rapid mental calculation as I carry on reading.

Back in here I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off for marking, and then set down to revise and prepare for my lesson later this morning.

By the time that the lesson began I’d prepared almost the entire unit which is good news because the more I do today, the less I have to do next week. But it was just as well that I did because it was quite a short unit and we’ve almost finished it.

We had a quiz about the things that we should have learned last week and, in contrast to how my dream went, I finished on the podium. At one stage I had a run of eight questions correct, and I’ve never done that before in any Welsh class.

And my Welsh joke – it went down really well and if the tutor laughed out loud at it, then it must have been good.

After the disgusting drink break (we actually had the prescribed two today) I had a few things to do and then I began to choose the music for the next radio programme.

The very next one will be very easy because it relates to a concert. I already have all of the music and I wrote the text years ago when Liz and I were running “Radio Anglais” in the Auvergne, so I concentrated on the one after.

This one is another one that will be complicated because there are so many anniversaries that took place on that date. It will take careful selection to sort it out.

My cleaner stuck her head in the apartment too. She’d been to LeClerc and had found some slices of vegan cheese for me, so cheese on toast will be back on the menu for lunch on Sunday.

There should also have been a lengthy chat with my friend in the UK who is handling this ongoing project but he was unavoidably detained elsewhere with another matter so we agreed to continue our chat tomorrow.

Tea tonight was as usual a delicious taco roll with rice and veg followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. Plenty of stuffing left too so seeing as how things are unfolding here, I might lengthen it and divide it into two so that there will be one for next week

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because I have bread to make. I forgot that this afternoon so I’ll rustle up a 300-gram loaf in the air fryer and then go to bed.

But before I go, I bet that you are all wondering about the Welsh joke that I told in class.
It’s not easy to say it in English because with Welsh being an ancient language, it follows really ancient grammar rules that were in place long before the Romanisation of modern Western European languages. One of those rules is that where a noun is “feminine”, the first letter of the adjective used to describe it may mutate
So – "Mae dau o blant yn cerdded yn y goedwig"
Two children are walking in the wood
"Mae hogan yn dweud ‘edrych ar yr aderyn fawr yn y goeden’ "
The girl says ‘look at the big bird in the tree’
"Mae hogyn yn dweud ‘Aderyn MAWR – aderyn yn wrywaidd’ "
The boy said ‘Big bird – bird is masculine’ (so the adjective ‘big’ doesn’t mutate)
"Mae hogan yn dweud ‘mae gen ti lygaid rhagorol’ "
The girl says ‘you have really good eyes’

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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"

0

Friday 4th April 2025 – THIS BLASTED NEW …

… phone isn’t ‘arf complicated!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Tuesday 14th January 2025 – I AM TYPING …

… these notes during a pause in the football.

It’s hardly surprising that there’s a pause either because, as the score is proving, trying to play a game of football as banks of fog come rolling from the Dee estuary across the stadium at Cae Castell is producing some extremely unpredictable, and for Y Bala who are defending the river end, some extremely unfortunate moments.

After an hour of playing hide and seek the players have gone off the field in the hope that the fog will roll away. But even if it does, there is no guarantee that it won’t roll back.

It’s ironic that it’s happening to Y Bala. The final round of the first half of the season should have been played weeks ago but their pitch has been alternately under snow, ice and water on so many occasions that after several postponements that led to the postponement of the final round of matches, the game against Caernarfon that we watched on Saturday, was played at a neutral venue, Llandudno’s all-weather stadium

All the final round games were postponed until tonight, but now Y Bala’s vital match against Cei Connah is swathed in fog and all the players are in the dressing room waiting. There’s no guarantee that they will be back out either.

So while I’m waiting for things to happen, after finishing my notes last night I stayed up to listen to yet another concert (I’ve forgotten who it was) and then at about 00:30 I gave it up as a bad job and crawled into my bed. I can’t keep going as I used to.

Once in bed it took a while to go to sleep and there I stayed until about 06:35 when I awoke, once more drenched in sweat. There’s definitely something going on with this dialysis that I don’t understand.

It goes without saying, I suppose, that I went back to sleep again. I was certainly asleep when BILLY COTTON awoke me from the Dead.

Being awake was one thing. Leaving the bed was quite another thing completely. Mind you, I did (just about) beat the second alarm. And then I staggered off to the bedroom

After the bathroom it was the kitchen for the medication. And while I remembered the stuff that I can only take on a non-dialysis day, I forgot my blood-thinning medication. I’m definitely losing my touch, and probably my mind as well.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night I was stacking things inside the van. It was already quite loaded. There was me and there was another person, a girl, helping me. We had some long, thin wooden boxes probably about two metres long, to put in the back. We were carrying them one by one. Someone suggested that we’d advance much quicker if we were to take two or three at a time between the two of us. We tried it with a couple but it was much wore awkward. Positioning them in the van was a problem because the girl with me always wanted to carry them on her left-hand side which meant that she was having to fight with the back door to put them in when she arrived. That was becoming rather difficult. We stacked them inside quite high. There was already a lot of things in there so we thought that we’d better find some way of strapping these in against the side of the wall or the other things that are already in there, strapping them up against them against the side of the wall that way so that they didn’t fall over because if they were to fall they would be quite something of a problem inside and the whole inside was something of a mess.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. She was small and lively, but not anyone whom I recognised immediately. However, stacking stuff into vans was the occupation of a lifetime once upon a time and regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing a few photos of how I used to travel around Europe in the past.

Isabelle the Nurse is on duty for the next seven days. She is much more cheerful and was telling me about the float that she and her friends are building for Carnaval. She’s not telling me what it is though – it’s to be a surprise and won’t be unveiled until the day of the parade.

It’s now been announced that the football match has been postponed, which has now completely upset the timetable for the rest of the season. And I can press on, hours later than I was hoping.

So after Isabelle left I made my breakfast and then read some more of MY BOOK

His polemic by now is raging out of control and he condemns one of his colleagues in a manner that is quite unfitting in a published work, saying that "he blunders in a way which makes me hesitate to accept his statements about archaeological details that I have not myself studied" – a pretty outrageous remark for any academic to make, especially about a colleague.

He goes on to ask "How then would the professor and the doctor explain the fact that in the round barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds there was a reaction in favour of inhumation, seeing that Canon Greenwell 8 found in them 301 interments of unburnt and only 78 of burnt bones ?"

Christianity has been around for 2,000 years, but there are still plenty of Jews about. Protestantism has been around for almost 600 years, but there are still plenty of Catholics about. And going back to the “Dark Ages” of early Medieval times, there are many recorded instances of Christian Princesses being married to heathen Kings.

History shows us that several religions can live perfectly well side-by-side, and there’s no reason to suppose that things were different in Neolithic times. It’s quite possible to have two religions and two forms of dealing with dead bodies living in co-existence.

Back in here I revised for my Welsh lesson and hen went to class. We had, for the first time since I don’t know when, a full house of students and the class moved along smartly. I was once more quite satisfied with my progress, although my lack of memory is greatly hindering my vocabulary.

After the lesson it was lunch and a slice of flapjack with fruit, and then a very long and involved video chat with a friend in the UK who is carrying out a special project for me. We ended up discussing his holiday to Canada and, to my surprise, he liked everything that I didn’t and vice versa.

It was a Rosemaryesque conversation that lasted over an hour and it was very pleasant. It’s the only way that I get to see my friends these days and I do miss them all. Anyone else who wants a video chat some time, let me know.

Christmas cake break, very late, was next along with that disgusting protein drink, and then I started to work on the next radio programme. All of the songs are chosen, re-mixed, paired and segued and I’ve even begun to write the notes. That’s a job to be finished tomorrow I hope, in and around the shower I suppose, because it’s shower day tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a very rushed taco roll with rice followed by chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert. Rushed because there was football on the internet. But I did remember to organise the lentils as well as some split peas that I found.

It’s the last match of the first half of the season as I mentioned earlier, the round having been postponed because of the issues with the pitch and the weather at Y Bala which has seen the Caernarfon game postponed three, or is it four times?

That match was played at Llandudno on Saturday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and so the final round, having been postponed while that game was still unplayed, took place tonight.

Both Cei Connah and Y Bala needed to win in order to qualify for the European playoff section of the league, and it was the Nomads who took advantage of the conditions. The first goal was an audacious lob from near the halfway line when a gust of wind lifted the fog briefly and enabled a Nomad to see the Bala keeper off his line.

They scored two more goals while Bala offered nothing whatever at all. It was all one-way traffic. But the match being called off saved Y Bala’s bacon. Some of tonight’s results mean that Cei Connah can’t possibly qualify, but Bala could if they have a good win. So if the match is replayed on Thursday, it might favour Bala.

cat in commentary box cae castell fflint cymru 15 January 2025But before I leave the story of the football match, there was a new recruit to the commentary team this evening.

Please excuse the poor quality but it’s a screenshot taken in the fog and so nothing will ever come out correctly. However it goes to show that gate-crashers can get in anywhere.

That is, except my bed (unless it’s Castor, TOTGA or Zero of course, and maybe Jenny Agutter and Kate Bush) because I’m going to climb into it in a moment, alongside STRAWBERRY MOOSE who keeps me company as much as he possibly can.

Tomorrow I’m radioing again and showering and pie-baking too. Maybe even bread-making. I’m certainly keeping myself busy.

Today, our Welsh class was discussing war. We were being asked about our family in wartime so I told them the story of my great grandfather who, after having long-since retired after his service in India and South Africa, dyed his white hair black, lied about his age and joined the Canadian Army in 1914, and also of my mother who served in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

I didn’t mention my distant great-great-cousin or whatever relation he was who was SENTENCED TO DEATH because, being a devout Quaker, he refusing to fight

One woman, the teacher from Nantwich, told the story of her father who was an Army dentist in Syria and the Western Desert in World War II.
One day he had to examine a group of volunteers to see if they were fit to join the Army and fight. One of them he was obliged to reject because his teeth were rotten.
"Blimey!" exclaimed the unlucky volunteer. "I know that we were expected to kill the enemy, but I didn’t know that we had to eat them afterwards."

0

Sunday 12th January 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to put his lentils in the slow cooker overnight ready to make his vegan pies today?

That’s right, folks. Brain of Britain strikes again!

What I’ll have to do, if I remember, is to put them in the slow cooker overnight on Tuesday so that they are ready for baking on Wednesday. I can’t leave things another whole week or the pastry will walk out of the fridge on its own.

The thing about the lentils is that you put them in the slow cooker on high heat, and after about an hour when they begin to boil, you drain them off and rinse them. Then put them back in with fresh clean water and a variety of herbs and spices, and leave them on a slow setting for twelve hours by which time they should be cooked and taste nice.

Then fry some onions, shallots, garlic and a block of tofu (chopped finely) in a wok with herbs and spices and anything else you like (I used a tin of sweet corn last time),.

When it’s cooked, tip the lentils in and then simmer it right down with a stock cube, and then add a few handfuls of oats to stiffen the mix, and there you have your filling for a vegan pie. Mine will of course be different because I’ll probably be adding other stuff too, but I never know what, until the final moment.

That’s the thing about vegan cooking – you can experiment with all different kinds of things to see how it all ends up.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I’d finished my notes I had some dictating to do – the eleventh or “missing” track from the programme that I recorded before Christmas, and then the one for this famous concert that I’ve been pasting together from a collection of off-cuts.

After that I should have gone to bed, but onto the playlist came Neil Young and a mammoth 16-minute version of DOWN BY THE RIVER and how is it possible for anyone to go to bed when Neil Young is singing “Down By The River”?

There once was a girl who "could drag me over the rainbow and send me away" but that ship sailed a long time ago.

So last night we ended up with a “Neil Young Live” playlist and it was horribly late once more when I went to bed.

Once in bed though, I stayed in bed fast asleep with just the odd awakening here and there. But I was definitely asleep when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE aroused me from my slumber. It’s not just “Peel’s view-halloo” that “could awaken the dead” or “the sound of his horn” that “brought me from my bed”.

Bearing in mind it’s Sunday and I’ve had a small lie-in, I can’t hang about and I was straight into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for today.

Back in here there was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing some 3D modelling during the night, making figures and shapes. I wanted to make the shape of a girl but when I looked on my workspace I already had made a shape that I wanted so I had to rework it into a different shape. While I was doing that the first girl disappeared so that meant that I could make this figure back into the shape that I wanted at the start. When it was finished there was no enemy or anything in sight so I just had to make any kind of poses on a hillside. Then this other girl came to join her and this was when it began to be complicated. I decided that I’d better rework the new arrival and make some other figure that wouldn’t be similar to the one that I had.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any serious 3-D modelling. But now that my adventure down in the Auvergne is over, there’s no real need for it – certainly not in this apartment. It might come in handy if ever I decide to join a Virtual World community but I don’t even have the time to cope with all of the problems that arise in this World, never mind another one.

And then I was staying in some boarding house somewhere. I’d only not long arrived. It had been concerned with a road accident in which a vehicle pulling out onto a main road had sent a small child hurtling through the air so everything had come to a standstill. I found myself at the front of the queue where I could see a car parked in the middle of the road, a person on his ‘phone and a small child lying in the roadway so I imagined that everyone would be ‘phoning the police and ambulance. There was also something quite interesting. At another road junction was a guy digging a hole in the road from underneath. To protect his head when he came out he had a wooden box that he put over the hole and he put his head in it to work. One car came over and flattened it. He raised his head again and another car stopped. This was a side-lift fork lift truck and it began to lift up this box. It lifted up this guy and his girlfriend with it and pulled them out of the hole. This began a huge argument and dispute with a lot of name-calling. When I arrived back at my little hostel place whatever there was another couple there being interviewed for signing in. They were two young people, quite tall, quite well-built and speaking in a North American accent. After they had signed in, they came into the room where the rest of us were sitting and asked if there were any other Canadians in here. I was on the point of working out whether I should speak to them in English or French to see whether they were Québecois or Anglophone.

That was a totally strange dream too, tunnelling up to the road surface and putting a box over your head and then being pulled out by a side-life forklift truck. There’s no doubt that my dreams are usually quite interesting, even if I have no idea of what has brought them to the forefront.

The nurse was late today. He’d probably had a lie-in too . He didn’t hag around long, so I could make my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Apart from the usual scything and scathing remarks directed at his contemporaries, he notes that two of his colleagues consider that "a tall, broad-headed, dark-haired, light-eyed people ’, whom they regard as the descendants of the men of the Bronze Age ’, formerly inhabited Aberdeenshire, but were driven inland by later blond immigrants, who were shorter and had narrower heads ….. But is it the fact?" and then devotes a couple of pages in rubbishing their theories.

However, remember a week or so when we were discussing the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONhirs" – ed … and “nothing”? It looks to me as if his two colleagues do have some kind of case worth arguing.

On page 428 of his book, he attacks the arguments of a colleague by saying that "Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed ; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness"

However, on page 445, he attacks another one of his colleagues because "his arguments, which I have examined fully elsewhere, do not prove that the dominant Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves"

Leaving aside the question about “intermarriage” and that any cross-breeding of invader and native inhabitant is more likely to be by violence than by a priest turning up to bless the union, I’m trying now to work out how “crossbreeding” can cause one characteristic to be inherited to some great extent but not another to at least the same extent.

Back in here afterwards, there was football to watch. Clyde peppering the East Fife goal with shots and East Fife just having three shots on goal. Anyone care to guess the score?

And why was I watching that game? Because, once more, Stranraer’s game was postponed. And that’s just as well because Stranraer seems to have lost half its team in this transfer window so far.

Once the football was finished, I had the soundtrack of two radio programme notes to edit.

The first one was quite straightforward and hardly needed anything at all editing out – just the odd second or two which is no big deal.

The second one was this complicated concert and its notes. That overran by well over a minute and it’s really ironic that part of the vocal introduction that had given me some of the most difficulty was one of the parts that ended in the bin. It’s always like that, isn’t it?

The joins however where I’ve had to fade songs in and out and edit in a few rounds of applause seem to be done perfectly. I’m listening to it right now and I’m really impressed with those. But strange as it is, I’ve been using this sound-editing program for ten years and I’m still finding out tips and hints about it and making it work better for me.

There were several breaks – for making soup and a bread roll for a start. It was a beautiful leek and potato soup today with a pot of soya yoghurt and plenty of black pepper stirred in. The fresh bread roll, hot out of the air-fryer, made all the difference.

Later on, there was pizza dough to make. That went well too, and there are now two balls in the freezer and the third I rolled out, assembled and baked. And that was perfect.

So what’s going to happen at the Dialysis Centre tomorrow? Will it be another three and a half hours of excruciating agony? I don’t see what else it could be. In any respect I’m not looking forward to it.

But going back to these stone circles … "well, one of us is" – ed … archaeologists were puzzled by a strange, fossilised spiky animal that they had unearthed when they were excavating a stone circle somewhere
The took it to the Natural History Museum and found the curator. They asked him if he could identify it
"We found it when we were excavating that stone circle" said an archaeologist. "Do you know what it is?"
"Now that you told me where you found it, of course I do" said the curator. "It can only be a hengehog!"

0

Wednesday 18th December 2024 – IT’S REALLY HARD …

… to believe that this time next week we’ll all be sitting around stuffing ourselves with mince pies and turkey.

Well, you might but you can rule out the turkey from my point of view and if I don’t find any motivation from somewhere very soon, I won’t be eating any mince pies either. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt less like Christmas than I do this year.

At least the Christmas cake is something worth eating. I opened the oven door this afternoon and the whole building was overwhelmed with the smell of fresh-baked spices, and my faithful cleaner had something to say about it. So at least there will be something for Christmas.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve told the nurse not to bother calling on Christmas Day. I’m going to have a lie-in and savour the day at my ease.

That is, unless the lie-in was anything like this morning’s.

Last night wasn’t all that late going to bed – about 23:30 or something like that, and once in bed I was asleep quite quickly.

And there I lay, without moving a muscle or anything else until all of 06:45 when for some unaccountable reason I sat up bolt-upright, wide awake. I’ve no idea at all what disturbed me, but whatever it was, it must have been pretty good.

Just as I was deciding whether or not to leave my stinking pit, BILLY COTTON made up my mind for me, bellowing his raucous rattle loud enough to awaken the dead.

Once I’d managed to stagger to my feet I wandered off into the bathroom to sort myself out and then into the kitchen for a drink to wash down my medication.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night but to my surprise there was nothing on it at all. It must have been a deep sleep

However, do not be downhearted because when I awoke this morning I was actually away on my travels and I remember everything so clearly too, even now. What I remember was that we were in some kind of derelict, run-down city and we were going to a party. We were four of us, and three were going in one car with some members of someone’s family, not mine, I was going in another car with another group of people. We were waiting in this street for this taxi to arrive. There was me, a friend of mine and a girl, and the friend of mine was dating her. We were waiting in this street for a car to come to pick us up. We saw something that was of interest a little further down the street so we wandered off down there. We went past an Indian restaurant where there was a waiter outside trying to entice us in. For some reason the prices were hanging from an awning above the door. We couldn’t reach it or see it so we carried on walking a little further and then a little further. We came to a T-junction with an Insurance Company across the street. It didn’t look like an Insurance Company – it was several shops. Then I happened to look up and I could see the name of the Insurance Company in a window so it was obviously in the offices that were above the shops. We went over there, past another Indian Restaurant where there was another waiter outside trying to cajole us in. Again, the prices were out of reach so we couldn’t see them. This girl remembered something about one of the addresses in this street so she went over to have a look at the numbers so we followed her. The number that she wanted was 200-and-something but we were in the 120s or something. We had a look, and it was a run-down street with all kinds of old terraced houses of all different styles. We turned round and slowly began to walk back. Suddenly this girl took off like a rocket to run down to the far end of the street where we’d been waiting at first. The guy, he asked “what’s the matter with her?”. I didn’t have a clue. She hadn’t said a word but she just took off. The thought went through my mind that maybe she’d seen the car in the distance that had come to pick us up. I was totally unable to run and having trouble walking so there was no way that I could run after her so I really had no idea what was going to happen next. And it was right at this point that I sat up bolt-upright

And if anyone wants to know where this took place, it was in Stoke on Trent, on one of the side streets off Campbell Road near the old football ground. I can see it quite clearly in my head even now. However who the people were, I have no idea about them either but the girl was dressed all in red, a red tee-shirt and red shorts. It was a totally bizarre dream.

Isabelle the Nurse didn’t stop here long this morning. She admired the decorations again, oiled and greased my legs, fitted my compression socks and then cleared off. In and out in just a couple of minutes.

After she’d left I made breakfast and carried on reading the report of this excavation.

They are slowly coming round to the idea that the farm and its buildings were demolished with purpose, rather than being a random act of wanton and gratuitous destruction. Non-reusable material seems to have been put carefully into a ditch rather then being left scattered around, and there is no trace of anything lying around on the surface that might have been useful.

In one of the cellars though, it’s a different story. There, they have found a rather large grinding wheel of the type that would be used in a mill for grinding corn. It’s hand-powered, so that was probably a task undertaken by slaves.

Slaves would have been plentiful back in those days. There were no such things as prisoner-of-war camps and a victorious army would have a pile of useless mouths on its hands. Anyone important would be ransomed, sometimes making his captor a very rich man indeed. But if there was no-one to ransom you or you weren’t wealthy, then if you were lucky you’d be sold into slavery by your captor. If you were unlucky, you would be slaughtered.

And believe it or not, there were also people who gave themselves voluntarily into slavery. In a society were there was no welfare, if your crops failed, you and your family would starve to death. However, a slave-owner had the obligation to feed, clothe and house his slaves which, let’s face it, wasn’t much less than the life of an early medieval peasant anyway. So if the alternative was to starve to death, then slavery was an option that some people considered.

Back in here I had a few things that I wanted to do and that took me up until lunchtime. The after lunch my cleaner came round to do her stuff.

One of her tasks, according to this Association thing that has taken me in charge, is to help me with my grande toilette. We interpreted that as being the shower and so every Wednesday is shower day.

It was beautiful in there again today and I really enjoyed every minute of it. I didn’t really want to climb back out.

Still, back in here I began to find the music for the next radio programme and by the time I was ready to knock off for tea, not only had I found what I wanted but it had been remixed, paired off, segued and some of the notes had been written.

There had been a big interruption too. There was the afternoon hot chocolate break and then I made some dough for the naan bread for the next few weeks. But we’ve hit a tragedy, and that is that the soya yoghurt has frozen in the fridge and when it does that, it all separates out. I must order some more if I can.

Nevertheless, my leftover curry tonight was another good one, and the naan was cooked to perfection. Things are looking up around here and will be even better when I’m downstairs. Pretty much like only five months to go and then I can install myself in my own place. Won’t that be good?

So tomorrow I’m at the Dialysis Clinic and what I’ll do will be to prepare my order for LeClerc. I may as well make some good use of the time that I’m there

But the cleaner, when she came up, brought me a pile of post that had accumulated in my mailbox downstairs.
There were a couple of bills that needed paying so I had a close look at them, because I like to try to keep on top of things like that.
One of them concerns my taxe foncière from my current département of La Manche
"Please connect to the internet at the following address and make a bank transfer by electronic means"
The other is from from the Crewe Municipal Council where I used to live years ago.
"Please take the enclosed stone tablet, chisel your bank account details in block hieroglyphics thereupon and send it by native bearer to the Council’s Accounts Cave, situate …."

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