… back in the good old night-time routine of waking up early and not going back to sleep again.
Over the last three or four weeks, I genuinely believed that I’d left all of that behind and moved onwards and upwards into a much more normal sleeping pattern, but ohhh! Cruel and Wicked Fate has confounded me yet again.
Last night I was in bed by 22:30, thoroughly tired and exhausted, and I was pretty soon asleep. Apart from the odd bit of tossing and turning, I stayed asleep until some unearthly time in the morning where I was wide awake again, and despite how tired I might have been feeling, I didn’t go back to sleep again.
At one point, I was so fed up with it all that I went to look at the time. And just as I was about to switch on the ‘phone, the 06:29 alarm rang.
That was the cue to leave the bed, but in all honesty, it took much more than that to rise to my feet.
Once I was up and about, I slid over onto the chair and began to listen to where I was last night.
While this might be an interesting dream, relating to a discussion I’d had with my friend recently, I actually remember nothing whatever of this dream, regardless of any significance. Usually, whenever I begin to transcribe them, there’s usually always a distant memory that comes drifting back, but not with this one.
This seems to be a recurring dream right at the moment, with me training various football clubs. However, nothing seems to be so bad with some clubs that my training won’t make it worse.
Then I went to continue the notes from yesterday, but the first thing that I noticed was that I was locked out of my own blog site. This captcha will be the death of me at this rate. I simply went into my site’s file manager and disabled everything that I’ve done these last few days. I’ll look at it again later, but in the meantime, I’ll carry on with the blog.
When I was nearly finished, my friend turned up imitating the role that I’ll have to use on my little WordPress flying machine, but I carried on chatting with him, even if it did mean postponing the Hound of the Baskervilles’ breakfast.
So having fallen asleep four times and with my posting degenerating into a load of rubbish… "what’s new?" – ed … as you can see from the above, I’m going to bed and I’ll continue tomorrow. It always seems to be the case that I can fall asleep sitting on my chair at the desk but never at all when I’m lying in bed.
Anyway, tomorrow, we’ll go back to yesterday and carry on. from last night.
So trying to make sense of everything, my friend turned up with a mug of coffee, which was extremely nice of him, but I asked him to put it on the kitchen table, and I’d be in in a sec.
After a quick visit to ride the porcelain horse, I went to join my friend in the kitchen, where we drank coffee and chatted about nothing very much in particular until the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.
And then an interesting thing happened. The Hound of the Baskervilles, who hadn’t barked at all when she came in, rolled over onto his back and exposed his stomach so that Isabelle the Nurse could give him a good tummy-tickle. It’s amazing that he still remembers her after all these months.
She came over to me afterwards to deal with my legs and feet, and I asked her where my tummy-tickle was, but she told me basically to clear off.
After she left, the Hound of the Baskervilles had his breakfast and I made mine, and while I was eating, I was reading my new book, THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.
And for the benefit of some of my readers – it’s “Naturalists”, not “Naturists”. There’s a big difference.
This book will probably have one or two controversies of its own, but at least they will be between members. It’s not a book written from one person’s viewpoint.
There’s a crisis with the medication right now. It seems that one set of pills was missed off the order a couple of weeks ago, and now I’m down to my last handful. I shall have to have a word with my faithful cleaner later.
Back in here, there were the notes to finish, and then there were a few other things to do, such as to review and send off the radio programme for this week. And just when I was standing up to go to prepare myself for dialysis, the alarm went off to remind me that it was time to prepare myself for dialysis.
In the kitchen, I sorted out a disgusting drink and the midday medication and then made myself ready. My cleaner turned up to sort out the anaesthetic, but her first priority was to stroke the belly of the Hound of the Baskervilles. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he has far more luck with the women than I do.
After she left, I waited here with His Nibs for my taxi while my friend nipped out for a short while. Now that Mrs Dinosaur has left the area, we’re back at the usual situation of the taxi being a few minutes late. But at least it was a Mercedes B-series from the taxi company that the company that I use had recently bought.
We had to go via Sartilly for the old lady there, but nevertheless, we were still five minutes early at Avranches. I had one of the new nurses and she was quite efficient, and I was up and running by 14:15. I noticed that there were two people in my room whom I didn’t recognise. “Holidaymakers”, I was informed.
There wasn’t as much fluid to extract today so, once more, I persuaded her successfully to up the total by 300 grams to give me a head start for Thursday
Once I was organised, I had some football to watch. We started off with the rest of the match between LLansawel and Airbus UK Broughton.
Say what you like, it’s clear that three of the newly promoted clubs, Llandudlo, Cambrian United and the Wingmakers, can compete to some degree at this level, whereas the other three – Rhydaman, Trefelin and Trefynnon – are here as cannon fodder and that’s not a very pleasant place in which to be. Throw Y Fflint in there too, and you have what look like your relegation candidates for the end of the season.
So, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, the match finished 0-2 to the Wingmakers, and quite right too. From what I saw, they certainly had the better of the play.
After that, there was Cardiff Metro v Cambrian United. The Met pulled away into a 2-0 lead, but Cambian plugged away and came back into the game. The final score was 2-2, and Cambrian hit the woodwork on two occasions towards the end of the game.
Just as the final whistle blew, the nurse came round to unplug me. The time had fitted together nicely. And even better, just as I was about to leave, Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. The bad news is that I start a new course of the disgusting potassium powder. Ahh well!
By now, my chauffeur was waiting – a chatty guy whom I hadn’t seen for a while, so I didn’t have to hang around and I would have an interesting ride home.
We were back at a reasonable time and found my cleaner perched on her mushroom waiting for me. She helped me into the apartment and then went off to cuddle the Hound of the Baskervilles. I was clearly a distant second in her priorities.
She sorted out my disgusting drink, sorted out the medication, found my friend’s missing jacket and then wandered off. My friend stuck another bowl of chilli, this time with baked potato, in my mitt and we tucked in. This is real luxury, having a meal plonked into my hands upon my return.
The next plan was to write my notes, but I failed miserably. I fell asleep four times before I’d even written a dozen lines, so I said “sod it” and went to be.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Hound of the Baskervilles … "well, one of us has" – ed … yesterday, he went into La Rafale and ordered a pint of beer for himself.
"Wow! Magnificent" said the barman. "With skills like that, you ought to be in a circus!"
"Why?" asked the Hound of the Baskervilles. "Do they need an electrician?"
