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Sunday 7th December 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

… to bed last night, I was looking forward to a really good sleep and a nice lie-in until the nurse arrives and shakes me awake at about 08:45.

And I deserved it too. What with the football running late and my own lack of effort and motivation, it was quite late – long after midnight – when I finally crawled off to bed. It seemed to take an age to finish off everything that needed finishing.

But cruel fate intervened last night, as it so often does. Firstly, it was another one of those nights where it didn’t seem as if I’d been to sleep at all. I just seemed to be lying there in a kind of semi-conscious daze throughout the night.

Secondly, round about 06:00, I was wide-awake and it was totally impossible to go back to sleep, no matter how much I tried. Round about 06:50, I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

Being up and about at that time on a Sunday morning, I took full advantage and dictated all of the outstanding radio notes. Unfortunately, not being able to see clearly at that time of the morning, I made something of a mess of them and they will take a good while to sort out.

After the usual visit to the bathroom, I wandered off into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and to take my morning medication, and it was there in the kitchen that the nurse found me.

He was quite upset that I hadn’t taken advantage of the bed, and to be honest, so was I, but it can’t be helped. Anyway, he sorted out my legs and was soon gone.

Once he’d left, I could make my breakfast (including the last of my homemade croissants) and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, he is talking about a road that leads to Berwick-upon-Tweed but notes that "it is between 50 and 60 miles long, and no part of it appears to be mentioned in the Itinerary of Antonine." – the Iter Britanniarum.

Most people these days date the Iter Britanniarum to the reign of Caracalla on the grounds that many of the roads that are described within did not exist in Antonine’s time. So if the Iter Britanniarum really was prepared in the time of Caracalla, this road here must be a really late addition to the road network

He also talks about Chew Green, right on the border between England and Scotland. There, he tells us that "there is a complication of camps. A camp, 330 yards square, is overlapped by another camp, 330 yards by 200 yards, and encloses three smaller camps, one of which, about 110 yards square, is more strongly entrenched than the others. ".

Of course, with a description like that, I had to go for a look. And THIS WAS WHAT I FOUND. It’s another magnificent sight. You’ll see the modern track running from north-northwest to south-southeast. If you look slightly to the west of it, north of the fort with all of the defences, you can make out the track of the Roman road.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe. And once more, I was surprised at how much there was to transcribe. In this dream, I’d hired a new cleaner. I was showing her around the place and telling her what I would like to have done. I mentioned to her that I had two kittens and they spent a lot of time asleep, and if they were asleep, the best thing to do was to leave them where they are and not touch them. Just let them sleep until they awaken. That was as far as I went into this dream.

God help me if I ever have to hire a new cleaner. I am really lucky with the one whom I have, and I shall be lost without her. Yes, and I would love to have a cat, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed ….

There were three of us, and we were having to trek to this mountain that was in the distance. It was really snowy and a deep winter but we were on our journey. I was the smallest of the three so I was the one at the back while the two others were wading through the snow to make a trail. We passed into a forest and we could see the mountain, ohh, a hundred miles away in the distance, but we continued on our trek. At one point we came across a firefly that was buzzing around in our tracks. We thought that if it is going to report to its maker or whatever, then we would be in difficulty. However, it buzzed around us for a short while and we could push on. We then arrived in Crewe, but by this time, there were two of us and a girl. We climbed down into Earle Street near where Tiko’s used to be, and there was a Native American going past on his horse. We asked him if he ever went out to the Navajo country. He replied that he didn’t. We mentioned something about looking for a guide, but he gave us a very long lecture about white men pushing into his territory, how his people had had enough and how they were going to go on the warpath. This girl made a few comments to him in what was apparently his native language. He listened to her but it didn’t mollify his stance anyway. Later on, we learned that he had in fact gone onto the warpath and was busy devastating the homes and ranches of many settlers out there in what was formerly his hunting ground.

This was like a trek in LORD OF THE RINGS when everyone was going on a quest. But presumably, the Native American has to do with what I was reading the other week.

And then, I was living in Brussels and after all of the money that I’d spent on my kitchen and my nice apartment, my landlord was giving me notice to leave. That was extremely depressing. As it happened, the telephone rang so I had to go out and do some taxi work. At one point, I found myself not too far away from the free newspaper offices where they had all kinds of adverts, so I decided to go there and talk to someone to see what they had for apartments to let. Luckily, there was a parking space outside so I went in. The first thing that the guy asked me for was the number and reference, which I didn’t have. He said that if I hadn’t booked an appointment over the ‘phone, I couldn’t be seen, so I left. I picked up a couple of passengers after that. They wanted to go to various hotels around the city. The first one, I had a rough idea where it was but I almost ended up driving past it. The second one, I managed to drop the people off outside the door, and then I went back for my breakfast. While I was squeezing my lemon, a girl came in. She said something like “that’s my lemon squeezer.” I replied that I thought that it was mine, so we had a discussion about the lemon squeezer. Then, the two people from the hotel came in. I was talking about going back out after I’d had my breakfast, but they were surprised. They didn’t realise that I worked all day. They just thought that I worked an eight-hour shift or something. Then, a couple more people came in. They were musicians on their way to a performance in Germany. They had a video of themselves pulling up at some hotel in Germany and having to unload everything out of the car, including a bike, when it came to going into their room, and how the corridors were so small and winding that they damaged the walls and they damaged their equipment and they damaged their possessions as they found their room. I don’t know if I dictated … "no, you didn’t" – ed … but right at the end of that dream about the hotel and taxiing and Brussels, I was trying to write a note for a friend of mine, asking if she was coming up to see me, to bring me a copy of the “Vlan” and if she could make sure that I had a copy of the “Vlan” every week when it came out.

This ties in with a dream that I had a while ago about living in Brussels and having two apartments. However, I owned both of those. At one time though, I was thinking of fitting out the kitchen upstairs, and I’m glad that I didn’t; otherwise, I would have lost all of my investment when I moved downstairs.

It must have been an interesting discussion, arguing about a lemon squeezer. And here we are, taxiing again. What’s going on here?

Back in my comfortable office chair, there were the highlights of Stranraer v Stirling Albion to watch. And how the score ended up 3-2 to Stranraer, I really don’t know. Stranraer hit the woodwork half a dozen times, had half a dozen shots cleared off the line, and the Stirling Albion keeper was in outstanding form, saving another dozen or so point-blank efforts.

As for Stirling Albion, they had just two shots on target …

After a disgusting drinks break, I began to edit one of the sets of radio notes, but I found a problem – the left-hand track was eight seconds shorter than the right. It seems that it stopped recording for a short while in mid-stream. It took quite a bit of cutting and pasting in order to add exactly the right amount of speech back in and to synchronise it.

There wasn’t much time to do it either, because I had to knock off and make a start on my Christmas pudding. It took all afternoon to prepare it, too. Then I had to steam it for over three hours in a pan of boiling water.

While it was steaming, I made my pizza. And it was another really delicious one. And once again, I could only manage half of it. It’s worrying, actually, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. When I had my appetite, I was eating about two hundred and fifty grammes- worth of base, with all of the associated toppings. These days, I’m managing about eighty grammes of base, less than one-third.

So right now, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, and I don’t feel at all like it, but then, that’s par for the course, isn’t it?

But seeing as we have been talking about the Roman camps at Chew Green … "well, one of us has" – ed … during the excavation of the site, they found two skeletons together in the same grave. They were totally undamaged, and there were no weapons or armour among the grave goods.
"It looks as if they didn’t die fighting" said the chief archaeologist. "Not even amongst themselves in their grave."
"Ah well" said his assistant"they haven’t got the guts, have they?"

Saturday 6th December 2025 – MY CHRISTMAS CAKES …

… both are now marzipanned and back in the fridge, waiting for next weekend when I shall ice them. All that remains after that … "all!" – ed … will be to make the Christmas pudding and the mince pies.

And then to hope that my appetite comes back so that I can enjoy them. At the rate that I’m going, though, it’s unlikely. My appetite is still almost non-existent, but I’m doing my best.

Anyway, last night was another late night. Almost midnight, in fact, when I finally climbed into bed. It was a dreadful night too. It seemed almost as if I hadn’t gone to sleep at all, but instead I lay there tossing and turning throughout the night.

When the alarm went off, I was in that no-man’s land of not being asleep but not being awake either. However, I forced myself out of bed before the second alarm and then, at some point, staggered off into the bathroom.

After the medication and the hot ginger, honey and lemon, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And considering that I didn’t think that I’d gone to sleep at all, I was surprised by just how much there was on there.

I was back on the taxis and it had been a really quiet night. We hadn’t done very much so at the end of the night I went to book myself a room in a hotel to stay the night. I walked in, and one of my neighbours from Shavington was there. We had a chat and he asked me how things were. I told him that they weren’t so good at the moment. I dropped one of my crutches and he said “I’ll try to pick it up” but I picked it up instead. For some reason, his hand went onto my chest to try to stop me breathing. I had to tell him a couple of times to stop doing that. He asked me if I was going to look for another driver. I replied that I’d be finishing school in a couple of months so there’s not much point. Then, my girl driver came in. She wanted to cash up everything. She was very concerned about me. She laid all of her things out on the counter at this hotel reception. She asked if my phone would charge up my headphones. I replied “better than that, there’s a slot to listen where you plug in”. We began to chat but then she had a job to go out to do so she said that she’d have to go, but she didn’t really want to go. I replied “you can always stop the night with me”. She replied “well, I have this fare that I have to pick up”. I replied “well, you can always come back later”. She gave me one of these strange looks”.

It beats me why I would want to book a room in a hotel. And as for the neighbour, I’ve not thought about him since probably about 1972 so how come he worked his way into the scene, I don’t know. But we did have some quiet nights at times where we barely turned a wheel and that was what I call boring. I’d much rather be busy than lounging around doing nothing.

It had been a quiet night on the taxis. I hadn’t really done very much so I was thinking about going home to cash up everything and then maybe have an early night for once. Thomas from Peterborough was extremely offended that he would lose his evening’s work but people explained to him that he was a part-time driver and he would have to take what’s happening from the more important people who were planning the work and booking it … fell asleep here … so there I was, waiting for the final whistle and ready to drop down on my side to carry on working again.

This seems to be part of the first dream, with me going off on a tangent again, whoever Thomas from Peterborough is. But the second part of this looks like we’re back to talking football again.

There was some kind of big family group outing going on, and I was part of it on my own. I ended up talking to this married woman who had a daughter. She and her husband were there and the daughter but I was chatting to this woman. We ended up spending an awful lot of time together, so much so that I’m sure that there must have been talk. The daughter took to me too and I actually took her fishing on one occasion while we were on this outing. But then she said at the night as we were all prepared to camp down in this field that she was off fishing with another boy and she’d be back in the morning to see me so we bedded down. In the meantime, these kids were bedded down in this stream and they came across a car that was in the water. One of them opened the door and recoiled in horror, and they ran all the way back to where we were camping. The teacher was busy talking to a group of people about a missing car. These kids came dashing in, they saw this drawing and shouted “this is the car, this is the car”. They explained that they had seen the car in this stream so we all set out. I was with this woman again and we came to where we needed to go down to the bottom in a lift. There were several lifts, and everyone was queueing at one or two, so we went over to the one where no-one was queueing. We pressed the button and the doors opened, and the girl was in there, wrapped up in a sleeping bag asleep with one of her friends. We went down in this lift and as the lift approached the bottom, I shouted, woke these two kids and unzipped them out of their sleeping bag. We made ready to meet the others who were on their way down so that we could walk off to see the car in this stream and point out what was so horrific to the kids.

There’s an interesting story behind this dream too, but the World isn’t ready to hear it yet. I’ve no idea to what the car relates, though

Did I dictate this dream about a girl whom I knew who was a few years younger than me? We used to hang around a lot together … "no you didn’t" – ed …. It came to the time when she was eighteen and was planning on going to university. In the meantime, I’d been working for a few years after leaving school and was thinking of going to university so I’d applied to Aberdeen. My application had gone in and I asked this girl where she was thinking of going. She replied that she didn’t really know but Aberdeen sounded great to her. I asked if she had a prospectus but she said that she hadn’t, but she’d like to find one somewhere. I said that I had one and I asked her “why not come back to my house and we can spend a day or two going through the prospectus?”. Eventually, she agreed. When I arrived back home, this girl had transformed herself into a big spider. My mother hated spiders so she wouldn’t let this one into the house. I picked up a bike and a few camping things and went off to Canada, with the bike, these camping things and the spider. I set out, and while I was cycling around, I was talking to this spider about Aberdeen University. Eventually, I came to a great big kind of tourist attraction. It was really complicated. There was a river there down in the valley but there was also a river there had been partly canalised that was at the level at which we were. It was running over stones and was really rapid here, splashing everyone. There were people fishing, catching some enormous sizes of fish so I decided that I would spend half an hour fishing while this girl finished off making up her mind, and then we could get together and make a decision. However, I couldn’t make my bike stand up. I eventually found a bike park, which was complicated enough to reach, but no matter how I tried, there was too much weight on my bike for it to stand upright. I was having to think about a solution to prop it up somewhere so that I could go off to fish and leave this girl to finalise her decision. There were a couple of people there, married couples who were sitting around, and even they couldn’t help me make this bike stand upright. I was becoming so frustrated about that.

There is a girl to whom this story fits quite well, although at the time the events in the real World were happening, I didn’t realise it. Turning into a spider and cycling to Canada are quite surreal ideas though.

One thing about these dreams though is that it concerns fishing. I’ve only ever been fishing twice in my life, as a young kid, and found it to be one of the most boring “sports” ever. I couldn’t see the point then and it’s even less so today. I can’t understand why, all of a sudden, I’d be thinking of going fishing right now.

The nurse was late today coming round. I reminded him that it’s possible that tomorrow he’ll find me in bed in the morning, so he made a note. And after he finished my legs, he cleared off.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and carry on reading some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. Today, we’re still across Hadrian’s Wall roaming around Dere Street but as yet, I’ve not found anything of real importance.

After breakfast, I marzipanned my Christmas cakes. My marzipanning technique seems to be improving because it all went together perfectly the first time of trying the first time without any problems at all. I hope that the icing goes as well as this next weekend.

One thing that I miss though is my turntable. When I was building computers twenty-odd years ago, I had a turntable on which I would put them and it saved me hours. If I had had it here and used it for the marzipanning and the icing, I would save hours on those jobs too.

After a disgusting drink break, I had a mini foot-fest, watching the highlights of last night’s games in Wales. And that reminds me – ONE OF THE BEST GOALS YOU ARE EVER LIKELY TO SEE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME are now available. Take a bow, Corey Shephard!

Later on, I wrote the missing notes for another radio programme to be broadcast in the distant future and there was even time to make a start on yet another radio programme. I have to make the most of my freedom these days.

Things could have been so much better and I could have done so much more too except that once again, I fell asleep in the afternoon. For a good hour or so too. I’m really fed up of all of this.

There was more football tonight – the League Cup semi-final between Cambrian United and Y Barri. Cambrian, from the second division and who play their home games in the suburbs of Tonypandy, had the lion’s share of the play but the class of Y Barri showed through. Whatever chances they created, they took them, whereas Cambrian were pretty wasteful.

The score of 0-3 to Y Barri was definitely a flattering scoreline. And I do have to say that near the end, I crashed out a couple of times.

Tea was chips, salad and some of those vegan nuggets that I like. Only a small portion, but even so, I struggled to eat it all.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a really good lie-in tomorrow. But we shall see about that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cycling to Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I was AT THE POINT AMOUR LIGHTHOUSE on my mega-drive around the mountains of Labrador in 2010.
At the lighthouse, I met a woman who stared in disbelief at my small urban-motoring saloon and said, incredulously "have you driven around the Trans-labrador Highway in THAT??? "
"Ohh yes" I replied. "It’s not the car that counts, it’s the driver. And the next time that I come to Canada, I’ll be crossing the Atlantic on a motor-bike!"
The funny thing about this story is that when I told it to a Canadian girl a few years later, she asked "and did you?"
All of which goes to show that, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once famously said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Friday 5th December 2025 – I’VE DONE IT …

… again!

Crashed out on the chair in the office late this afternoon, and not just for five minutes either. I was for a whopping well over an hour. It looks as if I’m back in the bad old days of eighteen months ago when I was crashing out for hours every day with no sign of it ever improving.

This is a really huge disappointment to me, and I’m totally fed up with it. I wish that I could snap out of it and push on with work, now that I have (at long last) the opportunity.

That’s just how it was last night too. I fell asleep a couple of times again while I was typing out my notes, and by the time that I finished, I was so wiped out that I went straight to bed without even starting, never mind finishing, what else I had to do.

Once in bed, I fell asleep straight away, and there I stayed, without moving, until the alarm went off.

A couple of times just recently, I’ve said that I didn’t really feel like leaving the bed when the alarm went off. This morning was probably the worst that I have felt and I really was on the point of switching off the alarm and going back to bed.

Nevertheless, I struggled on and staggered into the bathroom for a good wash.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, lemon and honey drink, took my medication and then came back here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And it was no surprise to learn that there was nothing on there. It must have been a really deep sleep.

The nurse came quite early again and sorted out my legs. After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’ve crossed Hadrian’s Wall and we are now looking at some of the forward camps where troops were stationed as an advance guard to watch over the territory north of the wall.

He tells us that at Durisdeer, there are "the remains of a small, but well-preserved Roman fortlet are located about a mile up the Well or Wald Path to the north-east" and that a Roman road passed up the valley by the camp to connect the Nith Valley with the Clyde Valley.

Consequently, I had a play around with an online aerial map and CAME ACROSS THIS. If you look closely, you’ll see the modern track, which is where the wheel ruts are, but slightly above it, you can make out the ridge of the Roman road.

It was the defences that impressed me, though. I’ve not seen a Roman fort with a ditch and bank as pronounced as this one. They must have been really troubled times up on the frontier.

Back in here, I finished off what I should have done last night and then carried on with writing the radio notes. They are all finished now, ready to dictate.

There were several interruptions. Two disgusting drinks breaks, for a start. And my cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff.

The first thing that she had to do was to rescue two saucepans that had fallen out of the back of one of the drawers and landed on the floor underneath the unit. The second task was to shuffle the contents of the drawers around so that if a saucepan falls out again, it will drop into the drawer underneath and not onto the floor.

While she was at it, she also sorted out my Christmas tree. So now it has all of its decorations and lights. It’s only about 30 centimetres tall, but it puts a little ambience into the living room and makes it look a little more like Christmas. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I wish that other people around here would make some kind of effort.

Back in here, I crashed out on the chair for well over an hour, as I said just now. To my surprise, when I awoke, there was something on the dictaphone. I was at some kind of Russian spy school, looking through documents. I wasn’t very popular there and no-one liked me very much, not that that bothered me, but I was keen enough to learn. One of the documents was a report on a case that we had to study. It showed that someone had stolen some documents, had extracted information and passed them through to his superior. However, his superior was extremely unreliable and drunken. He was on the verge of giving away everything when he passed the information in some kind of strange, diagonal way across a whole range of people to someone totally unexpected on the far side of the operation. It fascinated me, so I was trying to write an extract of this. In the end, I ended up having to lie on the floor to do it, but the dog decided to jump all over me and I had to fight the dog off. In the end, I managed to drag the dog off outside and go back to the paper, but by then, the boss had come down from his booth. He told me not to bother and to move on to the next exercise. I told him that I was enjoying this particular one and I was determined to finish it. He said that the part that he enjoyed the most about it was the part when I was fighting off the dog. In the end, I put my foot down rather and made something of a fuss about it. In the end, he agreed to let me have a further five minutes to finish this particular case.

Actually, I’d been reading quite recently about a Russian spy school that sent agents to try to prise out the British and American nuclear secrets just after World War II, so it’s probably something to do with that.

But working on and enjoying a subject that my boss wants to ignore in order to concentrate on something else reminds me very much of my university course. I enjoyed the research that I was doing far more than the research that my tutor wanted me to do. It was for that reason that I was rejected for my Ph.D. The tutor didn’t think that I would stick to the task in hand.

With the little time that was left, I began to hunt down some missing photos from 2019. This is a project that I was hoping to attack with all of this free time that I now seem to have … "in theory" – ed …

For tea, I made a very quick stir fry and then came back in here to watch the football. Y Bala v Hwlffordd.

Both clubs are in difficulty right now at the wrong end of the table, and having seen this game, I’m not surprised. Hwlffordd didn’t impress me at all, but Y Bala were awful. They were clueless and offered absolutely nothing at all.

The score was 0-2 in favour of Hwlffordd, thanks to a silly, pointless penalty and another one of these marvellous wonder-goals that you see maybe once in ten years … "of which we have now seen two already this season" – ed … When the highlights come online, I’ll post the link and you can see for yourself. If someone had scored that goal in the Premier League, people would be talking about it for the next fifty years.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, and I can’t say that I’m sorry because I’m exhausted. But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Hadrian’s Wall … "well, one of us has" – ed … here is a question that was asked in a Roman school in about 200AD
Magister – "if it took five hundred men ten years to build the eighty Roman miles of Hadrian’s Wall, how long would it take three hundred men to build half of it if they took four weeks feriatum each complete year?"
Claudius – "no time at all, Magister."
Magister – "why not, Claudius?"
Claudius – "because those five hundred men have already built it."

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… to have a day off without having to rush around to various medical appointments, physiotherapy and all of the like?

It was definitely what I would call a “relaxing day”.

Having said that, of course, it would have been nicer had I managed to have had an early night to go with it (regardless of whether I wake up early or not) but that was, unfortunately, rather too much to expect. By the time that I’d finished my notes, the statistics and the backing-up and been to the bathroom, it was as near as 23:30, which makes no difference

That’ll teach me to fall asleep when I’m writing my notes.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, but I awoke on a couple of occasions at some crazy time of early morning. Although I managed to go back to sleep on a couple of occasions, the final time, at 05:40, I was not so fortunate.

After tossing and turning in bed for a while, at about 06:10 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. A stagger into the bathroom to clean myself up, and then another stagger into the kitchen to make my hot honey, ginger and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was out walking again and came over the top of a hill and was walking down this cobbled road that took me into this medieval town. It was a steep hill down, and from the top, I could see right over this city. I slowly reached down to the bottom, where, lying on its side, was this absolutely enormous motorbike scooter type of thing that was being used as an advertisement but had fallen over. They had five or six motorbikes that were attached to it by a rope. What they did was to set off on the motorbikes and begin to pull this motorbike. It went upright and it pull-started the engine. When it pull-started the engine, someone climbed up onto it and they disconnected all the motorbikes. Someone was extremely angry because what had happened had wrecked his Honda Benly. When I looked, there were three or four Honda Benlys, two of them with police fairings on. I’d never seen that many Honda Benlys in one place at any one time. As I walked off further on, this scooter had now become a huge articulated American bus which was being transformed into a hot dog stand or something like that. There was a message painted on the side of it – “why don’t you Europeans realise that we Americans love ‘great’?” It was certainly huge, this thing.

This was a surreal dream, that’s for sure, this giant scooter or motorbike. You wouldn’t be likely to see a Honda Benly being used as a police bike, though. They were the first of the high-revving 125cc twins that Honda imported into the UK, back in the early 1960s. I had one even earlier than that, a grey import that came into the UK as a personal possession of a sailor. I wonder where it is now, though. A friend of mine was looking after it while I sorted myself out during an “accommodation crisis”, but we had a dispute over some matter or other and I haven’t seen him, or the bike, since.

I was with a group of people and we were pulling some horse-drawn waggons. We went up this really incredibly steep hill, these waggons struggling to move up, but when we reached the top, we could see that there was one of these small Mexican towns below us so we went down very carefully. The contents of our waggons excited some kind of attention but we were sufficiently armed to keep everything at bay. We noticed that there were a few white women down there being mistreated. They had obviously been caught during some kind of border raid etc by these bandits. At first, we ingratiated ourselves with the bandits, but somehow at night, we managed to slip out. By this time, we had an armoured column with a jeep, a few lorries, several tanks and a couple of support vehicles and we headed off towards Granville. I remember saying to someone that all this action is going to take place in an area that I know really well. We drove north, and there was some kind of incident at a cross-roads but whether that was before we climbed that hill or not, I don’t know. We carried on travelling north, and at a fuel station at the side of the road, we pulled in and refuelled all the vehicles. One thing that I noticed was that we fuelled the vehicles from our own supplies and not from the fuel in the fuel station. I thought that that was a strange decision to make. As we were about to rejoin the road again, we saw another column in the distance, so we waited. It was the column of an American general, so we waited until his column had passed and we slipped into the rear of it. In the meantime, these bandits had recovered and were absolutely furious that we’d managed to escape and taken their prisoners with us. So that set out on our tail. Being much more mobile than we were, they were very, very likely to catch us before we’d gone very far

When I was typing this out, I had a feeling of déjà vu and I’m surprised that I mentioned it in the dream. I know where this road junction is – I can see it now. It’s the one in between the hospital roundabout and the roundabout at the start of the ring road. And what I can see in my mind is a pile of dead bodies scattered about all over the place as if they have been caught in an ambush.

The bit about the waggons and the Mexican village seems to relate to the film THE WILD BUNCH, which, despite the negative rating given by many critics, is in my opinion one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Fleeing from the Mexicans in an armoured column means nothing to me, though.

The nurse turned up early and sorted out my legs for me. He didn’t have much to say for himself today and was soon gone, leaving me to make my breakfast and to read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

At the moment, we’re stuck up on the Yorkshire Moors, trying to decipher the story behind Wade’s Causeway. This is a metalled road that leads to precisely nowhere, as fas as anyone has ascertained. Geographically, its line seems to point towards an empty bay on the coast, which is in a straight line from the end of the known road. Codrington thinks that that’s bizarre because there was a known Roman signalling station at Whitby, just along the coast, so why didn’t the road point in that direction?

In fact, every historian has a different opinion about the road, and some don’t even think that it was a road but a collapsed border wall of the kind of Hadrian’s Wall. Others are not convinced that it’s Roman, and that it might even date back as far as Neolithic times

After he left, I came back in here.

While I was going through the football news, I came across A MOST AMAZING INCIDENT IN WELSH FOOTBALL. at Mochdre along the Welsh coast.

Like everyone else who has read the article, I am gripping the edge of my seat in eager anticipation of finding out just exactly what the referee did or was alleged to have done!

To celebrate my day off, there was a pile of soundbytes of quite some length that had accumulated over the last couple of weeks so I set about cutting them into individual soundbytes. That took an age and it wasn’t until about 17:00 and two disgusting drinks breaks that I’d actually finished.

Mind you, I could have finished earlier but unfortunately, round about 15:00, I’m afraid that I crashed out for an hour or so. I thought that with dialysis and having organised a less-active life for myself this last few days, I would have been over all of this, so that was a disappointment.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sorting out the music for the new radio programme, editing, remixing, pairing and then seguing the songs. Tomorrow, I’ll start to write the text and hope that I’ll have the time to finish it so that I can dictate it for the next early morning.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta followed by ginger cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed.

Dialysis in the afternoon tomorrow, so I’d better be in good shape for it. I don’t want to go back to three times per week if I can possibly avoid it.

Anyway, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about motorbikes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ll tell you a true (and it really is true, too) story about a friend of mine on the Wirral who is a big biker-type of person.
He had been complaining for quite a while about how his wife didn’t understand him. But one day, things began to improve and he began to feel much better.
"What’s cheered you up?" I asked him.
"Well, our marriage has been on the rocks for a while because of her lack of interest in my hobbies, but things have changed" he replied. "I had a long talk with some friends, and I ended up getting a Harley-Davidson 883cc Sportster for her."
"Blimmin’ ‘eck" I replied. "That is just one hell of a good swap, that is!"

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Actually, you have no idea just how tired I was last night. I fell asleep twice … "or was it three times?" – ed … while I was typing out my notes, and in the end I gave up. I left undone a lot of things that I shouldn’t have left undone, and round about 22:20 I crawled into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, and there I stayed until about … errr … 04:20 when I awoke. I was able at that point to go back to sleep, but when I awoke the next time at 05:13, that was that. By 06:00, I was in the bathroom having a wash.

After the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and my medication, I came back in here to finish off what I should have finished off last night, like take the stats and back up the computer.

Then it was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in my office again and it was the final day so I was preparing to retire. I was slowly going through my things, slowly tidying up. But at one point, I was actually in somewhere else trying to clear the floor of all kinds of papers and everything. It was all little notes and stuff that I’d written years ago and it all went into the bin. I couldn’t believe how tidy I’d made the place. I even found an assignment from one of my University courses and when I had a look at it, I found that although it had received a good mark, the page layout and format of the document that I’d sent was awful, and I wondered how on earth I’d managed to miss this when I’d been preparing it. Then I was back in my office and going through my desk. There were tons of stuff, and I couldn’t work out what I needed to take and what I needed to leave behind. People were asking me what I intended to do. I replied that I had a deckchair, a nice garden and two nice cats. I’ll just sit out and enjoy the summer. Two of us, right at that moment, said that I’d picked the best time of the year to leave. Then the boss came round and asked me if I was nearly ready to go. I replied that I was still sorting out my stuff. She said something like “don’t take the toaster” which was the office toaster that was on my desk. I replied “it’s still on my desk, isn’t it?” because I thought that it was a really offensive thing to say. Then I suddenly realised that it was Friday so I rang up Nerina at her place and asked “shouldn’t we be going swimming tonight after work? I haven’t brought anything to wear”. She replied “I’ll get something off one of my brothers, some shorts or something” but I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Then she told me about this plastic underwear that you could buy. I turned up my nose at that. She tried to persuade me but I wasn’t in the mood to be persuaded. In the end, I thought that I’d probably just go home and make some tea for when Nerina comes home. That’s going to be the best solution but she was still trying to persuade me to wear either her brother’s shorts or some of this plastic underwear.

So having spent all those years during the night reaching the final few days at work but never actually finishing, here I am finally about to cross the threshold. That’s twice in a week or two that I’ve done that, after all of these years.

But whatever this is about plastic underwear? I really don’t know. And as if I really would pinch the office toaster … "perish the thought" – ed …

The nurse turned up, his usual cheerful self (at least, these days) and we had a little chat as he sorted out my legs. He’s all inclined not to come on Sundays to give me even more of a rest and relax, but I’m not quite at that stage yet – although if I fall asleep once more while I’m typing these notes, as I just did five minutes ago, I’ll think again.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Not that I managed to go very far today, though. I was side-tracked … "again" – ed … looking for the one of the many towns named Manton that contains some significant Roman remains, and ended up going on a guided tour of Roman villas in England – abandoned, or burnt, or destroyed, or buried.

You’ve no idea just how many there are altogether. They even came across one when they were digging a driveway into the Council offices in Bromley.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then I went to the lesson. It started off quite well, but it all went pear-shaped when we had a spontaneous test on a subject that had been covered by the class while I was at chemotherapy. That was an embarrassment.

However, I bravely stuck it out until the end of the lesson, but I was glad that it was over.

My faithful cleaner came around later, as usual, and organised the shower for me. And so now, I’m a nice, clean boy again. I can’t wait, though, to have the time to order the handrails for the shower so that I can shower on my own and have more than one per week.

After the shower and I’d dried myself off, the next task was to install the strings of Christmas lights in the windows.

Last year, I was the only person in this whole area who had some pretty coloured lights in the window. And even though I’m not a believer in Christmas or anything like that, it’s still nice to bring some joy and gaiety into a depressing period of the year and it’s a shame that other people don’t make any kind of effort at all.

Consequently, my faithful cleaner (under my supervision) put up my lights in both the windows, and now it looks as if at least one person in the area is celebrating Christmas instead of the whole area being so miserable about it. At some point, I’ll even organise my Christmas tree.

After my cleaner left, I sorted out the rest of the music that I need for my next radio programme, and I’ll organise that over the rest of the week. And won’t it be nice to have a couple of days when I’m going nowhere, so that I can press on.

Tea tonight was mashed potatoes, veg and vegan sausage, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Only small portions, but I managed to eat it all tonight. It’s a meal with foods that are full of carbohydrates and fats so while it’s not a particularly healthy meal, it’s full of energy and proteins so that should help to keep me going while this lack of appetite persists.

And so, on that point, I’m going to be and see how I’ll get on tonight. I could do with another good sleep but, as usual, that’s not particularly likely. We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about sticking it out … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story that I heard when I was in the High Arctic about two nudists who went on a camping holiday in the north of Greenland.
Freezing and shivering to death inside their tent, they were wondering how long they could stick it out before they ended up being frost-bitten.

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."

Friday 28th November 2025 – THERE’S NO DOUBT …

… about it – I really am ill.

Today has been a pretty miserable day as far as I am concerned. And it should have started so well too.

Having raced through everything last night, my notes were online quite early and I was looking forward to a nice, early night and a really good sleep. However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s really pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Like 04:05 this morning, for example.

At about 05:20, I’d given up all hope of going back to sleep and had risen from the Dead. I took full advantage of the early start by dictating the radio notes that I had rewritten the other day, so they were ready for editing.

Next stop was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been out with some friends last night, and we’d been to rescue a car that belonged to one of them. When I went to pick it up, they asked me if I would drive it back. It was a Morris marina, and I couldn’t get the hang of the gearbox. It felt ever so tight to me. However, I managed to move it in some fashion and came into the city centre. I put the indicator on to turn left, but people stopped for me as if I wanted to go up into the church precinct. In the end, I had no choice but to go up into the church. We stopped there and waited for the traffic to die down, then we climbed into the car again, with me struggling with the gearbox to leave. I ended up being stuck behind an old, dirty bus and I suddenly realised that I was in an old, dirty bus too. I had to pull out from behind this bus without hitting it and somehow make my way forward. I pulled out and had to wait for a gap in the traffic. Just as I was about to pull out, a car suddenly appeared. I saw it over my shoulder and the guy with me said to his wife “did you see that? He actually used his shoulder”. He was quite impressed by that. So we set off, but then we had to go to a DIY shop for some DIY stuff for my house. They all set off running but I knew that it was miles away so I ran a lot slower to conserve my strength. But there was an incredibly steep descent and I could have jumped into the bus and let it roll down to the bottom of the hill but I thought that it would be most unsafe so I carried on running. Eventually, I arrived at this DIY place and found that they had all purchased everything and it was all stacked. However, they looked exhausted so and they asked about when we were going to load it. I replied “you need to take a break first because you aren’t going to load anything like that in that condition”. The guy in the shop said that as it was all on a pallet already, he could take it with a fork-lift truck and drop it down at the side of our vehicle.

The part about looking over my shoulder relates to the time when I was chauffeuring in Brussels. I had a General from the Finnish Army in my car and he asked me if I had been a motor-cyclist. I asked him why, and he replied "you’re always looking over your shoulder when you drive, just like a motorcyclist does. "

The friend was, by the way, related to one of the young ladies who come to see me during the night and it’s a disaster that she never put in an appearance. And we had a Marina estate once when I had my taxis. We were going to use it for parcels but, as always, I was overtaken by events.

One thing though was that I never drove “dirty old buses”. I was quite selective about whom I drove for and restricted my activities to Shearings and to a local firm with an excellent reputation.

By now though, I was wishing that I had stayed in bed because I was beginning to feel awful, nauseous and totally exhausted. Nevertheless, I went for a good wash and to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I could no longer concentrate on anything, and it was a very weary, depressive me that crawled into the kitchen when Isabelle the Nurse came round. She gave me my injection and sorted out my feet, and when I told her how ill I was feeling, she suggested that I go back to bed.

Strangely enough, that was my opinion too, but first I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

As usual, I was sidetracked by the Iter Britanniarum as I followed the routes of some of these roads. Interestingly, he talks about a Roman agger or embankment that carried a road that crossed over the River Hodder in Lancashire. I had a quick look on an online aerial map and noticed a LOVELY CURVED EMBANKMENT NOW OVERGROWN WITH TREES, THAT COULD EASILY BE AN AGGER leading to the river, and if you zoom in to the river really closely, you can see what looks like a paved ford under the water.

There’s also talk about a Roman fort at Caersws in mid-Wales “in a bend of the River Severn with three concentric defensive rings” and, allowing for modern erosion by the river, I FOUND THIS.

A little earlier, I’d mentioned going back to bed but I couldn’t even go that far. I staggered onto my office chair in the bedroom and promptly fell asleep again.

When I awoke, over an hour later, I was still feeling ill but I pushed on and edited the radio notes that I’d dictated earlier. So that programme is ready to be assembled now.

The taxi came early to take me to the Centre de Ré-education so I had to wait around for a while when I arrived.

My first session was with the relief physiotherapist as mine was on a training day. She exercised my arms and legs for a half-hour period that passed surprisingly quickly.

The second session was with the occupational therapist but he didn’t really offer a great deal of help and we were finished after fifteen minutes.

After waiting around for a while, I saw Elise the Dishy Doctor. I poured out my tale of woe, and we decided, after a lengthy discussion, to suspend all of the activities at the Centre de Ré-education until the doctors at dialysis decide that I’m fit enough to restart, whenever that may be.

In the meantime, she gave me a prescription for twenty-five sessions of physiotherapy at my own pace in some local cabinet. However, as my faithful cleaner said later, finding one that has a vacancy is going to be a real challenge.

The final session was this standing upright in this frame thing but I abandoned that after twenty minutes and went to look for my taxi home.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and then I collapsed into a chair in the kitchen. After she left, I came back in here and, once installed in my comfortable chair, I crashed out again – until, would you believe, 19:45.

For tea tonight, I made a batch of hummus and ate it with some crackers while I watched the football – TNS v Caernarfon. TNS had the lion’s share of the game, of course but the Cofis kept them out for eighty-two minutes.

Two late goals, one of them with the very last kick of the game, gave TNS another win, and once again, the Cofis played the match without any great sense of urgency going forward. They really are going to have to play better than this if they want to make their mark.

So right now, I’m off to bed. Totally exhausted, but relieved to some extent that I’m only out for two afternoons next week. This is some kind of progress.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Finnish General … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I went round to his apartment once, he had a large stuffed black bear in his hallway.
He told me a story about it that I could easily believe to be true and underlines the misunderstanding when two foreigners are conversing in a third, foreign language.
He was holding a cocktail party and one of his guests, an Italian lady, asked him about the bear, and the conversation continued in English.
"I shot it myself" he replied.
"So is it the complete bear there? "
"Oh no. It’s just the fur "
"So what did you do with the bear itself? "
"We ate it"
And so she went round this cocktail party with stories of the General dragging the dead bear into a clearing in the forest and then sitting around a campfire eating it raw while it was still warm and fresh.

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

… I’d have gone back to sleep after the alarm sounded this morning. It was another one of those days when I have never felt less like leaving the bed.

If the truth be known, I should have gone to bed much earlier than I did, but as usual these days, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied and generally managed to waste a lot of time while I was finishing off the evening’s work. As a consequence, it was another evening that was much nearer 23:30 than anything else, and probably approaching from the wrong side too.

Not that I was all that tired either. That sleep that I had at the end of the afternoon probably had an influence on everything because, apart from everything else, it took a good while for me to drop off once I’d finally made it into bed.

At some point I remember waking up, but it wasn’t for very long and I was flat out, dead to the World when the alarm went off. And what wouldn’t I have given to have been able to have gone back to sleep. However, with the nurse coming around every day, a real, proper lie-in these days is quite impossible.

It was a real struggle for me to rise up from the bed before the second alarm, and then we had a desperate stagger into the bathroom for a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to wash down my medication, and then I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going out with a group of US Cavalry to make a large armed patrol into Native American lands. I was appalled by the lack of security that was going on there. There was a General in charge, and he was insistent that the natives wouldn’t attack because we were so numerous, but I thought that that was a crazy situation to suggest because they will attack when you least expect it, in a manner that you least expect it and a place where you least expect it. You need to be at security all the time, for example, at night, he just set up a kind of camp on the plain and didn’t mount any serious attempt at pickets or guards. About a mile away, there were some rocky slopes. That’s where I would have gone to have my camp at night – amongst the rocks on the slope where you are pretty much hidden from view from what’s happening down in the valley, and you would have immediate defence if there were any problems and you came under attack.

These books that I have been reading about the US cavalry in the late Nineteenth Century are clearly preying on my mind. I must be doing too much reading, I suppose. It’s interesting that I’m happy about giving tactical advice to US generals but seeing the mess in which managed to find themselves in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, it’s not too difficult.

Later on, we were on board a train heading from Italy to Germany. It was one of these super-high speed trains. It was travelling at an incredible rate of speed, and it came to a new tunnel that was twelve and a half miles long so it shot into this tunnel and out the other side. I went and stood outside the carriage for some fresh air after that, but when I looked back in, all of my seats had been taken and there was no room for me. I waited for a moment until we stopped at a station, where everyone alighted except my friend and me so I could sit down again. Then we thought about making breakfast. There was a kind-of grill in each carriage so we made some breakfast, bacon, sausage, things like that. Suddenly, my friend looked at the time and said “we’ll be in Munich in an hour and we haven’t made the beds or anything”. He asked me if I would go to fetch the suitcases, but I explained that I didn’t think that I could manage the two suitcases on my own, so he began to become agitated. “And what are we going to do about making the beds?” he asked.

Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find myself on a train these days, least of all travelling between Italy and southern Germany, much as I would like to. It’s simply a totally impractical proposition, never mind being able to sit outside the carriage.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to give me my injection, and then she sorted out my legs. Her happy mood is still continuing, which is nice. I don’t know what it is that she takes, but I wish that she would give me some.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. We’re up on the moors right now, north-east of Manchester, and I’m still tracking down these camps along the way, trying to identify them.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I rewrote some of the radio notes to make them longer. I can dictate them the next time that I awaken early, I suppose.

My faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. Once aboard, I had to go to the depot to witness a game of “musical chairs” as they swapped drivers around. Once I had my new driver, I could set off, but I was still late arriving.

It took a while for me to be seen, and once more they took a measurement of my dry weight. When they coupled me up, they didn’t want to take everything off but I managed to persuade them. If I’m not back for four days, I want to be ahead of the game as much as possible.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today but she ignored me again. She really doesn’t love me any more, which is a shame. I was left pretty much alone all through the session, something that suits me fine.

The taxi was waiting for me when they unplugged me, so I wasn’t back home as late as I was fearing. I had pasta, vegetables and ratatouille for tea, followed by some of my ginger cake.

While I was at dialysis though, they gave me a booklet that included a recipe for a pear cheesecake, and I reckon that I can make it into a vegan recipe with no difficulty. I shall give that a try one of these days.

But not now because, having already fallen asleep once while I was typing my notes, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep again.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Romans … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was chatting to a friend about Roman numerals
He told me "I have enormous difficulty trying to remember Roman numerals. If you asked me how you write, for example, 1, 1000, 51, 6 and 500, I wouldn’t have a clue. It makes me really angry."
"Is that so?" I asked.
"Oh yes" he replied. "I’M LIVID"

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. there is absolutely no point whatsoever in going to bed early, because all that it seems to mean is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, is why at 05:34 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Last night, having finished off my half-pizza (which did not require any preparation – just warming up) I’d finished tea quite early. And so I came in here, dashed off my notes, did everything else that I needed to do, and was in bed just a few minutes after 22:00. And wasn’t that nice for a change?

Once I was asleep, I remember nothing at all until about 03:30, but I was soon back to sleep and there I stayed until about 04:30. When I awoke at that time, I couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried, and so, after an hour or so, I decided that I’d leave the bed and make the most of an early start.

The first thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And then re-dictate some of them because for some reason, I’d missed off the first twenty seconds or so.

While I was at it, I found some notes that I’d written a while back for another programme and hadn’t recorded, so I dictated those too while I was at it.

As an aside, what I do is that if I’ve written notes and entered them into the spreadsheet that I keep but have yet to record them, I give them a light green background so that I can see them at a glance as I scroll through.

The next task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at Pionsat last night at the football club with the President. We were talking, and I mentioned that there was a British guy who played centre-half for several lower-league clubs and was rated quite highly. For some reason, he had disappeared off the radar in the UK. When I performed a search for his name, it turned out that he was playing for FC Rouen in France. The guy from Pionsat said that that must have been a good career move because there were plenty of British players now playing in France who were making their careers for themselves. He asked me if I knew someone called Mulliner who plays for one of the clubs down south. The name rang a little bell with me but it was all that I could think of. But we were talking about the football club and playing friendly matches. We said that they had one team that played in blue and another one that played in red, and when they were playing against other teams, they had a shirt that was a quartered blue and red that they used to wear and still did when they were playing friendlies.

Blue and red quartered shirts were our old colours for the school football teams. Not that I would really know, because I was only ever selected once. That was the problem when you had two players in front of you for your position, one who was on the books of Crewe Alexandra as a schoolboy and went on later to play professionally for Wycombe Wanderers, and the second who played semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria in the Nationwide Conference.

The only “Mulliner” I know in the footballing world was a goalkeeper who played for several clubs in Mid and North Wales in the Welsh pyramid. As for the centre-half, I can remember his name from the dream and while he’s never likely to have played for FC Rouen, he certainly had a “most interesting” career.

Later on, I was at work and one of the people came over to me with a piece of paper or a notebook or something. He asked “is your friend taking the mickey or something?”. I had absolutely no idea what he meant, so he showed me that on a page in this notebook thing, he’d drawn out the basis of a graph or a table, but he’d made it so small that there was no room to write any figures in between the lines. I looked at it and asked “why didn’t he turn it round ninety degrees or maybe go across two pages in the notebook?”. We couldn’t work out why he’d done this. It would be a puzzle to put any figures into this table. Then he was trying to work out what some kind of hieroglyphics meant at the bottom of the page of this notebook. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was a list of days, and then there was “HD” alongside it, so I asked “I wonder if that’s when he’s planning to take a holiday?”. The guy said “I’m not going to be here by then”. I asked “why not?”. He replied that he’d only come here on a temporary basis to learn the work and he was moving on somewhere else. I said that I was terribly disappointed by all of this because we happened to get on well with each other. He was about the only person with whom I did. He agreed but he was disappointed by the social life of this place. He said that there didn’t seem to be any at all. I replied that most of the parents seem to be far too egocentric and didn’t really want to mix at all at any other time outside the office. The only thing that was any kind of social in any degree was the cricket team, but that only took place in the summer and that was just one night per week, but that was just about everything.

Funnily enough, there was someone with whom I worked who would have fitted this description. He was the only person there whom I liked and we used to play snooker together. As for the cricket, though, I mentioned just now that I never really had the change to play as a goalkeeper (which was my favourite position) at school but when Nerina’s work organisation needed a wicketkeeper for their midweek cricket team, I found my niche. From there, I played a few times for a good-class local cricket team too when they couldn’t find a wicketkeeper.

When I’d finished, I went and organised myself in the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted my reverie when she breezed into the apartment. She gave me my injection and then organised my feet. We had a nice little chat while she was here, but then she moved on quickly.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and started my new book, ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN by Thomas Codrington. It’s an interesting book because it tells us not only about the situation of the roads, but goes into details as to the construction

You can tell how old the book is, though. He notes that "the Roman paving has recently been cut through in a trench for laying a telephone tube along the Edgware Road ". A “telephone tube”. That’s some ancient history of course. It’s harking back to the compressed air systems that existed in big cities for the pneumatic powering of lifts and so on.

But he (and the workmen) pay a huge compliment to the Romans. "The workmen found that it gave them much more trouble to break up than the modern concrete floor above.". Imagine what a typical local council road will look like in two thousand years time.

Back in here, I went to revise for my Welsh and then attended the lesson. It went OK – not as good as some of them have been just recently, but much better than many in the past, But I need to sort myself out because I have notes everywhere and need to tidy them up.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put in an appearance and she helped me have a lovely, warm shower. And you’ve no idea how much I appreciate it.

She also brought in the post, and one of them was a copy of a report from the dialysis centre. It lists all of my complaints and how I’m being over-taxed with medical appointments, but concludes rather ominously by saying "the patient’s morale is quite low. He’s talking about abandoning his treatment. We strongly recommend that he sees a psychiatrist."

Well, your morale would be low if you were going through all of what I’m going through. As for the psychiatrist, God help the person who draws the short straw and is obliged to probe the depths of my dark, subconscious mind.

Once I’d finished, I came back in here where, regrettably, I crashed out again. And for quite some considerable time too. The early morning doubtless had something to do with it, but I bet that the general fatigue had something to do with it and that’s rather sad.

After I awoke, I edited some of the radio notes and assembled one of the programmes. That’s now ready to go and I’ll do the other set during the week.

Tea was vegan pie with mash and vegetables followed by ginger cake and chocolate sauce, and now I’m off to bed, a nice clean boy in a nice clean bed because my cleaner changed the bedding while I was in the shower.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about filling in forms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone from Crewe who once did a “drop-in” at a local factory to enquire about employment prospects.
"But you haven’t filled in our questionnaire" said the secretary.
So the man from Crewe went back outside and beat up the doorman.

Sunday 23rd November 2025 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, I was asleep this morning when the alarm went off.

Now, you are probably thinking that it has happened a fair number of times just recently. However, that was during the week when the alarm goes off at 06:29. Today is a Sunday, a Day of Rest when the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59, and lying in bed asleep at that time of the morning is a very rare event.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. Although it seemed to be later than usual when I finished everything that I needed to do before retiring, it was actually 23:20 when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed without moving until the alarm at 07:59.

There was nothing on the dictaphone either. That gives you an idea of how deep the sleep actually was and how tired I must have been last night.

With awakening so late, it was a mad panic to wash and dress before the nurse arrived, and I was only just leaving the bathroom when he came in. He sorted out my legs, took my medical card to swipe so that the Sécurité Sociale can pay him for his visits, and then he left.

Once he’d disappeared, I did the washing-up from last night and then made some more croissants. While they were baking, I made coffee and breakfast. The two fresh croissants from the batch that I’d just made were delicious.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

The other day, I mentioned that there were inconsistencies in her book compared to the book of the first Mrs Carrington, AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE.

There are some more that reared their ugly head today. The first Mrs Carrington tells us that at Fort Laramie, they had only been supplied with one thousand rounds of ammunition instead of the hundred thousand that they had been promised. Colonel Carrington tells us, via Mrs Grummond’s book, that they were "given only one thousand rounds of ammunition instead of twenty thousand promised"

His speech, given at an anniversary reunion of the soldiers at the fort in 1909 is recorded by Mrs Grummond and includes the fact that "Upon reaching Powder River, where the little post of Reno had been held for a time, I found awaiting my arrival only seven thousand rounds of ammunition.". This isn’t mentioned by the first Mrs Carrington.

However, this makes sense because although Carrington complains persistently of a shortage of ammunition throughout his period at Fort Phil Kearny, he’s able to send to Captain Ten Eyck, who is leading a rescue party in an attempt to save Fetterman’s patrol "forty men and ten thousand rounds of ammunition." If he was so short of ammunition, he certainly wouldn’t have had ten thousand rounds to spare.

Back in here, we had a mini-foot-fest. I’d seen all of the Welsh football yesterday, so today it was the turn of Stranraer to feature. They were away at Spartans this weekend, Spartans being top of the league.

The score was four goals to nil at half-time but surprisingly, despite having very little of the play, it was in favour of Stranraer! The second half was much more even, but Stranraer managed to hang on to their four goal lead and severely embarrass the title favourites.

The funny thing is that I’ve seen Stranraer play much better than this and somehow manage to lose, but for once, everything seemed to go in their favour today.

This afternoon, I finished off the radio notes for the programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went off to do some baking.

Today’s loaf is easily the best that I have ever made. It had risen up to an incredible height and I can’t understand why it’s done so well. The pizza was really good too, but I only managed to eat half of it. Not to worry though. I’ll have the other half for tea tomorrow night.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. I’m still exhausted after this last week, despite my long sleep today, and I can’t wait to go and try to sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about Spartans FC in Edinburgh … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked a friend of mine who lives near there if she went to the match this weekend.
"I wouldn’t waste my time" she replied. "If I really wanted to watch someone struggle to score during ninety minutes, I’d come with you to the disco."

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, as all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, explains why I was sitting at my desk working at 03:30 this morning.

Last night, I’d hit the hay at about 19:30 or thereabouts after my totally exhausting day at the Centre de Ré-education. Having a day like that after two days of chemotherapy is not doing me any good at all, and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless giving me all of these exercises to make me better if the effort is going to kill me.

Surprisingly, considering how dead I was feeling earlier, it took an age for me to go off to sleep. But once I’d gone, I stayed gone and an earthquake wouldn’t have awoken me. But at 02:27 we had another one of these “sitting bolt upright” awakenings that I sometimes have.

Despite all that I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep so after an hour or so, I raised myself from the Dead.

We started off with a foot-fest. There had been some matches in the Welsh Cup last night and the highlights were now online.

And how I laughed as TNS – perennial winners of just about everything – were leading 1-0 against Cardiff Metropolitan with just five minutes to go, only to concede two quickfire goals and go out of the competition.

It was even funnier later when Connah’s Quay – perennial runners-up – playing away at second-tier Llandudno, went down and out 2-1.

What with other results today, we have to go back to 2002-03 to find a Welsh Cup winner who is still in the competition.

After the football, I made a start on last night’s blog entry. I was so exhausted last night that there was no possibility of me doing anything. Eventually, the entry went online and then I had to do the stats and the statistics that I also hadn’t done yesterday.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. I was in the north of Scotland somewhere. There was a kind of canal that had been dug artificially from the sea. There was a ferry boat, one of these small, flat ferry things moored at the ferry terminal along this canal that sailed out across to an island just across a short length of sea. I was there in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van waiting to be loaded on, and a tractor appeared. He had something in the bucket at the front and something in the tri-point hitch at the back. The ferry guy told him that if he wanted to cross over to the island, he’d have to hire a trailer in order to take his things onto the ferry. They couldn’t go like that. He said that he would have to go back to pick up a trailer as he only lives at the top of the hill. The ferry guy said something like “it will be in the next price band” when he comes back so “to tell whoever was here that it’s agreed to pay twenty-five bob to go across”, which was presumably the fare for the current price band where we were. Then I was beckoned onto the ferry. There was a weird chiming noise in the distance, and the ferry guy said that that was the local church bells ringing the time. Then, there was an even weirder one almost straight away. He pointed to some tower on the horizon and said “that’s the town clock, that one is that’s striking now”.

Several ferries of that nature have had the pleasure of my presence. Mainly up in Scotland (and mainly in Bill Badger) but more than just a few around the coast of Nova Scotia.

Later on, I was with my niece’s youngest daughter and someone else. We were in my apartment in Granville. We decided that we’d go out for a meal so I collected my crutches and we set out towards the town. We hadn’t gone too far when I realised that I’d left my sac banane behind with my wallet in it so my niece’s daughter volunteered to run back. But then she pointed out the fact that I was in fact wearing it so we carried on downtown and came across a canal again where there was a boat heading up the canal from the sea. We came into the centre and came into a restaurant. It was 22:00 now and we weren’t sure whether it was still serving, but they ushered us to a table. It was an extremely posh affair and we were surrounded by waiters. I said to my niece’s daughter “we’re actually outnumbered here” to which she laughed. They kept on insisting that we had wines and that kind of thing whereas sparkling water was fine for me. Eventually, they poured a sparkling water for me and left the menus. I had the vegan menu, so there was a kind of stuffed tomato that looked nice. For the main course, I was hoping to have a salad. There were pages and pages and pages of different types of lettuce and different types of dressing. I asked the others what they were having, and they made some kind of suggestion but it didn’t ring any bells with me. The third person with us stood up and went over to a different table. She looked at it and came back, saying “that’s a lovely table over there”. My niece’s daughter said “well, we’re here now”. But the other person replied “but I want to go to sit at that table” but my niece’s daughter ignored her and so did I. We carried on looking through the menu and there were still these pages and pages and pages of different lettuces and different dressings, and I couldn’t really find anything else.

There’s no chance of me being in another restaurant. The last time that I was in one was an absolute disaster and I shan’t be doing that again. Besides, my appetite is all to pot these days. However, who was the third person? That’s a big mystery.

After a visit to the bathroom, I went into the kitchen to make my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and to take my medication.

Back in here later, I sat down in my chair and that was the last thing that I remember until the nurse came at 08:30. Not that that is any surprise. It was an early start.

The nurse gave me a lecture this morning. I mentioned my ongoing dispute about the hours that they expect me to be available for treatment and he was most unhappy. He thinks that I should be grateful for all of the effort that everyone is making towards my eventual recovery and accept everything with a smile.

But that’s the difference between me and the medical profession. They want me to spend all of my life having treatment and I want some quality of life.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast. That included the two croissants left over from the last batch that I made and, warmed in the microwave, they were just as delicious.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

Some of the things that she writes are appalling, and I shudder to think what today’s World would make of them. The female Afro-Caribbean servant of one of the officers’ wives had been scared almost to death by an attack on the fort by the Native Americans and was refusing to go outside. The solution proposed by the officer’s wife was "to flail Laura into subordination by the help of a trunk strap.".

She asked the author to go to help her, and she did! And judging by the style of her writing and her description, she quite enjoyed it too.

Mrs Grummond told us at one stage that her "father was a slave-owner, but one of the better kind.". If the treatment of Laura is an example of the treatment meted out by one of the “better kind”, what on earth must the treatment have been that was meted out by one of the bad kind?

After the breakfast; I had a job to do. I sorted out all of the dry fruit that I need for my Christmas Cake, weighed it, chopped it into smaller amounts and mixed it in a large glass bowl. Having done that, I made a marinade of rum essence, brandy essence, lemon juice, orange essence and vanilla essence in water, added it all over the mix and stirred it well in.

It’s now in the fridge, all soaking in, and it’ll stay there like that for at least a week.

This afternoon I made a start on writing the notes for the radio programme that I’ve been preparing. It was a slow, laborious effort and I’ll have to finish it tomorrow.

We broke off for the football – Caerfyrddin v Colwyn Bay in the Welsh Cup.

Caerfyrddin are in the second tier and Colwyn Bay are in the Premier League, but with all of the cup upsets this weekend, a shock result might have been on the cards. However, Colwyn Bay ran out 3–1 winners without too much difficulty. They were always one pace ahead of the home side.

Tea tonight was two taco rolls with cheese, tomato and mushrooms followed by ginger cake and chocolate soya sauce. And now I’m off to bed, cough and all, because my cough has suddenly come back.

But seeing as we have been talking about the football on Friday night … "well, one of us has" – ed … the grandstand at Maesddu for the Llandudno v Connah’s Quay game was full to capacity, except for one empty seat.
"What’s with the empty seat?" asked one of the stewards
"I bought it for the wife" said the man sitting next to it "but unfortunately, she died."
"Well, couldn’t you offer it to one of your friends?" asked the steward.
"I did, but they couldn’t come" he replied. "They are all at the funeral."

Friday 21st November 2025 – I FORGOT …

… to mention yesterday that the 20th November was the tenth anniversary of being rushed to hospital when a blood test revealed that, instead of a red cells blood count of between 14 and 16, mine was 3.8 – a figure that is officially too low to support life.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d begun to feel ill a few weeks earlier while I was in Canada and the position had slowly deteriorated since then. Eventually, I’d reached a point where I could no longer keep going.

When I was transferred to the University Hospital at Leuven in April 2016, they told me quite bluntly that no-one had ever lived longer than eleven years with this illness, so either I’ll be setting some kind of World Record or these notes will shudder to a sudden halt at some point in the not-too-distant future. We shall have to see how things pan out.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, just for once, I finished with indecent haste everything that I needed to do. The notes were on line before 22:00 and I was in bed, would you believe, by 22:20. If only it could be like that every evening.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s a waste of time going to bed early, because all it seems to mean is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. I was all set to write those words again this morning when I awoke at 03:27 and was still awake at 04:10. I was giving some serious thought to leaving the bed at that moment but the next thing that I recall was the alarm going off at 06:29 as usual.

The foregoing notwithstanding, it was still quite a struggle to raise myself from the Dead and toddle off into the bathroom. Next stop was the kitchen where I made my hot ginger, honey and hot lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I’d been down in the Auvergne with a friend of mine. There was this big party taking place, so they doped me up with cough mixture etc so that I sounded healthy, and they dropped me off at this party. It went on for quite some time, and then it was time to head north. It was early in the morning, and I was thinking that if I have to drive through the towns and across country to join the motorway that brings me up here, I’d be running the risk of being found drink-driving, because I’m not used to drinking beer. I thought that if I nipped across to Combronde, which is ten kilometres away or something, I’d be on the other motorway. That way, I would be much better off in driving and heading north. So I began to set off, but for some reason, I found myself travelling with my friend again and his son. They had been somewhere and picked me up again. We were heading north. As we were going further north, suddenly the car shuddered to a halt and this boy, the son of my friend, suddenly screamed. It turned out that he had stubbed his toe somehow on the street outside and he’d hit a rock or something as we were going past. That had caused the car to shudder and stop, and that had caused him a most damaging pain to his foot.

Whatever was going on here, I really have no idea. Apart from one bottle of beer halfway down a mountain in Bulgaria in 1994 (it was the only refreshment available), I’ve not drunk any alcohol for decades. The rest of it is totally meaningless.

This started off being on a Native American reservation, guarding the tribes that had tried to break out to seek their freedom. However, I came across an old schoolfriend of mine while I was there and we began to chat about old times. I asked him what he was doing these days, and he replied that he was working for a radio station. So, of course, was I. We had a chat about what we were doing. He worked the late show, which was called something like “Good Evening”. He didn’t say exactly what he did, but he said that he had an album of music from the 1960s that had over sixty songs on it. That was what he played through his programme. I told him that I had a library of over fifteen thousand songs. He said that he remembered it from the olden days, but I replied that it had grown much bigger these days as I had been collecting discs and albums unashamedly over the last ever-so-many years. We carried on chatting like that for a while.

Native American reservations have been the subject of conversation for several weeks. The Navajo Reservation that I visited in Arizona in 2002 was the saddest, poorest place on Earth and I don’t blame anyone for wanting to break out. The natives were struggling to raise crops in an arid semi-desert environment while the luscious, irrigated green fields halfway up the hill at the back were part of an irrigated golf course. I once read a report that when a group of Native Americans surrendered their best hunting grounds in return for an annuity, the annuity consisted of two yards of calico per person and one blanket between six.

The friend was someone whom I knew at school and with whom I shared an apartment in Crewe for a while. The record mentioned in the dream would indeed probably represent his entire record collection, whereas mine is probably much more than fifteen thousand songs these days … "it’s actually twelve thousand six hundred that he has digitalised so far" – ed ….

It was finally my last couple of days at work and retirement was actually going ahead. I left the bed early and then spent about half an hour trying to decide what clothes to wear. In the end, I settled on a grey suit, a grey shirt and a kind-of orange-red tie, but it took so long to do it that I was running horribly late, and my sister told me that my niece had been banging on the bathroom door for ages, trying to make me hurry up. However, I hadn’t found half of what I needed. There were some things lying around that I’m sure my sister was going to take home with her when she leaves so I discreetly hid one or two of them so that there would at least be something behind. I then grabbed my bass speaker cabinet and ran off for the final train. I burst into work just on time, where they were busy laying out some food for my retirement party. I thought that it was tomorrow that I retired, not today. But they were laying out this food, and I took them by surprise. I found that my brother was sitting at the desk next to me. He was playing around with the electronic equipment that the usual woman who sat there had left behind, and making some remarks about how far behind in her work she was, and how much chaos it all was. I dumped my bass speaker down and then dashed off somewhere else to do something, but I can’t remember what it was.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that being on the point of retirement has been a reoccurring theme in these dreams for quite some considerable time, but last night I finally made it … "well, almost" – ed … My brother has appeared in a few dreams here and there but one of my sisters? Where did she come from?

The nurse was quite early again, which suits me. No blood pressure to take, so he was in and out in five minutes, which suited me even better. I could push on and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

While she was travelling towards Fort Phil Kearny, she tells us that she "had an experience with cactus that, in the expressive term of a later day, was the limit.". Now who amongst us would not have liked to have been present to witness that? What with women having had experiences with cacti and Native Americans having intercourse with their ponies, there must never have been a dull moment on the frontier, to say the least.

But leaving that aside, when discussing mental health issues (which is an extremely rare thing for a layman to do in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century), she notes that "such a condition as insanity is unknown amongst squaws, and if insanity is sometimes attributed to the red man, it is due to the white man’s firewater. ".

Despite the interesting nature of much of her writing, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt in some places. She notes that "It was well known that there was gold to be found in all the creeks near us, and a few pannings in the nearest branch abundantly proved it; but not a soldier deserted the post, or shirked his duty in its pursuit." and continues with her eulogy in honour of the troops.

However, Margaret Carrington notes at least four soldiers who deserted the fort, and according to a report that I read elsewhere, there were about twenty-five in total. There was also a military prison at the fort that was quite full on a regular basis.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do, and then I finished the selection of the music for the next radio programme, edited, re-mixed, paired and segued it.

The taxi turned up for me somewhat later than programmed, so it was something of a rush to go to the Centre de Ré-education. And it was walking from the taxi to the building that I realised how much the chemotherapy had affected me. I really was ill.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d telephoned the Centre de Ré-education to complain about them over-taxing what remains of my strength. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it seems as if I have been talking to the walls. Today, I had three sessions, next Wednesday and Friday four, the following Wednesday four and the Friday after, FIVE.

That is taking the mickey and no mistake.

The first session with my physiotherapist was all about working on my ankle muscles. These are, of course, non-existent so we aren’t going to go far with all of this.

The second session was sitting in this pseudo-rowing machine, pushing weights with my feet.

There was a pause of half an hour here so I took the initiative, went onto the attack and stormed up to the offices of my doctor there and berated the secretary. She assured me that she had spoken to the doctor, but she would speak to the doctor again.

We shall see.

The third session was standing upright in this machine for half an hour, looking out of the window. And then it was home-time. And what a struggle that was. I was totally exhausted.

Back in here, I was helped into the apartment – my lovely, shining, clean apartment – by my faithful cleaner who had been hard at work in my absence. And I needed help too because I would never have managed it on my own.

Once inside, I crashed into a chair in the kitchen, and it took me an hour to summon up the energy to move into my office.

Once in the office, I crashed out completely and there I sat for about an hour and a half, totally out of it. When I awoke at 19:30, I was feeling so dreadful that I crawled into bed, fully-clothed, and called it a night.

But seeing as we have been talking about our author and her “experience with a cactus” … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was told that there was a saloon at Fort Phil Kearny. One day, she went inside and asked the saloon keeper for a double-entendre.
"What happened?" I asked naively
"The saloon keeper gave her one."

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

… of mine seems to be starting to bear fruit. At dialysis this afternoon, I was asked "do you still want to do three sessions per week of three hours, or to try two sessions of four hours and see how it goes?".

As a consequence, for the foreseeable future I have my Saturday afternoons back, assuming that all goes well. Of course, if it doesn’t, they will think again but let’s enjoy the moment for now.

It’s about time that I had some good news because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

It wasn’t such good news last night, though. Once more, despite trying my best, I was late going to bed. I really don’t know why I can’t seem to concentrate on things like this these days.

And once in bed, I might have been asleep quite quickly but it wasn’t for long because I was wide-awake again at 03:10. At some point I must have gone back to sleep but I awoke again at about 04:30 and that time, it seemed to be for good. I lounged around in bed for some time but at about 05:30 I called it a night and left the bed.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, I went into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to accompany my medication. That drink really is wicked

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was something like a LORD OF THE RINGS adventure. Several people had gone into a large cave deep underground to liberate some kind of sacred, heavy chain. When they took out the chain, they made something of a noise and several enemies began to appear. These were the typical gruesome Middle-Earth type of enemies and these people were involved in some kind of battle. But I missed out something in the middle, which was when they pulled out this huge chain, there were plenty of other things too. He ordered his men to pick these other things out and pass them to him to keep. However, many of his men wouldn’t. Some of them did, but they were definitely not happy. One of them dumped a load of this stuff onto him, over his head, as a gesture of defiance after he had made a huge noise lifting up this chain. For some reason, this attracted the evil spirits and it became a fight to the death. Eventually, someone shouted “cut!”. It was of course a Hollywood-type of movie thing that had reached the end of a scene.

Wouldn’t that be nice if it were to happen in real life – finding yourself in a really sticky, unpleasant situation and all that you need to do is to shout “cut” and it would end? But what’s going on that a situation like this has suddenly appeared?

There was also something about going on an office trip somewhere. I was going with two or three other people and we decided that I would take my cat and one of these other people would take their dog, a collie. We asked a girl whom we knew if she was coming with us. She said that she couldn’t because in the evening when they would come back, there would be nowhere to park on the market. We found that to be a strange decision and tried to persuade her, but she was adamant. We set off walking through Crewe and were at the bottom end of Victoria Street. Someone said “well, it’s at the back of the fruit shop”. So we wandered our way up Victoria Street through an alleyway into the rear of the fruit shop, which used to be the old road that went down to the Ritz Cinema. There was a marquee there, and we went in. This was where everyone was assembling to go on this office trip.

What is surprising is that I can still remember where Perry’s Fruit and Veg shop used to be in Crewe Town Centre after all these years. As for the back entry that led into the street that dropped down to the Ritz Cinema before it was all swept away in a mad fit of demolition, the dream was actually perfectly correct.

The Ritz Cinema was great though. I’d fixed the projectionist’s motorcycle once so we had free admission. We’d go there in the late afternoon fifty and more years ago to watch the brilliant films of the day. Quite often, we’d be the only people in there but when we left in the early evening, there would be queues all the way down to the old Co-op.

The nurse turned up early today. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my feet. After he left, I should have gone for breakfast but I was engrossed in something else. In the end, it was a late breakfast.

Having finished AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE by Margaret Carrington, I’ve started reading MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington.

She was Henry Carrington’s second wife after Margaret Carrington died. She was however at Fort Phil Kearny as the wife of Lieutenant Grummond, one of the soldiers who was killed with Fetterman. It will be interesting to read her take on the situation.

It has to be said though that, in marrying Carrington in 1871, just four years after the death of her first husband, she can’t have borne Carrington any ill-will.

After breakfast, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and that’s now ready. I then went and uploaded the utilities to the computer’s new drive. I’d forgotten about them.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then, while awaiting the taxi, I crashed out completely, hunched over the kitchen table. I was far-gone too and I had a real struggle to bring myself round when the taxi arrived.

We had to pick someone up at the hospital, and then we drove down to Avranches.

To my surprise, they put me in a room on my own today. And no sooner had I been installed when one of the doctors (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me and made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

It’s all conditional, of course. It depends on how much water they need to remove and if the machine can do it (it’s limited to 950 ml/hour) in the time allowed. Otherwise, it’ll be back to three sessions.

Today, they kept me for almost four hours and extracted every last drop in order to give me a head start and we’ll see what happens on Monday for my next visit.

There is a down-side to all of this, though. The reason why I was in a private room was that they sent the psychologist to see me. Never mind about what she wanted – she blanched when I described my week’s medical appointments to her. I think that she needs to see a psychologist herself now.

She told me to let her know if I want to see her again, but I think that my problems will just make her feel worse.

They eventually let me go and I was late arriving home, as expected. They had kept my blood pressure sheet so I told the nurse not to bother coming round this evening. He was delighted by that.

It took a while to sort myself out once I arrived home, but then I made tea. I wasn’t all that hungry so I had mashed potato, peas and a vegan sausage followed by a piece of this delicious ginger cake that I have made.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about FE Smith, Lord Birkenhead, just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … his off-the-cuff remarks were legendary.
When he was Lord Chancellor, a newly-appointed judge came to see him for some advice about sentencing in a case that he had been trying.
"What do you think I should give to a man who allows himself to be b****red?" asked the judge.
"Well, " said FE Smith. "Thirty shillings, two Pounds – whatever you happen to have on you at the time."

Wednesday 19th November 2025 – PART THREE OF …

… my offensive did not go according to plan this afternoon.

After all, you can’t fight a battle if they don’t send anyone out to fight you.

What it does prove though, are that the tactics of many generals during a war, such as the Russians against Napoleon in 1812, of quite simply withdrawing your army and letting the enemy roam around haphazardly inside your territory are quite often the best tactics because they wear down the enemy and in the end, the enemy loses its morale as its supply lines lengthen and resupply becomes impossible. That was how I was feeling at the end of the afternoon.

That was a huge disappointment, because I’d been looking forward to this for the last twenty-four hours.

Last night ended up going to bed rather later – in fact much later – than I had intended and it took an age to fall asleep, probably due to all of the sleep that I almost had yesterday at chemotherapy.

And once asleep, there I lay until all of … errr … 04:10 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This time, I knew what had awoken me. There was a howling gale outside and it was blowing a huge rainstorm against my bedroom window. I’m experiencing all kinds of new sensations since I moved into this downstairs apartment at the front of the building.

It was impossible to go back to sleep with all of this going on, so at 05:30 or thereabouts, I left the bed and headed for the bathroom.

Neither medication nor breakfast this morning – what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out, that’s my theory for this morning. So instead, I came back here and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some famous businessman whose name I won’t mention who owns several limited companies and was outwardly a very wealthy man and he had spent £2.400.000 on a coach which he had fitted out as some kind of luxury travelling accommodation. It turned out that the coach was registered in some completely different name and the leasing payments stopped on the coach. There was an issue about it being repossessed so the reporters were on his trail. In the meantime, I was with a couple of other people and we were talking about the future. One of the things was the Ford Ranger. The Ranger’s bodywork was fairly rotten but we weren’t sure about the chassis. However, being an old American style of vehicle, the bodywork would come off the chassis. So I was thinking about taking the bodywork off, inspecting the chassis, welding it where necessary, then either buying a new body or repairing the old one. Everyone was encouraging me to go back to learn welding again, only this time, argon-arc welding, do the job properly and take it from there. We were out in the Ranger, and one of the people with us was a newspaper reporter. As we were going through the West End of London, we came across this guy threatening his wife with an axe. We pulled up at the side of the road and she came over. We asked her about this £2.300.000 coach, but instead, she climbed into the vehicle and asked us to take her away, so we did. However, he climbed into another vehicle and began to follow us. We decided that this wasn’t going to be a situation that was acceptable, so we drove into some kind of narrow entry where there was an exit at the far end, and we stopped. Our aim was to immobilise his vehicle and leave him there, and then carry on driving. He stopped behind us, but he came out and began to attack our vehicle with an axe. The newspaper reporter climbed out, and I climbed out too. Our aim was then to go ahead and neutralise this guy, and then to neutralise his vehicle.

The name of the guy has been removed from my account of the dream because there really is a businessman of this name whose business affairs have attracted the wrong kind of attention, and while there is no record of anyone having successfully won a slander or libel case against someone who has had a dream, there is always someone willing to try and there is a first time that such a case might be won. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. the whole state of Western society has gone downhill fast since solicitors have been allowed to tout for clients.

There has, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, been some discussion in the past about doing something with Strider, the Ford Ranger in Canada, and this part of the dream refers to that. And although I enjoyed my gas-welding course very much and did quite a lot of gas-welding afterwards, I really should have concentrated on argon-arc welding instead.

The nurse took me by surprise, coming at 06:25 this morning. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my legs. Then he cleared off and I went into the living room to wait for the taxi.

It was the senior driver who picked me up and we went across town to pick up another lady who was also going to chemotherapy. The drive was interesting because I’m sure that the driver has an issue with his vision. In the dark, in the rainstorm, he was driving along at 50 kph in an 80 kph limit at times, and wouldn’t put his foot down on the autoroute. I’ve noticed previously that in the dark he seems to be disorientated.

As a result, we were twenty minutes late arriving at Rennes, twenty more minutes than we should have had listening to the non-stop chatter from the lady in the back who never seemed to know when “enough” is “enough” and talked all of the way about the most inconsequential nonsense.

At the hospital, I was plugged in pretty much straight away and, for a change, everyone avoided me, which was nice. It was a shame that I wasn’t tired. The chemotherapy finished at 10:15 and at 10:30 I was on my way out of the door.

Travelling with the taxi company and the new rules from the Sécurité Sociale about combining trips and passengers, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed. Today was no exception and we ended up exploring the isthmus between the Sée and Sélune rivers.

As a result, I was back home at 12:15, all alone because my faithful cleaner was out on her rounds dealing with some of her other clients. So I had a disgusting drink and then made breakfast.

After breakfast, I … errr … crashed out on my chair for an hour or so, which is no surprise to anyone after the early start today.

Back in here, I ‘phoned the Centre de Ré-education and asked to speak to Elise the Dishy Doctor. However, she refused to speak to me and I had to speak to her secretary.

The secretary was gasping with surprise by the time I’d reached today on my list of medical appointments. She was speechless by the time that I’d reached Saturday. She agreed that I was doing far too much, given my state of health. She told me that she’s speak to the doctor about what’s going on and confirmed my ‘phone number.

Whether she will or not is another story, but certainly, no-one has as yet returned my call. As I said just now, it’s impossible to fight when your opponent won’t come out to fight you.

After another pause for a rest, I was interrupted by the return of the nurse to take my blood pressure this evening, and then for the next while I began to sort into the correct order the radio notes that I’d edited and began to assemble to program.

Tea tonight was a ratatouille with chick peas and pasta, followed by the last of the chocolate cake. And for once, I finished everything. I’m not sure how, though.

So tomorrow, we’re having dialysis so I’m off to bed. But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my latest offensive against my medical appointments … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of a case in the Courts where the then-junior counsel FE Smith was arguing with the judge.
"You are extremely offensive, young man!" said the judge
"As a matter of fact we both are" replied the future Lord Birkenhead "and the only difference between us is that I am trying to be, and you can’t help it."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: bouquet granvillais

Sunday 7th December 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

Saturday 6th December 2025 – MY CHRISTMAS CAKES …

Friday 5th December 2025 – I’VE DONE IT …

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 – ISN’T IT NICE …

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Saturday 29th November 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

Friday 28th November 2025 – THERE’S NO DOUBT …

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Sunday 23rd November 2025 – FOR THE FIRST …

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Friday 21st November 2025 – I FORGOT …

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

Wednesday 19th November 2025 – PART THREE OF …

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