Tag Archives: broke crockery

Saturday 18th May 2024 – THEY’VE DONE IT!

After all of this bad news and negativity that’s been going around and about just recently, it’s nice to have some good news to report for a change

But anyway it’s a pleasure to report that in the close season this year it will be the turn of the Cofi Army to hit the road out Europe way as Caernarfon Town swept aside Penybont for that discretional place in European club competition in front of a massive crowd that must in modern times at least be a club record

Last night I’d gone to bed, later than I would have liked of course, full of eager anticipation for this game.

Wales has traditionally three spots in European competition, one spot in the Champions League and two spots in the Europa League.

These spots are traditionally won by TNS, COnnah’s Quay Nomads and Bala Town but every so often there’s a fourth discretionary place awarded and then there’s a play-off between clubs between 4th and 7th

This is the “real” cup final because it gives the lesser clubs something to play for and an opportunity to sample the delights of European football

But for me, for some reason last night was quite turbulent. I went to bed in the “old” way which caused me no pain at all which was nice, but I kept tossing and turning, and couldn’t really settle down to sleep.

Nevertheless I must have gone to sleep at some point because I was dead to the world when the alarm went off. I fell out of bed, switched off the alarm and headed for the bathroom

One good wash and change of clothes later I was in the dining area taking my medication and then setting out the room as the nurse likes it.

He didn’t have much to say when he came and was soon gone. But then I had a problem – I couldn’t rise out of the chair on which I was sitting. I knew that it was going to be a bad day today.

Once I managed to rise to my feet, after a great battle, I began to make my broccoli stalk soup. I put a great deal of effort, not to mention a pot of soya yoghurt, into it and it was really delicious today with freshly ground black pepper and fresh home-made bread.

Nevertheless, I still fell asleep drinking a mug of strong coffee. It must be one of the pills that I’m taking that’s doing this.

Eventually I pulled myself around and went into the bedroom to check my messages and mails. And it seems that I have to go to the hospital in Paris on June 12 for a check-up and hopefully receive he results of my stay there the other week. They’ll have loads of news for me, and I bet that it’ll all be bad

Judging by the amount of stuff on the dictaphone the night must have been disturbed. In my version of “The Horror of War” or whatever it was called, when the Americans tried to make good their getaway in World War I from the prison camp they would actually succeed. Some would go to ground amongst the native population and some would head west looking for a front line to dodge behind. I don’t think that they would be still there sitting there in bed and waiting for something to happen to them if they had already broken out and made arrangements for where to go. It would be most unlikely that they would be just sitting there. They would be up there somewhere doing something and trying to be involved in the action and get away from their captivity.

And then I’d been doing something in Brussels. That involved staying in someone’s house while all this was done. It was some kind of work in the street but on the last day I decided that this would be it and I’d go home on the last train so I had to do what I was doing then come back to where I was living, change and then go back in the rain to give the final orders and then go straight to the station to catch the train home. As I was washing and putting on my clean clothes there were all kinds of disturbances. The girl who lived there came in to me to ask me if I’d show the owner of the house how to make an apple pie. I thought that this was the last thing that I needed at this time of night. I wanted to be off but the quicker that I did it, the quicker I’d be finished so I went over to see what he’d done. He’d done the pastry in a strange way. He’s cut it into eighths but in the circular way round do there wasn’t a bottom or top, just like eight slices of pie crust. Of course they had all to be joined together and the filling had to go in, the top had to go on. I thought to myself that the people were making this thing much more complicated than it ought to be but that was just how things used to go. No-one seemed to know just how to do anything ordinary and straightforward. It all had to be so complicated.

And that’s another story of my life, isn’t it? If there’s a simple way of doing something and a complicated way of doing it, you can bet your life which one anyone would choose when I’m involved. Even I’m not immune from this myself

I was in this big German prisoner-of-war camp in Russia weeding the garden and the band suddenly began to play the national anthem. It took me a few minutes to cotton on to what was happening nut suddenly I realised that it was the German national anthem and that meant that they were planning an escape. I wasn’t sure who was escaping but I learnt later on that 20 guys from hut two had escaped. For some reason I was held responsible for it. Whilst no real punitive action was taken against me I was treated like a prisoner, being shackled, by being … indistinct … I felt in the end it probably wouldn’t have ended up better for me had I tried to escape with the others rather than stay behind. I certainly couldn’t have been worse-treated once they left. And then one of the members playing the second time, I was supposed to either sing some songs or write some songs, the songs that shouldn’t have music and they turned out to be tracks off the album that were played to basically accompany the escape. Most of them were not good at all

Back in this dream again, the composer was well-known but he was not in the camp, he was dead so I took it that this was the signal for an escape. I was puzzled why I hadn’t been told about it seeing that I was one of the leaders of the camp from the prisoners’ point of view. Anyway everyone was immediately confined to bed. I saw my moment and escaped. Schopenhauser or whoever wrote it originally had chosen a different moment to escape but I chose that one. In the end I ended up down in the south of Germany where this girl tried to persuade me to help her paint her toenails red but I was unable to do so … fell asleep here …

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t actually “fall asleep” because I’m already asleep when I’m dictating. What happens is that the disctaphone goes silent and eventually you hear deep rhythmic breahinf and occasional snoring.

But what’s going on with this obsession with prison camps tonight then?

Our nurse went to the local council tip during the night to throw away all of her incriminating paperwork. On the way her little brown Clio was involved in an accident with a couple of guys. It wasn’t particularly badly damaged or anything like that but it made her reflect for a couple of minutes and led to something of an argument before she agreed to invite the guys to her house one day when she wouldn’t be there. So she went there and threw away all of her paperwork. Then she was talking about this and that as if she’d already spoken to the female guards about it. They’d had some kind of friendly interaction but it didn’t sound right by the way that this dream was going. I think that she was trying to avoid all kinds of interaction while she disposed of this incriminating … fell asleep here …

“Si” is the French way of contradicting someone so this dentist woman or whatever she was started to use it to correct members of her team and then their team had been exposed to the Germans and they should make ready for a rather rapid flight before the Germans came along to arrest them.

Some of the stuff about which I dream really is bizarre for sure and quite often there’s no logical explanation for it. I often wonder what goes on in the depths of my subconscious.

Rosemary had left a message for me to call her so I gave her a “quick” ring – “quick’ being 56 minutes this afternoon while we put the World to rights as usual

And then it was the football.

For a town with a population of less than 10,000, a crowd of over 2,000 is immense but they were there singing away and cheering on their team

And their team rewarded them by roaring into a three-goal lead in the first 35 minutes with some beautiful play down the wings that tore the Penybont defence to shreds

Penybont pulled one back right at the death and quite right too as they played the more classy football. We had the usual chaos in the Caernarfon defence that we have had for several seasons too but they rode their luck

At the end of the game the fans flooded onto the pitch and the party began. For a club that was on the verge of extinction and in the third tier of football 15 years ago, the devotion of the fans, the most passionate in Europe, saved the club and they now have their reward

If you want to see the highlights of the game THEY ARE HERE

But as I said earlier, it’s this discretionary fourth place that has permitted all kinds of Welsh Clubs to sample European football, even Cefn Druids from the second tier one year.

After this I fell asleep for a while until tea time, and then baked potatoes, salad and one of my favourite quorn fillets.

But I broke another plate when I dropped a jar of pickled onions onto it. Luckily not one of my dinner service plates, but it’s still very bad news. I don’t know what’s the matter with me right now.

Right now though I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is another day and, I hope, a better one

And just be glad that Penybont didn’t play Their new signing. That guy who is half man, half horse
… "and who is he" – ed …
Why, their new centaur-forward of course.

0

Monday 29th April 2024 – I’VE BROKEN ONE …

… of my nice dinner plates this evening.

That’s a shame because I quite liked this set of crockery. But what’s surprising is that I’ve owned it almost 7 years and it’s the first piece of any sort of crockery and glassware that I’ve broken since I’ve been living here.

And the estate agents reminded me that yesterday it’s actually been seven years since I moved in. You’ve no idea how time flies. When we were kids our six weeks summer holiday used to last for ever, but nowadays a year passes in the blink of an eye and it’s very uncomfortable.

Eight years ago today I was living in Leuven in Belgium, going to the hospital every two weeks, going to watch OH Leuven in the Belgian second division and travelling on Belgium’s wonderful railway network to all sorts of bizarre football grounds for various matches

Going to SK Lierse was always my favourite of course. They had cheerleaders to entertain the crowd and they were much nicer-looking cheerleaders than those whom we encountered that night in that truckstop on Interstate 80 in Bangor, Maine, when we were on our way to a tractor pull in New Hampshire.

Of course, that’s all water under the bridge now. I won’t ever revisit the USA, won’t be going to see SK Lierse and won’t be going to Leuven either. In fact I’ll be lucky if I ever make it outside the front door of my apartment unless it’s in the company of a taxi driver taking me to a medical appointment.

And while we’re on the subject of medical appointments and taxis … "well, one of us is" – ed … I rang up the taxi company today to talk to them about my trips to Paris.

They need to be authorised by the Securité Sociale in advance and the hospital had obtained prior authorisation for three trips. Those three trips had expired and so they need to obtain some more authorisation.

When I was there last week I explained this to the doctor but I wasn’t convinced that she understood. Consequently my plan was to have the taxi company speak to the hospital to explain what was required and negotiate with them directly. After all, it’s all good business for them

However I needn’t have worried. The hospital has applied for, and received, prior authorisation for no fewer than FIFTEEN further trips to Paris. I’m not sure exactly what they are expecting, but it sounds extremely worrying. Are they REALLY expecting me to go that many times?

But anyway, that was today.

Yesterday I ended up going to bed quite late because of the football. Even so, it still took an age to actually go to sleep but once I did I slept the Sleep of the Dead and didn’t move an inch. In fact, it was another night when there was nothing at all on the dictaphone.

That’s a shame because as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what usually goes on during the night is much more exciting these days than what happens during the daytime. After the exciting life that I’ve lived, being confined to spending the rest of my days sitting on a chair is a pretty miserable existence.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed as usual, switched it off and wandered off to the bathroom, followed by wandering off into the dining area for my medication, the usual mounds of it.

Having set out the room as the nurse likes it, she dealt with my foot and puttees as this story about the prescription on the wall of the doctor’s office rumbled on.

We agreed that I’d ring up to make further enquiries and let her know what I’ve found out. And then she cleared off and left me to it.

It took half a dozen calls to the doctor’s before the secretary answered the call. I’d been trying for hours. Anyway she was convinced that the prescription had been written. Anyway, the doctor would be back at 16:00 so further enquiries could be made them.

With that news I rang back the nurse and that proved to be a complicated affair trying to connect to her. But we managed in the end and I could explain the situation to her. She’d follow it up.

Then the cleaner came round with the rest of the medical supplies so I explained the situation to her. She had to go there with a client this afternoon so she’d look herself for the prescription.

She called me back later to say that she’d been, she’d looked, but there was nothing there.

At about 16:30 the nurse phoned me back. She’d seen the doctor and he’d written nothing. So what’s this story all about them? It’s a total mystery to me. The plot sickens.

In the meantime this afternoon I’ve gone one better than Dave Crosby, presumably because I had the ‘flu for Christmas and wasn’t feeling up to par. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear because I promised myself this year. I feel like I owe it to someone

And they can come and collect it out of the waste bin in the bathroom any time they like.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent either working on the Unit of the Welsh course that I missed while I was in hospital or else I was asleep.

While I was working I was fighting off wave after wave of sleep, so much so that I couldn’t concentrate so in the end I gave up and had an hour fast asleep on the chair here inn the office. Then I could crack on and finish it.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper but taking the pyrex cooking bowl out of the air fryer it slipped from my grasp, fell on the dinner plate and broke it. That’s a really sad state of affairs because I now have an odd number of items

However in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter all that much as I’m never likely to have visitors here for meals. In fact, I’m not really likely to have visitors at all these days.

There’s plenty of stuffing left though so I’ll have a taco roll tomorrow and then on Wednesday have one of my leftover curries with what’s left. On Thursday I’ll send off my LeClerc order and stock up with supplies for the next few weeks

Right now though I’m off to bed, and hope that I’ll go off on a few voyages to break the monotony and not break the crockery.

It reminds me of that famous advert that I once saw – "Unbreakable tea service for sale – matching teapot, cream jug, sugar bowl, six cups and five saucers."

0