Tag Archives: caroline

Friday 11th July 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that yesterday I posted something about the generous contributions given by certain members of London society to the poor, the sick and infirm, and I finished that paragraph by saying "that modern-day society has collapsed, with the rich squirrelling away as much as they can in their offshore accounts."

As if to underline it, and bang on cue, this morning I received probably the most offensive e-mail that I have ever read in my whole life (and you don’t need me to tell you that I have received plenty like it all throughout my career).

Usually, I try my best to keep politics out of my ravings, mainly because, with the rise of 1930s Fascism in the Western World over the last fifteen years, I’d be writing about nothing else at all. However, sometimes it is quite unavoidable, especially when the timing is so perfect.

It came from Helen Whately, who, as many people will doubtless know, is the Conservative Party’s Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. In this mail, she’s having a bitter rant about the £100 billion that needs to be spent on Welfare and Sickness Benefits this year, and the cost that it entails.

“That’s more than we’ll spend on our armed forces. And more than we’ll spend on the police” she wails.

Her plan, being a good, loyal Tory, is to slash welfare and sickness benefits. “No more generous handouts” she cries, not that I’ve ever known any welfare and sickness benefit to be “generous”. All so that the wealthy (such as she and her husband Marcus Whately, who, according to Companies House, had a net worth of £629,272 in 2023) can pay less income tax.

And anyone whose husband has a net worth of £629,272 and describes “between £29.20 and £187.45 a week” – according to the Government’s own website – as “generous” must be totally deranged.

Offensive and inhumanitarian gestures by the Tories are pretty much par for the course but when it comes to kicking the sick and disabled in the teeth, I don’t think that there can be anything quite as low and despicable as Helen Whately and her dreadful mail.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

When the alarm went off this morning at 06:29, I was sitting on the edge of the bed sorting out a few papers, having arisen from the Dead about five minutes earlier. And I hadn’t had an early night either. It was only a few minutes before midnight that I finally finished everything and headed up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.

There had been an ice-pack strapped to my knee all night so I had hardly moved at all while I was asleep, and I could move a little easier this morning. Still, it was a very slow start to the day as I took my time to sort myself out.

After having a good wash and taken my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my disabled friend from Congleton last night and we were in some kind of classroom. We were having to give her a talk or debate on something. She was sitting there, hardly responding, so I tapped her on the shoulder to remind her. She stood up and began to talk about this particular motion and these particular events, and said “when Èric and I begin to do things like this, we always do something” and she carried on. I became extremely embarrassed by this because I didn’t want my relationship of any nature being thrown around at that particular moment. But as usual, she was ill and had all of the cares of the World so I was wondering whether it was in fact my friend from Congleton or whether it was that I was trying to make this place ready for my Dutch friend and her, with the other girl’s voice.

There is actually some talk that my Dutch friend might be coming here to help me move, but it is just talk and with her fragile health condition, it’s very unlikely that she will be able to make it here. I’m not banking on it.

Later on, I was there with a lot of people with whom I used to work. It involved some girl in a wheelchair or some kind of wheelchair. Everyone had been looking around for something or other without much success so they had been sent a little further wide where they had encountered other groups of people. Some of these encounters had been difficult. There were animals too and on one occasion they were looking for some people from their own group when someone appeared in a wheelchair being pushed by someone else. They were pushed into one of the toilet blocks as if it was at school. Some other people came to look for them and eventually found them and they began to leave but not until after they had caused some kind of commotion in the toilet block but I didn’t know what it was. In the end, these people were assembled in a large group talking to someone else. There was a lion at the far end, and it was the girl in the wheelchair who noticed it but because she couldn’t see it too well, she couldn’t say too much and no-one could understand her. It wasn’t until the lion was actually in the air pouncing that they realised the danger so they quickly moved over to the side and the lion landed right where they would have been. He turned round to go again at them but I fell asleep then.

This could also possibly be some kind of reference to my disabled friend from Congleton. And if so, why have I suddenly started to think about her again? I haven’t seen or heard from her for probably fifteen years.

And then finally I was at school, busy searching through some documents for something or other and the deputy headmaster appeared. He’d heard on the news that the North Vietnamese Army had reached somewhere like some kind of bay in South Vietnam so we went to have a look on the map to see where it was but the map’s scale was wrong. He remembered that he had a huge-scale map of South-East Asia in his room so we went into his room, but his map had gone. He seemed to remember that the Headmaster had borrowed it for something so we had a laugh and a joke about the Headmaster assuming that everything in the school was his and no-one else had the right to anything. I explained that that sounds like the story of my life anyway. We began to discuss history in general. I told him that the period between 1871 and 1912 was really the most fascinating of all as Europe gradually changed its borders, changed its ambitions and developed an air of nationalism. He told me about a programme on the television that was being broadcast that night. It would go on for about three hours and that if that was my favourite period of history, this would be a programme well worth watching because although it was fiction, it laid out much of it in the correct kind of historical terms. I thought that I was going to be out that night so I told him that I would have to find some kind of blank videotape that I could use to record it.

This period actually was my favourite historical period at school, except that the rise of Nationalism and the security of borders dates from the “Year of Revolutions” of 1848. However, the more that I read (or didn’t read) of history subsequently made me much more interested in the so-called “Dark Ages”, the period between the collapse of the Roman Empire in Britain and the elimination of the educated classes by the arriving Saxons, and the rise of religious education under such people as Ceolfrith, Bede and Alcuin at the end of the Seventh and beginning of the Eighth Century.

The nurse was early again today to sort out my legs and to apply this ointment to my knee. He didn’t hang around long so I could make my breakfast (without it boiling over this morning) and read MY BOOK.

We’re prowling around Aldgate today where, according to our author John Stow, "is a fair house … possessed by Mrs Cornwallies, widow … by gift of Henry VIII in reward of fine puddings by her made, wherewith she had presented him"

There is also a very interesting account of the demolition of the Priory of the Holy Trinity following the dissolution of the monasteries after it had been offered to the public "but no man would undertake the offer".

After breakfast I made a start on some desultory tidying-up but I can’t do very much, unfortunately, these days. When my cleaner turned up in the afternoon, she blitzed through everything. I now have a nice fresh bed, a tidy bedroom and it all looks quite wonderful in here. I don’t want to move now.

The estate agent came round at about 15:30, as promised, to ostensibly photograph the place, but I was right in my original assumption that she had merely come on a spying mission to check out the place to see if it needed redecorating or anything before it would be re-let.

She seemed to be quite happy, which was just as well, because there wasn’t going to be any other alternative.

After she and my faithful cleaner left, I made a start on the next radio programme but I didn’t make much progress before I had to stop to make tea.

Air-fried chips, vegan salad and some of those mini-breadcrumbed things were on the menu and I didn’t really feel like eating too much. My appetite has still not recovered which is just as well. Now that I’m approaching the new, svelte me, I intend to stay that way

And so I’m off to bed, ready (I don’t think) for dialysis tomorrow. Anyway, I’m aching all over and I don’t know why. I can’t even sneeze because there’s such a pain in my ribs. What kind of state am I in?

But seeing as we have been talking about the charitable nature of the Conservative Party … "well, one of us has" – ed … a few years ago, at the annual Conservative Christmas party, someone passed a collection box around, marked "for the sick".
The next year, at the following Conservative Christmas party, the same box was passed around, with the same label "for the sick".
However, underneath that label, there was another one that read "please note that this box is restricted to monetary contributions only".

Saturday 19th October 2024 – THEY LEFT ME …

… pretty much to myself at the Dialysis Clinic this afternoon.

Once they’d plugged me in, they only came back once to deal with an alarm, one of the nursing assistants brought me a coffee, and that was that until it was time to unplug me

That’s much more like my way of doing things and if they can keep it up like that every time I go, I shall be much happier.

Another thing that shall make me much happier is going to bed early. Last night was ridiculous. Just as I was about to switch off everything and go to bed, round on the playlist came the classic Quicksilver Messenger Service version of Elias Bates (Bo Diddley to you)’s version of WHO DO YOU LOVE, all 25 minutes and 15 seconds of it.

Of course, one thing leads to another and once you start you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are and it was after 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed

For once though I had a good sleep. Apart from a brief, very brief moment, I was asleep for the entire night but I was still feeling the worse for wear when I crawled out of bed at the sound of the alarm.

First thing was to go into the kitchen. I’ve no bread left and so I set to work to make a loaf of bread, starting by making the dough and giving it a good kneading.

Whilst it was busy festering I went into the bathroom. With it being a Dialysis Day to day I gave myself a good scrub and even applied the deodorant, not that it makes much difference

Having organised myself I sorted out the washing. There’s tons of it, but I washed the bed linen today along with some of the stuff of which supplies are running low. When I came here from the Auvergne I didn’t bring everything with me – just enough to keep me going. But there’s no chance now of going back to the Auvergne to pick up the rest.

When the nurse came round he looked at the dough and asked “are you making bread?”. His asinine, patronising comments are getting on my nerves.

Luckily he didn’t stay long and was soon down the road, and I can carry on with breakfast and my book.

Today, the Woolhope Naturalists are at Llandrindod Wells where we hear them applauding the efforts that are being made in salmon conservation and calling for some kind of control of pollution of the local rivers – a good 100 years ahead of their time.

And then I put the bread in the oven.

After I’d started the washing off I’d made a start on the dictaphone notes but the arrival of the nurse had put paid to that. So after breakfast I carried on. There was this very small girl. She was very small and very lively, and very interested in everything that seemed to be going on around her. One day I had to go to the hospital. A car came for me – it was a big Austin A110. I climbed into it and it had to go to pick up some more people. A guy was picked up and he sat in the back, a woman or a guy – it seemed to change between the two. Then there was this small girl and this woman. The woman insisted on sitting in the front, so much so that she actually climbed into the front while I was in the seat. In the end I agreed that I’d step out of the car and sit in the rear. The little girl made some kind of comment so I said “God, I’m sitting next to you, am I?” in one of those harmless fun tones which started a little bit of a play argument. This all took place at the entrance to a car park somewhere but it turned out to be at the Earl of Crewe. We were all at the Earl of Crewe outside, all fooling around, all of us. Someone came up to me and said “You’ve forgotten that it’s her birthday today, haven’t you?” meaning the little girl. I replied “I didn’t really know”. “Don’t worry. The driver has bought a little present for her on your behalf”. I thought “that’s nice of him. That’s the second time that he’s done that. I’ll have to see about paying him back or something”. But I have half an hour when I’m not doing anything. I was planning on looking at a recipe that someone had given me. Instead, I can look at the recipe in the car and go to buy her a present then. We all ended up in some kind of old house with low ceilings and wattle-and-daub walls. We were all inside there and making conversation with each other and the little girl was doing her school homework. There was someone else there doing some work at the seat behind her. I was going to read this recipe but I thought that I’d go to talk to this girl and see what she’s doing. and this dream carried on like that for ages.

This dream certainly dates me if I’m being picked up by an Austin A110. I was still a teenager when those cars were top-of-the-range. And I often used (and probably still do) tease young girls like that. The incident of the woman wanting to sit in the front reminds me of that strange guy at the Dialysis Centre who never opened his mouth all the time except when the taxi driver asked “who wants to sit in the front?”.

Having had one phantom alarm call we have a second. And one of my friends seems to be coming “extremely close” to everyone who comes to her house. Tomorrow morning there is going to be someone new going so we should all be at the house and we should catch her. Se we were there and were waiting. Sure enough, someone came, a refugee from some island somewhere. She had a close encounter with him which makes the fourteenth in fourteen days. After that we walked home. I walked away over the hills and when I was round about at an arch some woman came up, a type of girl, not even wanting to talk to me about anything other than the items of clothing in my freezer bag that I had to give her, a freezer bag with eight items of clothing in there so now there was one piece of pizza and just three or four left. She wanted to search through them and wasn’t going to let me go home until I’d submitted to a search

There is actually one of my friends who behaves like that. Mind you, it’s a good 15-20 years since I’ve seen her and even then I used to keep a respectable distance. However, I don’t understand anything about the second part of that dream.

By the way, I have absolutely no recollection of either of those phantom alarm calls.

Finally I was in a bedsit room in Manchester. It was something of a mess but I was leaving today. I had a train at 18:00 that I absolutely had to catch. I wanted to see one of the many followers of this blog before I left but he could only fit me in after 17:00. As he lived in Altrincham that was leaving it rather tight to go out there to see him then come back to Manchester in the centre for my train. I’d have to have everything ready but it was now 09:25, I was lying there, I was hearing people washing so I arose, found a bearskin to keep me warm and then went to see if there was a washbasin free where I had a really good wash ready for going out catching the Underground and going off to do the things that I needed to do

If I could go across Manchester on the Underground, that would be something of a miracle. Any plans for an underground network in the city have long-since been scuppered which was a shame and today everyone has to go by tram and even then it’s not all that convenient. The “Northern powerhouse” promised by so many politicians is a myth, a vote-catching soundbyte and as long as the politicians won’t admit that there’s anything of any importance beyond the M25, so it will remain.

Having hung up the washing to dry, I sorted out the bread. One side of it hadn’t risen at all so we can call this loaf a failure, which is a shame. But I can’t understand why that would be because the bread was in the middle of the oven with the heat, in principle, passing equally all around it.

While the bread was cooling and the washing was drying I came back in here where I was supposed to be having a morning off. However, I made an interesting discovery relating to what might in the near future be an interesting radio programme so I followed it up.

Round about 11:50 I had a message – “could you be ready for 12:15? We’re short of numbers today and there’s a person needing to go to Avranches for 13:00. Would you share?”.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am being offered an extraordinary service that exists nowhere else in the World to my knowledge, and it’s all free to me. Who am I to argue about any of this? In any case, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish

It meant a mad panic though, for me and my faithful cleaner to prepare me for the trip and we only just made it. Just as she was leaving, the driver turned up.

It was someone who had taken me to Paris in the past and we had a good chat on the way down to Avranches.

With the taxi coming early, I was early arriving and so I was coupled up quickly, and then left to my own devices.

For the first time in a couple of weeks I crashed out (and isn’t that a change?). Only for twenty minutes or so and when I awoke I had the most appalling indigestion that plagued me for hours.

With no interruptions I reviewed my Welsh, last week’s and the forthcoming week, had a close look at the homework that I need to finish off and then tidied up the laptop. The whole desktop is far too cluttered and there are loads of tabs open in Waterfox and I’ve no idea why. They aren’t open now.

No-one bothered me or interrupted me and as far as I could see, there wasn’t even a doctor on duty. But for the compression stage of the procedure where someone has to clamp my arm for ten minutes I had Julie the Cook again
"You really ought to try to do this yourself" she said
"Clear off!" I replied. "How else am I going to have a beautiful girl sitting beside me for ten minutes holding my hand?"

When they weighed me I found that I’d lost another 2kg. My “unfit” target weight is now firmly in my sights and if I can reach it I would be delighted. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … getting it off is one thing. Keeping it off is something else completely.

The taxi driver was a new girl. She was an ambulancier in the Champagne-Ardennes who moved here five weeks ago. She applied to the company for a job and in the kind of logic that only they think is reasonable but neither my driver nor me could understand, they put her to driving taxis when she’s no idea of where she’s going. At least as an ambulancier she’d be with someone, which would help her pick up the hints.

And for once in our lives, having left the Dialysis Centre early, at Sartilly we find ourselves in a long queue stuck behind a tractor (it’s that time of year again) and we crawl all the way to Granville at 30kmh.

My faithful cleaner watched me up the stairs, and today I could manage nine before I need to lift up my leg with my hand. This is certainly progress and I hope that it keeps up.

Back in here even though I was early I did nothing until tea time. I was exhausted. But I made myself a lovely tea of a burger on a bun with salad and baked potato followed by apple cake and soya cream.

Now that this severe indigestion has eased somewhat I’m off to bed once I’ve dictated the radio notes. Tomorrow I’ll be busy with the radio, with pizza dough to make and there’s something else that I need to make but I’ve forgotten what it is right now. I hope that I remember.

But I forgot to mention an incident that caused panic and embarrassment at the Dialysis Clinic today.
A man walked by mistake into the ladies’ cloakroom and a couple of minutes later two women walked in behind him.
Suddenly there were all kinds of panic as a couple of nurses dashed towards the cloak room with the emergency gear.
"What’s going on?" I asked
"It’s one of those two women" replied a breathless nurse. "She’s had a stroke!"
"What about the other one?" I asked
"She wasn’t quick enough" replied the nurse.

Sunday 4th August 2024 – ♫ PANCAKE TUESDAY …♫

♫ … Eric’s busy baking♫

But leaving aside the question of whether or not it is a Tuesday today, Eric has been a very busy boy in the kitchen this afternoon.

We now have another loaf all ready and baked so that we can start the week tomorrow with fresh bread for our toast, and we have a monster flapjack cut into 12 slices that will keep the blaidd from the drws, as they say in Caernarfon, for the next few weeks

When I made my lunchtime sandwiches yesterday I noticed that I didn’t have much bread left so I made a mental note to myself that some baking wold be involved in the proceedings at some point today.

And I was not wrong. When I looked last night, I reckoned that there might be enough for toast and maybe for a sandwich at lunchtime but that would be it.

So I sorted myself out and put my puttees to soak in a bowl of soapy hot water, where they still are after 24 hours. If that doesn’t clean them to the nurse’s satisfaction then nothing will.

When I’d done that I rolled up the other pair and put them ready for the morning.

Before going to bed I dictated a pile of notes for the radio programmes ready to edit. I didn’t do too many because I could feel myself flagging as I was dictating, and making too many silly mistakes.

Nevertheless, it was still after midnight and I was letting it all hang out. I had hoped to be in bed a long time before this

And it was a miserable night too. I’m glad that I didn’t have to wake up until 08:00 today.

But when the alarm went off I was already awake. I’d been awake for a while. Dog-tired as I was when I went to bed, I’d gone off to sleep quite quickly but I’d woken up far too early.

After having a wash and a clean-up I came in here to listen to the dictaphone. And I was amazed at all the stuff on there. No wonder it had been a miserable night. I was going to make a pizza but I had the horrible realisation that I hadn’t taken the pizza dough out of the freezer at Sunday lunchtime. Then I suddenly realised that it’s still Saturday night and I’m still in bed so I don’t need to quite make the pizza as yet so I turned over and tried to go back to sleep again.

That was one of these “panic attack’ dreams that I have every so often. You have to admit – it’s not everyone who can make a pizza while he’s in bed asleep.

Then there was something about it being someone’s birthday and that seemed to affect a couple of rock groups and their music but I’m not quite sure how and I seemed to have forgotten part of the dream that included that but it generated onwards towards birthdays and cooking, people putting birthday recipes and birthday ideas for meals altogether. I was going to comment on a couple which I’d sorted out because they could be so easily changed to vegan but while writing out the notes I seem to have lost the thread completely. I started writing basically gibberish and in the end pressed “send” and sent it because I couldn’t think of what else I needed to say and sending anything at this stage is better than sending nothing. It was a really confused and miserable night last night with all kinds of activity and things going on with which I didn’t really get to grips.

It seems that I wasn’t just writing gibberish last night. I was speaking it too

I was at school and we had some project to do, to talk about our teachers. I was working away in a corner and another girl came to sit close to me so we ended up chatting while we were working. I’d picked as my subject one of the teachers who was married to another one. His wife was a former accountant and accounts manager. We were fantasising why the male prof didn’t like the idea too much of working on the internet. We came to the conclusion that it was because his wife didn’t let him because she was too busy doing other things with it, and why he was so late handing work back to us was because she would go through it with a fine toothcomb and being a teacher herself and an accountant she would absolutely have to find some fault with it. We were fantasising things about this that went on for ages. None of it was very complimentary and none of it was stuff that I could write down but it was still interesting. One of the teachers then came over to us with a big pile of notes. She said to the girl “I have your results here from the previous project. Would you like me to read them to you?” so the girl said “yes”. The teacher said “some of them are very confidential”, looking at me. The girl said “that’s all OK. I don’t mind Eric knowing anything of things like that”. “Yes, but one or two of them concern Eric”. I replied “don’t worry about making any comments about me. You might have comments to say for the first time but a lot of other people will have said them before this, I promise you”. It went on like this. This was another one of these nice warm comfortable dreams that I have some times and don’t have enough of and that I wish could go on for ever and ever

Yes, this is much more like the kind of dream that I want to have. I’ve had a few dreams, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that focus on a girl and me at school back in our schooldays. And if only my schooldays had happened like this. All these girls hanging around me and I wish that I knew who they were and why they weren’t there when it mattered.

Later on I’m making my afternoon cocoa and I have it in the pan. I’m stirring away, talking about other things and thinking about loads of other things too while I’m doing it. I seem to be there for ages and ages and notice tat this chocolate now is starting to congeal. That can’t be right so I have a look and the gas has gone out in the little rechaud thing that I used for heating my chocolate and I’ve been standing there for the last I don’t know how long stirring it and it’s not made the slightest bit of difference. It’s just been going colder and colder and colder. Now I’m going to have to heat it up and wait for that to happen and it’s hot enough. I can see me being here with this all night.

And it wouldn’t be the first time that that’s happened, trying to cook a meal and the gas has been out for quite a while

I was in the European Union’s building in Brussels. It was time to go so I prepared to leave and picked up my briefcase, then picked up a long cane and began to push my briefcase along the floor in front of me. Quite a few people gave me some strange looks, some stranger than others including one woman who was extremely suspicious. When I reached the exit door at the interior of the building I picked it up and immediately went to open it. All the people dived for cover so I took out my laptop and packet of sandwiches. Before I had time to do anything again I was overwhelmed by security guards who insisted on demanding to know what I was doing. I told them to mind their own business and we had another stand-off in that … fell asleep here …

Yes, over the years I had a few good stand-offs with the Security guards. They were totally lacking in an understanding of what was happening in the modern World. The period in which we were living was changing rapidly and dramatically, far too quickly for them.

I was back giving a girl advice on buying a computer for her studies. She could have a grant to enable her to buy a computer but she needed to know the specifications and so on. I explained to her the maximum specifications that the Open University would allow under this grant but I also explained to her that firstly they didn’t check and secondly, as long as she didn’t tell them any different they weren’t going to know about what her computer was so we had a little discussion along those lines while she was having a look through the sales pages to see whether she could find anything suitable.

When I was living in Brussels I lost count of the number of computers I built and repaired. That was another field that was changing dramatically and rapidly and I was lucky enough to be there during that little window where we had SX, DX and Pentium architecture and I could cope with that. However I was left behind rather rapidly at that point.

Did I dictate the dream where we were all back in France again and there was something going on and someone had to submit some kind of written document … "no you didn’t" – ed … so one of our group took it upon herself to do it, and then asked if we needed any amendments before she sent it off. The problem was that this document was a complete mess and needed a total rewrite and revision before we could send it. I’m no journeyman so I could have cleared it up but … fell asleep here … which is a shame because this sounds as if it might have been interesting.

We had a new wheelchair for a friend of mine. I assembled it but couldn’t tighten it up because two of the straps that we needed to bring the whole thing into tension once there was a weight on it were not supplied with the kit and we had to fetch those extra. I explained to my friend that she’s going to be a bit flopping around on this. She was concerned about her blood test – if the blood test that she goes to takes for ever, how’s she going to cope? I explained to her that there was nothing wrong with the actual comfort of the machine, it’s just one or two pieces missing but she didn’t seem to understand. In the end I sat her in the machine and had things arranged as they normally would be. We were there for an hour or something then I set them up as they would be when we had the straps in there. Everything seemed to be much better so I asked her if she was comfortable but again she didn’t reply. Once I pressed her, she kept on going on about her blood test. I’ve no idea what was happening with her there but she was being extremely un-cooperative about this new wheelchair.

Phew! After that I’m exhausted. It’s no surprise that I was feeling pretty tired

In the middle of sorting this out the nurse came and dealt with my legs. She had rather more time than usual so we had a little chat which was nice

But as a result it was rather a late breakfast but the coffee was nevertheless really nice.

Back in here I watched Stranraer stroll to a 2-0 lead quite comfortably and then throw it away in the final stages of the game. They should have been out of sight and down the road a long time before the end of the game, and Peterhead only had two shots on goal during the whole match …

Then I’ve been radioing. The notes for two additional tracks have been edited and the radio programmes have been assembled. They are complete and ready to go. And then the first of the two longer ones is all edited and assembled as far as I can. The final track has been chosen and remixed and the notes written ready for dictating.

Doing the final editing for the last one that I dictated is tomorrow’s task, if I choose to accept it

And then we had the baking. That was after my hot chocolate. I have a loaf, a flapjack and I also baked a pizza for tea and that really was delicious. Just as good as last weekend’s.

So now I’m off to bed for a nice early night, I hope.

But did you note the phrase “another stand-off”. It wouldn’t be the first one. I remember a memo that came round saying “Fonctionnaires are reminded that they cannot bring their children into the office” and there I was, wandering around the building with Roxanne.
"Haven’t you read the memo about children in the office?" roared a a Security guard
"Ohh yes, I read it" I replied
"So why have you brought her in? She’s not allowed"
"But the memo talks about … ‘bringing your child …’"
"That’s right" he shouted
"But she’s not my child" I explained.

Sunday 27th August 2023 – TODAY I HAVE …

… emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

As usual, on a Saturday night, I was late going to bed. It doesn’t make much of a difference really on a Saturday if I’m having a lie-in on a Sunday. But this morning I kept on waking up and by 10:00 I’d given up comple tely the whole idea of going back to sleep.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, being up and about is one thing. Being wide awake, fighting fit and raring to go is something else completely and I didn’t even have the energy to go and take my medication for quite a while.

After my midday cereal and cheese on toast I made a start on the next batch of fruit bread. It’s basically a load of bread buns but with all kinds of things in it like ground-up brazil nuts, mashed banana, desiccated coconut, sultanas, almonds, sunflower seeds and anything else that’s lying around.

It takes quite a lot of kneading but when it all goes together it makes a really nice dough.

While I was waiting for the dough to proof, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was back in the good old days of OUSA again. A few of us were hanging around together. For some reason I came across an absolutely enormous pile of money, notes, that could have been worth a fortune, and some letters which on the face of it had been written by one of our group. I didn’t know what to do with these things – I didn’t want to return them to the person to whom I thought they belonged because he’d want to know how I’d managed to find them. So there I was with this huge pile of money in my hand and someone noticed it – the girlfriend of the guy concerned. She asked me from where all this stuff had come. I replied that I didn’t know. I’d just come across it while I was doing some clearing up. I was as confused as everyone else about from where all this had come. She immediately took possession of it and came across the letters that had been written. She immediately associated them with her boyfriend, as I did and anyone else would have done too. She accosted him. At first this led to some very unpleasant minutes but then when she was reading some bits out of these letters to him there was a mention about going to the Eisteddfod. That rang a bell with me because when the Eisteddfod was on that year we were all at the students’ Annual General Meeting so I said “it can’t possibly have been him because he wasn’t at the Eisteddfod but at the Annual meeting”. Then I remembered that I actually had photographs of him speaking from the stage with the backdrop etc making it perfectly clear that we were there. I could remember talking about the Eisteddfod at the meeting so I went to find my information. At first I thought that it was this guy playing fast and loose with someone else but when I remembered talking about the Eisteddfod it couldn’t possibly have been him so I’d no idea what this was about at all.

And then I was in Edleston Road in Crewe, by the Imperial. My youngest sister and her husband were there. He was riding around on what looked like an old moped or something. One thing that we noticed was that in the street were a load of people going past on some of the weirdest pushbikes you’d ever seen, all kinds of strange, ridiculous equipment. One or two of them were totally unable to ride and kept on falling off, making fools of themselves. We wondered what was going on. It turned out that somewhere in town was a display of unusual cycles. At that point I happened to look at the moped thing that my brother in law was riding. It had a strange number-plate on it that I didn’t recognise. I asked him about it. He said that it was his father’s old bike, an old Rover from 1964 and there’s only 20-odd miles on the clock. he was trying to sell it but had no idea of what it was worth but it must be worth thousands. I asked him if I could look at it, which surprised him but eventually he let me have a look. It was something similar to an old Triumph Tiger Cub or something. I thought that I’d like to go for a ride on this but then firstly I couldn’t afford the kind of price that ha was thinking of asking for it and secondly a bike like this doesn’t belong on the road but in a museum. It shouldn’t be run about any old how, spoiling its value by running up the miles on it.

Later on there was another group of us this time having a chat. One of us was talking about programs on the computer, saying that there were some programs that link the computer up to the internet without you even knowing about it and anything could be happening. You could be downloading files from there or your own personal files could be uploaded to the internet and anyone could then really have a look at them. This sounded interesting so I was hoping that he’d say some more about it but as usual in this crowd he had quite a few girls and was more interested in seeing the girls that I was. But at that point I fell asleep.

Well, what I mean is that I’m always asleep when I dictate my notes but what does happen sometimes is that my dictating just tails off into nothingness and occasionally I begin to snore or, like last night, I dropped the dictaphone and it fell on my head.

Finally I was out in the countryside last night somewhere in North Shropshire. I had to take a little girl to school but there was really thick fog so you couldn’t actually see anything. We piled into the van anyway and set off, doing our best in this freezing fog. Gradually as we came to the tops of hills we could see that the tops were clear. When we reached the top of the hills we could see that there was a couple of other people with children walking that way. It was so dangerous to try to go past them that we ended up at walking pace behind them. It wasn’t until they’d stopped to look at something in the hedgerow that we could actually go past and drive on. We then came in to Whitchurch. The first thing that we noticed was a huge supermarket at a place called Crewe Square by a roundabout where the by-pass was, around Whitchurch. But this was nowhere that I recognised at all. We continued and found ourselves going down the hill past the old Grammar School into the town. I was really bewildered as to how I’d actually managed to come this way because it was a really strange way to come. I really couldn’t understand the route that I’d taken.

That wasn’t everything either, but you really don’t want to know about the rest, especially if you are eating your meal or something.

And at some point during the night I was definitely joined by Nerina, my friend from Congleton and also by Zero for a brief moment. It seems that I’m quite popular just at present.

While the fruit buns were baking I assembled my pizza. I’d taken some frozen dough out of the freezer earlier on and it had been defrosting during the afternoon. I’d rolled it out a while back and had left it to proof so I assembled it while I was waiting for the fruit buns.

Once again, it was an excellent pizza. This cheese that I can buy now seems to be doing the job and the cherry tomatoes that I cut in half and stick right on top of everything add the finishing touch

Tomorrow I’m going to have to start to gather up my paperwork ready for Wednesday and to order some stuff off the internet, like my new course book for the forthcoming year. High time that I organised myself.

After all, I’m not going to be here on Wednesday and I hope that, if I have the results that I would like to have, I won’t be here for a while either while they hack me to bits.

But I can’t see that happening very much. It’s not as if it will make much of a difference. As soon as they sort one thing out, something else goes wrong. I’m getting to the stage where I’m afraid to go to the toilet these days in case something else drops off.

Friday 11th August 2023 – I DIDN’T QUITE …

… manage to go for the rest of the week without crashing out. Having done so well over the last few days, I fell at the final fence this afternoon.

But then that’s hardly a surprise because the last few nights have been what one would call “mobile” and last night was no exception. And I was even up before the alarm went off this morning too.

After the medication I had a shower to clean myself up and then nipped out to the shops.

Caliburn and I went to LIDL for a change this morning and seeing as I didn’t want very much at all, it was quite an expensive shop. And I mean that too.

The fact is that there is always some stuff that I need from there to keep in stock, and as I don’t go there all that often these days, I made the most of my trip and stocked right up.

Amongst the things that I bought from LIDL were some carrots so back here, I cleaned, diced and blanched them ready for freezing. And then armed with my coffee and cheese-on-toast, I went for my Welsh lesson.

It was rather a mixed lesson. Some of it was quite good, and other parts of it were … errr … less so. But now it’s over for the weekend and we’ll live to fight again on Monday.

During the lunch break I transcribed the notes from the dictaphone. There was a claim to be made for some medical expenses. Everyone had to fill in some forms and send them off. I had my papers all over the place as usual. They asked me about mine. I replied “you’ll have to give me 5 minutes while I go upstairs and find them in the bedroom”. I went upstairs to loo, for my receipts. Nerina came in and began to harangue me about this so I shouted at her to leave me alone and let me get on with it otherwise I’ll never ever be able to find it. In the end she wandered off. I carried on looking. One of my sisters then came and asked me the same question. I became even more angry and shouted even more at her. But I just couldn’t find any of these papers. I’d no idea where they’d gone. The last I saw of them, they were on my bedroom windowsill but now they could be anywhere. I didn’t have a clue what had become of them.

And then someone had their babycam monitor focused on their child’s playpen area. every now and again it would take an automatic photograph of the child. On one occasion there was no child to be seen in the photograph. What they saw instead was the family cat, a big long-haired black one, climbing up against the play area opening the door. It had obviously opened the door and the child had gone out through it and was somewhere else around the house

Later on I was at work. Everyone else went off for their evening meal. I was left holding the baby for a while while they were away. After about a couple of hours no-one had come back. I walked out down to Hospital Street in Nantwich to see if I could find them. They were all in a restaurant and had only just begun to eat their meal. I asked how long they were going to be. They didn’t know so I suggested another couple of hours. They said “no” but I could see that that was what it was going to be. I asked “what am I going to do? I’m starving and I have to have my meal yet”. They replied “you can hang on a little longer can’t you?”. So I left. On the corner of Hospital Street and the other one and I’ll tell you the name in a minute … “Pratchett’s Row” – ed … there was a chip shop so I went in and ordered a bag of chips and a cheese toastie. That was an interesting thing because you ordered and paid. They gave you strips of what looked like brown parcel tape with the price of £1:00 on each strip. You then queued and when yours was ready they handed it to you and you handed over the strips of tape to show that you’d paid. I had my chips and cheese toastie and set off back to the office eating on the way back.

Meantime, everyone was talking about football grounds from the 1970s. Vale Park came up and also the subject of the railway station at Longport. I was telling people how I’d go to the game and then walk back to the railway station afterwards on a Friday night with a bag of chips.

Incidentally, during the day yesterday I was having exactly this discussion with someone on the internet, re-living old past glories.

After that I was back in the Auvergne last night in my house. Brigitte had a pile of stuff, food in bottles and cans that she didn’t need. She brought them down to me so I was busy stacking them away in my house ready for future use. There wasn’t anything there that was really appetising but it was free so I took it.

My friend from Congleton was starting a hairdressing business and was looking for premises. She came across a room to let on a farm. We went to look at it. It was a tiny room. You had to climb up there on a weird arrangement, a cross between stairs and a ladder. There was a really tiny window in the wall. Nevertheless she rented it. I thought that it was a strange decision. First of all the customers had to find it and then they had to climb up here. There was barely enough room for the 3 of us to stand upright in it once we left the bed that was in there. It was in High Street in Crewe but the view out of the window was looking at the area with a completely different perspective. I’d never seen that part of Crewe looking like that before. It was reminding me of the climb up Edleston Road but it was all wrong, all in reverse. I really couldn’t understand why it was as it was, for example Edleston Road climbed up towards the middle instead of going downhill towards the middle as it does. We went outside for a walk around. We could see some trees that were pretty much dead. They’d been trimmed off so that they were only growing on our side of the field and cut off where they grew over the neighbour’s field. It was all looking really weird. We went back in and climbed back up into our room. We’d seen when we were outside that this tiny window was actually a large window with most of it being blanked off. I was wondering about how I could take off the blanking so that the window would look a lot brighter and make the room look brighter.

That’s not everything aither, but then again you don’t really want to know the rest, especially if you’re eating a meal.

Rosemary had rung me up at some point during my lesson so I phoned her back as soon as it was over. We had another one of our long marathon chats. She has to go for some surgery on her knee very soon. It seems that old age is catching up on all of us.

That, regrettably, was that. I’d been feeling rather flaky for a little while and not long after we hung up, I drifted off into never-land for some time. It took me a while to recover afterwards, and then I began to look for music for the next radio programme, although I didn’t get very far.

Tea tonight was the last of the vegan sausage rolls with salad and chips, delicious as usual. But I’ll have to think about baking my own sausage rolls in future.

This calls for a cunning plan, and I need to find a recipe for vegan sausage stuffing. As for the pastry, I’ll have to buy it ready-name. making flaky pastry from scratch is an extremely complicated process.

Shopping tomorrow, not that I need all that much. But I’ll go out all the same. It won’t be for long but at least I’ll have some fresh air.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, I’m off to bed and I’ll hope for a good night. If I don’t have a good sleep, I hope that I’ll go for a good wander around instead.

Monday 31st July 2023 – I’M GOING TO STOP …

… discussing my miserable nights because you’re probably just as fed up reading about them as I am having them.

So when the alarm went off I was fast asleep in the bed and it was something of a struggle to crawl out of bed before the second alarm went off.

After the medication I went and had a shower to try to awaken me but that didn’t work very well. After the nurse had been to give me my weekly injection I came back in here.

It took an age for me to come round into the Land of the Living and it was a very late mid-morning coffee. And then I had a listen to the dictaphone.

There were tons of stuff on the dictaphone from the night there too. Someone’s name turned up on my social network, a boy whom I knew from a foreign country when I was at school. We got in touch and agreed to meet. I could recognise him from his photo. He was with some kind of little dog. When they came close to me they suddenly disappeared. I had a walk around this park and couldn’t see them. I walked across the park to the other end and that was when I caught a glimpse of them. I waved and they waved back. Eventually after many attempts we managed to meet up. It turned out this he had stopped to buy a sandwich on his way to meet me and his dog had seen someone with a sandwich and gone haring after it so he’d gone haring after the dog. he wanted to know why I hadn’t written to ask him where he was. I thought “it’s only been like 15 minutes” but something inside told me that it was in fact a couple of years that i’d been wandering around that park. That was a lapse of time that I couldn’t explain

There was something about Zero too last night. My friend from Congleton had had some good luck. She’d had her house up for sale for a considerable amount of time and it had suddenly sold for a much better price than she had anticipated too. She already had another property lined up that she could buy so she didn’t need the money and her doctor was asking her what she planned to do. She could come up with thousands of things. One was to buy a house at Prestatyn where they could go at weekends but would in fact be Zero’s house when she’s a little older. The other doctor thought that a good idea. He also mentioned about her becoming a private patient and having to pay for her medical treatment saying that private patients had so much better treatment than NHS ones etc. He also asked her when she was going to marry again. She made some kind of vague nebulous reply about that.

I can’t remember who I was with in the next one. It wasn’t TOTGA because her name came up in the conversation but it was a girl with whom I used to work who had a good job that involved projects. The thing was that you came up with your own project and this firm would back you and provide you with the resources to do it. She was telling me all about it and how good the other situation was. In fact it might have been someone I used to know quite well, saying how much of a change it was from her previous employment. She said that any kind of project was considered, whether fitting tyres on a car, rock groups practising etc. It’s the sort of thing that had I been able I would have been interested in doing. I had an appointment somewhere else but she was talking away so much about this that I didn’t really want to leave. I wanted to stay to listen to the rest of it even though I was running late. We said that the only way to do a job like this is to go at it 100% give it everything you have and take what opportunities are offered. While this might not suit some people’s mentality it certainly suits others and those are the kind of people who would benefit from some situation like this

Later on we had an old small FIAT saloon, the type that you could load things in through the back window. I was putting some electrical equipment in but knocked the amplifier on the back seat forward into the footwell. As I was locking up the car I told Nerina what I’d done and told her not to let me drive away in the morning like that. She asked why I didn’t do it now. I said that it’s too complicated being in the dark and I can’t see what I’m doing. I might start pulling wires out. She still thought that it would be a good idea to do it now. To be quite honest I was absolutely exhausted. I just really wanted to stop doing it and go to bed but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to explain it as a good reason to Nerina. I was busy finding all kinds of other reasons not to do the job right now.

And finally I was doing some research so I joined an institute. I was in their offices looking through some paperwork. I came across someone’s file. It was a huge front and back piece with hooks on it where you could hang it from a rail with the spine upwards. I took one of these out to have a look at it. It was really just full of notes etc and various items of correspondence, one of which was someone asking around if anyone had an Opel Omega or Corsa that they could take a ride in to see what they were like ready to purchase. Someone scrawled underneath “God, are they asking for a taxi here?”. I had a look through it and went to put it back but I caught my right ankle on a stone on the wall and that caused me to drop to my knees. I don’t know why that happened but I couldn’t stand back up again. And I can’t stand up if I end on my knees either. That’s what’s really stopping me from going very far – the fear of falling over.

So we had Zero, TOTGA, Nerina and a few other regulars out there with us last night. It was nice to see so many of our friends. Still no Castor though, which is a shame. In a couple of weeks time it will be four years since our Brief Encounter in Peel Sound and the Coronation Gulf.

So when I’ve not been asleep I’ve been dealing with the next radio programme. The music is sorted out, paired off and much of the text has been written.

From now on I’m going to try to do things in a slightly different way. Usually I leave the very last track until last but in the programme that I’m preparing, the very last track has already been chosen, and for a very good reason too.

Inserting a track and its relevant text into the middle of a programme is quite complicated and takes much more time but I’ve been giving that a great deal of thought in order to find a work-around.

Tea was a stuffed pepper as usual and it was of course quite nice too. Made with fresh carrots too. There was not enough room in the freezer to buy a bulk lot of carrots to freeze so I just bought a couple to see me through until next weekend.

I’ll need to make some space in the freezer for more veg so I reckon that on Thursday I’ll be having mixed veg in cheese sauce. Now that I can buy vegan cheese in good quantities I can have much more of that, and quite right too.

But that’s for Thursday. There are a few more days in between. I’ll wander off to bed and prepare myself for battle tomorrow. Here’s Hoping that it’s a better day.

Sunnday 7th May 2023 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was by far and away the best that I’ve ever made. For once in my life I had the base at exactly the right thickness and the the cooking time absolutely spot-on. And that produced a masterpiece. I shall really have to remember these settings and try again next weekend.

Another thing that I’ll have to try to remember for next weekend is to have a sleep like the one that I had today. With staying up late to dictate the notes for the radio programme and one or two other things that turned up in between (as they usually do) It was 02:15 when I finally crawled into bed

And that was where I stayed until, would you believe, midday.

There was plenty of tossing and turning during all of this though, and I don’t suppose that I was really settled. Checking the times of recordings on the dictaphone, there wasn’t really a very long period of constant unconsciousness.

While we’re on the subject of the dictaphone … “well, one of us is” – ed … there were tons of stuff on there from the night. I’d really had a busy time. I started off being in the middle of a dream, something to do about a house or something like that, when I awoke and at that point it disappeared completely. I was recovering so instead of being in my normal room I was in a room upstairs at the front. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember.

Tubes, all kinds of feathers and dice and everything that happened to go with plastic tubing, so when am I going to play rugby? Anyway, I had to clean up my fridge and I hadn’t cleaned up for 50 years. I found some instructions on the internet and began to sit down to read them as I went, to see who would take the final place and private profits. And if you have any idea what that might be all about, I hope you tell me because I don’t have a clue. It’s just another load of gibberish that appeared on the dictaphone from during the night.

Some woman was very inquisitive last night. She wanted to know why we were going to the YWCA. Eventually, when we stopped laughing, we had to explain that we worked for the company that dealt with the HR of the employees of the YWCA in Paris. We were going there on official business like that. She wanted to know what we were doing at the moment and other questions that I forget. We basically told her to mind her own business.

I was with Zero’s father (but, regrettably, not Zero) last night. He’d just bought a new electric drill combo set and was trying it out at home with someone. I just happened to be there and they weren’t talking to me. They were busy trying to make this drill work. After about an hour they decided that there must be some kind of fault with it. He and I took it back to the shop and picked up another. We noticed that by now they were in a clearance sale and just disposing of the remaining stock. Back at his house he unpacked it and tried again. He was there for the rest of the day trying to drill a piece of wood correctly. All the time there were these problems. In the end he decided that the second drill was faulty too. I’d have to take him back to the shop to swap it yet again. That was really the only time that they acknowledged my existence, when it came down to me taking them to the shop. I was rather disappointed with this because they weren’t even engaging me in conversation. While this was going on they were just intent on getting this drill up and working. I may as well not be there except that I was the one with the car running them around.

I also went out on a blind date last night. It turned out to be with Caroline. We ended up back at her house in bed. This was really the last place where I wanted to be. I was thinking about how I would get out of this. While she was distracted with my arm around her back I pressed my watch rhythmically. It buzzed and I pretended that it was a phone call. I had to come out with an excuse that with being a chauffeur I had to go out to pick up my director and bring him home. I’m not sure whether she swallowed it but that was what I did. I felt rather guilty about it but I thought that the last thing that I want to do is to end up in bed with her, or with anyone for that matter.

Finally, some small boy had been killed. An investigation pointed towards the father so he’d been arrested. It was one of his golf clubs that had beaten the boy to death. Ultimately the father was detained in some kind of mental institution because he was a psychiatric case. He was there for years. There were all kinds of people who were doing all kinds of studies on him with regard to the effects of incarceration. I ended up going to see him with someone else. All he had of course was his cell and a red plastic set of golf clubs with a plastic golf ball. he was playing golf around his cell all day. We interviewed him but we had to be very careful what we said because we weren’t sure even after all this time that he knew that his son was dead and whether he grasped the seriousness of what had happened. In the end we came to leave. I remember saying to him “you’ve no idea how sorry I am for you”. We went outside and found his bright red plastic razor on the floor in the washroom. It seemed to sum up everything about his life, the razor just sitting there on the floor doing absolutely nothing while he was moving on in his cell just sitting there playing golf all day

Actually, not really “finally” because there was more stuff than that but you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you are in the middle of a meal.

With not raising myself from the dead until quite late, there wasn’t much time before brunch. More porridge, cheese on toast and strong coffee to fire me up for the day. Then I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone notes and I was glad that the coffee was strong.

There were a few other things that needed doing so I didn’t have all that much time to deal with the radio programme. The notes are a bit of a mess because I can’t have been concentrating last night so they are taking more than the usual editing. But the nurse is coming to give me my fortnightly injection in the morning ready for my trip out to Leuven so I’ll finish things off afterwards.

After lunch I’d taken out a lump of dough from the freezer (I’m glad that I made that earlier in the week and didn’t wait until today) and that had spent the afternoon defrosting.

Later on, I kneaded it and rolled it out, then after it had finished proofing I assembled the pizza. And as I said, it was really delicious.

There’s still some time left before bed so I’ll carry on with the radio editing. And tomorrow I have some forms to download and one or two of those need filling in. I mustn’t forget those because it’s important, especially now that the SNCF application has somehow failed to work.

So when I’ve had my injection, we’ll see how energetic I feel. Not very much, I bet.

Saturday 18th February 2023 – THAT FOOTBALL MATCH …

… this afternoon was actually quite entertaining.

Considering that the teams were second-bottom and third-bottom of the table, it was quite a skilful match, all thing being considered and I quite enjoyed watching it.

But you can see why Aberystwyth are struggling down in the basement. Leading 3-1 going into injury time, Pontypridd pulled two late goals back to equalise by the final whistle.

As well as that, midway through the first half they had two gilt-edged chances within a minute to score but one shot went wide and the other one went over the bar. And the first goal that they conceded was the result of a careless error.

It’s stupid things like this that has dragged them into the relegation maelstrom and unless they stiffen up at the back and cut out the silly errors they will be out of the league for the first time since the league was formed in 1992 and that will leave Y Drenewydd as the only ever-present.

While we’re on the subject of dragging … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a hard time dragging myself out of bed this morning. I’d had a pretty rough night yet again, taking hours to go off to sleep and then going off for quite a few travels that must have disturbed my sleep. I started off at some kind of farm or somewhere like thatg with someone who may have been my father. Someone bought a pile of shopping which had been stacked up outside. We were having to wait until about 20:00 when something would happen or someone would come so we were loitering around outside. I was trying hard to find something to do. In the end I went to put the shopping away but found that my father had beaten me to it. Then I thought that I’d go into the washhouse and see what was happening in there. He said that our sister had her boyfriend in there so maybe it wasn’t a good idea. At that point she opened the door and asked if anyone knew how to fix the little light that was in there. I went in there, trying to figure out what light she meant. She had one of these tea lights inside a glass lantern type of thing. She passed the latches to me. When I opened the box it was smoking so I told her about putting used matches back in the box. It was dangerous. I lit the tea light for her inside this lantern. She’d covered the lantern in black plastic so I told her that that would need to be removed too or it would all melt and make a mess.

The next was, according to what I dictated at the time, a dream that produced one of the best nights that I’ve ever had. I was with a friend from Cheshire. I’d been playing around with my 3D programs. Someone else had come along. It might have been Nerina who was talking about designing dresses etc. I began to tell her about the 3D programs for making 3D objects. She suggested it herself so I tried to give her some information about it without letting on that I knew too much. Suddenly my friend from Cheshire became rather belligerent. She tried to pretend to everyone that the two of us were a couple. Then my friend from Cheshire and I ended up on the floor. She had fallen and I’d fallen with her or something but this discussion with half a dozen people went on all around. Then we decided that we’d have to go. Someone asked my friend from Cheshire if she wanted to have some maths lessons to improve her position. She snapped back in a manner that really offended me and probably offended a lot of other people too. We all set off to walk. I tried to hold on to my friend from Cheshire to stop her doing anything rash but as we made our way from one lift to another to go down this building she wrestled away from me and pushed herself forward after someone who was with us. As we all crammed into a lift some of us were left behind including me and another person and a small child who belonged to someone. That was bound to disrupt all kinds of proceedings now that a small child had become separated from her mother. I tried to take hold of the child. This led to all kinds of confusion about getting into the lifts. We were disrupting the other passengers. I could immediately imagine a scenario where I’d be taking the child down in one lift and the mother would be coming back up in another lift to pick up her child again. I could see that this whole evening had descended into total chaos.

But why I would say that this was one of the best nights that I’ve ever had I’ve really no idea.

And then I was with a couple of other people in a house somewhere waiting for my father to come round. I knew that he was due any minute so I thought that we’d go to stand outside but I couldn’t attract their attention enough to make them stop what they were doing and come out. Then I saw Caliburn in the distance turning into the drive that led up to this house so I tried to round them up again. They didn’t move until Caliburn pulled up outside the door. It took them so long to be ready that by the time I’d set foot out of the door my father had become fed up and had driven away. They were all furious but I tried to explain that that was just how my father was . So what happens now? I said “if it’s left to me I’d easily walk after him but you lot go back in the house and I’ll be back in a few minutes”. They seemed to take this as some kind of personal insult. You could tell by the determination on their faces that they intended to go marching down after him, catching up with him and giving him a piece of their mind, maybe more. I thought that that was something that would only inflame the situation even further and make things even worse than they already are. I was extremely unhappy about how this was going to unfold.

Later on there was a dream about Sherlock Holmes who was going back to college to study something. Lestrade was taking the mickey out of him for doing that. I awoke just as I was about to dictate and everything was immediately wiped away from my mind about what was going on in this particular dream. I couldn’t remember anything at all.

At one point Hercule Poirot was undertaking an investigation. He’d invited everyone to a meeting. Someone made the point that maybe in mentioning the past it was his aim to enquire about the present. I told them that it was usually the other way around. When people have a meeting and start to enquire about the present, usually it’s because they want to know something about the past. Someone is trying to put everyone at ease by asking the question about the present.

Finally, I was in work, and not threatening to retire either which makes a change. It was time to go home so we all flooded out of the place into the car park underneath. I went to find my car but in the position where I’d parked it was a Ford Anglia 100E hearse. I’d actually come in the same but a saloon. The hearse was black and all mildewy with dirt and cobwebs whereas mine was at least black and tidy. I spent a good 10 minutes prowling around trying to find mine and wondering what on earth was going on. The I came across the Senator. I thought to myself “did I come here in the Senator instead?” I was confused about the car. In the end I got into the Senator and set off to drive. Going down the road was a car parked at the bottom, a gold Ford Cortina MkIII. It left practically no room to get through. It was a real squeeze for me to get the Senator through. I brushed down the side of this car with the Senator. When I looked there was someone actually sitting in the passenger seat. I thought that this will lead to a few problems now because there’s no insurance on the Senator but then the guy shouldn’t have been sitting there anyway. When I went round the corner some woman flagged me down and muttered something. I wondered what she wanted. After about 3 or 4 times it turned out that what she was asking for was whether the speed limit in here was 30mph or 40. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to know that. What I’d been doing in the office was writing an essay for my University course. I’d actually finished as much as I wanted to write except for the conclusion. I wanted to check that I had enough words. When I turned over the page to write the conclusion I found that I’d already written stuff in about something completely different. It seemed that I’d been writing out this essay in my notebook so I was going to have to go home and copy it all out onto some fresh sheets of paper and add my conclusion at the end before I could submit it.

With all of that, it’s hardly any surprise that I was totally exhausted this morning. But nevertheless, I did manage to beat the second alarm.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I pushed on and completed all of the text for the two radio programmes. And before I go to bed tonight I’ll dictate them. It’s not been possible to do that as yet because with Carnaval and the crowds in caravanettes on the car park, it’s been too noisy to dictate anything. I’ll have to wait until the noise outside dies down.

After the football I didn’t really do very much. After all it took me long enough to type out all of the dictaphone notes. But then I’m entitled to take things easy every now and again.

Tea tonight was quite late. I was chatting to someone on-line and let the time run away with me. But when I finally managed to go for it, it was delicious. Baked potato and salad with one of those breadcrumbed soya fillets. They are really nice and as luck would have it, they had some more in LIDL yesterday so I bought a couple more for the next few weeks.

Tonight I’ll be having a lie-in. It’s Sunday tomorrow and all of my work will be done so I can take it easy. I might even have a go at baking some bread in the air fryer to see what happens. That will be interesting and no mistake.

Sunday 11th September 2022 – WHILE THIS GUY …

… on his kayak goes paddling by the end of the headland at the Pointe du Roc, I was busy recovering from yesterday.

Far too tired to go to bed, and far too tired to do anything else after my exertions yesterday, it was rather late when I finally went to bed.

For a couple of hours I was having quite a good sleep and then all of the tossing and turning began and the rest of the night was quite disturbed.

If I had had the energy and initiative (both of which are sadly lacking these days) I could have been up and about a lot earlier than 10:45. But then again it IS Sunday and I’m entitled to have one day of lying in bed vegetating.

And as the red powered hang-glider goes gliding by overhead while I was out in the Place d’Armes, I was busy taking my medication and then sitting down to start work.

And work on a Sunday? Yes! Especially when I had a day like yesterday when I didn’t write up my notes.

It took much longer than I ought to have done too, but then again with it being Sunday I wasn’t quite as dedicated as I might otherwise have been. There are always interruptions, one thing leads to another and once you make a start you’ve no idea just how many other things there are.

And this took me up to lunchtime.

It was the usual Sunday breakfast of porridge, toast and plenty of strong black coffee, and a good proportion of my porridge ended up in the bin.

Whyever that would be I have no idea. It’s not like me to leave food that I have made. I usually have a very good idea of how much food I’m able to eat and this was just a usual proportion.

While these people scramble across the rocks with their equipment for the pèche à pied, I began to deal with the music for the next radio programme that I’ll be preparing.

Having been out all day yesterday I hadn’t paired off the music for Monday’s work and so I sat down to do it after my meal.

The joints went together really well and it sounds quite good. And I’m getting to grips with the idea of intros, and extended the one for Monday’s opening track so that there would be enough time to superimpose the introductory speech.

There was also a good lead-in for the speech from this week’s guest and that impressive as well.

And that took me up to the time for me to go out for my afternoon walk.

The weather was much nicer today – in fact I had the window open again – so there was a good possibility that it would bring out the crowds.

There were plenty of people down there too just as I expected. Plenty of them in the sea too “taking the waters” and that’s quite impressive. We’re approaching the start of Autumn and everything will be cooling down.

The tide was well-out this afternoon – far too far out for people at the Plat Gousset to be taking advantage of it – so it was quite quiet down at that end of the beach. No-one in the water down there unless it was in the tidal swimming pool that I can’t see from here.

And you can see just how far out the tide is right now.

We’re used to seeing the marker lights on the rocks at the end of the Ile de Chausey, but it’s rare to see them so far out of the water like this.

It makes quite a contrast from what we are used to seeing when we are looking out from here or going past on a boat.

That will explain the people that we saw just now on the rocks at the end of the Pointe du Roc on their way out for a bit of pèche à pied .

While we were out here on the clifftop there was an aeroplane that had taken off from the airfield.

She’s F-GIKI, a Robin DR.400-120 Dauphin 2+2, chassis number 1931 that is owned by the Aero Club of Granville.

She was picked up on radar at 16:20 just offshore from here, flew over Mont St Michel, deep into Brittany and came back over St Malo, coming back in to land at 17:57.

My photo was timed at 16:17 (adjusted) so that’s probably about right. She must be under the radar just here.

Taking my life into my hands, I decided to restart my walks down to the end of the headland.

Fighting my way past the crowds, I came in the end to the bunker at the back of the lighthouse where there’s a good view out to sea.

The view out to sea today towards Jersey wasn’t as good as it might have meen but down the coast it was one of the best that we have had. Cap Fréhel was visible with the naked eye today, and even the lighthouse could be identified.

Having clambered up there to the top of the bunker I took a photo, and I’ve not enhanced it at all.

The view down the bay on the other side of the headland was just as good.

The Pointe de Carolles was looking quite beautiful this afternoon. The sun was catching it quite nicely and we could see the houses down there quite clearly. However they aren’t all that far away.

The hotels down at the head of the Baie de Mont St Michel are much farther away but even so, we can see them quite clearly this afternoon as well, in the background just to the right of the Pointe de Carolles.

It’s a shame that we can’t see Mont St Michel from here – that is, not until someone decides to dynamite the headland over there.

The walk down to the end of the headland was undertaken quite gingerly, sliding about on my gammy leg on the loose gravel and rough surface.

As we have already seen, there was plenty of activity down there with the kayak, the pèche-à-pied and all of the views. And so it’s no surprise that this afternoon there were a few people down there making the most of it.

There’s a woman down there hiding in the bushes but I’ve really no idea what she’s doing, and the knee of someone sunbathing too.

Plenty of people wandering around on the lower path as well enoying the lovely afternoon.

Meanwhile, there has been something exciting happening in the inner harbour by the looks of things.

Both od the sailing ships, Marité and Shtandart, have left the port and are out at sea. Marité must have simply gone for a lap around the bay as she did yesterday, because she came back into port at 19:51 this evening.

As for Shtandart, it’s much more difficult to keep track of her. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she has switched off her AIS beacon and so I’m not able to find out by reference to my radar where she might be.

For all I know, she might even br back in port but it’s dark outside so I won’t be able to see anyway.

Having checked the harbour this afternoon I headed for home.

And this was something that took me rather by surprise. I’m used to finding police barrages all over the place and even customs barrages. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous guises will recall that I’ve even been caught in a few of them.

But what I don’t understand is why on earth they would want to have a customs barrage underneath the Porte St Jean. It’s not as if they are going to come across too many foreign smugglers there or people driving their cars on red diesel.

In fact the funniest moment that I ever had with a French “flying customs patrol” was back in 2002 when they took ages to set up all of their equipment to check the fuel of a lorry that I was driving, only to find out that it was in fact petrol-engined.

Back here there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. All of them. There was Hans, Alison, Caroline and me. Caroline was in a wheelchair. We came into a building to go upstairs. Caroline went up first because she was going to bring down Aunt Mary in her wheelchair so that we could go up and visit whoever else was in her apartment. We waited and waited but nothing happened. We went upstairs to the floor, going up the stairs. The lift came back and Caroline exiited pushing the person on a wheelchair. We asked Caroline what had happened. She said that the panel had fallen down and you can’t see the buttons to press. We walked in there and a cupboard in there had fallen over blocking the entrance to the lift properly so we just stood it upright. I went to pull Caroline in and this other wheelchair. I thought that I would be blocked in here so I’d have to go down with them and back up. I stepped out. Caroline asked “how do I get in now?”. Suddenly Hans took her wheelchair, folded it up, stuck it in her hand and pushed them both inside it. Alison looked at Hans and said “I thought that you’d do well living in France”. The lift didn’t move but we were now focusing on getting to this door. Caroline would have to fend for herself to make the lift go downstairs and back up again.

Later I was in a white Ford Transit van driving from Nantwich to Crewe. As we reached Wells Green there was a vehicle in the middle of the road turning right so I passed underneath him on the left. Just as I passed him on the left a Morris Minor Traveller came the other way on my side of the road and hit all down the side of the van. Of course I stopped. Some guy came over who said that he had seen the accident. There was a girl there so he pointed me out to her. I shouted to her to come over. She was shouting some guy’s name. I went over to her and asked her why she wouldn’t come over and talk to me about the accident. She replied “no, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it” and continued to shout this boy’s name. I said “right, let’s call the police”. I picked up my phone to dial 999 but she ran off up the road towards Nantwich. I ‘phoned the police and told them that I was involved in this accident but the driver had taken flight. They said that they’d be here in a moment.

And then we were in a hotel somewhere. There was a big business meeting taking place. I’d arrived early and was waiting maybe for Alison to show up. People stated arriving, all these upper echelons. I was amazed about how they were behaving, insisting, demanding, peremptory with the staff. One guy whom I noticed was particularly revolting with them. another guy sitting near me who was sprawled out on his chair listening to his music, someone walked past and pulled the plug out of the wall accidentally as they were going past. He was outraged and called on them to come back but they can’t have heard and just carried on walking etc. But he had put his power cable across the aisle so what did he expect? Eventually I noticed that it was approaching 16:00 and we had things to do so I decided to go upstairs which meant disturbing this guy again which wasn’t very popular. There was some stuff on the floor by the seat that I thought was mine so I went to pick it up. he made a scene about it as it was his. eventually I made sure that I had everything I need and began to set off for my room. I was really embarrassed by the behaviour of some of these people checking in at this hotel. It wasn’t a good signal for any of them.

I can’t remember very much about this one. I was with Nerina and I’d gone away early for Christmas. She was saying something along the lines of “you can tell that you’re popular when people waited until after you’d gone to bring in their Christmas gifts for each other”. I replied that that’s not true at all because people give their Christmas gifts around before they themselves go on holiday. There were a couple of people who went on holiday before me who brought in Christmas gifts for everyone including me”. That’s about all that I remember

Finally I was watching the football last night as well. Mike Wilde of Connah’s Quay Nomads took a really quick throw-in down the touchline to one of his players who beat someone and passed inside where one of his team-mates was totally unmarked. He came into goal with a on-on-one situation with the keeper. he pushed the ball past the keeper and then tripped over his own foot. The referee blew his whistle to stop the game. Everyone in the crowd could see quite clearly that there was no penalty because he really did stub his toe in the ground going round a good 3 feet from where the keeper was. We were all bewildered as to why the game had stopped.

Tonight’s pizza was one of the best that I have ever made.

And had I remembered to put the olives on it too, it would have been even better. I shall have to remember to make more like this

After breakfast i’d taken out a lump of frozen dough from the freezer and it had been defrosting all day. After my ginger beer following my walk this afternoon I kneaded it and rolled it out onto the pizza tray where I left it to proof for a while.

When it was ready, I assembled it and put it in the oven to bake, and when it was completely baked it was ready to seat.

Now I’m off to bed. It’s an early start in the morning with a radio programme to prepare. And then I have things to do. It looks as if everything is warming up again.

Sunday 24th April 2022 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… my walk this afternoon took me around the medieval city walls to see what was happening around there.

And so while you admire the progress that they have been making with the repointing of the medieval city walls in the Place du Marché aux Chevaux and the Rue du Nord, I’ll tell you all about my rather quiet day today.

“Quiet” was definitely the word to use because it didn’t actually start until 11:40 when I finally fell, not without a great deal of difficulty, out of bed.

And even then I wasn’t really in all that much of a mood to do very much for a while.

After brunch I eventually buckled down to work and the first task was to pair up the music of the next radio programme.

That didn’t take too long and then I turned my attention to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was a war on. The whole system of supply chains and everything was totally disrupted and nothing was being produced anywhere. One person organised something that churned out tonnes of stuff much quicker than anything else had ever been churned out and was rescuing people from cars (including a girl in a wheelchair whom I know), all kinds of things. It became some kind of by-word on the TV what he was doing but someone actually went behind the scenes afterwards and showed loads of collateral damage that had been done. This was really something that could only be done once because they couldn’t afford the damage that was being committed to the infrastructure and everything in doing it. There was litter and junk abandoned all over the place that couldn’t ever be used again. Barges were just emptied and dumped and didn’t go back for return loads etc.

There was also something about a delivery service something like ours … “whose?” – ed … that had all kinds of weird and strange rules about delivery. They were catching people out because of the volume of stuff that they were sending. There was one case where they were sending stuff to be collected by a young family on behalf of a relative but were totally overwhelmed with packets. They had to bring in someone from the company to try to deal with all of these deliveries and deal with all of these children as well in this family who were being disturbed by the continual flow of parcels etc. Again there were parcels dumped all over the place. It was like a runaway juggernaut type of situation with these kids in a pram or pushchair and this guy from the parcel company trying to control them and the parcels, trying to obtain all of the address details changed etc. These two dreams were extremely stressful.

Finally there was a group of soldiers, an informal group who rode into a fort in order to help defend it. They eventually found where the colonel’s office was. He was totally intoxicated rather like the colonel in THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY. He told them to take their place wherever they thought fit. Having had a tour of the walls with the colonel, the guy in charge took a huge lump of bread and some cheese, pickels etc and went back to his men. He started to talk to them about the defence of the city and the battle and shared out the food amongst them.

When I listened to what was on the dictaphone, I was quite surprised. I was convinced that there was much more than this too. I had the feeling that I was awake for much of the night dictating into the dictaphone. I know that in the past I’ve caught myself dictating into my hand instead of the dictaphone and I wonder if I’ve been doing that again.

All of this took me up to the time when I would usually go for walkies around the headland.

But as I had made up my mind to go around the walls this afternoon I made a little diversion to have a look over the wall at the end of the car park to see who was down on the bach this afternoon.

Although there was quite a strong wind it was really bright and sunny this afternoon and so there wre quite a few people down there, not that there was an awful lot of beach to be on right now.

No-one actually brave enough to put their feet in the water though. It wasn’t actually that warm. That will probably be for another time later on. There are a couple more Bank Holidays coming up imminently

While I was out there looking down at the beach I had my roving eye looking around out at sea.

Although there was quite a haze out there and not even the Ile de Chausey was visible, there was plenty of activity just offshore. There was a cabin cruiser and a couple of speedboats for a start, and probably a few other things that I couldn’t make out.

No fishing boats though – they must all be having a day off today.

So I pushed on … “pushed off” – ed … along the path down past where they were repairing the medieval city walls, dodging the English family with the dog who were trying to negotiate the scaffolding.

But the repairs are continuing along the Rue du Nord right now, even though the big crack in the walls where they have been repairing is filling me with some kind of concern.

From the Place du Marché aux Chevaux I passed through the arch and along the path underneath the walls where I used to go running all that time ago.

Down at the viewpoint overlooking the beach at the Plat Gousset I stopped to have a look down there to see what was happening.

The summer season hasn’t officially started yet. The promenade cabins haven’t arrived on the Plat Gosset yet and the diving platform on the pillar hasn’t been put back. I imagine that that’s for some other time later on.

The tidal swimming pool is looking nice though, although no-one is taking advantage of that right now either.

From there I continued on to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Maréchal Foch.

As well as the vertical-axis wind turbine spinning around in the foreground, we had lots of people milling around on the beach and on the Plat Gousset. The fine weather has certainly brought them out in their droves.

Even the seagull that bombed the photograph on the extreme left-hand edge seemed to be enjoying itself too as it prepares to alight on the roof of the casino down there.

While we’re on the subject of seagulls … “well, one of us is” – ed … it’s that time of year again.

The town’s gardeners have been out cutting the grass and the seagulls have been collecting it. They’ve built all of their nests on the roofs of the houses and they are now settling down to lay their eggs.

In a couple of weeks we might catch sight of the eggs and then we can watch the seagull chicks slowly growing up. I shall have to make a note to come by this way more often in order to watch the events as they unfold until the chicks are ready to fly away.

Here in the Square Maurice Marland there have been a few more developments too.

A few years ago they spent a lot of money renovating the square and then the let it run to seed somewhat. At one time just recently it was looking quite shabby.

However, while I’ve not been paying attantion, they have been slowly bringing it back into condition.

These planters are quite new. They certainly weren’t here before. I wonder what we’re going to see planted in them.

Back into town there wasn’t anything happening so I went to have a look at the port.

With having seen no fishing boats out at sea this afternoon I was expecting to see them all in the harbour. And they certainly were there too.

Quite a few whom we have seen before, like Hermes I, Hera, Philcathane and Galapagos but there are a couple there who are strangers. SM734551 is called Hermine Bastien Steeven, the SM telling us that despite her Dutch name, is from Saint Malo, and PL626645 is called Le P’tit Caprice, registered down the coast at Paimpol in Brittany.

Marité and Belle France are in there today too which is a surprise. They ought to be out at sea earning their keep with a couple of loads of tourists.

Back here I had a coffee and then sat down with the guitar. On the playlist earlier, the song ROLL ME AWAY had come round. When I listened closely to it, I reckoned that it was a fairly simple chord progression so I sat down to work it out.

And it works too. So for my next trick I’ll work out a bass line to it.

Regular readers will recall that I said in the past that I won’t add any more songs to my own acoustic playlist set until I can master the ones there, but this particular one has always been a favourite of mine and it has a certain significance.

“Stood alone on a mountain top
Starin’ out at the Great Divide
I could go East, I could go West
It was all up to me to decide”
Doesn’t that remind me of when I was standing up there on the HIGH PLAINS OF WYOMING in 2002?

And what about
“12 hours out of Mackinaw City
Stopped in a bar to have a brew
Met a girl and we had a few drinks
And I told her what I’d decided to do
She looked out the window a long long moment
Then she looked into my eyes
She didn’t have to say a thing
I knew what she was thinkin’
Roll, roll me away
Won’t you roll me away tonight
I too am lost, I feel double-crossed
And I’m sick of what’s wrong and what’s right
We never even said a word
We just walked out and got on that bike
And we rolled
And we rolled clean out of sight
We rolled across the high plains
Deep into the mountains
Felt so good to me
Finally feelin’ free
Somewhere along a high road
The air began to turn cold
She said she missed her home
I headed on alone”?

And the air certainly was cold where we were at the time that all of this was going on. Yes, one day I really will, I promise you, write about those three missing days on my blog.

Tea tonight was, as usual, a vegan pizza.

After lunch I’d taken out a lump of frozen dough from the freezer and it had been happily defrosting during the afternoon. When I’d finished what I’d needed to do I rolled it out and when it had proofed I assembled it.

After last week’s unsatisfactory attempt when it was overcooked, I turned the oven down slightly today and that produced a much better effort. I didn’t break any teeth this evening.

But I’m off to bed in a minute. An early start and a radio programme to complete. And two to send off – I mustn’t forget that, as I’m not here next week.

Well, in fact I’m not all here at any time but let’s not bog ourselves down in semantics.

Friday 19th November 2021 – JUST A FEW …

… more brief notes because I’m in the middle of watching a football match and when it’s finished I’m off to bed because I have to get up at 05:00.

And I do remember that I said that I was going to update the notes from yesterday but unfortunately things didn’t quite work out like that. Not the least reason being the fact that I had yet another bad night last night and I ended off drifting into sleep a couple of times this afternoon when I should have been working.

It felt as if I didn’t have any sleep at all last night but considering the amount of stuff that was on the dictaphone from last night I must have fallen asleep several times.

I was out in Caliburn last night, going from Winsford to Crewe and it was very late. I couldn’t think of what was wrong. I’d been driving for a few hundred yards and I suddenly realised thet I had no headlights. I looked around and there were no electrics of any kind working in the van. Just then I was going past a farm so I pulled into the farm yard to get off the road before someone ran into the back. Jerry and Mike were there, leading some camels with kids on them. They passed in through Caliburn and out the other side and then came back that way. They asked me what I was doing so I explained. They had a few suggestions but I suggested that it was the main fuse that had gone. Jerry said “hang on. We’ll have a look” and lifted up the bonnet but said “ohh it’s a new Transit and I don’t know these ones”. I had a look and saw that the battery had shifted position so I put it back. Sure enough, there was the main fuse underneath the battery and it had broken. Some woman came by now from the farm and asked what was going on. I explained to her but she replied “we don’t have one of those”. I said that I’d have to order one but in the meantime I was sure that I could rig up something so that I could carry on driving and do whatever I had to do.
Later on there was something about dressing up in fancy dress in the Welsh class. One guy had dressed as a canwyll yr ysbryd but I thought that he should have been more like a ghost with a sheet over him as well while he was doing it. There was quite a lot to this dream but I can’t remember any more than that
Some time later I’d been out with with my friend from Congleton. She lived somewhere out beyond Manchester but I was far too tired to take her home so she arranged for her mother to come and pick her up from my family home which was actually where she lived in Congleton. We stopped somewhere for a quick flirt about, something like that, and then I drove back. She said “don’t park where you normally park. Pull up across the road” because her aunt had parked there once and a policeman had come along and moved her on
Finally someone was making a film about the Great Train Robbery. Of course they were disguising all the names and the names of towns and so on but it was quite clear what it was. I had some kind of rôle to play in it. I was on my way to the garage where everyone was assembling. There was a policewoman directing traffic so I had a chat to her. She was saying how glad she was going to be to get off work at the end of her shift. I thought “you’re going to have a surprise later on in that case”. I arrived at the garage and everyone was trying to organise themselves but there were still a few things that weren’t working. There was this red MkV Cortina and they couldn’t make the flashers work on it. One guy was frustrated and put a great big dent in the boot. The I noticed that a few of the things were going wrong in this organisation. Some of the equipment wasn’t up to much. I immediately thought that this was going to be a catastrophe. Everyone would be caught quite quickly because of all this. I recommended not sharing out the money until much later when the hue and cry had died down a little. Someone there had guns and everything like that. I could see that several tragedies are going to arise in this affair if we weren’t careful.

When the alarm went off I staggered out of bed for my medication and then checked my mails and messages. Liz was on line too so we had a little chat for a while.

Today’s task was to choose the music for the next four radio programmes and that took far longer than it ought to have done as well. Mind you, had I been wide awake and in the mood to work I could have done it a lot quicker than I did

After breakfast I went out for a walk. I needed a bread knife because there isn’t one here,

Down at the end of the Tiensestraat I came once more into the Herbert Hooverplein.

Being earlier than usual, the outdoor market here was in full swing.

This is the kind of place like one of these Middle-Eastern or North African street markets – apart from the weather of course. You can buy absolutely everything imaginable here, including bulbs for planting in the garden

Surprisingly, there didn’t seem to be too many customers around right now. It’s not actually that late in the morning. I would have expected the place to be heaving with folk.

The market stretches on around and into the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein.

Standing underneath the arches to the entrance to the University Library I have a good view of all of the stalls and what they are selling.

The University Library is the same one that was burnt by the Germans during the Sack of Leuven in 1914 and all of the books, some as old as 1300 years, went up in flames.

Collections were made throughout the World to rebuild the building and to restock it, so the Germans came by in 1940 and burnt it again.

Sown in the Diestsestraat are a couple of cheap shops that sell household equipment so I wen to try my luck there.

First though, I went to have a look at the house-building that’s been going on down there.

They are actually making reasonable progress which is quite a surprise considering that this is Belgium where they seem to be taking their time about most of these building projects.

And you’ve no idea how hard it was to actually find a bread-knife around Leuven. I tried several shops in the Diestsestraat but had no success.

While I was out I went to Delhaize to buy the salad stuff and fruit for lunch today and for my butties tomorrow on my way home. And in Hema, a more-upmarket kitchen shop near Delhaize, I finally found a bread knife at a reasonable price, so I can make my sandwiches in peace,

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that taking photos of people taking photos is a regular occurrence in these pages.

Today I was eben more lucky because there was someone actually filming here with a film-camera. However I couldn’t see what it was that he was actually filming, and he didn’t stay long.

Back at my little room, after lunch I carried on with the music, fighting off wave after wave of sleep, mostly very unsuccessfully. However, at least it was only 10 minutes here and there, not several hours as was the case a couple of months ago.

Tea was falafel and pasta followed by soya dessert, and now I’m settling down to watch the football. TNS v Newtown.

TNS won the match 2-0 but it would have been a totally different story had the referee awarded maybe even one of the stonewall penalties that I would have awarded to Newtown had I been refereeing it.

And this is, shame as it is to say it, the first time that i’ve ever seen TNS set out to kick an opposing player off the park. As I have said before, Lifumpa Mwandwe is far too good for this league but he’s not going to last long in it if in other matches he’s kicked about as much as he was tonight.

Saturday 2nd October 2021 – YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING …

… why there aren’t any photos today. Well, read on.

Last night I didn’t finish my journal entry because I almost fell asleep on my chair and in any case it was almost bed time so I posted what I’d done and went to bed.

It was another depressing night, tossing and turning and not really going into a deep sleep at all, although there must have been some at some point because there was stuff on the dictaphone.

Once again, I awoke in a deep sweat – it seems to be happening almost every night now and why I note them is because it’s one of the things that they always ask me at hospital.

After the medication I came in here to organise a few things. With these new sleeping hours there isn’t time to do much before I have to go out to the shops.

Windy, grey and damp this morning but that’s enough about me. So was the weather.

At Noz they didn’t have a lot although there was some kind of book sale so I bought a couple more to add to my library.

LeClerc was an expensive shop because I bought more coffee. I always go for the instant coffee in the silver paper containers rather than glass jars to save on waste and (of course) they are lighter for me to carry upstairs – that’s the kind of state that I’m in these days.

They never seem to have any when I need some and last week I had to buy a different variety that I don’t like all that much. But this week they had my preferred brand so I added a packet to the weekly shop to keep in store.

As I mentioned earlier, the weather was windy, damp and overcast. When I went out of LeClerc it was teeming down with a torrential downpour of rain, the kind of downpour that we haven’t had for ages. From the end of the covered parking to where I park Caliburn is about 30 metres but I was soaked and so were the paper bags with my fruit and veg in them.

By the time I reached home it was pouring down even more, and that’s exactly how it stayed until at least it went dark. And if anyone thinks that I’m going out in that, they are mistaken.

Back here I put away the frozen food and then made a coffee. And while I was drinking it, I turned my attention to the dictaphone. I downloaded the files onto the computer but then I remembered that I had no hummus for lunch.

Luckily I had everything that I needed

At some point during the night Barbararling – and it’s probably been 10 years since she last featured in a nocturnal ramble so what’s made her reappear? – was there in her role as mother of Zero but I don’t remember much of that at all, which is a shame. Wouldn’t I have liked to have known how this would have ended?

Somewhat later I’d gone to look at the new building to where I was moving. I was in the laundry on the 1st floor and to get down onto the ground floor I somehow missed the stairs and slid down a kind of post thing and ended up in the foyer. The foyer was full of plants that were not in very good condition but were giving off tons of fruit. All the people there were discussing the plants and fruit and what needed to be done. I happened to say something and someone asked “are you moving in?”. I replied “yes, on the 12th”. I’d gone and had a quote for a kitchen and some kitchen fitters and I was checking out the apartment but I couldn’t get in, something like that. So these people started to talk and they knew the person who was moving and thought “thank God she’s going”. Everyone said that they had seen her packing and driving off with some stuff. They tried to find the advert for me in a magazine for the property that was on sale but we couldn’t find it. Then the German army turned up and started to interrogate everyone quite roughly.

Finally, I was in New Brunswick last night as well. There were some people whom I knew who had a laboratory and making dangerous drugs. They sent some off in a car to someone and they rang him up to tell them that they were on their way. Someone said something about the last time the shipment was intercepted by the police and this guy went totally berserk and completely wrecked the apartment building where he was living.

After lunch I sat down and carried on with the journal entry from yesterday, but only in a half-hearted way because I’ve been shuffling the music around.

There are 6 groups of artists, grouped at random, each with about 50 artists, and I alternate from one group to the next so that I’m not playing the same group all the time. But over the last year or so it seems to have settled down into a rut so I wanted to shake things up a little.

No walk of course but I made a coffee all the same and carried on with my work.

While I was looking through my messages I came across a video of the highlights of Y Barri v Y Drenewydd from this afternoon, a match in which Y Drenewydd won 0-3.

And I’ll ask the same question that I asked a few weeks ago – “whatever is Lifumpa Mwandwe doing playing in the Welsh pyramid?”. He’s a country mile above everyone else whom I’ve ever seen.

Tea tonight was baked potato, veg and a couple of those small breaded soya burgers that I bought ages ago and froze. That’s the last of those which is a shame because I liked them.

Now that I’ve finished my notes I really feel that I ought to stick my head out of the window to see if the weather has eased off and if so, go for a walk, but I’m not up to that.

Instead, I’m going to have a little relax before going to bed. Make the most of my evening and have a nice lie-in tomorrow. And then bake my fruit bread because I’ve run out.

Sunday 29th August 2021 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… big fall today. Something along the lines of when I fell a couple of years ago when I dislocated my knee and broke my hand. This time, I landed on my knee and on my elbow and I have gravel rash just about everywhere.

Whatever else I have done remains to be seen, of course but at the moment I’ve cleaned my knee and I have an antiseptic pad on my elbow.

One gets the impression that it’s not safe for me to be allowed out without a keeper.

This morning I finally had a lie-in – until all of about 09:30. It was actually rather earlier than that because someone sent me a text message round about 08:30 but if anyone thinks that I’m going to respond at that time of morning on a Sunday they are mistaken.

After the medication I came back in here to do some work but after a short while I was disturbed by a phone call. I have a appointment to see a neighbour at 14:00 but could I come now?

We had a very lengthy chat for several hours about a project that I have in mind and she gave me a load of informatio which I could put to a great deal of use.

That took me all the way up to lunch and then for the first part of this afternoon I’ve been teaching myself how to write, synchronise and add subtitles to video files. It’s rather time-consuming and took me a while to figure it out, but now everything is working exactly as it should and I’m quite pleased with what I did.

That took me all the way up to my afternoon walk outside.

It goes without saying that the first port of call is the beach to see what is happening, so I wandered off across the car park to have a look over the wall.

There were quite a few people down there on the beach today which is no surprise as it’s about the last day of the holiday season. And chapeau to those who are going into the water because there is quite a lot of wind today and it’s really cold in all of that heavy cloud shadow.

While I had one eye out on the beach, the other eye was, as usual, looking out to sea to see what I could see.

Unfortunately, there was nothing big sailing around the bay this afternoon, even though the tide was in and the harbour gates were open. All that I could see was a speedboat out at sea, and a zodiac full of fishermen hidden in the shadow of the cloud.

No sign whatsoever of Marité and La Granvillaise which is strange seeing as this is really their last opportunity to rake in the cash.

So off I set along the path, where I met my Waterloo. Face-down in the gravel and I could only just about manage to find the strength to drag myself to my feet.

It reminds me of the time that Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams fell overbaord from a lifeboat.
“Did you drag yourselves up?” asked Kenneth Horne
“Oh no” they replied. “We were dressed quite casually”.

Staggering off down the path, covered from head to foot in dust, I went down to the end of the headland.

As I reached the end of the path by the lighthouse, aroud the headland came one of the Joly France ferries. This one is Belle France, the newest of the fleet that came in to port earlier in the summer.

The lunchtime train from Paris came in at 14:10 or thereabouts and will have brought in passengers who will be going over to the island for a out-of-season holiday. Belle France will be bringing back the people who are going to be taking the evening train to the metropolis.

Managing to keep on my feet, I tottered across the car park and down to the end of the headland. Surprisingly, there was nothing going on out in the bay around there so I headed off towards the port.

There wasn’t any change in occupancy in the chantier naval today. Still the same seven boats as before.

Instead, I had a good look around the port to see what else was happening in the port. I could see Chausiaise, the Ile de Chausey freighter over there at the ferry terminal waiting for things to happen.

Behind her up against the other side of the ferry terminal is another one of the Joly France ferries. This is the more recent of the older two ferries, with the rectangular windows in “portrait” format.

There wasn’t anything else of note happening over there so I pushed off further along the path.

The Galeon Adalucia is still there moored in the harbour. I wanted to take a photo of it today because this is possibly the last time that we shall be seeing it. Someone was telling me that she’s hitting the road tomorrow for St Brieuc.

She’s still pulling in the crowds as you can see. There are masses of people over there on the quayside taking a last look at her before she goes.

And talking of going, I’m going too, back to my apartment.

On the way back home I was interrupted by a familiar noise going past overhead.

Luckily I had the camera ready so I was able to snap it as it went by overhead. It’s the red microlight, or powered hang-glider or whatever she calls herself. We haven’t seen her for a good couple of days.

Back here, I paired off the tracks for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday, and the unfortunately I fell asleep for half a hour.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone to attract my attention today

I started off on board a ship like the THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR only this time I was someone else – a female. I had Zero with me and I wanted to see how she would respond to certain stimuli. I asked on the internet if anyone had any marijuana or cannabis to smoke and if so would they like to bring it round and share it with the 3 of us and see what happened as the drug unfolded. And I have no idea whatever about what was going on here.

There had been a few Hollywood films made with a low budget or even no budget as a strike had hit hard but all of a sudden it cleared up. This meant that this thing with Zero was back on the agenda. How it cleared up was that I was treating a girl not much older than that who had broken her hand. I was a real guessing game and I had to work it out in the end which I did, and the question of how she was going to get back to hospital. I didn’t want to run her because I was waiting to catch up my beauty sleep. It turned out that the traffic was all flowing again so she’ll get something or other (I must stop mumbling) from down the south coast for which I was grateful. She was talking about she’d rung up her brother and gave me her brother’s phone number. Luckily he answered me and said that he would come and fetch her for which I was grateful.

Later, I wanted to go and look at a car somewhere or other and asked my father to come with me. In the end he said that he would come with me one morning which meant that I’d be late for work. I took my car in to the garage and left it there. I asked them where there were any decent cars because I was retiring. He pointed to a garage about a mile down the road which I said that I knew but which occasionally had some old bangers in and a few other cars but I didn’t think that that was the kind of place that was of any interest. I went back to the office at 09:00 and my father was standing outside. We set off and somehow we ended up in this museum having a look round. We became separated and were having a look. It was pretty crowded. Then I thought “this isn’t getting anything done, is it? I’ll be without a car, I’ll be late for work, all this kind of thing”.

Now here’s a thing!

Here I am, at home on a Sunday with nothing much going on today, and I HAVEN’T had pizza for tea. So what happened there?

Yesterday, I’d taken a frozen burger in breadcrumbs out of the freezer in order to have it for tea but with Rosemary phoning me, I’d ended up missing my meal.

Meanwhile, the burger had defrosted so it needed to be eaten. There were a couple of older small potatoes hanging around so I finished off all of that with some vegetables.

So now, an early night. I need to be on form tomorrow so I don’t intend to hang around.

And any case, I’m sick to death of this keyboard.

Thursday 11th March 2021 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… miserable and depressing day again. And while you admire the force of the waves smashing down on the sea wall in the storm this afternoon I’ll tell you all about it.

It actually started off quite well and once again I was out of bed just after the first alarm went off despite the rather later night than I intended.

After the medication I had a listen to where I’d been during the night. One of my younger sisters – I can’t remember which one – had had an accident and was paralysed from the waist down. She was having to get all new stuff from school so I had to take her to the shop where the school uniforms were. While we were searching for the rooms we came across the right room for the blue and white pinafore skirts and grey tunics, that kind of thing. We started to make a list of things that she needed for next year. Then she got out of her wheelchair and very unsteadily went towards looking at the pens and papers, that kind of thing. I thought that she ought to go back in her chair because she wasn’t fit enough to be walking around. I had one or two words with her about going back to sit in her wheelchair again.

Later on, there was something strange happening in a big office. It was necessary to follow some people and record their movements. I’d been on the lookout for suitable people to do this. I’d been driving around the hospital in a tractor and trailer and came across a young boy and his mother – his mother had been visiting the boy. I thought of going to ask them if they could do this but I had the tractor stuck. It meant a lot of reversing around. I ended up back in the public area in the library and TOTGA was in. She’d already done this a few times for me so I waited until she turned up and I asked her if she would do it again. I asked if she had all of the paperwork. She replied that she had left it all at home. I said “never mind. We’ll have to start again from scratch”.

Later on Caroline put in an appearance too. This is the first time for quite a while that she’s put in an appearance in a nocturnal ramble.

There was much more to it than all of this too, but firstly I’ve forgotten most of it and what I didn’t forget, it’s not the kind of thing that you would be interested in hearing, especially if you are having your tea right now.

First task after I’d finished my dictaphone notes was to attack the day’s quantity of photographs. Another 20 went the way of the west today and I’m now wandering around Nuuk in Greenland looking at the sculptures.

There’s only another 360 to review for July and then there are … gulp … 2500 or so for August and then a pile for September and October too. Then 2019 will be up to date.

When all of that is done, then I have to update all of the blog entries for that period, and I still haven’t worked out how I’m going to write about the three missing days in September when I was having … errr … certain issues.

Once I’d organised myself properly I wandered of and had a shower to make myself look pretty. That is of course a job that takes a darn sight longer than it ought to do as you can imagine.

The last thing that I really felt like doing was to go to the shops this morning. I really wasn’t feeling like it. But I hauled myself out and set off in the gale.

There was a trawler out there in the harbour, just pulling away from the Fish Processing Plant. At first, I thought that it was going to be heading back out to sea but instead it headed off across the harbour and went to tie up over there.

She’ll be in good company over there too. Tied up over there where she has been for quite a while just recently is La Grande Ancre. It’s not like her to be moored up for very long without moving.

There were some guys up there on the top of the quayside and by the looks of things they were unloading that red van. I wonder if they are going to be loading up one of the fishing boats ready to go out on a voyage.

Thursday is usually the day that we see Normandy Trader in the port. At the moment though the harbour gates are closed and she isn’t in there as yet.

But there’s a lot of activity going on down there right now with the unloading of a lorry and a pile of timber. I suppose that this means that she’ll be in here at the earliest possible opportunity.

From there I pushed on to LIDL for the shopping. I didn’t really need all that much but I bought what I thought that I needed. They had some more of these mis-shapen carrots at €1:59 for 2kg (1kg of normal carrots cost €1:29) so I bought a pack. I’m getting rather low on carrots right now.

On the way back I was caught in a rather dramatic shower and was soaked to the skin. But luckily the rain didn’t last for too long and the sun came out quite quickly afterwards.

Back here I had my hot chocolate and sourdough fruit bread, and then I came in here and … errr … fell asleep. I don’t know how long I was out but by the time I’d gathered my wits together after I awoke, it was 14:25. I made it about 2.5 hours that I was out, all told.

After lunch, I came back in here and shame as it is to say it, I fell asleep again and was late going out for my afternoon walk.

Taking the correct camera with me today, I wandered off outside.

The storm that had been blowing up this morning was now raging outside. You can see from the whitecaps on the waves that we were having our money’s worth this afternoon. With the tide being well in, there wasn’t much beach to be on but even so, there wasn’t anyone at all down there picking their way around the rocks. It wasn’t the kind of weather to be down there.

For a change just recently, the view along the coast and inland was fairly clear today and you could see a good way into the distance although it was hazy yet again out at sea.

With the tide being well in, all of the fishing boats were on their way home.

Coming in from the English Channel braving the wild water was one of the smaller shellfish boats. That’s not the kind of boat in which I would like to be out there in all of this.

There were just two or three people walking around the headland today so there was no issue about social distancing. Apart from the boats that we have seen, there wasn’t anything happening out there at sea.

My route took me over the lawn and through the car park to the end of the headland but there was nothing exciting happening there either so I headed off along the path on top of the cliffs.

The storm was totally wild out here, as you have seen from the photos that I posted earlier. The waves were crashing away over the sea wall and the poor people out there were being soaked.

Over at the ferry terminal this afternoon there seems to be quite a lot of activity.

Both of the Joly France boats are over there right now, presumably making use of the ferry terminal, and that means that Chausiais has had to move out. She’s been obliged to moor up against the outer wall of the inner harbour.

Down at the chantier navale there was a hive of activity with people wandering around working on the boats that were down there. Still the same four boats though. We haven’t had any change in occupancy for a week now.

When I went out to the shops this morning there were five refrigerated lorries parked at the Fish processing Plant.

That means that despite the heavy storm and high winds, they are expecting a good catch coming into port. And sure enough, there were plenty of fishing boats down there this afternoon unloading at the wharf.

As well as the crowds on top hauling the stuff off to the Fish Processing Plant, there are several vehicles on the lower level belonging to private enterprises such as local seafood shops taking away the shellfish from the boats that they charter.

Back here, I had my coffee and the last of my coffee cake, and then I peeled, diced and blanched half of the carrots that I had bought this morning. As well as that, I fed the sourdough and the ginger mother-solution.

The guitar practice went OK and then I had tea – taco rolls with the remainder of the stuffing from the other day. The apple pie was delicious too.

During the day here and there while I’ve been doing other things, I’ve been doing some more of the file duplicates. I’m now up to 1.05TB of free space. From here now, it’ll be a very slow crawl file by file.

But I won’t be doing any more tonight. I’ve had a bad day and I’m exhausted. I’m off to bed early because tomorrow I have a lot to do. I have to go to Valognes near Cherbourg to have my first vaccination and on the way home I have to stop off and repair a computer. Such are the exciting things that I get to do.

Tuesday 12th September 2017 – I’M IN GOOSE …

… Bay right now, and this bed-and-breakfast is far too posh for me. Even the spare toilet rolls in the bathroom have little hats on.

But then I shouldn’t even be here. I should have been staying somewhere else but according to mine host here, the guy whom I’m looking for is “out of town” and that’s a huge disappointment.

It means that yet another one of my projects has tombé à l’eau, as they say back home in France.

Last night, I had another disturbed night’s sleep – maybe crashing out for an hour or two in the afternoon yesterday didn’t help. But it took ages to go off to sleep, and I was tossing and turning all night.

But I was on my travels too. Back running my business and it was a Saturday morning, really quiet, and so I wandered away. I ended up at a house ful of people who were visiting someone who was quite ill.People were being let in to see this person two at a time, and there was a lot of noise coming from that room. Eventually it was my turn, and found that the sick person was another former friend of mine. She had a puppy with her – apparently her cat had died. She wasn’t interested in talking much about anything serious – just chatting about nothing. I asked her why her house was surrounded by scaffolding and she gave me a weird look. The other person there said that the house was a wreck and falling down, and this was apparent, although the house wasn’t as bad as the one next door.
Somewhere along the line I was in my bedroom when I noticed a young rat in there. That filled me with dismay.

After breakfast, I set out to tidy up my living accommodation, and that took me longer than i intended too.

And then I had to take it all out and load it into Strider. Luckily I’d tidied him out the other dayso that didn’t take too long.

I could also take a photo of the caravan too. Expensive, but it was the only thing available and I was quite comfortable in there.

And so I went to cash up, and it wasn’t quite as painful as I was expecting. But then again, to do things like this you need to bite the bullet.

It also gave me an opportunity for Strawberry Moose and me to say goodbye to our crew.

Nothing had been too much trouble for them. I was made very welcome and I’ll be delighted to go back and carry out a further exploration.

The road into Cartwright the other day was beautiful and well-worth a photograph. But with it being late afternoon, I had the sun in my eyes to the west.

Not so this morning though. I have the sun at my back and the view is even better.

That’s Main Tickle over there again, I reckon.

Somewhere down there, I reckon, is Muddy Bay where the orphanage was.

It’s impossible, apparently, to go there by road and so we were obliged to go by boat the other day.

But the weather was nothing like as good as it is today and so the photography wasn’t as good as it might have been,
and that was disappointing.

At a certain point the Métis Trail goes over the brown of a hill and just for a brief moment there’s a view in the distance of what I reckon might be Paradise River.

You can see why Cartwright gave it its name, can’t you?

This new zoom lens that I have bought is doing really well and while it’s not as sharp as I like, it’s producing the goods fair enough.

Cartwright wasn’t clearly the only one who considered it to be Paradise.

It looks as if a native Canadian has chosen this spot for his homestead and, honestly, who can blame him?

It’s the kind of place where most of us would like to settle if we have the chance – and I’ll show you my preferred spot in due course.

This is one of the places where we always stop to take a photograph as we drive by – it’s where the Métis Trail rejoins the Labrador Coastal Drive.

It’s the first place where Labrador City appears on the signs – only 813 kilometres away – and it’s only another 500 or so kilometres from there to the North Shore of the St Lawrence and Highway 138.

And I’m not going to be there for a good while yet.

Although this is one of my favourite spots on the Labrador Coastal Drive, this isn’t my ideal place – at least, from a personal point of view.

But with a stretch of 414 kilometres without fuel and any kind of facilities whatsoever, this would be the ideal spot for a couple of fuel pumps, a small motel, a little food shop and coffee bar.

But of course they won’t let me in live permanently in Canada, will they?

Around here on the dirt road the speed limit is 70kph. And although I was doing … err … about 70 kph I was passed by a lorry as if I were standing still.

A few kilometres further on, there he was on the side of the road, receiving the care and attention of the local Highway Enforcement Office, a member of which was busily writing out a ticket.

It’s the first time EVER that I’ve seen Highway Enforcement out here, and if anything is a sign that times, they are a’changing, then this is it.

Somewhere hidden in those trees is another sign of the times – a Highway Labour Camp.

And they need it too because the road – bad when it was new in 2010 – was even worse in 2014, worse still in 2015 and absolutely disgraceful this year.

They can’t let it disintegrate much more than this, surely?

One of the main arguments put forward about the veracity of the Norse sagas of Vinland concerns the cattle.

The Norse are said to have brought cattle with them, and how they had them grazing in the meadows. This is dismissed as fantasy by the critics.

But there certainly are peri-Arctic meadows in this region – dozens of them in fact, and from what I have seen there are more and more of them developing as the forests are cleared, whether by fire or other means.

Another thing that there are plenty of are eskers. These are like sand ridges and stretch for miles.

But they aren’t brought by rivers but by glaciers. The stones caught up in the glaciers rub against each other and are slowly reduced to sand.

When the glaciers recede, the sand is dumped along where the edges of the glaciers would have been, and they are spectacular where roads have been cut through them.

I mentioned earlier where my ideal spot in Labrador would be.

If I could settle here, I would be extremely happy. But also extremely isolated too because it’s miles from anywhere.

Situated at N52° 52′ 30″ and W58° 19’52” in fact.

You can see what I mean about these peri-Arctic meadows. They are all over the place these days.

And assuming that the climate was kinder in the 11th Century – in the middle of the “Medieval Warm” period, there would have been many more too.

Bringing cattle here would not have been any problem whatever, especially if the cattle had been used to life in Greenland.

There’s another enormous work camp here at the side of the road.

We’re currently up on the Eagle Plateau and so it’s called, rather imaginatively, “Eagle Camp”.

I thought at first that it was something to do with Highway maintenance, but closer inspection revealed that it’s all “Valard” – the company that is constructing the electricity transmission cables across Labrador.

Mind you, the highway DOES need attention. It was resurfaced with loose gravel in 2015 and it’s already been ripped to pieces.

At one point I hit a hidden dip, the rear end of Strider lifted off the road and I was going sideways heading for the drop off the verge.

We had an exciting couple of seconds (which seemed like a couple of hours) as I wrestled for control of the vehicle. But we are still here.

I mean – you can see what the labrador Coastal Drive looks like simply by glancing in the rear-view mirror of Strider.

At this point we have loose gravel being thrown about everywhere and clouds – and I do mean clouds – of dust thrown up behind us.

No wonder that you spend so much time fighting for traction if you are thrown off course by the lumps and potholes.

But at least it’s not like the time in the Utah Desert where the trail was so rough that I was travelling slowly and the wind was so strong and in the wrong direction that I had the unnerving experience of being overtaken by my own dust-cloud.

But oh! Wait a minute! Look at this!

When we were here in 2015 we noticed that the asphalting of the highway had started – but had come to a sudden stop with patches of gravel road in between.

But now, the asphalting has extended far beyond where it was back then. There’s the sign telling you to prepare for the gravel road, and there’s the guy cleaning off the edges of the road.

Another 5 years and it will be asphalt all the way.

But despite how good the road might be, there are still challenges to face, such as the incessant climbs and descents.

We’re travelling from south-east to north-west and all of the river valleys around here are going from south-west to north-east.

You can see over there the line on the right – that’s the road back up the other side of this valley. On the left is the track of the Valard cable from Muskrat Falls.

But here is the final descent for now. That’s the valley of the Churchill River, and to the right are the towns of Happy Valley and Goose Bay.

That’s not quite my destination for tonight though – I’m driving on to North-West River where I have things to do.

But I’ll leave you here to admire the beautiful scenery.

But a little further on is the entrance to the controversial Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project.

And opposite is the camp of the protestors. Not quite as big as the Faslane camp, but it’s limited by law, and here all the same.

I’m not going into the rights and wrongs of the project, because everyone has his or her own opinion about it, but it’s one of these things where, from my own point of view, the environmental and cultural objections outweigh the profit considerations.

But then again, as I keep on saying, I don’t have to live here

But leaving aside Muskrat Falls for the moment, I clatter across the metal bridge over the Churchill River.

It’s been known by several other names, such as the Grand River (which it certainly is) and the Hamilton River, but it was renamed the “Churchill” upon the death of Sir Winston.

But whatever name it might have, it’s certainly the most famous river in the whole of Labrador,and probably the most important too.

As usual these days, arriving in Happy Valley, I find a different dirt road heading east and follow it all the way that I can.

And on this particular road, I can’t go any further. But it certainly brings me to a spectacular view over Goose bay and the head of the Hamilton Inlet.

It’s very easy to picture the scene as the first European explorers – maybe Louis Fornel the fur trader or maybe John Davis of the Davis Straits – or maybe even the Norse explorers – made landfall here.

But hats off to this guy here at Birch Lane Farm. It’s not everyone who would attempt commercial farming in a place like this.

But he seems to have plenty of crops and a good growth of hay, so it looks as if he can make a good go of it.

It totally undermines the opinions that people have about the “Frozen North” – just as it did when I saw the shipping container marked “Alaskan Agriculture”.

A quick call in to the port here at Terrington Basin in Goose Bay to see who’s about.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a “Ship of the Day” and we strike it lucky here. We have the heavy load carrier Fairlane who left Shanghai on 12th July and came here via the Suez Canal.

That’s a long way to come for any ship and it makes me wonder what it was that she was bringing in.

At North West River we hit a temporary setback. My contact isn’t answering his telephone so that rules out my accommodation and my project for tomorrow, which is a disaster.

Not only that, the B&B in the town is fully-booked up.

The motel has a room, but it requires me to drive all the way back to Goose Bay to pick up the key as the unit here is unstaffed. And the girl at reception is particularly unhelpful.

So badger that for a gale of soldiers. A quick telephone call (thanks, Josée for the ‘phone) conjures up a bed in a B&B in Happy Valley, at a price rather less than the motel. I can do that so I cancel the motel room.

But it’s frightfully posh in here – way out of my league. The spare toilet rolls in the bathroom have hats on.

I’m more used to the kind of place where you can “spit on the deck and call the cat a b@$t@rd” as you know, but beggars can’t be choosers, not by any stretch of the imagination

At least I can use the microwave here, so it’s beans, sausages and spuds for tea. And then an early night.

I’m whacked!

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: caroline

Friday 11th July 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

Saturday 19th October 2024 – THEY LEFT ME …

Sunday 4th August 2024 – ♫ PANCAKE TUESDAY …♫

Sunday 27th August 2023 – TODAY I HAVE …

Friday 11th August 2023 – I DIDN’T QUITE …

Monday 31st July 2023 – I’M GOING TO STOP …

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Sunday 11th September 2022 – WHILE THIS GUY …

Sunday 24th April 2022 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

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Saturday 2nd October 2021 – YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING …

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