Tag Archives: cheryl foster

Tuesday 23rd September 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting all alone in my nice apartment. My visitors have flown the nest this evening due to wanting to put some tarmac underneath their wheels. They have an appointment in Limoges tomorrow evening and so want to break the back of the journey this evening.

They had a lovely lie-in this morning, though. My alarm went off at 06:29 – yet another morning where I slept right through, out like a light – and as there were no signs of life coming from elsewhere, I cracked on and wrote yesterday’s blog entry.

By the time that I had finished, I heard sounds of movement so I went and made some coffee for everyone. While it was brewing, I went to the bathroom to sort myself out and then we sat around drinking coffee and chatting.

One thing that I learned was that my camp bed was not very comfortable. In fact, not at all comfortable. I shall not be proposing that to anyone in the future unless the unlucky recipient brings an air mattress.

The nurse was surprised to see me with a house full of women. Nevertheless, he sorted out my legs and gave me the first of this series of five injections that I have to have a week after the chemotherapy.

When he left, my visitors took turns under the shower, and the first one in found out all about the length of time it takes the hot water to run through from the water tank.

After they had showered, I had to give a couple of porridge-making lessons to my hungry visitors and we sat down and had breakfast.

Almost immediately afterwards, the bowls were whipped from the table and the washing-up was done before I could even blink an eye. I told my visitors that they can certainly come again.

We had another long chat afterwards, and then I mentioned the sheet of chipboard that needs to be … errr … lost. A brief flurry of text messages, and it was cut in half with my circular saw and stuffed into a car from where it will end up in Limoges at some point.

After a coffee, my guests wandered off for a walk, and I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of those dreams where something went on at one of the testing stations while we were stopped en route somewhere and I didn’t have enough room for all my things. They were on one of the carts. This led to an argument and one of the inspectors was knifed but I was convinced that it wasn’t me who did it.

This is another one of those dreams of which I remember nothing at all. I like the bit “I was convinced that it wasn’t me who did it”. As if I would need convincing.

We were discussing the treatment of captured women spies by different States of the USA. There were some States, like, say, South Carolina who would really just interrogate them and then let them go where there were other States that were farther north like New York that would take them very seriously and execute them. But that’s all that I remember of this particular dream because the batteries went flat in the middle of dictating it, and by the time that I’d wired it up again, all of the memory that I had was gone.

It makes me wonder what the rest of the dream that I had forgotten was all about. I suppose, however, that this dream relates to what I have been reading about the American Revolution.

One of the players on the opposite side was called for a foul, and the referee called him over. She began to talk to him about the incident but he took absolutely no notice at all. She began to become a little sterner with him but again, he just totally ignored it. She began to take out her notebook, which was an electronic notebook, but he just took it from her. A couple of us tried to intervene to take the notebook back but in the end, he just hung on to it. She was obviously not able to deal with him so she sent him off but he refused to leave, so she called the police. In the meantime, he took the notebook and went into the buffet. There was an oily salad in there. We heard him inside there, soaking this notebook in the oily salad and then taking it into the kitchen and boiling it into the pan of orange juice that someone had left. We all thought that this was the strangest thing that we had ever seen. We then heard a car pull up outside and the sound of tramping feet but it wasn’t the police at all but something else. However, they didn’t come in, so we were sitting there in this kind-of impasse waiting for the police to arrive.

Yesterday at dialysis, I was watching an old football match in the Cymru Alliance – I can’t remember now which – where female referee Cheryl Foster was officiating. A mass brawl broke out and in the end when things had calmed down, she sent off one of the players

When the alarm went off, I had some kind of metal plate, an oval type of metal plate with three screw holes in it. What I was trying to do was to screw it to something like a porcelain dish or porcelain plate. I’d already done it once in the past because there were three screw holes in the plate. However, it’s really complicated to screw into something solid and hard like that, so I had to find the exact three screws that I used last time, so I was searching through my box of loose screws, trying to find the exact three screws. The aim was that this plate would have this bracket on it, and the bracket would support a tripod, a small desktop tripod, but I had no idea why I wanted to do this.

There is actually a mini-tripod on my desk. It belongs to the webcam but since I moved down here, I’ve positioned the webcam elsewhere. But screwing something into a porcelain plate is certainly a novel idea.

When my visitors came back, I showed them where the bread and salad were, and they made themselves some cheese salad sandwiches for lunch. I settled for a disgusting drink.

We had another long chat, reminiscing about all kinds of old times from school. We were so engrossed that it took us all the way up to tea-time.

My faithful cleaner had dropped in earlier to give me some sunflower seeds and an aubergine that I had asked her to buy. The sunflower seeds, I put on one side for future bread-making activities but with the aubergine, I made an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit for tea, which went down very well.

Once more, the empty plates were whipped off the table and washed before I even had time to think.

Finally, my friends left me for Limoges, with a promise to come back to see me again. And I really do hope that I do. I don’t have anything like enough visits these days, although it’s certainly more than it used to be.

But before I go to bed, making a sandwich reminds me of a conversation that took place in the film HELLZAPOPPIN’.
One of the actors was talking on the ‘phone –
"That’s good – that’s bad – that’s bad – that’s good – that’s bad – that’s good – that’s good …"
"Who are you talking to?" asked his sidekick
"I’m talking to my sister" replied the first.
"But what are you doing?"
"Why, I’m helping her sort a box of strawberries!"
If you want to know where shows like Monty Python and the like obtained their ideas, have a look at HELLZAPOPPIN’.

Saturday 21st November 2020 – JUST FOR A …

… change, I managed to beat the third alarm to my feet.

And not only is that a surprise in itself, it’s even more surprising when you consider that I didn’t go to bed until long after 01:30.

It goes without saying that I didn’t go anywhere during the night. There probably wasn’t enough time to do very much anyway so it was something of a restful sleep for what it was. And I do have to say that when the third alarm went off I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor, and that’s as good as it got for about half an hour.

This morning I finished going through my mailbox and a pile of stuff has bitten the dust – and quite right too. It’s down to a much-more manageable proportion now.

As well as that I was chatting to my friend with Covid (well, she doesn’t have it now of course) and doing some work on the arrears from my journey around Central Europe. And then, I … errr … fell asleep. And no surprise there after my early start.

After lunch I didn’t do the baking. After all if I’m baking tomorrow as well I may as well have a go at my cake then and use the oven for everything.

But there was football on quite early today too. Barry Town and Y Drenewydd played out an exciting, pulsating 0-0 draw. Yes, exciting, not like most 0-0 draws. The action flowed from one end to the other throughout, ably assisted by Cheryl Foster, the league’s female referee. We had several shots on goal, including one almighty whack from; Nat Jarvis that rattled the Newtown woodwork, but the defences were well on top in this game. Quite an enjoyable game all around.

lighthouse semaphore pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallBy now it was extremely late and going dark but nevertheless I went out for my afternoon walk.

Surprisingly there were a few people out there this afternoon and some of them were heading my way as I admired the lighthouse and the semaphore station out on the end of the Pointe du Roc. And of course, that would have to be my luck, wouldn’t it? Not many people around, but all of them right where I would ordinarily be running.

And so instead, dodging the dog, I had a sedate stroll up to the end of the track, across the car park and around the headland to see what was going on at the memorial to the lifeboatmen.

decorated seafarers monument pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day they sprinkled fresh gravel all around it to make it look pretty.

Today there seem to have been even more changes. The memorial has now grown a few huge bunches of flowers. It would be to commemorate something I imagine but what, I don’t know. I shall have to go tomorrow and check the dates of the sinkings that are recorded there.

What with nothing else whatever going on out there this afternoon, I headed for home and a hot coffee. And such are the way of things around here right now that I switched on the kettle, went for a gypsy’s and then headed for the office, completely forgetting to make the coffee.

Tea tonight was something of a fry-up of vegetables and vegetable balls, in the microwave fryer that Rachel gave me last year. It’s actually too big for the microwave but if I take out the round plate, put a support over the rotator and put the fryer on that so that it doesn’t turn round, it does actually fit.

It takes ages though, so there was plenty of time to make some cheese sauce too. And it was all followed down by the last of the apple crumble. Tomorrow I’m going to have yet another attempt at a fruit tart with agar-agar

rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThat was the cue to go out for my evening runs. And it was just as well that I was all alone out there because for some reason I wasn’t on my best form and my running was rather bizarre.

Have I taken a photo of the Rue du Nord from this point before? I don’t think so, and so I’ll put that right. This is the resting point after the second leg of my runs, the first being right down at the end of that shot. There’s quite a steep bank behind me and I can’t run up there. It brings me to a shuddering halt.

From here I ran on down the path underneath the walls and all the way round to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch where we take our photos of the sea breaking onto the Plat Gousset.

place marechal foch Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was absolutely nothing of any excitement here either.

With nothing else to do, I took a photo of the end of the Place nearest the street and then headed for home, running across the Square Maurice Marland.

At one of the houses at the end I encountered a woman. She had let her dog out to take itself off for a walk but instead of coming back home it was simply sitting there by the side of the road and she was trying everything to make it move, but with no success.

After an exchange of pleasantries I continued my walk around the walls and then ran on the rest of the way home.

For a change I’m going to have an early night. And then a nice long lie-in to get myself together for what I have to do tomorrow – like bake a cake, bake a tart, start off the sourdough bread etc etc. And to book my voyage to Belgium, something that I forgot to do today. I really must organise myself.