Tag Archives: computer issues

Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

… at dialysis today spilled a whole beaker of hot coffee all over the keyboard of his nearly-new laptop?

Yes, I’m convinced that I’m going from bad to worse these days and I don’t know why, but everything seems to be taking so long, and I seem to be creating difficulty after difficulty for myself.

Like last night, for example. It could — and should — have been another early night, but when I’d finished my tea, it was already 21:45 and that leaves me very little time to do anything that I want.

Consequently, it was closer to 23:30 when I crawled into bed last night, and this is good for neither man nor beast.

Once in bed, though, it didn’t take long to go to sleep, and apart from one or two awakenings, more of which anon, I stayed asleep until about 06:15.

Not that I felt much like leaving my bed when the alarm went off. It was quite a struggle to drag myself into the bathroom and once again, it was horribly late when I went in for my hot drink and medication.

To make matters worse, the computer in here wouldn’t boot up. In the end, I had to go into the BIOS to check and, sure enough, the bootable disk had fallen to the bottom of the pile, so I had to promote it to the top and we could start again.

Once it was up and running correctly, I uploaded the dictaphone files to see what had gone on during the night.

A friend of mine had reached his 118th birthday. He was living in an old people’s home where it was customary once every couple of months to let them out for a week to go to some kind of rehabilitation and re-education class. What they did with him was that they combined two groups together so that he could have a couple of weeks away from the home doing different things because he’d been a very active man. They had rung us up on a Monday morning to say that he was being released for a week and did we have any calculations that he could do for recipes etc. We said that we’d sort a few out. But ten minutes later, he was at our door with his carer. Firstly, she was concerned about this process that we had of combining the two series, and secondly, there was some kind of delay in this week’s course starting, so could he come to take part in our group activities? We all went out and saw him in the corridor, and we were delighted to see him and began to chat to him — he was called George — and make some plans about some kind of activity. However, his tutor told us to slow down and take it easy rather than him letting all at once, but we weren’t interested in that. We had our own things to do and the race between one of the tenants from Rhyl and Cardiff Met, and their coach Ryan Valentine … fell asleep here …

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating, but what happens at times like this, I slowly drift off into silence and then you can hear me breathing deeply.

So if you want to hear what I’m like during … errr … four hours and a few minutes of deep sleep, don’t hesitate to ask.

But what this dream means, I’ve really no idea because, … "as usual" – ed … it makes no sense at all. And Ryan Jenkins is the manager of Cardiff Metropolitan – Ryan Valentine is the number two at Y Bala.

Did I dictate the dream … "well, sort of" – ed … about the kind of old man who was being looked after somewhere, and they had programmes and things for him. One day, I noticed that the programmes had returned to the shelf where they stay sometimes, so I wondered which ones they had ended up keeping and which ones had returned. However, they were all returned and the old guy had died or something. From there, I headed back to my van, which was where I was living at the time. There was some kind of squat or something like that, and there were quite a few people living there in all kinds of situations, including several people who were living in some kind of tent, I suppose. But instead of being on the ground, it was hanging by a rope from a tree, with the idea that it would keep out the damp in the cold weather. As you walked into this camp, the glow of the open fires make these kind-of tent things look extremely weird and surreal.

Wanting to dictate this dream led to a mad panic-stricken search of the bed for the dictaphone, which had fallen out of my hand when I fell asleep just now. And it was still running, four hours and a bit after I’d lost it. That’s a long time-gap to drop back into a previous dream.

There were some workmen coming into our office to paint and decorate it, so round about 17:30, I went out to buy a couple of things and some tile cement that I needed for home because these workmen were starting at 18:00 and they needed some kind of supervision. I went into Crewe town centre where I found a really cheap set of golf clubs so I bought them so that I could practise playing my golf. I wandered around BHS and Woolies but they didn’t have any tile cement. When I came to Halford’s up the road, that was just closed so I went back to the office, hoping that no-one would notice me because it was now slightly after 18:00. I noticed that the colours that they were using to paint were horrible, a kind of dark blue in the main office. When I went into my office, there was a guy there preparing everything and I noticed that one of the walls was a horrible dark green. I asked him, and he replied that it wasn’t he who had chosen the colours — the colours had been chosen by the Head Office. I went outside to begin to play with a car — an old MkIII Cortina that I’d found in a shed five or so years ago. After playing around with it, I managed to make it start so I crawled underneath it to see what it would need for the MoT. One thing that it would need was a new silencer, and the silencer was routed so that it expelled air through the hollow rear axle rather than the tailpipe. I thought that this is going to be complicated if I were to renew the exhaust. Then a young Chinese guy came along. He was with the workmen. He began to talk to me about the cars, and the subject moved on to girls as it usually did back in those days. He told me a few little secrets about his life and a girl or two. I thought to myself “why is he telling me all of this? This is something that I don’t need to know especially as he worked with this office-renovating firm and not in our business

No chance of going to Wooolies, BHS or Halfords in Crewe Town Centre these days. Those shops have long-gone and the whole town centre has been flattened by the Council to prepare it for the massive investment of cash and facilities once HS2 arrives in Crewe. It looks as if Crewe Town Centre will be a war zone for many years to come.

But much as I try to keep politics off these pages, Crewe’s decision to flatten the town centre probably came about as a result of Louise Haigh, Labour’s spokesperson on transport who “appeared” during a speech in March 2023 to promise to build phase 2 of HS2, sentiments echoed later by shadow Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who said in September 2023 that “We will build HS2 in full”.

And a Cortina in a dream? What a surprise! Just as surprising as it would be if I ever decided to play golf.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and, just as quickly, breezed out again. She’s off on her week’s break this evening so I imagine that she wants to finish as quickly as possible.

After she had left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re dealing with the miscellanea — the little remote areas of the southern Balkans that haven’t as yet figured in the main part of the story. This is proving to be interesting as it highlights how several of these areas managed to skate nimbly in between the various major warring parties and preserve some of their independence.

Back in here, I reviewed this week’s radio programme and sent it off, and then once I’d done what else needed to be done, I revised my Welsh until it was time to prepare for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic, and then I waited for the taxi. Bang on 13:00 he turned up, and once we’d picked up another passenger in Granville, we headed for Avranches.

For a change, I was early arriving, and in even more of a change, I was seen to quite quickly. And then I could press on and do some work.

That was, until I spilled the coffee all over the laptop. Luckily, I don’t take sugar, but even so, it was a mess. I managed to throw my sheet over it to absorb what it could, and after some love and attention from one of the nurses, it still manages to work, which is just as well. How long it stays working is anyone’s guess. I’ve left it switched on overnight in the hope that the heat generated will dry it out.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and she definitely doesn’t love me any more now. I told her what my nurse and my cleaner had said about the cough and the pain in the foot. She confirmed that there is nothing that can be done about the pain. It’s due to the breaking up of my nervous system, but she’ll do her best to put together a cocktail of painkillers that have no side-effects, and we’ll see where we go.

As for the cough, she’ll try to make an appointment for me to have a thoracic scan, followed by an appointment with a lung specialist. And not before time.

The taxi driver was waiting for me when I was unplugged, but the chaos on the roads meant that we weren’t home any earlier, which was a shame.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and after she left, I had the other half of my pizza. And I didn’t enjoy it at all. My taste buds really are changing again and it’s not very nice.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for my Welsh course tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that old man … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met an old man in a Greek cemetery who was there for a funeral.
"How old are you?" I asked
"A hundred and three" he replied
"Where do you know him from?" asked my Greek friend.
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "But I bet that he comes from Ikaria."

Sunday 22nd March 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again today. You wouldn’t believe that it’s a Sunday, which is supposed to be a Day of Rest for me.

Not that it was much of a rest last night because it was another really late night again. I’ve no idea what time it was when I finally crawled underneath the covers, but it certainly wasn’t 23:30 I’d seen that come and go some time earlier.

It took longer than usual for me to go off to sleep, which appears to be par for the course these days. And although I have a vague recollection of waking up once or twice during the night, the next thing that I remember was the tail-end of the doorbell as Isabelle the Nurse announced her arrival.

She found me in bed, of course, and as well as sorting out my legs and feet, she also had to take some measurements of them too. That was complicated enough, and as much as I wanted just to go back to sleep, her irrepressible good nature meant that she talked all the way through the procedure.

After she left, try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards and so, about half an hour later, I raised myself from the Dead and went off to the bathroom.

In the kitchen later, I remembered to take some of my medication, and then I made breakfast. Porridge, strong coffee and two of my home-made croissants. And there’s no doubt about it — these croissants are some of the best that I have ever made.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the (brief) Venetian recapture of some of the Greek territory from the Ottomans.

But it’s the same story as usual — disputes among the conquerors, disputes among their subjects, disputes between the conquerors and their subjects. Here, you have all of the ingredients that you need to ensure that, once the Ottomans gather up their strength and their resources, they will simply walk back into their former territories.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I’d been chatting to a taxi driver around Granville, related to a company that had a lot of Mercedes cars and a few odd, indiscriminate ones. At the end of the shift, I was talking to this taxi driver and looking through the window of the garage where you could see all of the vehicles there. He asked if I would go in to see if he’d been given credit for the final job that he had done. That meant going up and touching the taxi plate, pushing it and the last job would appear in the windscreen of the car. I went in, but I couldn’t find his particular car. There were all sorts of cars in there. The dream then moved on to something about the work in the European Union and an article on the chauffeurs. I was really disappointed to see that my name wasn’t mentioned, but it described some of the work that we had to do. It said that only two of the chauffeurs were authorised to take the luggage down to the south of France. This dream carried on, discussing the work, and then there was an article that the chauffeurs had decided to stop issuing certain visas to certain people. The company that controlled the issue of visas agreed with them, so these visas were stopped being issued

The first part of the dream relates to the taxi company that takes me about to my hospital appointments. I’ve been to their premises a few times late at night, and seen through the window their taxis parked up in the barn until next morning. Pressing the taxi plate wouldn’t do anything, though, because they don’t have plates — they have stickers.

As for the second part, we did have the press round the EU on several occasions and on one of them, I was actually filmed. Not that I ever denied anyone a visa though — I don’t understand that. It was however my responsibility to take one of my boss’s subordinates around for visas when someone from that office was required to travel.

There had been a rise in pilgrims from the Latin, the Frank and the Byzantine communities heading towards Jerusalem, and their habit of lying prostrate on the floor and kissing the soil when they arrived was inciting a lot of comments. It was therefore decided that they would stop the ferries that were bringing the pilgrims over by sea and the Byzantines were delighted by this.

This presumably relates to the book that I’m reading right now.

After that, I had a footfest – the highlights of the games in the JD Cymru League yesterday. However, there was nothing interesting or controversial in there.

Afterwards, there was Stranraer once again losing — this time to Clyde 2-1 in a game that they should have won had it not been for them falling asleep for five minutes shortly after the start of the second half.

We then had Greenock Morton recording a surprising away win against Ayr United. The way that Morton have been playing just recently, I wouldn’t have thought that they would win a raffle, even if they were the only entrants.

After a rather late disgusting drink break, I attacked the new computer. Yesterday, I couldn’t seem to make it read the disks in the array, so I concentrated on that for several hours. In the end, I managed to make it function, and now I have most of what I want in the way of disks connected to the computer.

With what time was left, I was uploading my entire suite of programs to the computer, and now, that’s pretty much how I would like it to be.

At about 17:00 I knocked off for cooking. Firstly, I made the dough for my pizza base and then secondly, I made my really thick custard.

While I was baking my pizza, I poured the cooled custard all over the vegan jelly. Now it’s beginning to look like a trifle. I hope that it actually tastes like one too. I shall find out on Tuesday.

The pizza was delicious, though. I experimented by using sliced cheese that I grated rather than the grated cheese. And indeed, it was much nicer. It’s more time-consuming though, but you can’t win everything.

And now I’m off to bed if this appalling cough will let me. It’s really bad tonight. I just hope that they will be impressed by it at dialysis tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the disk array … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was speaking to one of my friends about it, and I asked her to send her congratulations to the array now that the computer can read it
"Certainly" she replied. "Hip, hip, array!"

Saturday 21st March 2026 — I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from last night. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s something that fills me full of dismay. So boring is my life these days, compared to how it used to be, that the only excitement that I seem to have is whatever goes on during the night. And so a night with nowhere to go is really depressing.

Not that it was particularly early. As usual, things seemed to drag on and on, and it was about 23:15 when I was ready to crawl into my stinking pit, having moved all of the rubbish off the bed.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until a mega-coughing fit awoke me. I’ve no idea what time it was because I was too depressed to check. But there I lay, in that kind of no-man’s land between sleeping, being awake, and dozing off, all the way through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

And once again, I had a real battle with myself to leave the bed at that moment. It’s becoming harder and harder to force myself right out of bed these days.

In the bathroom, I had a wash, and then I washed my undies ready for next time. In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and took my medication, and then I came back in here.

With no dictaphone notes to transcribe, I had a look at the highlights from last night’s football. Llanelli went down to Cardiff Metro, as expected, but the TNS v Colwyn Bay game had a very unexpected result.

Colwyn Bay have NEVER beaten TNS, and as the match was bing played at TNS’s ground, no-one expected any difference. Colwyn Bay did, however, take the lead, but we all expected it to be just delaying the inevitable.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, I mentioned TNS’s rather … errr … pedestrian defence and how a quick ball over the top and a couple of rapid wingers rushing on could create havoc. Sure enough, a long clearance out of Colwyn Bay’s defence, right over the top of the TNS defence, saw the ex-Greenock Morton striker Jordan Davies rush on after it.

A panic-stricken TNS ‘keeper rushed right off his line to try to clear, but missed the ball and scythed down Davies. Result — a red card and a free kick.

Later on, Colwyn Bay scored a second, and although TNS hit the woodwork twice, the score finished 0-2 in favour of Colwyn Bay. You can SEE THE HIGHLIGHTS HERE

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, full of good humour as usual. This time, she managed to avoid hurting my foot, which was good news, and she soon left. I reminded her before she went that she might probably find me in bed tomorrow when she calls;

After she had gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Having told us yesterday about how well the Greeks were being treated by the Ottomans, he goes on today to tell us about some of the atrocities that they committed. It should be said, however, that most of them were committed after a rebellion or something like that.

There was however the terrible tax on children. Every year, the Ottomans would come to each Greek town or island to select a number of children, and carry them back to their cities. The boys, they would train them as Janissaries, the elite formations of the Ottoman army. The fate of the girls needs no description.

On another subject, he tells us that a convent was opened in Athens by a nun called Philothee Benizelou. Our author informs us that "she has left a most uncomplimentary description of the Athenians of her day, with whom she had some pecuniary difficulties and upon whom she showers a string of abusive epithets in the best classical style"

A woman after my own heart. My next task will be to find a copy of her writings.

Back in here, I had thing to do, and then I made a start on trying to make the new computer work.

First thing was to further dismantle the old computer. I removed the graphics card (complete with HDMI port) and then went to install it in the new one. That was not as easy as it might have been either — it needed some adjustment to the case to make it fit because the face of the graphics card covers two whole bays.

Having done that, I was still no further on, so I carried on my unplugging one by one everything that I’d plugged in yesterday. And it was after I’d removed one bar of additional RAM that the machine suddenly sprung into life. So there’s a short-circuit in one of the bars of RAM then.

So once, the computer was up and running, it now became necessary to install my suite of preferred programs, and as usual, that takes a very long time.

While it was doing its stuff, I was busy tidying up all of the bits and pieces and putting them away. Then, I had endless hours of fun trying to put the box and packaging up onto the top shelf of the unit by the door. And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either, at least, for me.

Round about 16:00, I knocked off … "for the moment" – ed … and went into the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I’d talked about making a trifle for a pudding. I’d found a recipe for making vegan jelly, involving agar-agar and fruit juice, so armed with a carton of grape juice, some agar-agar, some sugar, and a pear, I set to work.

And do you know what? It’s set to perfection!

Tomorrow, I’m going to make some really thick custard to pour all over it, and when it’s all cooled, I’ll whip up some vegan topping to pour all over it. It should be wonderful.

We had football on the internet later – Y Bala v Hwlffordd. Y Bala are next-to-bottom and ripe for relegation whilst Hwlffordd are seventh and pushing for the European play-offs. But Hwlffordd were absolutely awful today, the worst that I have ever seen them play. And while Y Bala were very … errr … agricultural, they played with a fire and an enthusiasm that I haven’t seen for ages, and their 1-0 victory, their first home win in 142 days, was well-earned.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with a baked potato and veg in butter, followed by vegan cheesecake. And it was a lovely tea. I enjoyed every mouthful of it. It will set me up nicely for my lie-in tomorrow, I hope.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about writing in the best classical style … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of a family who sent their son to one of the best European schools in Brussels so that he could have a good multicultural and classical education.
One of the family’s neighbours asked them "and how is his education going?"
"It’s wonderful" said the boy’s mother. "In no time at all, he could write home asking for money in seventeen different languages."

Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

… my bedroom/office is in this evening.

You can’t move in here for computer bits, boxes, packaging, cables and all of that. It’s going to take hours to sort out all of it and make the place tidy enough that I can even crawl into bed.

Consequently, it won’t be anything like as early a night as last night was.

And “early” is certainly the word. Having abandoned tea at some ridiculously early time last night, I came back in here and dashed all the way through what needed to be done, with hardly a pause. That’s why I was in bed at 21:48, and I wish that it was as early as that every night.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens when I try to have an early night, without me having to explain it in anything like any detail.

Searing pains in the foot, intense fits of coughing – they would be guaranteed to awaken me at any moment without the extra assurance of an early night. And so, from about 04:00 onwards, I was going through phases of sleeping, dozing and awakening all the way through to the alarm going off at 06:29.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there have been very, very few times when I have felt less like leaving my stinking pit than this morning.

Eventually, though, I was in the bathroom for a good wash and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication, all the time wondering how long it will be before I’m back in bed. Totally ridiculous, seeing how early I was in bed last night.

Back in here, I managed to avoid the bed and instead, had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

There were Royals under attack again last night. This time, it was the turn of Prince Michael to face the music when he asked someone in the crowd what they knew about a certain organisation. They replied that they were the people who sponsored the prize given by the Prince for some kind of good social activity. That took the Prince quite by surprise, as it was as well-known as it seemed to be. But with a lot of attention on the Royal Family in these recent times, it’s hardly surprising that a lot of these little facts are creeping out into the open when they were hidden before.

The Royal Family is still making the headlines these days, even if the Press has moved on from AFKAP – The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince. They now seem to be concentrating on others, and I really do wonder when someone else is suckered into the Epstein web. Not that it’s likely to be Prince Michael, of course. He keeps himself well out of the limelight and out of controversial situations.

I’d joined some kind of club on the internet about something or other, and although there was a list of about seven or eight people who were supposed to be officiating this site, I had my suspicions that it was being done by artificial intelligence, so what I proposed to do was to sit down and draw some 3D models of people that would represent this mysterious committee. I began to draw one, and I was giving some people a few lessons on the anatomical arrangements, the clothing, etc., but it was coming close to midday. I had some cheese with me, but I wanted some bread or something like that to go on it. Seeing as we were at the seaside, I went to a few of the stalls to see if they would sell me a bap or something, but they would only sell me a bap if it had something on it. In the end, I had to settle for a really basic kind of salad bap with just lettuce and tomato on it. It cost me thirty shillings, which I thought was enormously expensive, but I thought then that at least I’d have something to eat with my cheese at the moment.

Yesterday, I had a posting removed from a British newspaper comments section. My comment contained a word that is completely innocuous in British English but means something completely different in American English. It seems that their comments “moderator” is an artificial intelligence program from the USA because it was zapped almost immediately.

And it’s been an age since I’ve done anything with my 3D program, but the story that no-one would sell me an “empty” bread roll is one that occurred on several occasions in the distant past.

I was back in the Auvergne at Cécile’s place. I’d put an advert in the local paper about wanting to form a group. I had a couple of replies, and the first person to turn up was a female keyboard player. The second was a guy with a guitar. We began to talk about what we wanted to do and what we intended to do, and it seemed to gel a little. We didn’t have a drummer, but that can come later, I suppose. The guy explained that he was something of a novice, but that didn’t matter because we’d improve as we went on. When it came to late at night, these other two people decided that they would have to go, but they said that they would be back in the morning. They actually left together, so I thought that at least, those two were going to get on really well. Then, it must have been Cécile who mentioned something about tea. We hadn’t eaten, so she was going to make a great big bean salad, and she wondered if I’d help too. The way that she was giving out the instructions, it looked as if I would be going to be making all of it. Then I remembered that I’d bought some bean salad dressing from Canada and I couldn’t remember where I’d left it, so I thought that I’d run down to the shop on the seafront and see if they had any. But I’d forgotten how late it was, and, of course, all the shops along the seafront were closed, so I had to come back empty-handed. As I was passing the police station, I noticed that there was a woman standing outside with a baby in a pushchair. The woman was smoking a Turkish cigarette right in front of the baby. There were a couple of people remonstrating with her about this, but she didn’t seem to care at all.

Cécile used to play the guitar, and so when we were together, I did actually put an advert in one of these ecological papers to see if there were any drummers about. We did actually have a response too, but Cécile had to go off to the Ile d’Yeu to look after her mother, and so that put an end to that project before it had even started.

All of the shops being closed is another recurring story from the past, but I’m not sure where the cigarette episode fits in all of this.

And back at the seaside again? Hmmmm.

I was trying to organise a football team, so I’d sent out an open invitation for players to come to trials. One guy, who played in the centre of defence, had brought along his wife, who also played in central defence, and asked if she could have a trial too. I put her on the field alongside her husband at the start of the game. Although, like most trial games, it was very bitty and disjointed, she had a really good game and, in fact, performed better than her husband. Anyway, I kept them both on for the next round of trials.

When FC Pionsat St Hilaire was due to play against another team one Saturday night, the opposition turned up with only ten players. There was a girl with their supporters, and she offered to play for them. We couldn’t see why she shouldn’t, so she ended up on the field with them. And she was quite a useful player too.

But the third and fourth dreams recurred all the way through the night, coming back on several occasions. It’s been a good while since I’ve had a dream like that.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and was disappointed that I hadn’t found a doctor whom I could berate. And she made a bad move with her hand, right on the base of my foot exactly where the worst pain can be found. I was in agony after that.

After she left, I went to make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve finished the Latin occupation of Greece, and we’re now dealing with the Ottomans. Surprisingly, life for the Greeks under the Ottomans is in some respects easier than under the Latins, so our author tells us. They are allowed freedom of religion, the power to appoint their own governors and all kinds of things like that, things that they were never allowed to do under the Latins.

And surprisingly, there is very little repression of the population.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. And for a change, it was one of the best lessons that I’ve had, and I wish that they would all go like this one.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff. She sat me down at the kitchen table, took all of the boxes off the shelf unit by the door and told me to sort them out.

It took an age, as you might expect because tidying up is not my forte, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, it’s almost all done now. There’s just one box of stuff that I wouldn’t know how to sort, and there’s a box that I brought in here, full of stuff that should, by rights, belong in the bedroom.

Surprisingly, even though I used more boxes than were there before, not only is the unit much tidier, there seems to be much less stuff on it. I’m not sure how that happened.

After she left, I came back in here and unwrapped my late birthday present.

As you might have guessed, it’s a new computer – or, at least, a reconditioned one.

The first thing that I did was to take the case off and installed the hard drives from the old one and uprated the RAM, but to my surprise, there’s no HDMI socket for the screen.

On the graphics card, there are four ports that look as if they might be USB ports but they are about twice the size. Some kind of HDMI adapter came with the computer and it plugs into the ports on the graphics card, but when I plug in the HDMI cable, there’s no screen display.

The screen is working fine because when I plug it back into the laptop, it works fine. So I’ll have to find a solution, and if not, I shall hope that the graphics card from the old computer will fit into this motherboard.

However, as you might expect, I have boxes, cables and computers all over the place and I can’t go to bed until I tidy them away somehow.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with cheese, followed by vegan cheesecake. Only a small tea tonight as I’m still off my food. It looks as if it’s going to be another period of semi-starvation right now.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I’m going to tidy up and at some point, if I’m lucky, I might even be able to find some room on the bed for me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the pain in my foot … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once told one of the doctors at dialysis about it.
"It hurts so much in several places, doctor" I said."What do you advise?"
"Well" he replied. "My advice is to stop going to those places."

Wednesday 14th January 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

However, although that may be a surprise to some, the fact is that last night I had probably the best night’s sleep that I have had for a long, long time.

What with the football and everything, I had quite a late night again. By the time that I’d written my notes, taken the stats, and backed up everything, it was after 23:30 when I finally crawled into the bed underneath the covers.

Once I was warm and comfortable, I went straight to sleep, and the very next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. I was so surprised that I sat bolt upright and slid sideways out of bed in a panic.

Usually, during the night, there’s some kind of very vague memory of something, either me turning over in bed or having a coughing fit, but last night, there was absolutely nothing. It really was the Sleep of the Dead.

Sitting upright on the bed with the feet on the floor is one thing. Standing up and heading to the bathroom is something completely different. It took me a good few minutes … "as usual" – ed … to summon up the energy to leave the bedroom again this morning.

However, I was early into the kitchen after my scrub up, and I made my hot drink with which to take my medicine. And back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone, I checked my mails and so on.

The nurse was early today — actually before 8:00. He asked how things went in Paris, so I told him the news. He had the air of being disappointed, but then again, so am I. He sorted out my feet, and then he cleared off. It didn’t take him long.

Once he’d left, I made breakfast and began to read A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE again.

It’s been so long since I last read it that I’d forgotten where I was in the book, so I started all over again. At the moment, we’re walking along Dere Street, the Roman road that leads from Hadrian’s Wall up to the Antonine Wall in Scotland, and we’ve just arrived in the vicinity of Newsteads.

James Curle is at the stage of wondering why the Romans didn’t build their fort on the promontory commanding the area, instead of halfway up the slope. However, once his excavations make a start, he’ll find out why. And it becomes much more exciting when he does find out why.

Back in here, I began to install the office correctly. I’m now just using the new laptop as a desktop work unit, with the desktop screen plugged in. Some of the external drives are plugged into an adapter that is plugged into one USB port of the machine, and there’s another adapter in the second USB port with the mouse and keyboard from the desktop plugged into it. And that’s a much better way to work.

After all of that, I had a footfest with the highlights of all of the matches from last night, including Y Bala’s most improbable win against Y Fflint. That kept me busy for a while, and then there was some post that needed my attention.

Eventually, I could push on and do some work.

The next radio programme is going to feature a rock festival, so I had to track down the groups that played there, try to find their setlists for the festival and then see if I actually had any of the songs in my collection.

That took much longer than it ought, but then again, as usual with these festivals, many of the groups are quite unknown outside their orbit, and their music is unavailable by conventional means.

However, I eventually managed to round up enough music, including at least one very rare track that the group concerned only ever played live once and never ever recorded on an album. That should be of interest when it crawls into the public domain. But then, having a friend whose son was once sound engineer for the Pink Fairies has conjured up all kinds of rarities in the past.

So now, all of the music has been selected, converted to the correct format, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’ve even started to write the notes for it all.

That took me up until teatime tonight (a rather late teatime, it has to be said). I had peas, carrots, a mash of sweet and ordinary potatoes and gravy with a slice of my new vegan pie, followed by a slice of Christmas cake.

The vegan pie is wonderful, and I shall be looking forward to trying the other seven slices. I cut the pie into eight, and the other seven are now in the freezer ready for later.

But right now, late again, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, and I expect that Emilie the Cute Consultant will ignore me again. She definitely doesn’t love me any more.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the frontier … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "how many ears did Davy Crockett have?"
"Three" I replied. "His left ear, his right ear and his final front ear. Now you tell me how many ears Captain Spock had"
"I don’t know" he replied
"He also had three" I answered. "His left ear, his right ear and Space."
"Space?" he asked
"Yes" I answered. "Space, the final front ear."

Sunday 11th January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a miserable day today. Partly for reasons that I’ll mention in due course, and partly for reasons that I won’t mention. Either way, once more, it’s quite obvious that I’m ill again.

With this new computer, everything happened so much faster, as I briefly mentioned last night. Instead of grinding out the time until after midnight, everything was finished by 23:10 and I was soon in bed under the covers.

And there I lay, with something of a disturbed sleep. I’m not sure exactly how many times I awoke, but it was more than just a few. Even so, I was fast asleep when Isabelle breezed in on the latest storm. And it was a storm too – not quite on a par with that a couple of days ago, but even so …

She hardly awoke me, which was good. She peeled back the quilt, did her stuff and then left, while I went back to sleep.

It was 09:35 when I finally left the bed, and after a quick wash, I went into the kitchen for breakfast.

First task was the croissants. And I remembered to fold them the correct way today. They didn’t come out too badly, I suppose, for an amateur process. I had two with my porridge and coffee and left the other four for subsequent Sundays.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

I was in hospital, and I heard about the plan to restrict the password to exclude certain patients who were presumably no longer of any medical value. It’s a password that the nurse uses when she comes on Sundays for that really long word with whatever it is that is supposed to awaken me. They couldn’t work out which word to use instead of it. There were several that they also used on Sunday morning so there wasn’t really one that was memorable or instantly used in the way that 999 was so they weren’t able to access it.

This is an intriguing dream. I can see some kind of logic in it, but I’ve no idea where it came from or where it was going.

There was a girl from school whom I was seeing. I’d just started work and we were still drifting around together. After lunch, on my way back to the office, I’d get whoever it was who was with me to drop me off at her house so that I could say “hello” and have a little chat, then I’d dash on down the street to try to make up the lost time. This went on for several weeks. But one day, I was running a little late and when I turned up at her house, her mother was there but she wasn’t. She was in one of the bedrooms, standing on a ladder doing something in the attic and saw me arrive. So she came downstairs and said that she’d gone into town with someone. It wasn’t her father or something like that but I can’t remember who. She was on a red bicycle and the other person was on a bicycle of some odd colour. At that point, her father arrived. He gave me a really heavy pair of gauntlets and wheeled out a form of three-wheeled tricycle, with a seat at the back on which to sit and pedal and a seat in between the two front wheels facing forwards for a passenger. He urged me to climb in but for some reason, I took some time and he made a sarcastic comment, and then he pedalled off with me, trying to find where this girl had gone, his daughter.

This is another intriguing dream. Who is the girl? The girl whom I was dating after leaving school while whe was carrying on was one of the girls who came to see me a few weeks ago. She was three years younger than me. However, I’m certain that it wasn’t her, even if she did fit into one or two of the characteristics of this dream.

As for the rickshaw, a friend of mine in Munich has – or had – a 1920s rickshaw that he used for running around the town, and I’ve been driven around a local town in it.

Did I dictate that dream about the girl whom I used to go to see at lunchtimes? I’m sure that I did, … "yes, you did" – ed …but later on in that dream we were all sorting out a few kinds of things and my stepbrother Paul had had a bang in the back of his car so we’d been ordering bits and pieces for it as well as ordering other things. And sure enough, little by little, the packages came. I was half-expecting to have a package from this girl who had disappeared because I didn’t know if I’d said that I’d gone up there once afterwards and the house was empty and they had all gone. I never heard from her after that. So these parcels kept on arriving and my mother was rather frustrated because she was having to run around. One day she came in with an enormous parcel tucked under her arm. We said “oh, that’s the rear valance”. but when we unwrapped it, it wasn’t just the rear valance but the whole rear panel. It was painted the correct colour for the car and the number plate was already installed. It even had “Jaguar Ford” written on the back in some kind of stylish graphics instead of just the plain, ordinary “Ford” Of course, we all made some kind of remark about that to my step-brother, about the posh car that he was going to have There was a rear bumper too, and he looked at it and said “no-one’s going to bend this if they drive into it” Then he started to make arrangements with someone whom we knew to cut out the old, damaged bodywork. And then up the back gardens from down the street came some young woman. She looked at us all and said “lounging around again, are you?” She saw me with a mug of coffee in my hands and said “and time for tea for you”. So we all had a little social chat for ten minutes.

The colour of the car is actually the colour of my father’s MkV Cortina, which is languishing down the field on my farm waiting for me to pull out the engine and gearbox, although this will never happen now, of course. The back panel has another significant meaning, and it breaks my heart to think of how stupid I must have been one evening in 1983, when I acted decisively without thinking things through, and made the totally wrong decision that ended up costing me far, far more than I saved. If I could turn the clock back in time, it would have been to that moment.

As for my stepbrother, he was a lovely guy and would do anything for you. However, he fell in with the wrong crowd, was taken to the cleaner’s and died of a brain aneurysm, the same as his father.

I didn’t dictate that dream about that girl leaving. I’d gone up to her house to see her but she’d gone, the house was all closed etc. so I had to set off for home. What I had was one of these butcher’s bikes, the tricycle thing with the seat at the back and in between the two wheels was a large box where the butcher would put the meat in for deliveries, etc., one of the earliest versions of the bakfiets. I had to go home, and I was trying to think of how to go home without encountering any hills because it was difficult to manoeuvre up and down and I came up with a way back via Warmingham without going up any hills. So I set off, and I’d been going a couple of hundred yards when I thought “this is crazy because I’ll be going about seven or eight miles round and my house is only about a mile and a half from here, if that, so why don’t I just go home and struggle with the one hill that’s in between it?”. So that was what I decided to do. When I was back home, I didn’t remember how I’d actually arrived. I couldn’t remember the route or anything and I didn’t recall being out of breath. But this was when these parcels began to arrive, and I was there, hopeful that something would happen with a parcel for me. But there was something somewhere about after I’d been to that girl’s house and gone to the end of the street, there was a huge slope down to the left. You’d have to go down this cutting, down this slope to reach the railway station, which was one of these provincial things with just two platforms. If you were to cross the line to the other platform, that was actually down on top of an embankment because the slope was that steep and the embankment was quite high too. At the bottom, there was a road and I walked down this road somewhere somehow, and there were lots of people walking up it. There were the substantial ruins of a castle, one of these medieval, fourteenth-century Edwardian castles, and they were almost intact. You’d see all the carvings in the brickwork to make it look like a piece of beauty as well as a fortress, and lots of people were making comments about it and so was I. It looked wonderful, but I carried on walking and I’m not sure where all of this fitted in.

It’s disturbing me deeply, this story about the girl who keeps on appearing in my dreams and then disappearing. I’d love to know who she is. The butcher’s bike is quite an interesting object to appear in this dream, that’s for sure. I worked out that I was somewhere round by Hungerford Road in Crewe, so I could have come down and up Macon way which is much less steep than either Mill Street or Edleston Road. And then, even less steep, I could have gone the other way down to Crewe Green roundabout and then along Crewe Green Road.

The medieval castle and the footpath alongside it relate to the city walls at Leuven, although they are alongside a river, not alongside a railway station in a Welsh valley, the name of which totally escapes me at the moment.

This took me up to a disgusting drink break, following which I dismantled an external drive box to rescue the hard drive which has now handed in its hat and which I’ll have to rescue one of these days, and carried on with the updating of this computer.

There was football too – Forfar v Stranraer. And while the Loons had the lion’s share of the play in the first half, Stranraer wiped the floor with them in the second and were 2-1 up and cruising, only to be undone by a sucker-punch deep into injury time.

After that, there were the bread and pizza to make. And for a change, instead of sunflower seeds, I ground up a large handful of Brazil nuts and used them.

While I was at it, I baked the vegan pie and that looks lovely too. I’ll slice it into eight in the week and put seven slices in the freezer ready for another time.

The bread looks wonderful and the pizza was nice too, although I only ate half of it again.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow afternoon and then Paris on Tuesday. We seem to be back where we were a couple of months ago.

But seeing as we have been talking about medieval castles … "well, one of us has" – ed … a couple of tourists were being shown around Caernarfon Castle not so long ago..
"This castle is unique in history" said the guide. "In the seven hundred years that it’s been here, there have been no repairs and no restoration project carried out on the building."
"That’s an amazing coincidence" said one of the tourists. "It must have the same landlord that we do."

Friday 9th January 2026 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the storm.

Having abandoned everything after tea and gone to bed, I settled down underneath the quilt and fell sleep quite quickly. And there I lay until all of … errr … 02:39.

The wind that awoke me was the noisiest that I have ever encountered – and believe me, I’ve heard some noisy ones. It sounded as if it was definitely at its climax and it carried on like that for at least two hours. Sleep was impossible

Round about 05:00, having lain awake for a couple of hours, I left the bed, had a wash, went to take my medicine and to make my hot drink, and then came back in here to write up yesterday’s notes. They are all done and dusted now and posted online.

It took much longer than expected, due to this steam-driven computing that I’m using at the moment, And that led me to think of a cunning plan, more of which anon.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in with the breeze and didn’t stay long. She mentioned that she had not encountered any fallen trees on her circuit so far, or seen any visible sings of damage. One thing that she mentioned though was that just up the coast at Cherbourg, a gust of 213 kph had been recorded, and surely that’s a record for this area.

After she left, I made breakfast – the usual porridge, toast and coffee. However, it left me with the most terrible stomach ache and I really was feeling quite ill afterwards.

With the wind having died down slightly, it was quieter in the office and so, the early start having caught up with me, I went to lie down for a while to catch up with my beauty sleep and to try to sleep off this stomach ache.

So there I lay until all of … errr … 11:45. That was a good two hours, and I felt as if I’d needed it too. There was plenty of work to do, tidying up files and the like, but the most important was to start another batch of home-made baked beans.

Rather than try again with soaking dried beans, I’d bought a large tin of beans soaked in brine. I want to see if these are any more successful – i.e. less hard. That first batch that I made really were too hard.

The beans themselves are too big for baked beans. They are about twice the size of normal ones, but you have to go with what you’ve got, I suppose.

In the meantime, I’d had a parcel delivery. It was a laptop computer, but not the one that I want. It was the one that I’d tried to cancel and which should, according to the supplier, be still at the factory. So what’s going on here then?

All that I know is that it will be going back on Monday once the confirmation of receipt is lodged at the supplier’s office. In the meantime, I’ll wait for the other.

That took me up to my cleaner arriving, and the first thing that she did after she’d organised the bathroom was to shoo me under the shower to make up for that which I didn’t have on Tuesday. While I was washing, she picked up the huge pile of paper that was lying on the floor following my tidying-up the other day, and rushed it to the bin across the road.

After she left, I put my cunning plan … "see above" – ed … into action.

What I did was to take out the desktop computer from the cupboard where I’d put it the other day, and I began to strip it down.

The aim was to take out the power pack, see if there was a built-in fuse, and if not, to note the details of the pack so that I could order a new one.

After a lengthy struggle, I finally managed to locate the securing screws and remove them, and then to deal with taking out the power pack. But this is where "the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy".

Unbelievably, the cables are hard-wired into the transformer rather than being plugged in. And whoever had assembled it had obviously done so before the motherboard had gone in, because there was no way to move the cables without dismantling practically everything.

Nevertheless, we did have a Plan B. If I have a motherboard, a case, a processor, 96GB of RAM, a DVD drive etc, I’m halfway to an office computer anyway. Disks are easy to obtain , so is a power pack, and so would be an uprated processor.

Consequently, I sent an e-mail to the computer technician at the radio, to involve him or one of his friends into helping me rebuild this one into an even leaner, fitter, fighting machine. We’ll have to see if he replies. It’s certainly going to be quicker and cheaper than the only quote that I’ve had to date. I’m still trying to recover after that one.

While I was a-dismantling, I had a message on the ‘phone. "Can you spare a minute?"

It was Rosemary with a little problem and needed some quick help. So there we were, one hour and sixteen minutes later, still chatting about not very much. She seems to think quite highly of my theory, a theory that I have had for some time, that Caligula, Putin and Xi in China have had an agreement to divide up the World between them – Caligula in the Americas, Putin in Europe and Xi in Asia.

This explains Caligula’s mad panic about Greenland. He’s suddenly realised that when Russia occupies Denmark, it will also inherit Greenland as a colony of Denmark. And when Russia is installed in Greenland, it can control the North Atlantic and also the North-West Passage to the Pacific, and he’s scared stiff.

That, in my opinion, was one of Hitler’s two big mistakes – the first was not pushing on and taking Gibraltar and the second was not landing several divisions of troops in Iceland and Greenland while he had the upper hand.

Hard at work later, I suddenly realised that I’d forgotten to transcribe the dictaphone notes, so that was the next task.

There was something about my cousins in Whitchurch in Shropshire and something else that involved some kind of stately home owner, a Lord or something or other. I remember saying to him that really, he should have been able to have his own car. He replied that he did at one time, before all of this happened, but that’s all that I seem to be able to remember of this

My father’s sister and her husband had ten children (I think that my family was trying to start a new race of humans) and their progress around from farm to farm can be plotted by where her children ended up. Some are in Bronington still, some are in Whitchurch, some are in Barbridge and some are in Crewe. I lost count a long time ago of who is where.

All of that work had worn me out and I ended up crashing out again for twenty minutes. That took me up to tea time so I wandered off into the kitchen.

Tea was sausage, chips and home-made baked beans followed by Christmas cake for pudding. The beans were OK, I suppose, but they aren’t like real baked beans and I’ll have to do my best to liberate some more real ones, I suppose. A tray of twenty-four tins from a leading manufacturer costs €53:99 delivered, and I suppose that I shall have to bite the bullet one of these days.

But not now of course, because I’m off to bed. The wind has died down considerably from earlier and it’s a lot quieter now. Looking at the data from the weather station down the road, we had gusts of wind at the apogee of the storm blowing as much as 140 kph and that’s some going. And although it’s gusting a lot less, it’s still wreaking havoc. It should have been the final round of matches in the first phase of the JD Cymru League tonight but every single one has been postponed until Tuesday night. So there’s nothing else to do but go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about Caligula … "well, one of us has" – ed …, three men met in a prison cell in Leavenworth, Kansas, after the next Presidential election in 2028.
They ask the first one why he was in prison. "I’ve been here since 2025" he replied. "I was a bitter opponent of Caligula"
They turn to the second one. "And you?"
"I’ve been here since just after the recent election. I was a fanatical supporter of Caligula"
They turn to the third one. "And you?"
"I’ve only just arrived" he replied. "And I am Caligula."

Wednesday 7th January 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again when I awoke this morning.

That was quite a disappointment to me, because I’d managed to have more sleep than the previous night.

Mind you, seeing as there was no sleep at all on Monday night, anything is an improvement on that, especially a nice, balmy, early … errr … 00:30

The notes, the backup, and the stats were finished at a quite reasonable time, but there’s always some housekeeping to do before I go to bed. And this is where I became really annoyed because what would usually take ten minutes with the big desktop computer took forever with the steam-driven computing of the travelling laptop. The laptop is OK for when I’m out and about, but here at home trying to do some real heavy-duty work with it, it just grinds to a halt.

The day shall be cherished when the new laptop arrives, and when I can finally find someone who can build a decent office computer for me, I shall be delirious … "you mean that you aren’t now?" – ed … It’s disappointing that between all of us, we’ve not been able to lay our hands on one reliable supplier, or worked out a way to have one received in the UK and sent on over here.

Anyway, I was in bed at about 00:30 and fast asleep at about 00:31. No coughing fit or agonising pain in the foot awoke me, so I slept right through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Once more, it was a struggle to leave the bed, but I made it into the bathroom where I sorted myself out, and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to go with my medication.

When I’d finished that, I put away the rest of the shopping from last night, and that was a task and a half too. I hadn’t realised that there was so much.

Back in here, there was nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, as I said earlier, and it was just as well because Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

While she was sorting me out, I explained about my fainting fit yesterday. She’s of the opinion that it might have been low blood pressure, but that would be a surprise because usually, I can withstand some pretty low blood pressure readings, such as the 6.8 of the other week, without any problems.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast. Not a lot, but I managed to finish it today, which makes a big difference. Still nothing to read, so it didn’t take long.

Back in here, I checked my e-mails. And here was a big disappointment. The new laptop, which should be arriving today, is held up at the factory and is still awaiting delivery. The estimated new arrival time is “not known”. After what I said earlier, that is a tragedy.

Instead, I surfed through the internet pages to see what else was on offer. My eyes alighted on a laptop that had much higher spec than the outstanding one, made by a more reputable manufacturer, and for not very much more money, so I bit the bullet. And even as we speak, it’s in the post heading this way.

Although the mail that I received about the other one said that I could cancel it at any time, when I went to cancel that order, it told me that cancellation was “no longer possible”, even though it’s still at the factory. So never mind. When it arrives, it will be going straight back

The next task was to rewrite a couple of sections of code for my web pages. And how much *.html, *.css and *.js have I forgotten? A task that would have taken me ten minutes ten years ago took me a good couple of hours and it’s still not exactly how I want it. This is really sad.

After a disgusting drink break, I rang up Paris to find out what time I’m expected on Tuesday. And when they told me, I went for a lie-down.

After recovering from the shock, I rang up the taxi company
"There is some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that I have to go to Paris on Tuesday. you have plenty of authorisations left, and it’s for a consultation so I’ll be back the same day."
"So what’s the bad news?"
"The appointment is for 10:30"
"Oh dear – that means leaving at 06:30."
"Probably earlier than that if there’s snow on the ground. We know what happened on Monday"
So I’m being picked up at 06:00. God help us!

There were a couple of other things to do, and then I attacked the next radio programme, which will also be a concert. I edited the soundtrack and remixed it, cutting it down to about 58 minutes, and then dashed off some text for it.

It could have been finished too, except that I was … errr … away with the fairies … "although not in a manner that would have caused the editor of Aunt Judy’s magazine any excitement"- ed …

And properly too.

I was with my youngest sister. Somehow, we’d found our way into a kind of rich man’s home, which was at the top of a very steep hill. He had influential guests to come to see him, all of whom were criminals or crooks or something. When they arrived at the bottom of this steep hill, they would be accompanied up to the house up this really steep roadway by a group of people in some kind of 1950s Rolls-Royce or Bentley that was painted a bright mid-blue. We saw a couple of cars arrive like that. For some reason then, we were discovered, and we had to run. We came to the top of the bank where there was a really steep staircase of, ohh, hundreds of steps. My brother appeared, and he was in some kind of threatening mood, as if he belonged to this place. I looked at my sister, she looked at me, and the clipboard that I had in my hand, I threw it down the stairs, and we both ran hell for leather down the stairs. The clipboard only made a short distance, and then I had to pick it up every so often and throw it further down, and we’d continue running. On one occasion, I almost managed to catch it in mid-air as we arrived where the clipboard as before it had touched the ground. In the end, we reached the bottom, totally out of breath. I said “well, shall we ‘gang wham’ then?” in some kind of Geordie accent. She didn’t understand what I meant at first so after I’d repeated it a couple of times, I said “going home?”. She replied “oh no! You have to take me dancing and dining” and all these kinds of things, to which I laughed and said “I didn’t realise that I was supposed to be looking after you in that way”.

My brother, being menacing and threatening, is nothing new, although he was something of a paper tiger in that respect. However, being conspiratorial with my youngest sister might have been something that we would have done many years ago when she was a child, because she really was a good sport in those days, she grew out of it quickly with the stresses of work, marriage and family, as many people do

The Bentley, or Rolls-Royce, was interesting though, and I can still see it, even now.

Tea tonight was the last of the vegan pie, with mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, carrots and leeks. It was a struggle to eat it but I managed. And I forgot to have a dessert. But the vegan pie was nice and I’ll make another at the weekend.

So now, if the computer lets me, I shall be going to bed. I hope that this closing-down sequence doesn’t take another two hours.

But seeing as we have been talking about good news and bad news … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a conversation that I overheard between a doctor and a patient at dialysis.
"I have some bad news for you and some worse news for you."
"Go on, doctor, tell me the bad news."
"I’m afraid that you only have twenty-four hours to live"
"Good grief! So what’s the worse news?"
"I forgot to tell you yesterday."

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

… parcels delivery this morning, on a Sunday! What kind of strange idea was that? There was nothing in my e-mails to suggest that one would be arriving today.

Not only that, I wasn’t anything like prepared for its arrival either. What with one ting and another, like a late restart after tea, falling asleep on my chair for almost an hour, all of that, it was long after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was probably 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s why I was so surprised and disappointed to be awake at 03:20. There was something about being in a strange place and some American expected me to be in charge of the gentlemen’s restroom when I knew nothing at all about the exact situation.

The next time that I awoke, it was 07:50. I was in two minds whether to leave the bed at that point but I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and went back to sleep.

At about 08:15, there was this insistent ringing on the doorbell. The nurse usually rings when he arrives to make sure that I’m about, but I ignore it as he has a key to the building and my door. And then it rang again. “Don’t worry” I thought. He’ll work it out.

But a third time? And a fourth one? At that point, streaming profanities and vulgar abuse, I began to leave the bed but the door opened and in came the nurse, carrying a parcel. I quickly nipped back under the covers.

"Parcel delivery for you".
"Where was it?" I asked. "On the doorstep?"
"Oh, no" he replied. "The courier was ringing your bell to deliver it when I arrived"

So a courier delivering parcels at 08:15 on a Sunday morning? Whatever is going on here? It’s rather an extreme way of behaving, dragging people from their beds at silly times on a Sunday morning when all respectable people should still be asleep.

The nurse fitted my socks while I was lying in bed, and after he left, I have it a few minutes and the left the bed.

This morning, I didn’t bother with a wash. I just sorted myself out and then went to make breakfast – porridge, coffee and the last of the inside-out croissants. I must make some more next week, but I’ll make them the correct way round this time.

Back in here, there was some football from last night. I started off with Connah’s Quay beating Y Barri 3-1, despite being 1-0 down with only twenty minutes to play. And that’s as far as I went because this computer is just not up to watching streamed programmes

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was some kind of party going on in Stoke-on-Trent and I’d been invited by my friend. So I turned up, and I was in my van. I had some things in the back to drop off. He noticed the spare wheel in the back and the large sheet of wood – pallet wood made into a sheet.I explained that one of my tyres was down somewhat on tread so I need to replace it. He said that it’s no surprise that it’s down on tread because it’s always sagging down to one side He had a look inside and said “yes, we have a jack. Yes we have a wheelbrace. There’s a DC socket in the back for the compressor and a few other things”, and he said that we’ll deal with it, but right now, there were other things to do. We had to go round to the front, but people kept on appearing with things wrapped in towels. They were unwrapping the towels and handing them to us. There were all kinds of different food supplies, piles and piles of stuff, loads and loads of loose mint sweets in wrappers. There was so much that we were just dropping it on the floor because we couldn’t carry it all at once. We decided to make a couple of runs and then come back for it, hoping that no-one else comes back for it in the meantime. Some of the people coming back were my youngest sister and her husband. They were dressed as if for Hallowe’en, with blackened faces. I went in to drop off these things, and all my family was in there. My mother said “oh Eric, you’re looking smart today”. I replied “meaning that I don’t look very smart any other day?”. There were all these children around, children whom I knew, children and grandchildren of all the people whom I knew in my circle of friends. There was one particular girl whom I would have liked to have seen, but she hadn’t come. I was particularly disappointed, but so was everyone else. However, she had sent a letter saying “don’t think that I am being rude but ..” and I didn’t manage to hear the rest of it. I was quite disappointed. We dropped these things off, and all these children whom we knew milling around. A couple of young teenage girls came over to chat. I thankedt one of them for doing something for me in the past, but I can’t remember what it was. She went to pat me on the chest and I replied “be careful. I have a catheter port in there” so she apologised. We began to chat, and that was that.

“all my family was in there” – how about that for a scary nightmare Hallowe’en scenario? But this was a dream with all kinds of things going on. A friend and I had had been talking about her children and grandchildren a day or two back, and this probably is where the scenario about all these kids comes from.

As for the missing girl, I am sure that you can all guess who it was, so I’m going to award Zero marks for that.

Caernarfon were playing in the Welsh Premier League and were very close to the top. With the final game to play, it was extremely important. If they were to win, they would qualify for Europe. However, they were hemmed in and surrounded by a large force of Apache warriors and i was very difficult to do anything under these events. The captain of the fort found two of his players fighting . He broke them up, and gave them a lecture about tomorrow being the most important day in the club’s history, all of this, In the meantime, he sent two people out during the night through the enemy lines. They were successful and managed to meet up with a large force of cavalry that was heading their way to try to relieve them. Having been told of the forces and their positions etc, the cavalry commander decided to sleep the night in a dry gulch in the immediate area so that his troops would be fresh and rested ready for battle that he would give on the first of the month as soon as it becomes daylight

If you think that the previous dream was all mixed up, then this one was even worse. The root of the word “Caernarfon” – “Caer” – implies a Roman fort or camp of course and there was a Roman camp there, but they were hardly likely to be defending it against Native Americans. The idea of resting after a march and launching an attack at daybreak was quite a common US Army military tactic in those days.

Did I dictate the dream about the guy going on the bus to the neighbouring town? … “No you didn’t” – ed … He was disabled too, just like me, and couldn’t walk properly. He had no force in his legs. He managed to climb aboard the bus and it set off. Its destination was this town and was going no further so it didn’t pick up anyone as it entered the town. When it came to the edge of the pedestrian area, the bus stopped and everyone alighted. The disabled guy went up to the bus driver and asked if this was where they would come back on board later. He replied “yes” so the guy said that he wouldn’t manage to climb back aboard. The driver recommended that he go to one of the bus stops a little further out of the town centre where the pavements were raised. In the meantime, back at home, there was an absolutely tremendous shower of snow. Within half an hour, there was maybe half a metre of snow everywhere. Some was some poor guy, a footballer, standing by the door of his apartment looking very miserable because he had been planning on breaking some kind of record for his team that afternoon but all the matches had been postponed. People began to shovel, but it wasn’t really much good because the snow was coming down too fast. They wondered if they should bring in some professional snowmen. They thought that that might be a good idea, but they remembered reading that one professional snowman had been killed a couple of days earlier during an incident involving heavy snow. Someone else had the idea of picking up a couple of laptops and taking them outside to put on chairs so that when the snow fell down, the warm laptop would actually melt it and it would be somewhere for people to sit while they were taking a little break from shovelling snow.

We’ve had a few dreams abut buses in built-up areas just recently. And having difficulty climbing aboard a bus is another one of those issues. Here in Granville, some of the pavements have been raised to bus-door height but, ironically, the ones outside the medical centres and in the town centre, where most disabled people are likely to go, have not.

Leaving a laptop outside to melt the snow that falls on it is an interesting idea. It might work for te minutes, but it would be an expensive way of doing it.

The rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon were spent doing some housekeeping on the travelling laptop and the external hard drive, trying to tidy everything up before the new computer arrives.

Later on, I tried a different way of making bread. I’d seen a “no-knead” recipe for making bread in the air fryer, so I thought that I’d give it a try.

It’s very long-winded and takes a fair bit of time and the result wasn’t anything spectacularly good. It was only half a loaf too (my air fryer is quite small) so I might persevere and next time, make a full-sized loaf but bake it in the conventional oven.

While I was at it, I baked a small pizza and managed to eat half of it. I’ll save the other half for tea tomorrow night. But it was a weird pizza, because I had no fresh mushrooms. My cleaner hadn’t been to the shops this weekend.

Instead, I used frozen mushrooms, a great big handful, and I simmered them to dry the water out. And when I’d finished, there were hardly any mushrooms left. You’ll be amazed at how much water thee is in frozen mushrooms.

So right now, I’m off to bed, if the pain in my foot will subside. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately. We are back in our usual routine. And my new laptop might be here for Wednesday so that I can start working again. Steam-driven computing is not an ideal way forward.

But seeing as we have been talking about dreaming … “well, one of us has” – ed … one of my friends told me about a dream that she had.
"I dreamed that I was to have a new washing machine" she said. "If I went to sleep on my right side, I dreamed that I would have an Indesit, but if I went to sleep on my left side, I dreamed that I was t have an Electrolux."
"So what happened?" I enquired wearily
"I woke up my husband and told him"
"And what did he say?"
"He said ‘if you lie there on your back like that, quite still, I’ll give you a hotpoint"

Saturday 3rd January 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been today!

There hasn’t been a moment, I reckon, when I’ve stopped to relax. It’s been non-stop all day and the irony of it all is that there was very little of it that was actually in my plans this morning when I awoke.

It all went wrong this morning at … errr … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was abut 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I was in hospital in Ancient Rome. I was a member of the military for some particular reason, although I’m not quite sure why. That was really all that I remember except that song again, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN somewhere in the background, sung by a choir rather than a musical piece, that kind of thing, with no music – just the voices singing it.

As if anyone would be likely to find me in the military. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if it had ever come down to a war when I was of fighting age, I’d have been in the Merchant Navy. But there is more relevance in this dream than meets the eye at first sight.

After than, I went to chck on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several frinds of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … "it’s a clever machine, this!" – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

By the time that I’d finished, the washing machine had stopped so I went to hang out the washing – my cleaner had put out the clothes airer yesterday when she was here. But hanging up the washing is now becoming a difficult task and I might have to ask for help before long. What kind of a state am I in?

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was runnng on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniosly not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

The plan was to take out the hard drive and see whether it could be resurrected. That, however, was easier said than done. There was no hatch for quick access to the hard drive (which was probably why I hadn’t upgraded it to an SSD when I upgraded everything else) so I had to dismantle the entire case.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Managemet picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And aafter an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

Bu to give you some idea of how old this hard drive is, I couldn’t at first make it accept the password. It was only after much thought and many attempts that I realised that the language settings were not “French French” but “Belgian French” – and I’d left Belgium in 2006.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-drivn computing, the other one mus be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … "or maybe you will" – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows ugrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house move. THey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpeced finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intellignce sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metalic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Something else I came across was the power pack and cables for the 2TB external hard drive that I found the other day, so that’s now plugged in and running. Piles of rubbish on it, so I’m slowly going through it all to either transfer or delete it. But plugging that in led to a tidying up of the plate of spaghetti of cables that is on the shelf above my head where the back-up disks, the printer, the studio amplifier and the internet box are

But here’s a thing. Since I bought my first “Acer” laptop in 2006, I have had five of them in total and they are all here – the earliest three in bits, the one that I repaired this morning and the travelling laptop that is now up and running again after its blip this morning. But would you believe – I can only find one power cable. The idea of repairing the older one early this morning was to use it just as a library and keep it on the kitchen table, storing all of my E-nooks, but that plan is a non-starter if I can’t find a cable.

So now, with a nice, tidy office, all of that took me right up to teatime. Tonight, it was baked potato, veg and a burger in a bun followed by Christmas pudding and vegan ice-cream. I’m running low on milk so no custard tonight. That’s all of the Christmas pudding gone now so on Monday, I’ll go back and attack the jam roly-poly.

Back in here again, I crashed out, and for an hour or so too, which is hardly a surprise after everything that I’ve done today. I’m totally exhausted, and I’ve hardly done anything that I had planned to do. Not that it’s important tonight that I’m running late, because I’m planning on a lie-in tomorrow morning and the nurse can shake me awake.

But seeing as we have been talking abou language confiusion … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
"I can manage quite well" retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
"I thought differently" said Wilde "when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs."

Thursday 1st January 2026 – AND A HAPPY …

… this has been today!

It all went wrong this morning at … err … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was about 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I went down to town in my van and wanted to park it in an area where parking was free, so I parked up at the back on the way to the Val ès Fleurs. On the way back, into the centre do do my shopping, I bumped into one of the other residents. He was surprised that I had parked so far away, so he took me and showed me where I ought to park, which was right in the town centre but was a “pay and display” park. I explained that this was where I parked in the evenings when there was no “pay and display”, otherwise I’ll look for a free place. He seemed to be surprised that I was willing to walk a little distance rather than to pay a parking fee. After we’d finished our discussion, I asked him if I could give him a lift back up to our building, but he said “no”, he had other things to do.

When I was healthy, whenever that was, walking here and there would never bother me all that much, not even in inclement weather. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that i’ve walked home from my girlfriend’s in Chester, all twenty-five or thirty miles, on several occasions when I’ve missed the last bus, and it’s never bothered me.

The next thing that I remember was being in some kind of hall. I walked in and there were quite a few people around. I went to sit on a bench against the wall, a nice, comfortable, padded bench. Gradually, as more people came in, I moved along to give them space. When it came time to go, and I tried to stand up, there wasn’t enough headroom to put myself straight. In the end, I had to say to a girl who was sitting on the bench a lot further up, if she’d mind if I slid along to sit there because that was where the roof had a greater clearance. She tried to help me to stand up but I explained that it was something that only I could do. In the end, I managed to struggle to my feet with bending my head and back forward. I thanked her for her help anyway. She replied “yes, have a nice time where you’re going. It’s a shame that we are going to be one Welsh person less in this hall. I couldn’t understand how it was that she had guessed that I was Welsh.

That’s something that many people can’t understand. I can’t be helped to stand up because my legs need to lock in one position and if I don’t have that correct, nothing on earth will enable me to stay upright, no matter how much help I have. And I don’t have a Welsh accent either. “Part of Flint” spoke very much with a South Cheshire – North Shropshire accent and my mother was brought up in polite society but nevertheless within the sound of Bow Bells.

After than, I went to check on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several friends of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … “it’s a clever machine, this!” – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early, so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was running on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniously not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Management picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And after an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … “or maybe you will” – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows upgrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house moveThey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpected finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

But seeing as we have been talking about language confusion … “well, one of us has” – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
“I can manage quite well” retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
“I thought differently” said Wilde “when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs.”

… this has been today!

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

As if anyone would be likely to find me in the military. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if it had ever come down to a war when I was of fighting age, I’d have been in the Merchant Navy. But there is more relevance in this dream than meets the eye at first sight.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Wednesday 31st December 2025 – HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all of my readers. If you are reading these notes before midnight, I wish you an excellent reveillon. For those of you reading after midnight, I hope that you had a wonderful evening.

My best New Year’s Eve was, of course, that of 1999/2000 where I was interviewed on Flemish TV – in Flemish – as I flew out from Brussels and spent a week on Long Beach Island off the coast of New Jersey. But that’s another story.

Instead, let’s turn our attention to last night.

For once just recently, I managed to go for a whole day without crashing out and even managed to complete the notes too. I must be feeling better than I did at the weekend.

By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was about 23:15 when I crawled into my beautiful bed, and it wasn’t long until I was asleep either. It was so comfortable in there.

So comfortable that I really didn’t want to wake up, but I did nevertheless. I didn’t check the time, though. Instead, I thought “I’ll heave myself out of bed when the alarm sounds. It’ll go off in a couple of minutes, probably”.

After about half an hour of waiting, I had a look at the time. It was 03:20, meaning that I had been awake since about 02:50. Consequently, I tried my best to go back to sleep but instead, I watched the clock go round and round.

When it reached 04:55, I thought that I’d give it ten minutes and then go off an start work. The next thing that I remembered, though, was that it was 06:10. I must have gone back to sleep again.

When the alarm sounded, I hauled myself off into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. I took my time sorting myself out. It was nice to have a slow start to the day.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in Davenport Avenue and someone came to the house. They said that they wanted the catalogue for the records over the road at the social club. I must have lent them my records and I presumably wanted to play them and let people search through them for their favourites. I found the book with everything in it and set out to go across the road with the book. There were a couple of young boys loitering around the entrance to the place and they asked me what I was doing. I said that I was minding my own business. What were they doing? They cycled off and I walked down to the clubhouse. It was heaving with people and you couldn’t approach the door at first. I eventually worked out where the door was, walked through and began to ask around for whoever had asked for this. The first place that I tried was in the lounge bar but there was no-one there who seemed to be interested. In the sports room, there was no-one there either. In the end, I went through to the dance room. The barman was there with a crowd of people waiting to be served so I handed him the book and he took it.

We did have a social club across the road from our house in Davenport Avenue that was indeed laid out like that. It was quite popular too and there were times when it was very difficult to fight your way in. Today though, when I looked at an aerial photo of the site, it was yet another housing estate.

Later on, I was running my taxis again from Shavington. There were probably about a dozen people in the house. They were all doing different things, ironing clothes, cleaning shoes, etc., presumably for some big meeting or something. A couple of years earlier, there had been a taxi driver around Crewe whom my mother liked but he’d disappeared. The last we’d heard was that he was in Portugal. So my mother then disappeared and these people were all still trying to sort out their shoes and clothes. I was trying to find my shoes, which had disappeared somewhere amongst the chaos. My mother came back and said that she was off to see this guy. She was going to take him this, take him that and take him something else. I said “don’t take him everything like that. You don’t know anything about this guy”. She replied “that’s where you’re wrong. As a matter of fact, he has some kind of virus and he set up a business out there and it all went wrong. He’s really poverty-stricken”. I replied “so he made a bad business decision, so he’s ill but that happens to a lot of people. I’ve made bad business decisions, and I’ve been ill, but no-one came running halfway across the continent for me”. She was totally adamant that she was going and taking all this stuff so in the end, I just turned round, walked into the other room and carried on looking for my shoes, and everyone else carried on sorting out their clothes. Then someone else came in and was talking about the current situation and asking me how I was. I said that I’d just had a huge, blazing row with my mother. They asked me if I was bothered and I replied “not in the least. I’ve won the field and she’s cleared off so I’m not bothered in the least”.

So I was back on the taxis again after a couple of nights off – a very rare event indeed when I was actually driving.

As for my mother, I often had rows with her. It never bothered me, though, because I was quite used to her unpredictable and sometimes illogical nature. I’d heard it all before and so I was immune to it all.

However, I did find this dream to be extremely embarrassing. Now that I am ill, I have in fact had people who have come halfway across Europe and even further vide Canada to see me. I’m hardly likely to go criticising others.

The nurse turned up again but he didn’t stay long. We talked about his chiropodist and how nice she seemed to be – a vast improvement on whoever I’ve had before.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on with reading about Roman military engineering. Today, we’ve been talking about Hero engines and Heron fountains and both of those are interesting concepts. Had I been down on the farm, I would have built an example of each and had an experiment to see whether I could harness the energy and put it to use.

We were also discussing reverse overshot waterwheels. These are interesting because rather than water falling into buckets on a kind of treadmill to turn the treadmill and power machinery, there were men inside the treadmill turning it by walking, as in a mediaeval crane, and the buckets attached to the treadmill were used to lift the water up and out. That was how they drained mines and quarries in Roman days.

Back in here, I had some football to watch. Cardiff Metropolitan were at home to Hwlffordd in the JD Cymru League, and there were highlights to see. And hats off to the producers who managed to squeeze something out of the game because the fact that it was a 0-0 draw summed up just about everything there was to say about the game. I shan’t waste any more time watching a repeat. Someone ought to present Hwlffordd manager Tony Pennock with a stringed musical instrument and a ruminant animal for his team to use in the opponent’s penalty area next game.

There were computer issues later on. One of the discs in the array decided not to fire up and it was shorting out all of the others. After I’d taken it out, the others worked perfectly. I was trying for hours to fix the disc, but in the end, I had to call it a day. I “repaired” it about three weeks ago and it’s developed the same fault so I figure that it’s a hardware issue.

There should be a ruck of spare hard drives around here somewhere but God alone knows where. I found a 2 TB external drive, but the power pack for it is missing.

The rest of the day was spent on the radio programmes. All of the text is now written, and I started on another one. This one is going to be another Rock Festival and they are hard work to prepare

Tea was falafel and pasta, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. And now I’m off to bed, to celebrate the New Year by sleeping through it. I wish you all the best.

But seeing as we have been talking about that club in Crewe … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was in there, a ‘phone on the bar suddenly began to ring. A man right by it picked it up and answered the call
"Darling" said a female voice. "There’s a beautiful leather coat here in this shop on sale at £1000. I know we can’t afford it but it’s so lovely … "
"Just this once, ike it so much" said the man. "I’m sure that we can manage somehow."
"But you said that we couldn’t afford that £3000 holiday for our wedding anniversary " said the female voice
"If it means that much to you dear, go ahead and book it too. We’ll manage somehow."
The conversation finished at that point, and the guy with the ‘phone looked around at the people standing nearby and asked "Does anyone know whose ‘phone this is?"

Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

… found me in bed, fast asleep, this morning when she arrived to sort out my legs. For once, I’d actually managed to have a decent … "kind-of" – ed … lie-in.

And I needed it too. Yesterday evening was another difficult night when I kept on falling asleep while I was trying to type out my notes. It took an age to finish everything.

There was another difficulty too. When I went to stand up, I couldn’t manage to keep myself upright and it was the most uncomfortable feeling that I have ever had. Even worse, I couldn’t walk either. It seemed that my right leg had now totally ceased to function, and if that were ever to happen, it would be the end of the world.

Eventually though, I managed to make it to the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I crawled into bed. And I can’t say that I’m sorry.

The next thing that I remember was Isabelle the Nurse’s cheery greeting as she breezed into the bedroom at about 08:40. I’d been flat out, fast asleep for a little more than nine hours, and it’s been a very long time indeed since anything like that happened.

She sorted out my legs and feet while I was in bed, half asleep, and then she disappeared again. But not before admiring my Christmas cakes and the icing thereupon. But how disappointed was I that she didn’t bring me a nice, hot mug of coffee?

After she left, it took me a good twenty minutes to decide that I wanted to leave the bed. I could quite easily have stayed in bed all morning, but anyway …

The first thing that I did was to make the croissants because I have run out. And what a mess I made of those. I rolled up the pastry with the points inside rather than on the outside so they went berserk when they began to bake.

While they were baking, I made the rest of my breakfast, and the porridge boiled over in the microwave. It really wasn’t my morning. At least the croissants tasted nice, no matter how they looked.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

He’s now down in Southern England and, as this is a region that has been thoroughly explored and catalogued, there’s really nothing new about any of it. He makes one or two educated guesses about a couple of places, but subsequent research has shown that he was somewhat wide of the mark.

Not that it’s a problem. Modern archaeology has many more tools in its inventory than he had in 1909 and in many cases, he really was groping around in the dark.

After breakfast, there was tidying up to do. I found a couple of empty biscuit tins and, having cleaned them out, put the cakes in them. They are now on the cake shelf with all of the other baking products.

There were the leftover croissants to put in the fridge for another time, and then the kitchen needed another clean because yesterday, I hadn’t done a very good job.

Back in here, it was 11:04 when I finally sat down to begin work. And that’s a luxury and no mistake. I’d enjoyed my really slow start to the day.

First thing was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had been invaded by the Nazis so we were going through our house, destroying any incriminating paperwork, hiding our guns etc., so that we had a purely clean house when they finally arrived. When they did arrive, it was two women. The first thing that they did was to compare the marking of the deer with the deer that we’d had previously. It matched, so it was obviously our deer that we had killed. There was no problem there. Then she began to discuss the famine. I told her that that was two hundred years ago and had nothing to do with me. Eventually, I managed to convince her that it was an epoch in history and nothing particularly recent. She began to ask questions about my private life etc. We told her that we’d prepared a list ready for baking with all the details of our homes and our cookery on it so she told us to bake it, so we did. She had a good look around … fell asleep here …. Anyway, it was going back into that girl’s room for quite some time, and then one day we heard that he had taken her in his car to the beach and that was considered to be excessive and inappropriate, so he was summoned before the bishop.

The opening part of the dream reminds me of a story that I had heard once in North-Eastern France in 1914. When the Germans invaded and the British and French troops were in full retreat to the Marne, an undefended village found itself right in the path of the advancing German Army. Having heard of the atrocities committed upon the civilians in Belgium by the Germans, the mayor of the village ordered that all firearms be surrendered to him. And then, in consultation with the priest and the local undertaker, they put them all in a coffin and then had a formal “burial ceremony” in the cemetery.

The end of the dream refers to the case of the notorious headmaster Neil Foden, who is currently serving seventeen years in prison, but if you want to know more about that, you can look it up yourselves. The rest of the dream means very little.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I am actually asleep when I’m dictating these dreams. But what I mean when I say that I fell asleep is that my voice tapers off into silence, and you can then hear the heavy breathing.

Next on the agenda was the footfest of matches from yesterday. And HERE are the highlights of last night’s game. They don’t actually do anything like justice to the game, which is a shame.

And while we’re at it, THIS GAME is between a Third Division club (Bangor City) and a Second Division club (Trefelin), and I reckon that it would do justice to any fixture played in the Premier League.

When all of the Welsh football was over, we had Stranraer away at Elgin. And this run of Stranraer’s keeps on going. They ran out 2-1 winnsers, making five victories in a row. For a team that, at the end of September, were hopelessly anchored, well adrift, at the foot of the table, they are now up to fourth.

The bubble will have to burst sometime, but we are all enjoying it while it lasts.

A few months ago, my friend from Munich gave me an old 2012 2TB hard drive that had become corrupted. One task that I’ve been meaning to do is to have a look and see if I can fix it. Anyway, I stuck it into a spare bay in the array and had a play about.

In the end, after a little bit of messing around in the BIOS, I managed to make it fire up and then I could format it. It seems to be working fine now.

Interestingly, it seems to have corrupted itself into two partitions, one of 500GB and another one of 1.31TB. I’ve only ever seen one hard drive do that before, and even as we speak, that one is sitting on my desk, where it has been for a couple of years.

While I had the array switched on, I began to do a little housekeeping. I found an empty 4TB drive and fitted that in, so now, every bay is full. Then I began to shuffle things around somewhat to make my backing-up much more efficient

At 16:30 I knocked off in order to go bread-making and pizza-making. They both turned out to be excellent, mainly due to me having added a little more liquid than usual and letting them bake for a few minutes longer.

So now, having finished my notes, I’ll check the stats, do the backing-up and then go to bed. There won’t be a lie-in tomorrow morning, which is a shame, but we have dialysis instead. But as a footnote, I’ve not felt at all tired today and have kept on going remarkably well, considering. It seems that a really good sleep is what I’ve been missing.

But seeing as we have been talking about baking and tidying up etc … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked someone what was the secret of a happy life.
He replied "finding a woman who can bake, who can keep a tidy house, knit and sew, look after the kids and run the finances"
"And did you?" I asked
"Ohh yes" he replied. "But it was a nightmare."
"Why was that?" I asked
"Arranging things so that those five women never met each other."

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday 16th November 2025 – WHEN ISABELLE THE NURSE …

… came round this evening, she made some remark about the delicious smell in the kitchen.

It wasn’t me, of course. I was in the office. However, I did reply, saying "I’m not surprised. There’s a cake baking in the oven."

That’s right, people, I’ve been a busy boy yet again this afternoon.

Not that I felt much like it, however. I’ve been feeling better today than I was yesterday and on Thursday, but not by much. However, if I don’t do things around here, no-one else will.

With it being a Sunday, I was anticipating having a decent lie-in. After all, Sunday is a Day of Rest and the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59. And if it wasn’t for the nurse coming round, it wouldn’t be going off them.

So last night, I made a determined effort to be in bed rather early, and once again, I failed miserably. By the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing, it was just after 23:15 when I finally slid in between the sheets ready for my long lie-in.

But so much for that. Despite going to sleep quite quickly, it was all of … errr … 06:15 when I finally awoke. That’s an early start for a weekday, never mind a Sunday.

Anyway, I hauled myself out of bed and into the bathroom for a good scrub up. Next, I went into the kitchen to make my hot honey, ginger and lemon drink, and used it to wash down the medication.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been out with someone, a guy. We’d been roaming around everywhere. He suggested that we went round to the house of his family to stay the night seeing as we were in the area. We made our way to his house and walked inside. I went in, “I’m so-and-so’s friend. My name is Eric” but I stopped in mid-speech because there were probably about thirty people in this living room, young people of all different age groups. It seemed that they were spread out over sofas and chairs and everything as if they were somehow camping there to spend the night. We had a brief chat with them, and people squeezed up to let us perch on sofas and arms of settees. Somehow, we all managed to drop off to sleep. Next morning, it was fairly late when I awoke and there were a few other people still asleep, a few people awake and talking. I remember someone saying, while pointing to a young girl at the far end of the room, that she spent much of the middle of the night talking about her family in Australia. I replied “I don’t remember anything about that because I crashed out straight away until right this minute”. They all replied “yes, we noticed”. Later on, we were out and the guy with whom I’d been wandering around the previous day was showing his photos to me, all these beautiful buildings. I didn’t remember passing those buildings with him, and I wish that I had taken some of those photos because the buildings were really beautiful. We ended up in some kind of big shop and I bought a baguette, a long baguette but it was very soft. Then, I looked around and one or two other people from this had bought baguettes too and were walking around with them. But I’d been nibbling mine in between because I was really hungry by this time. The dream then moved on and I was in a hospital. I took advantage of an empty bed by sitting in it, starting to write my blog for the previous night because I remembered that I hadn’t written it yet. I began to write it out by hand but then thought “should I fetch the computer?” but I looked around, and no-one else in this ward had any computer or anything like that so I went back to start to write it out by hand. However, I wasn’t comfortable and couldn’t read my own writing in the end. I noticed that one by one, these people were being called for interviews. I thought that these beds must be here for a doctor’s queue or something, and people could lie down on the bed while they were waiting. I wondered what would happen to me once everyone in this hospital realised that I’d been there for a long time trying to write out my blog and didn’t have a single medical appointment at all.

Later on, I remembered that one of the reasons why we’d gone out next morning was for me to go to the van to fetch my rucksack with the computer etc in it.

This was an interesting dream, right enough. Regular readers of a previous version of this rubbish will recall that I once stayed in a house like this with so many other people staying there that we had to chisel out a little corner of floor space for ourselves.

The hospital, I imagine, relates to how we are arranged at dialysis. But the photos and the baguette don’t seem to relate to anything much, although in the past, I’ve been on trips with people and their photos have been so radically different from mine that I was certain that they had taken them in different places to those that we visited together.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and took my blood pressure while I was seated in the office. It saves her having to wait five minutes after I’ve moved about, because if I move, the blood pressure needs time to stabilise.

She also sorted out my legs and left to carry on with her rounds. I could go to make breakfast – porridge with two of the croissants left over from last weekend. And the croissants were delicious. I shall definitely make more of those.

After breakfast, I had a footfest to watch. I’d seen all of the matches in Wales, but there was Stranraer v East Kilbride. East Kilbride, having been promoted from non-league for this season, are making Scottish League Two look easy.

And despite Stranraer’s improved form of late, East Kilbride hardly broke into a sweat but still managed a comfortable 3-1 victory.

Greenock Morton are also having a poor season. They were playing Ross County last night and the game was televised. Once more, Morton made it look easy and ran out comfortable 3–0 winners. So why can’t they play like that every game?

After a disgusting drink break, there were things to do.

The array of back-up disks isn’t working very well at the moment. It’s switching on, but cutting out before it begins to run. It’s difficult to know which USB cable powers it because there are (at the last count) fifteen plugged into this computer.

Consequently, I unplugged all of them and, by plugging in one at a time and checking the File Manager, I managed to work out which was which.

And so I unplugged them all again and this time, I labelled them before I put them back. And having plugged the array into a USB 3.0 connection instead of a USB 1.0 as previously, everything worked fine.

For half an hour or so, I played with the radio programme, dictating the notes that I wrote to the other day ready for editing.

Later on, I went into the kitchen. I had bread, pizza and cake to make. I’m going to keep up with this idea of a high calorie, high carbohydrate cake to fill me up when I’m leaving other food on the plate.

Today’s cake was ginger, almond and coconut.

The bread and the pizza were excellent, and the cake is magnificent. When Isabelle the Nurse came back for the evening’s blood pressure, she said that she thought that it smelt excellent. When I took it out of the oven, she said that it looked excellent too.

While I was eating my pizza, I was chatting to my niece’s eldest daughter. She was at home, sitting on her sofa with her dog just chilling out before she goes to make supper – roast chicken with mixed vegetables. I haven’t seen her for ages, and it must be her turn to come to see me soon.

But I’ll worry about that another time because I’m off to bed for a good sleep … "he hopes" – ed …

But seeing as we have been talking about cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe went to the doctors.
"Doctor" she began "It was my birthday yesterday and my friends made me a cake. But ever since I ate a slice, I’ve lost the vision i my left eye."
"I’m not surprised" said the doctor. " I can see what’s wrong from here. When you go to eat another slice, blow out the candles first and remove them from the cake."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: computer issues

Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

Sunday 22nd March 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

Saturday 21st March 2026 — I HAD NOTHING ON …

Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

Wednesday 14th January 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Sunday 11th January 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

Friday 9th January 2026 – I WAS RIGHT …

Wednesday 7th January 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

Saturday 3rd January 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

Thursday 1st January 2026 – AND A HAPPY …

Wednesday 31st December 2025 – HAPPY NEW YEAR …

Sunday 14th December 2025 – ISABELLE THE NURSE …

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

Sunday 16th November 2025 – WHEN ISABELLE THE NURSE …

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