♫… this morning♫
At 06:05 and thought “here we go again. Just when I was hoping to have a really good sleep for once …”
But I did in fact go back to sleep again. And I’m glad that I did because I had a visitor – a most welcome visitor too who came to see me in my sleep.
But more of that anon.
After I finished my notes last night I dictated the notes for the two programmes that I’d prepared during last week and, having reviewed them yesterday, it was much easier, and much quicker to dictate them. And hopefully, much quicker to edit them too.
Everything was finished by about 23:15 which meant that, although it was after my target time of 23:00, there’s a lie-in tomorrow until 08:00. And how I need it too.
Nice clean shorts in which to go to bed too. Life’s becoming a luxury here these days.
As I said just now, I awoke at 06:05 and after a few minutes I was convinced that I could raise myself from the dead but I’m glad that I didn’t. Instead, I had sweet dreams until I awoke again at just a couple of minutes before 08:00.
When the alarm went off I sprung out of bed and headed to the bathroom for a quick wash before the nurse arrived.
The spare dressing gown fell off its hanger on the back of the door. There it was on the floor and I didn’t have time to pick it up. I suddenly began to think “when will I have thirty seconds to pick it up and hang it back?”
Yes, there is so much to do that life is becoming a race – a race against time. LIFE IS JUST A BET ON A RACE BETWEEN THE LIGHTS and that’s all that I can say.
The nurse came late today. She made a few encouraging noises and left off a few of the plasters to see how my leg improves. She’s certainly more optimistic than I am.
After she left I made breakfast and READ MY BOOK. Today we’ve made it to Stonehenge, as it sits in its natural state.
But before we leave the villa at Bignor, it’s worth mentioning that Thomas Wright had heard that "the farmer to whom the land belongs is desirous of selling that portion of it which contains the remains of the Roman villa ," and so "If the government will not interfere in a case like this-which it would do in any other country—it is to be hoped that there is public spirit enough to secure the preservation of these interesting remains on the site where they stand , in such a manner that they may be seen to the most advantage by every one that will visit them"
And so we see the seeds being sown of the idea of the National Trust, or English Heritage. But it took until 1882 and the Ancient Monuments Protection Act before the Government took any action, and even then the Roman Villa at Bignor was not on the list.
Back in here I carried on with the dictaphone notes. I’d made a start earlier before the nurse arrived but hadn’t finished. I was doing a character analysis of Lewis Carroll at one point last night. We met him once and had to ask him whatever questions we liked. Then we had to go away and write down our assessment of his qualities. For some reason or other I was busy writing stuff about his liking of folk music
Lewis Carroll – can you imagine how hard it would be to do that? Everyone is a product of his time and should be judged in respect of the prevailing conditions at that moment. How difficult is it for us to be able to put ourselves into the mindset of another period and judge someone in accordance with those characteristics? I personally am fed up of people making judgements on historical characters, or even contemporary people living in another culture, based on our own standards of today.
There was also something about being on the trail of the Romans in Derbyshire, finding soapstone blocks that had been really well-shaped and practically professional and listening to a talk on them. At the same time people were interested in reading about French place-names and how they’ve derived from the one that was given by the Romans when they came to settle in the area.
And that reminds me – It’s never “Roman” in France. The French don’t accept that the Romans brought civilisation and urbanism to France. It’s considered that France was already civilised and urbanised before the arrival of Romans and so the remains should be called “Gallo-Roman”. I’ve seen a historical meeting in France almost break out in a brawl when someone used the word “Roman” instead of “Gallo-Roman” to describe some remains.
Having awoken once, then back to sleep and who should come to see me but Zero! There had been a festival taking place, a music festival. It had been pouring down with rain and all the crowd was dancing under a huge piece of plastic. When it was time to go everyone ran with the plastic to put it away but I was caught in the middle and overwhelmed by all of it. In the end I managed to make my way to where my friends were waiting for a ride back to the campsite. We were sitting there chatting away. One of them was Zero’s father. I ended up round at his house. His brother-in-law was living with him – a right waster, fond of alcohol and buying all these derelict cars and somehow selling them on at a profit. It was really annoying Zero’s father. We were having a really good chat when his son came up and asked “could you do me a favour on Sunday?”. I asked “what is it?” and he replied “could you run me to Gatwick?”. I replied, laughing (and when I listened to the dictaphone I found that I had been laughing too), “I could run you to Gatwick but i certainly wouldn’t be for a favour”. He answered “OK, but I’ll buy you a pint”. I thought “it’s going to take a lot of pints for me to drive him to Gatwick”. We actually agreed on an arrangement. When I went to pick him up he had Zero with him. We arrived in London and I dropped him off. She asked if I could run her somewhere else. I replied “yes” and we ended up at some traffic lights in the south of London. She alighted and someone, I don’t know who, said “that’s the last you’ll see of her”. I set off to go north from there. There was some trouble with the van’s clutch. If I tried to pull away in second instead of first the clutch would go dead and the van wouldn’t move. If I then put it in first it wouldn’t move back and I had to perform some really complicated arrangement to make the clutch grip. That was causing all kinds of problems in these traffic queues with cars cutting in. I thought to myself “I’ll be glad to join the motorway and go back to when I don’t need to use the gearbox. But I was perplexed about the appearance of Zero. I thought “what is it that she’s doing down here in London? Why didn’t she want a ride back etc?
And then I stepped back into that dream later. Zero’s father went out and then her brother made arrangements to go out with his friend. That left the two of us alone together. We had a cup of coffee and a chat and she took her brother a cup of tea. Then we went into the living room and began to tip out the drawers of one of the units where she kept her things. What she wanted was some lined wallpaper that she would line her drawers and put her tools in, all in one long line in this drawer. But we hunted high and low in that house for some lined wallpaper – wallpaper with lines on it. I knew that there was some somewhere but we couldn’t find it. This was beginning to become complicated and we had all her things tipped out all over the living room floor.
How nice is that? Not only did Zero come to see me, I stepped back into a dream and she returned. I couldn’t wish for anything better and I wish that she’d come back to see me more often. As Counting Crows sang, MAN, I SURE DO LOVE THEM RED-HAIRED GIRLS.
Having done that, I attacked the two radio programmes that I dictated last night and by the time I stopped for tea, they were complete, 11th track added for each programme, notes for that extra track written, dictated, edited in and now I have two more programmes fully prepared that take me up to 20th June next year
There were plenty of interruptions during the course of the day.
Firstly, I had soup to make. Due to a confusion between my cleaner and myself I ended up with two lots of mushrooms. That can only mean one thing – mushroom soup. And seeing as I had some soya yoghurt, then that could only mean cream of mushroom soup.
Rosemary rang me too for a chat. Just a short one today – 1hr 11 mins. So my Welsh homework is now pushed back to tomorrow too but it can’t be helped. Talking to friends is much more important.
Tonight’s pizza was excellent again. I had two tomatoes that were looking the worse for wear so that called for a home-made tomato sauce as I made the other week. This time I made a couple of changes to what I did last time and the sauce was actually beautiful. It certainly made a good pizza
So now I’m off to bed, in the hope that Zero will come to see me again.
But all his talk about vans, France and so on reminds me of the time I went in the van to p-p-p-pick up a Penguin, a Percy Penguin in fact, from work one evening
A new French restaurant had opened in Holmes Chapel and I wanted to try it out so I asked Percy Penguin "do you fancy some Coq au Vin?"
"Yes please" she said, and climbed over the seat into the back
we all went our separate ways.
, which will forever be associated in my brain with late, dark, cold nights on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in the High Arctic, and that is exactly what I’m trying to put out of my mind.
