Tag Archives: crash out

Thursday 18th December 2025 – FOR THE THIRD …

… time in three days, I’ve woken up at some ungodly hour in the morning. Once more, I didn’t look to see what time it was but the good thing about this one this time was that after an hour or so, I managed to go back to sleep.

In fact, yesterday evening was a carbon copy of the previous evening. Despite a good start to writing the notes, I dillied and dallied trying to find the motivation to work, and by the time that I’d finished everything, I was exhausted and crashed out once more on my chair here in the office.

Consequently, by the time that I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom and come back in here, it was after 23:30 and I slid gratefully into bed, ready for a good sleep. So much for wishful thinking.

As I mentioned earlier, I’d woken at some point but eventually managed to go back to sleep until the alarm went off.

And here, I was a miserable failure. When the first alarm sounded, I awoke quite quickly, but I must have immediately gone back to sleep because when the second one rang, I was still under the covers in bed.

Eventually, I managed to drag myself into the bathroom for a good wash and brush-up, and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis later. And then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were at work, preparing for the Christmas holidays so everything was rather relaxed and we were light-heartedly fooling around a little. Someone had found some kind of airgun that would plant some kind of object onto clothes, etc. They were using it to shoot at things, people, etc. It was one of my sisters, in fact. She and her friend went upstairs to another office. I’d been taking no real attention to this while it had been going on but later on, I happened to look at one of the feet of STRAWBERRY MOOSE and found that he had one of these embedded in his feet. I said that I’d have a word with her about it. I went to find the ‘phone sheet with people’s names on it but there was so much rubbish, with papers and newspapers all over my desk and the more that I looked, the worse it was becoming, as I couldn’t find this piece of paper anywhere. One of the women told me – she said “you’d better watch out because the deputy headmaster is in there with them now”. I carried on searching anyway and I was coming across tonnes of papers that I never knew that I had that I could do with taking home and sorting. Then someone knocked on my window and made a gesture as if they were going. I thought “well, it’s still a couple of days yet to the holidays, so they can’t be going yet, surely?”. However, a minute or two later when I looked, she was quite a way off down the road, so maybe she had had permission to finish so much earlier; I don’t know.

So I’m back at work then. I thought that I’d retired a week or two ago. But it seems that I’m becoming confused, what with the office and the deputy headmaster. Still, it’s quite easy for me to become confused at the best of times. It’s also nice to see His Nibs making an appearance, even if he has just been shot in the hoof.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my feet. He didn’t stay long so I could concentrate on making breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Our author is still struggling with his siting of several Roman camps on Iter XII of the Itinerarium Provinciarum Antoni Augusti. He states quite categorically that "no traces of Roman stations are known at Loughor, Neath, or near Cowbridge". Although he notes that the distance given from Burrium (modern-day Usk) to Gobannium corresponds with the distance to Abergavenny, "The indications of a Roman road on to Abergavenny are only a few short lengths of boundary along the present road, and no Roman remains are known at Abergavenny. "

Modern research has revealed some quite substantial Roman remains at “Loughor, Neath, or near Cowbridge” that leave no doubt that these were major Roman camps, and construction work in modern times has revealed substantial remains of a large Roman settlement underneath what is today the town centre of Abergavenny.

After breakfast, I came back in here to start work. There were some things to do, and then I carried on with the next radio programme. I don’t know where this fit of energy has come from, but I managed to choose the rest of the tracks, edit, pair and segue everything, and then write the notes for most of it.

It’s a shame that there aren’t many more days like this. I could certainly do with them.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and just after she left, the taxi turned up, twenty-five minutes early. It was a struggle to reach the car, what with the howling gale raging all around outside and I needed help to walk to the road And being early away didn’t help much because we had two other people to pick up.

We were the same time as usual arriving at dialysis and I was seen quite quickly. Once I was plugged in, I was left pretty much alone, which suits me fine. I checked on the news and then revised my Welsh, even though we don’t have a lesson for three weeks.

One of my favourite drivers, the chatty one from the other day, brought me home, but via a circuitous route to pick up and drop off someone else along the way.

The howling gale had increased in intensity while I’d been away so I was dropped off at the back door. The car can pull up right to the door there, so there’s much less distance to walk in the wind and I feel much more secure if I’m dropped there.

My cleaner helped me in and sorted me out, and then after she had left, I made tea. It was a mushroom risotto made with all fresh ingredients, and I should really have enjoyed it but about half of it ended up in the waste bin. I really was in no mood, and I don’t know why.

The fruitcake and soya dessert were delicious though.

So having fallen asleep three times already while typing out my notes, I’m off to bed to see what happens tonight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Roman remains in Abergavenny … "well, one of us has" – ed … I read an article that claims that Abergavenny museum "has a stunning array of Roman urns"
When I mentioned it to someone today, they asked me "what’s a Roman urn?"
Without thinking, I replied "about ten denarii a week."

Wednesday 17th December 2025 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

… we had another horrible night, when I was awake at some ridiculous hour.

Don’t ask me what time it was, because I didn’t dare look. I didn’t want to demoralise myself even more than I already am, but judging by how long I remained awake afterwards, it can’t have been any later than yesterday.

It’s difficult to understand why I’ve woken up so early just now. I’ve been really exhausted at the end of the last couple of previous evenings – last night, I crashed out for forty-five minutes as soon as I’d finished writing my notes – and so by rights, I ought to be flat-out until the alarm goes off, as on Sunday morning.

And so, what with my unexpected forty-five minutes away with the fairies, yesterday was another late night, much later than it should have been.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long and I was soon awake. And there I lay, just as on the previous morning, tossing and turning, trying to make myself comfortable so that I could go back to sleep again.

It must have worked to some degree because the alarm going off at 06:29 awoke me. I’ve no idea when I fell asleep, but it can’t have been very long beforehand.

As usual, it took a good few minutes to raise myself from the Dead, and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good scrub up.

After the medication and the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was at a football match somewhere in Scotland. When I saw the reports of the game afterwards, I saw that the number of points that each team had gained at that game was 224. I thought that it was a really unusual number so I wondered how they had managed it. I remembered bits about the game but not very much, but most of the action was on the terraces between the spectators, where there were some confrontations. I remember two opposing supporters being frogmarched up to the back of the stand by a group of the other supporters and pinned against the wall there. The thing that really caught my eye about this was, just outside the ground were some tenement flats, and a group of football supporters made a couple of kinds of these human pyramids up against the wall, as high as the fifth floor of these tenements. When someone had climbed up to the top, they could knock on the window and some other young kid living in that tenement could wrestle a window open because it was really tough and climb out, climb back down the human pyramid and go off with his friends. And it wasn’t just once that it happened – it was twice.

Football is another one of those subjects that seems to be recurring quite often in my dreams. The rest of it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but the story of the human pyramid reminded me of a real event in Crewe forty or more years ago when a new “singles disco” opened in the town. There were fifteen guys and just one girl who attended, so we all had visions of the men forming a human pyramid to dance with the girl.

I had a visit from Zero last night. There was a lot of tidying up that needed doing in the basement so I was down there moving all the books around. One box of books fell from the top shelf so I picked it up and threw it back. However, it didn’t land quite correctly – it fell down again. When I picked it up and went to throw it for the second time, I didn’t have the strength. My brother came down with another box of books. I told him to leave it here and I’d throw it onto the top. We began to talk about the work that I was doing down there, which was tidying up the clothes and tidying up the face image gallery. He wondered whether I ought to be doing something else, but I told him that this was what I had been told to do and this was what I was doing. So I was busy trying to sort out these boxes and everything else, and then I decided to spend ten minutes on the clothes. I began to sort them out and move them around and came across some of Roxanne’s dresses. I put them on hangers and hung them up in the cupboard. Just then, Zero came down in this beautiful, gorgeous peacock-blue dress, a kind of formal attire. While I was sorting out these other dresses, I handed a hanger to her to put her dress on. She told me that she wanted to keep on wearing it. I told her that it might be damaged if she’s playing about in it and it will be ruined. She’d be far better off hanging it up. She replied that she’d go to check with her mother. She left and then came back five minutes later while I was still sorting out these dresses and these faces and throwing these boxes of books onto the top and not being able to. She said that her mum had said that she can continue to wear it throughout the evening. In that case, I gave her a peck on the cheek and we carried on talking for a while.

So welcome back, Zero! It’s nice to see you again. I can still see the dress that she was wearing, and it really was lovely. Far too nice to wear as a casual dress. But we actually did find a few of Roxanne’s dresses – her confirmation dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and an evening dress with a jacket – here when we unpacked an old suitcase that had been lying around for ages since the Duysbergh days. There were a couple of her dolls too.

And as usual, someone from my family comes along to spike my guns just when things are becoming interesting.

The nurse turned up as usual this morning. I asked him if he knew of any chiropodists because I have a prescription for one to come here to sort out my feet. He said that there’s one with whom he co-operates, and he’ll put her in touch with me.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’re at the Wansdyke in South-West England and he’s going against the prevailing trend at that period, suggesting that the dyke was built after the road, rather than before it, as most people back then thought.

As it happens, he’s probably right, because when part of the dyke was excavated in modern times, they found a couple of late-Roman coins on top of the level of the underlying ground underneath the dyke, indicating that the dyke was built on top of the coins.

He’s still struggling with his forts on one of the Itineraries – trying to locate them somewhere along the southern shore of the Severn whereas today, they have been pretty well identified with places in South Wales.

After breakfast, I came in here where I had things to do, and then I set about writing the notes for the radio programme for which I’d chosen the music the other day.

There were numerous interruptions, such as the disgusting drink break and a telephone call from the chiropodist. She’ll be coming round on 30th December at 10:00, which is good news.

When the notes were finished, I had a letter to write and an order to send off to an online retailer for some more supplies, including the handrails for the shower. I’m hoping to have those fitted in early January so that I can be much more autonomous in the shower. In fact, there are a few things around here that need doing, so I’ll need to contact the guy who installed the kitchen.

With the time that was left, I began to choose the music for another radio programme. I want to try to do two programmes a week now that I’m settled back in here and there’s no chemotherapy or Centre de Ré-education to worry me.

In the end, I only finished about half of that because, as you might expect, I fell asleep for forty minutes on my chair.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in a spicy tomato sauce. It should have been with ratatouille, but to my surprise, I found that I’d forgotten to order any tins just now. The fruitcake and soya dessert were nice too.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …. but before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my visit from Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember saying to her how much I missed her.
"I love you terribly" I said
"I know" she replied "but I’m sure that you’re doing your best."

Tuesday 16th December 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was!

The last thing that you expect when you go to bed at 23:30 is to be wide awake again at 02:45, with no possibility whatsoever of going back to sleep.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been tired on Monday evening. I was in fact in something of a state when I was typing out my notes and I fell asleep three or four times—on one occasion almost falling off my chair. I was desperate to go to bed.

When I finally did make it into bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but not for long. What was even worse was that it wasn’t a drowsy me lying there in bed but a wide-awake, fully alert me … "within certain limits, of course" – ed … I was even contemplating leaving the bed, but much as I like having these early starts, 02:45 is something of an exaggeration.

So I lay there, watching the clock go round – 03:30, 04:00, 04:30, 05:00 – resolving that at 05:30 I would leave the bed and start to do some work. However, the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29, so at some point between 05:00 and 05:30 I must have fallen asleep again.

You’ve no idea just how difficult it was to haul myself out of bed at that point. I would have given all that I own, and more besides, to have been able to crawl back in under the covers. But that’s not getting the baby bathed, so in the end I summoned up the strength …

… Or, at least I thought I had, but I couldn’t pull myself up off the bed into an upright position this morning. I mentioned the other day that I noticed yet another problem with my leg, and here we are again this morning. This is going to turn out to be something serious.

Eventually, I made it into the bathroom and had a good scrub and then into the kitchen for my medication and hot ginger, honey and lemon drink. But while I was taking the meds, I was thinking, which I know is dangerous. I’m going to keep a note of when I have these really bad nights and compare them with my dialysis sessions to see whether there is any connection.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, not that there had been much time to go anywhere. We were in the USA last night at the house of some people. There was an American football game on, so we were watching it half-heartedly, although there was one of the classic comedy films on the other channel. I would have much rather watched that, but “when in Rome” and all that. The conversation began to become rather political and began to become somewhat extreme. After a couple of people had left, I said to one of the girls who was staying behind “I hope that those people aren’t going to get into trouble for what they have been saying. I don’t really want that to happen”. She said something like “things aren’t as bad as the media make out”. Then I was looking at some stuff from the university. It turned out that there had been a scandal about the production of some of the documents, so I actually tracked my way down into the university’s intranet system using my old identity and password to find out what was happening. The first thing that I’d noticed was that the system had changed dramatically. It was no longer the free-for-all that it used to be, but it was very closely structured, and there was very little on there that was not to do with studying. The one particular chat group on there was discussing this situation but very obliquely. No-one seemed to be getting down to the serious issues that had taken place, despite how hard I looked, so I posted one or two messages on there, but no-one seemed to respond. Eventually, I found out that it seemed to have been, in the view of one or two people, more of an administrative issue than a question of personal incompetence or something. But then we were deciding that those of us who were remaining were going to paint some furniture. I had a paintbrush in my hand to paint some kind of primer on the wood. When it had all been primed, I went to wash the paintbrush to put on the top coat, but the two sinks in the kitchen were full of dirty water and full of dirty crockery. In the end, I rinsed out the brush in the dirty water. One of the other girls came in. She looked at what I was doing and said “don’t go busting a gut, Eric, will you?”.

Leaving aside my current health situation, there are other reasons too why I won’t be going to the USA any time soon, so this dream is unlikely to repeat itself in real life. However, it’s usually quite true that the media quite often exaggerate and blow up out of all proportion many of the events that take place in the World, but nevertheless, there’s an undercurrent of suppression, oppression and unpleasantness currently unfolding in the Western World and I’m glad that I shan’t be around to see it unfold. I feel sorry for those people younger than me who will have to live through it when it reaches its climax.

As for the dirty sink, that’s just how my style of living used to be before I cleaned up my act – and cleaned up my kitchen.

Another thing that I’d discovered was that in my rush to go to bed last night, I’d forgotten to note the statistics.

The nurse turned up as usual, a big smile on his face. He certainly seems to be a lot happier since he went on his holidays back in the summer. He sorted out my legs, and then I could push on, make breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’re poring over Devon at the moment, and he’s making a couple of assumptions about certain Roman forts that he believes to be there, namely Leucarum. and Moridunum, but modern thought is that these places are in South-West Wales, at Llwchwr and Caerfyrddin respectively.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson, once I’d remembered to plug in my webcam. We had an informal Christmas party today as we were doing some work, and the atmosphere was quite relaxed. In fact, it was another lesson in which I did very well and it goes to show the benefit of taking some time to revise. Now, if only what I had learned would succeed in staying in my head…

After the lesson, my cleaner put her sooty foot in the door and organised the shower for me. So while she was cleaning the apartment, I was stuck underneath the shower having a good hose down. But it’s certainly true that I’m not as well as I have been. I had one or two uncomfortable moments under there this afternoon.

After she left, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme. And now, that’s all chosen, remixed, edited, paired and segued. That took until about 17:30 or thereabouts, and at that point I couldn’t keep on going any longer. I decided to close my eyes and relax for five minutes.

The next thing that I recalled, it was 19:20. My new office chair is certainly comfortable, and I’m glad about that.

While I was asleep, I was on a coach trip. I’d ushered everyone on board and was looking for a friend of mine, but couldn’t see her. Instead, I found an empty seat so I asked if it would be OK if I were to sit there. It was a young blonde-haired girl and she said “yes”, so I sat down and we drove off. leter on, we came to some kind of halt where a couple of people alighted from the coach. I went round to look at a cylinder head that I was bringing with me, went in to fetch a can of oil, and then squirted some more oil onto the valve gear I then put the oil back. i was going to fetch a cup of coffee so I asked the girl, who was sitting in her seat, if she’d like a coffee. Se siad “yes”, and after much debate, she decided that she would like it with sugar but no milk, and in a large cup. I went and found the coffee, but the coffee was cold so I asked one of the guys behind the till whether there was any objection if I were to make a coffee because I’d missed the coffee from earlier. He asked me whether I could do it from an urn with a spout or would I like him to do it? I said that he could do it. In the meantime, I’d organised two large fibre cups and . One of them already had somehow some coffee in it, but it was cold. I explained that the coffee was cold because I was doing other things, so he went off to make some

Whatever this is all about, I really don’t know. It doesn’t seem to relate to anything at all.

Tea tonight was mashed potato, veg and one of these strange, spicy burgers that I bought a while ago, followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. It seems that I have no trouble eating mashed potato so I had a 5 kg sack delivered the other day. As long as I can eat that with plenty of vegan butter, I’ll be doing OK, I reckon.

But now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover after that wicked night last night. But we shall see how it works out. Things never seem to go to plan when I’m talking about sleeping.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about Welsh and that untidy kitchen … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a friend of mine from Chester who married a Welsh girl.
He told her "the secret of a happy marriage and a happy home life is to have a happy husband. And what makes me happy is coming home to a kiss and a cuddle, my slippers waiting by the fireside, a hot mug of coffee and a nice tidy house instead of this mess in which we seem to be living right now."
For the first two days, he didn’t see any improvement. However, on the third day, things were a little different. The swelling began to go down and he could open his right eye a little.

Friday 12th December 2025 – WELL, THAT WAS …

… a waste of my afternoon. As if I don’t already have enough to do without being sent on fools’ errands halfway across Normandy.

At least, there was an upside to it all, so I can take some consolation from that. My favourite taxi driver, the chatty girl with a houseful of cats, was assigned to take me so I had the undisputed and undivided pleasure of her company. But even so …

It was bad enough last night, and that didn’t contribute much to my goodwill. I was en route to finish my notes quite early (for once) when I fell asleep … "yet again" – ed … on my chair in here. As a result, it was much closer to 23:30 than it should have been when I finally crawled into bed.

Mind you, I was asleep quite quickly and there I lay, without moving (as far as I know) until … errr … 06:03 this morning when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. I lay around in bed vegetating for a while and then with a desperate effort, hauled myself out of bed.

When the alarm went off, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor so that counts as an early start. Nevertheless, it wasn’t such an early start by the time that I finally made it into the bathroom

In the kitchen afterwards, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my former friend from Stoke-on-Trent, a former girlfriend of mine and one of his friends. We’d been out somewhere wandering around and had come across a motorcycle shop. There were lots of motorcycles in there of all ages and all sizes. We were looking around them, and there was a 350cc two-stroke twin there of some description and several smaller bikes. I was beginning to think that maybe I could buy myself a motorbike, but the more I sat and the more I thought about it, it turned out to be lightweight motorcycles that were the ones. I didn’t think that I had the strength these days to have a big one. I was thinking that I started off with a 50cc motorbike and this is probably how I’m going to finish. It was all very depressing. When we came out, we climbed into my van and set off down the motorway. I wasn’t driving for some reason. We were driving along when someone overtook us on the inside. It was at that point that the driver pulled onto the hard shoulder and reversed. It turned out that there was a large van on the side of the road by an emergency telephone, with a couple of people by it. One of them was wearing a bright yellow fleece. My friend said something like “we saw this bright yellow fleece and wondered who it was”. Of course, it wasn’t me because I was in the van with them. It turned out that the radiator had burst on this van and there was water everywhere all over the road. These people with the van were arguing about it. They had a small child with them, and that small child was looking very sunburnt. Someone said something about it, but the child’s mother obviously thought that it was OK. My friend who had said something about it carried on, but I told him that he had no room to talk because he was quite sunburnt too. In the end, we left them to wait for a breakdown truck and climbed into the van. We began to talk about motorbikes, and he said that I should be moving that 350 from his garage sometime. I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but then it suddenly hit me that it was my Honda 125, the Benly. I replied “yes, I’ll have to think about it”. We carried on driving until we came near his house. I was thinking that I had hardly spoken to my girlfriend, and I would like the opportunity to chat to her and hang out with her, and when we drop off my friend and his friend, I could have a chat to this girl and try to arrange some kind of appointment to have some kind of time with her. Instead, they pulled up at the kerb not too far away from my friend’s house, and said “well, we’ll leave you here, Eric, and see you again some time”. They made it quite clear that I had to climb out of the van. I climbed out of the van and they drove away, and that was even more depressing and disappointing. I set off to walk home, but for some reason, there was a woman hitchhiking at the side of the road and a Royal Mail van pulled up and offered her a lift. But I was still there being terribly depressed and disappointed about everything that had gone on. Nothing had gone right, nothing had gone the way that I had wanted it to go and I was just really depressed about it all.

Phew! That was some marathon last night! But it’s usually the case that in certain circumstances I was often sidetracked out of the way by more than just one person. So much so at one time that it became something of a habit.

Anyway, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I do have a couple of bright yellow fleeces that I keep for special occasions. I haven’t worn them for quite a while, but they are here. And my first motorbike was indeed a 50cc motorbike, a Suzuki M12. However, it was something of a disaster because it kept on stretching the gearbox return spring. I was always replacing it until in the end I lost interest. I should have saved my money and bought something more interesting, like an old C11 or C12 BSA 250. It would have been just as powerful as the Suzuki and probably a lot more reliable.

There is also the Honda Benly, but I mentioned that the other day. The rest of the dream is unclear, but the disappointment and the depression certainly weren’t, probably even more so in that Zero never put in an appearance last night.

Isabelle the Nurse put in her usual appearance. We discussed my ‘flu vaccination. I told her that the doctors had agreed that I could have it, so she’s programmed it in for tomorrow morning. Still no news on the Covid injection though.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’ve finally arrived in Devon but the search for Roman remains has proved to be “inconclusive”. He’s made several assumptions about different likely sites for Roman camps and seaports, but not one has been borne out by modern research. We’re now heading back up another Roman road towards Birmingham but the chances of finding a site on an aerial map are “remote”, due to the massive urban sprawl in the West Midlands.

Back here, I had my shopping order to send off. Not having ordered anything for five weeks, it’s the most expensive order that I have ever made, but I’ll now be stocked up until the New Year, which is good news. I reckon that I’ll have everything that I’ll need in the way of food and I can keep out of mischief.

There was then another footfest. I’d forgotten that Stranraer had been playing in the League Cup on Tuesday night and I stumbled by accident this morning across a recording of the match.

Whatever Stranraer’s manager has put in the team’s half-time cuppa, I wish that he would send some to me. If we were to turn the clock back a couple of months, Stranraer were languishing at the foot of the table and couldn’t even buy a goal. But in their last three matches, they have scored eleven. From the last five league games, they have earned eleven out of fifteen points and advanced in two cup competitions as well.

So having beaten second-placed Spartans 4-0 in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, on Tuesday they were away in the League Cup to league leaders East Kilbride. And having twice lost easily to East Kilbride earlier in the season, on Tuesday night they swept them aside quite comfortably to win 4-1 away. I wish I knew what was going on there and I hope that they can keep it up.

Once the football was over, I began to write the notes for the next radio programme but, as usual, I was sidetracked. We had the disgusting drink break, of course, and then my faithful cleaner came in to do her stuff, followed shortly afterwards by the taxi driver.

When I was a baby, I was hospitalised for several months because of some kind of infection, and ever since then, I have always been told that I have an allergy to penicillin. At the dialysis centre, they weren’t convinced. They believe that many babies show signs of an allergy to penicillin, but it’s some kind of infantile thing that passes as kids grow older, and so they had arranged an appointment for me at this allergy specialist in Avranches.

His clinic was in some kind of smelly apartment building and access was extremely difficult. I had to cross a main road, climb up a step and then wander around in a labyrinth before I found his clinic, which was on the first floor (it’s a good job that there was a lift).

When he finally saw me, he put three different drops of solutions on my arm and pierced the skin. After a couple of minutes, one of them began to burn like Hades and went bright red.

He immediately wrote out for me a certificate of allergy to penicillin and gave me a note to give to the dialysis centre suggesting two other alternatives. Then we had the repeat journey back to the taxi.

There was another passenger to bring back from the hospital, but she wasn’t ready so I had the pleasure of the company of my driver all to myself.

My cleaner helped me back in here and gave me another disgusting drink, and then, regrettably, I crashed out. And there I stayed until about 19:20. All that walking had worn me out.

While I was asleep, I was away with the fairies. I was at school and one of the girls from a couple of years below me was chatting to me. Suddenly she asked if I’d like to go with her to the swimming baths. It was early morning so I said something about going after breakfast. She was surprised and said “but we could have something to eat at the breaktime” so, seeing as she was really keen to go, I agreed to go right now. I went into my locker for my towel but I could not see my swimming trunks so I picked up the towel and we set off. We found outselves with our arms around each other walking into town past the hordes of pupils whom we knew heading towards school to start the day. I suddenly realised that without my swimming trunks, I couldn’t go swimming, so I was stuck in this difficulty about being with this girl but not being able to do anything about it.

This is one of these typical dreams, full of doubt and indecision. Here I am, with the bird on my plate, and not able to get my fork stuck in it, as Frankie Howerd once famously said. That’s something else that seems to be the story of my life.

Tea tonight was sausage, chips and baked beans, followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. And now, I’m off to bed, ready to enjoy another Saturday off. I have to make the most of it when I can.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about allergies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m relieved to know that I’m not alone in having an allergy.
Later on this evening, I was discussing my allergies with a friend, and she said that I was in very good company
"How do you mean?" I asked
"Well, take Thomas Gray for example" she said. "Didn’t he write a poem saying how he had an allergy to a country churchyard?"

Wednesday 10th December 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… visitors around today.

Or, rather, visitor. One of the other inhabitants rang me up to see if I was in. When I told him that I was, he came down for a sociable chat.

That’s what I like about this building. There’s a solidarity among the inhabitants that you don’t seem to find in many other places these days.

Having said that, I wish that I could have found some solidarity during the night to rock me back to sleep when I awoke unexpectedly.

Last night, I hadn’t rushed very quickly through the things that I needed to do. It was round about 23:30 when I finally went to bed, in some kind of hope that, after the turbulent times the previous night, I might at least manage seven hours sleep before the alarm were to go off.

That was why I was so disappointed when I awoke at … errr … 00:15. I’d hardly had time to go off to sleep. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there, vegetating, for a whole four hours until in the end I was totally fed up.

At that point, about 05:10, I decided that I may as well take advantage of the early start, so I heaved myself out of bed. I wrote the notes for the two tracks that will join the first of the two radio programmes that I had been preparing.

Having written them, I dictated them, edited them and then assembled the programme. By the time that the alarm should have gone off (I’d switched it off when I left the bed), the programme was up and running at exactly the right length after some judicious editing.

After that, I went into the bathroom and sorted myself out and then into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My mother was in some kind of a kitchen somewhere to do with cookery. We kids were waiting outside to hear the results. While I was looking out of the window, I noticed a second-hand car site at the side of the hotel where we were. One of the vehicles that they had on the forecourt was a turquoise and white Ford Corsair estate. It looked beautiful, so I said to my mother that if she wins, I’ve seen the car that we should have, and we can all go away. However, she didn’t seem to be all that interested. Later on, I was out in my van and came to a weird junction where you had to cross over an island to reach the other side to turn left. On this island was a load of tram tracks. As I was approaching this island, some young kid on a pair of roller skates came roaring down the hill. I could see that this kid was going to turn in front of me where the tram tracks were. Once I was sure that that was the way in which he was going, I put my foot on the brakes of the van, but he saw me, panicked and fell over. I leaned out of the van to ask him if he was OK, but he picked himself up – and fell over again. At that moment, an ambulance appeared, picked up the boy and disappeared. I saw the boy’s photo many years later in an ancient news report. But while I was in the hotel with my mother and was moving around, I noticed that I wasn’t using my crutches, so I happened to mention it to her. Later on still, I was out for a walk around the park. When we reached the far end, there was a wire across the entrance and you had to climb over or climb under it. I reached the entrance and threw my front leg over it, pulled my rear leg up behind me, but of course it couldn’t go very far and I became tangled in the wire. All of the local passers-by had to help me untangle myself and then I could move on. It was the most memorable Christmas that I’d had, this particular one at that time

My mother being in a cookery competition would be a surprise to anyone who had eaten a meal at our house in the past. I shan’t go into detail because it brings back far too many unhappy memories of what she used to serve up. However, I do remember that it was because of her cooking that my brother and I began to experiment with baking cakes.

We also used to have a second-hand car sales yard across the road from where we lived in Davenport Avenue. On one occasion it had a Ford Corsair 1500 GT for sale, a dark red saloon, and how I used to admire it.and wish that I had the £195 to buy it. The Corsairs were beautiful cars, but not as nice as the Ford Classic, which was probably the most beautiful British car to ever grace the roads.

As for what the boy on the roller skates was doing, I have no idea. He doesn’t seem to fit in at all. The bit about being tangled up in a fence would probably be par for the course if I were to try to climb over a fence in my present state, and once again, we’re going places without our crutches.

Isabelle the Nurse came along as usual, and we had a discussion about the ‘flu jab and the Covid booster that I’m supposed to have. She’ll do the ‘flu jab with no problems (the injection is actually in my fridge even as we speak) provided that the dialysis centre says that I’m healthy enough.

The Covid injection is a different matter. The wholesale injections only come in packs of six, so she needs five more patients to sign up before she can order a packet. However, she assures me that I’m on the waiting list.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we’re supposed to be strolling down Akeman Street but as usual, I’ve been sidetracked elsewhere. Back into the Scottish borders, in fact.

A chance remark led me to look for the Roman fort of Bremenium in Northumberland and the chance remark that "across the stream is the site of a temporary marching camp". Of course, I had to go for a look, and it was WELL WORTH THE VISIT .

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago, we talked about the collection of different Roman camps at Chew Green. There’s mention of a road from Bremenium to Chew Green with a large Roman camp halfway along the road. Once more, I went for a wander around. So HERE’S ANOTHER ONE to add to your collection.

After breakfast, I had plenty of things to do, but I was interrupted by the arrival of my neighbour.

It’s very nice to see people, that’s for sure, and neighbours even more so. I made coffee for us and we had a good chat about this and that, which was nice. He stayed for about half an hour or so and as he left, I told him that he was welcome to come anytime. I know that I’m not the most sociable of people but I have to make an effort.

Back in here, I made a start on editing the recording for the next radio programme. However, I knocked off at some point to go to make a cake.

In the end, I decided on a fruit cake. I have plenty of sultanas and there were some figs left over from the Christmas pudding. I diced the figs into small pieces, mixed them with the raisins and than tipped them into a typical cake mix

As I said the other day, I baked it for longer on a lower heat lower down in the oven and it seems to have baked really well. I wish that I knew why the tops of my cakes keep on cracking, though.

Back in here, I finished off editing, assembling the programme, choosing the final track, writing and dictating the notes for that, and then assembling the programme completely. So that’s two radio programmes completed today.

The programme might have been finished earlier too, except that for about half an hour or so, I crashed out. No surprise, seeing how short my night was.

Tea was mashed potato, veggies and a slice of vegan pie, followed by a slice of my delicious fruitcake with chocolate soya sauce.

So dialysis tomorrow, and how I am not looking forward to that. I suppose that I’d better wander off to bed and make the most of what’s left of the night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my mother’s cooking … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember as a kid watching a film about Dracula and dashing in to tell my father.
"There’s a film on the telly and a man just killed Dracula with a stake."
"That’s nothing" he replied. "Your mother can do that with a plate of egg and chips."

Saturday 6th December 2025 – MY CHRISTMAS CAKES …

… both are now marzipanned and back in the fridge, waiting for next weekend when I shall ice them. All that remains after that … "all!" – ed … will be to make the Christmas pudding and the mince pies.

And then to hope that my appetite comes back so that I can enjoy them. At the rate that I’m going, though, it’s unlikely. My appetite is still almost non-existent, but I’m doing my best.

Anyway, last night was another late night. Almost midnight, in fact, when I finally climbed into bed. It was a dreadful night too. It seemed almost as if I hadn’t gone to sleep at all, but instead I lay there tossing and turning throughout the night.

When the alarm went off, I was in that no-man’s land of not being asleep but not being awake either. However, I forced myself out of bed before the second alarm and then, at some point, staggered off into the bathroom.

After the medication and the hot ginger, honey and lemon, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And considering that I didn’t think that I’d gone to sleep at all, I was surprised by just how much there was on there.

I was back on the taxis and it had been a really quiet night. We hadn’t done very much so at the end of the night I went to book myself a room in a hotel to stay the night. I walked in, and one of my neighbours from Shavington was there. We had a chat and he asked me how things were. I told him that they weren’t so good at the moment. I dropped one of my crutches and he said “I’ll try to pick it up” but I picked it up instead. For some reason, his hand went onto my chest to try to stop me breathing. I had to tell him a couple of times to stop doing that. He asked me if I was going to look for another driver. I replied that I’d be finishing school in a couple of months so there’s not much point. Then, my girl driver came in. She wanted to cash up everything. She was very concerned about me. She laid all of her things out on the counter at this hotel reception. She asked if my phone would charge up my headphones. I replied “better than that, there’s a slot to listen where you plug in”. We began to chat but then she had a job to go out to do so she said that she’d have to go, but she didn’t really want to go. I replied “you can always stop the night with me”. She replied “well, I have this fare that I have to pick up”. I replied “well, you can always come back later”. She gave me one of these strange looks”.

It beats me why I would want to book a room in a hotel. And as for the neighbour, I’ve not thought about him since probably about 1972 so how come he worked his way into the scene, I don’t know. But we did have some quiet nights at times where we barely turned a wheel and that was what I call boring. I’d much rather be busy than lounging around doing nothing.

It had been a quiet night on the taxis. I hadn’t really done very much so I was thinking about going home to cash up everything and then maybe have an early night for once. Thomas from Peterborough was extremely offended that he would lose his evening’s work but people explained to him that he was a part-time driver and he would have to take what’s happening from the more important people who were planning the work and booking it … fell asleep here … so there I was, waiting for the final whistle and ready to drop down on my side to carry on working again.

This seems to be part of the first dream, with me going off on a tangent again, whoever Thomas from Peterborough is. But the second part of this looks like we’re back to talking football again.

There was some kind of big family group outing going on, and I was part of it on my own. I ended up talking to this married woman who had a daughter. She and her husband were there and the daughter but I was chatting to this woman. We ended up spending an awful lot of time together, so much so that I’m sure that there must have been talk. The daughter took to me too and I actually took her fishing on one occasion while we were on this outing. But then she said at the night as we were all prepared to camp down in this field that she was off fishing with another boy and she’d be back in the morning to see me so we bedded down. In the meantime, these kids were bedded down in this stream and they came across a car that was in the water. One of them opened the door and recoiled in horror, and they ran all the way back to where we were camping. The teacher was busy talking to a group of people about a missing car. These kids came dashing in, they saw this drawing and shouted “this is the car, this is the car”. They explained that they had seen the car in this stream so we all set out. I was with this woman again and we came to where we needed to go down to the bottom in a lift. There were several lifts, and everyone was queueing at one or two, so we went over to the one where no-one was queueing. We pressed the button and the doors opened, and the girl was in there, wrapped up in a sleeping bag asleep with one of her friends. We went down in this lift and as the lift approached the bottom, I shouted, woke these two kids and unzipped them out of their sleeping bag. We made ready to meet the others who were on their way down so that we could walk off to see the car in this stream and point out what was so horrific to the kids.

There’s an interesting story behind this dream too, but the World isn’t ready to hear it yet. I’ve no idea to what the car relates, though

Did I dictate this dream about a girl whom I knew who was a few years younger than me? We used to hang around a lot together … "no you didn’t" – ed …. It came to the time when she was eighteen and was planning on going to university. In the meantime, I’d been working for a few years after leaving school and was thinking of going to university so I’d applied to Aberdeen. My application had gone in and I asked this girl where she was thinking of going. She replied that she didn’t really know but Aberdeen sounded great to her. I asked if she had a prospectus but she said that she hadn’t, but she’d like to find one somewhere. I said that I had one and I asked her “why not come back to my house and we can spend a day or two going through the prospectus?”. Eventually, she agreed. When I arrived back home, this girl had transformed herself into a big spider. My mother hated spiders so she wouldn’t let this one into the house. I picked up a bike and a few camping things and went off to Canada, with the bike, these camping things and the spider. I set out, and while I was cycling around, I was talking to this spider about Aberdeen University. Eventually, I came to a great big kind of tourist attraction. It was really complicated. There was a river there down in the valley but there was also a river there had been partly canalised that was at the level at which we were. It was running over stones and was really rapid here, splashing everyone. There were people fishing, catching some enormous sizes of fish so I decided that I would spend half an hour fishing while this girl finished off making up her mind, and then we could get together and make a decision. However, I couldn’t make my bike stand up. I eventually found a bike park, which was complicated enough to reach, but no matter how I tried, there was too much weight on my bike for it to stand upright. I was having to think about a solution to prop it up somewhere so that I could go off to fish and leave this girl to finalise her decision. There were a couple of people there, married couples who were sitting around, and even they couldn’t help me make this bike stand upright. I was becoming so frustrated about that.

There is a girl to whom this story fits quite well, although at the time the events in the real World were happening, I didn’t realise it. Turning into a spider and cycling to Canada are quite surreal ideas though.

One thing about these dreams though is that it concerns fishing. I’ve only ever been fishing twice in my life, as a young kid, and found it to be one of the most boring “sports” ever. I couldn’t see the point then and it’s even less so today. I can’t understand why, all of a sudden, I’d be thinking of going fishing right now.

The nurse was late today coming round. I reminded him that it’s possible that tomorrow he’ll find me in bed in the morning, so he made a note. And after he finished my legs, he cleared off.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and carry on reading some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. Today, we’re still across Hadrian’s Wall roaming around Dere Street but as yet, I’ve not found anything of real importance.

After breakfast, I marzipanned my Christmas cakes. My marzipanning technique seems to be improving because it all went together perfectly the first time of trying the first time without any problems at all. I hope that the icing goes as well as this next weekend.

One thing that I miss though is my turntable. When I was building computers twenty-odd years ago, I had a turntable on which I would put them and it saved me hours. If I had had it here and used it for the marzipanning and the icing, I would save hours on those jobs too.

After a disgusting drink break, I had a mini foot-fest, watching the highlights of last night’s games in Wales. And that reminds me – ONE OF THE BEST GOALS YOU ARE EVER LIKELY TO SEE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME are now available. Take a bow, Corey Shephard!

Later on, I wrote the missing notes for another radio programme to be broadcast in the distant future and there was even time to make a start on yet another radio programme. I have to make the most of my freedom these days.

Things could have been so much better and I could have done so much more too except that once again, I fell asleep in the afternoon. For a good hour or so too. I’m really fed up of all of this.

There was more football tonight – the League Cup semi-final between Cambrian United and Y Barri. Cambrian, from the second division and who play their home games in the suburbs of Tonypandy, had the lion’s share of the play but the class of Y Barri showed through. Whatever chances they created, they took them, whereas Cambrian were pretty wasteful.

The score of 0-3 to Y Barri was definitely a flattering scoreline. And I do have to say that near the end, I crashed out a couple of times.

Tea was chips, salad and some of those vegan nuggets that I like. Only a small portion, but even so, I struggled to eat it all.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a really good lie-in tomorrow. But we shall see about that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cycling to Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I was AT THE POINT AMOUR LIGHTHOUSE on my mega-drive around the mountains of Labrador in 2010.
At the lighthouse, I met a woman who stared in disbelief at my small urban-motoring saloon and said, incredulously "have you driven around the Trans-labrador Highway in THAT??? "
"Ohh yes" I replied. "It’s not the car that counts, it’s the driver. And the next time that I come to Canada, I’ll be crossing the Atlantic on a motor-bike!"
The funny thing about this story is that when I told it to a Canadian girl a few years later, she asked "and did you?"
All of which goes to show that, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once famously said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Friday 5th December 2025 – I’VE DONE IT …

… again!

Crashed out on the chair in the office late this afternoon, and not just for five minutes either. I was for a whopping well over an hour. It looks as if I’m back in the bad old days of eighteen months ago when I was crashing out for hours every day with no sign of it ever improving.

This is a really huge disappointment to me, and I’m totally fed up with it. I wish that I could snap out of it and push on with work, now that I have (at long last) the opportunity.

That’s just how it was last night too. I fell asleep a couple of times again while I was typing out my notes, and by the time that I finished, I was so wiped out that I went straight to bed without even starting, never mind finishing, what else I had to do.

Once in bed, I fell asleep straight away, and there I stayed, without moving, until the alarm went off.

A couple of times just recently, I’ve said that I didn’t really feel like leaving the bed when the alarm went off. This morning was probably the worst that I have felt and I really was on the point of switching off the alarm and going back to bed.

Nevertheless, I struggled on and staggered into the bathroom for a good wash.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, lemon and honey drink, took my medication and then came back here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And it was no surprise to learn that there was nothing on there. It must have been a really deep sleep.

The nurse came quite early again and sorted out my legs. After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’ve crossed Hadrian’s Wall and we are now looking at some of the forward camps where troops were stationed as an advance guard to watch over the territory north of the wall.

He tells us that at Durisdeer, there are "the remains of a small, but well-preserved Roman fortlet are located about a mile up the Well or Wald Path to the north-east" and that a Roman road passed up the valley by the camp to connect the Nith Valley with the Clyde Valley.

Consequently, I had a play around with an online aerial map and CAME ACROSS THIS. If you look closely, you’ll see the modern track, which is where the wheel ruts are, but slightly above it, you can make out the ridge of the Roman road.

It was the defences that impressed me, though. I’ve not seen a Roman fort with a ditch and bank as pronounced as this one. They must have been really troubled times up on the frontier.

Back in here, I finished off what I should have done last night and then carried on with writing the radio notes. They are all finished now, ready to dictate.

There were several interruptions. Two disgusting drinks breaks, for a start. And my cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff.

The first thing that she had to do was to rescue two saucepans that had fallen out of the back of one of the drawers and landed on the floor underneath the unit. The second task was to shuffle the contents of the drawers around so that if a saucepan falls out again, it will drop into the drawer underneath and not onto the floor.

While she was at it, she also sorted out my Christmas tree. So now it has all of its decorations and lights. It’s only about 30 centimetres tall, but it puts a little ambience into the living room and makes it look a little more like Christmas. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I wish that other people around here would make some kind of effort.

Back in here, I crashed out on the chair for well over an hour, as I said just now. To my surprise, when I awoke, there was something on the dictaphone. I was at some kind of Russian spy school, looking through documents. I wasn’t very popular there and no-one liked me very much, not that that bothered me, but I was keen enough to learn. One of the documents was a report on a case that we had to study. It showed that someone had stolen some documents, had extracted information and passed them through to his superior. However, his superior was extremely unreliable and drunken. He was on the verge of giving away everything when he passed the information in some kind of strange, diagonal way across a whole range of people to someone totally unexpected on the far side of the operation. It fascinated me, so I was trying to write an extract of this. In the end, I ended up having to lie on the floor to do it, but the dog decided to jump all over me and I had to fight the dog off. In the end, I managed to drag the dog off outside and go back to the paper, but by then, the boss had come down from his booth. He told me not to bother and to move on to the next exercise. I told him that I was enjoying this particular one and I was determined to finish it. He said that the part that he enjoyed the most about it was the part when I was fighting off the dog. In the end, I put my foot down rather and made something of a fuss about it. In the end, he agreed to let me have a further five minutes to finish this particular case.

Actually, I’d been reading quite recently about a Russian spy school that sent agents to try to prise out the British and American nuclear secrets just after World War II, so it’s probably something to do with that.

But working on and enjoying a subject that my boss wants to ignore in order to concentrate on something else reminds me very much of my university course. I enjoyed the research that I was doing far more than the research that my tutor wanted me to do. It was for that reason that I was rejected for my Ph.D. The tutor didn’t think that I would stick to the task in hand.

With the little time that was left, I began to hunt down some missing photos from 2019. This is a project that I was hoping to attack with all of this free time that I now seem to have … "in theory" – ed …

For tea, I made a very quick stir fry and then came back in here to watch the football. Y Bala v Hwlffordd.

Both clubs are in difficulty right now at the wrong end of the table, and having seen this game, I’m not surprised. Hwlffordd didn’t impress me at all, but Y Bala were awful. They were clueless and offered absolutely nothing at all.

The score was 0-2 in favour of Hwlffordd, thanks to a silly, pointless penalty and another one of these marvellous wonder-goals that you see maybe once in ten years … "of which we have now seen two already this season" – ed … When the highlights come online, I’ll post the link and you can see for yourself. If someone had scored that goal in the Premier League, people would be talking about it for the next fifty years.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, and I can’t say that I’m sorry because I’m exhausted. But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Hadrian’s Wall … "well, one of us has" – ed … here is a question that was asked in a Roman school in about 200AD
Magister – "if it took five hundred men ten years to build the eighty Roman miles of Hadrian’s Wall, how long would it take three hundred men to build half of it if they took four weeks feriatum each complete year?"
Claudius – "no time at all, Magister."
Magister – "why not, Claudius?"
Claudius – "because those five hundred men have already built it."

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… to have a day off without having to rush around to various medical appointments, physiotherapy and all of the like?

It was definitely what I would call a “relaxing day”.

Having said that, of course, it would have been nicer had I managed to have had an early night to go with it (regardless of whether I wake up early or not) but that was, unfortunately, rather too much to expect. By the time that I’d finished my notes, the statistics and the backing-up and been to the bathroom, it was as near as 23:30, which makes no difference

That’ll teach me to fall asleep when I’m writing my notes.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, but I awoke on a couple of occasions at some crazy time of early morning. Although I managed to go back to sleep on a couple of occasions, the final time, at 05:40, I was not so fortunate.

After tossing and turning in bed for a while, at about 06:10 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. A stagger into the bathroom to clean myself up, and then another stagger into the kitchen to make my hot honey, ginger and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was out walking again and came over the top of a hill and was walking down this cobbled road that took me into this medieval town. It was a steep hill down, and from the top, I could see right over this city. I slowly reached down to the bottom, where, lying on its side, was this absolutely enormous motorbike scooter type of thing that was being used as an advertisement but had fallen over. They had five or six motorbikes that were attached to it by a rope. What they did was to set off on the motorbikes and begin to pull this motorbike. It went upright and it pull-started the engine. When it pull-started the engine, someone climbed up onto it and they disconnected all the motorbikes. Someone was extremely angry because what had happened had wrecked his Honda Benly. When I looked, there were three or four Honda Benlys, two of them with police fairings on. I’d never seen that many Honda Benlys in one place at any one time. As I walked off further on, this scooter had now become a huge articulated American bus which was being transformed into a hot dog stand or something like that. There was a message painted on the side of it – “why don’t you Europeans realise that we Americans love ‘great’?” It was certainly huge, this thing.

This was a surreal dream, that’s for sure, this giant scooter or motorbike. You wouldn’t be likely to see a Honda Benly being used as a police bike, though. They were the first of the high-revving 125cc twins that Honda imported into the UK, back in the early 1960s. I had one even earlier than that, a grey import that came into the UK as a personal possession of a sailor. I wonder where it is now, though. A friend of mine was looking after it while I sorted myself out during an “accommodation crisis”, but we had a dispute over some matter or other and I haven’t seen him, or the bike, since.

I was with a group of people and we were pulling some horse-drawn waggons. We went up this really incredibly steep hill, these waggons struggling to move up, but when we reached the top, we could see that there was one of these small Mexican towns below us so we went down very carefully. The contents of our waggons excited some kind of attention but we were sufficiently armed to keep everything at bay. We noticed that there were a few white women down there being mistreated. They had obviously been caught during some kind of border raid etc by these bandits. At first, we ingratiated ourselves with the bandits, but somehow at night, we managed to slip out. By this time, we had an armoured column with a jeep, a few lorries, several tanks and a couple of support vehicles and we headed off towards Granville. I remember saying to someone that all this action is going to take place in an area that I know really well. We drove north, and there was some kind of incident at a cross-roads but whether that was before we climbed that hill or not, I don’t know. We carried on travelling north, and at a fuel station at the side of the road, we pulled in and refuelled all the vehicles. One thing that I noticed was that we fuelled the vehicles from our own supplies and not from the fuel in the fuel station. I thought that that was a strange decision to make. As we were about to rejoin the road again, we saw another column in the distance, so we waited. It was the column of an American general, so we waited until his column had passed and we slipped into the rear of it. In the meantime, these bandits had recovered and were absolutely furious that we’d managed to escape and taken their prisoners with us. So that set out on our tail. Being much more mobile than we were, they were very, very likely to catch us before we’d gone very far

When I was typing this out, I had a feeling of déjà vu and I’m surprised that I mentioned it in the dream. I know where this road junction is – I can see it now. It’s the one in between the hospital roundabout and the roundabout at the start of the ring road. And what I can see in my mind is a pile of dead bodies scattered about all over the place as if they have been caught in an ambush.

The bit about the waggons and the Mexican village seems to relate to the film THE WILD BUNCH, which, despite the negative rating given by many critics, is in my opinion one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Fleeing from the Mexicans in an armoured column means nothing to me, though.

The nurse turned up early and sorted out my legs for me. He didn’t have much to say for himself today and was soon gone, leaving me to make my breakfast and to read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

At the moment, we’re stuck up on the Yorkshire Moors, trying to decipher the story behind Wade’s Causeway. This is a metalled road that leads to precisely nowhere, as fas as anyone has ascertained. Geographically, its line seems to point towards an empty bay on the coast, which is in a straight line from the end of the known road. Codrington thinks that that’s bizarre because there was a known Roman signalling station at Whitby, just along the coast, so why didn’t the road point in that direction?

In fact, every historian has a different opinion about the road, and some don’t even think that it was a road but a collapsed border wall of the kind of Hadrian’s Wall. Others are not convinced that it’s Roman, and that it might even date back as far as Neolithic times

After he left, I came back in here.

While I was going through the football news, I came across A MOST AMAZING INCIDENT IN WELSH FOOTBALL. at Mochdre along the Welsh coast.

Like everyone else who has read the article, I am gripping the edge of my seat in eager anticipation of finding out just exactly what the referee did or was alleged to have done!

To celebrate my day off, there was a pile of soundbytes of quite some length that had accumulated over the last couple of weeks so I set about cutting them into individual soundbytes. That took an age and it wasn’t until about 17:00 and two disgusting drinks breaks that I’d actually finished.

Mind you, I could have finished earlier but unfortunately, round about 15:00, I’m afraid that I crashed out for an hour or so. I thought that with dialysis and having organised a less-active life for myself this last few days, I would have been over all of this, so that was a disappointment.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sorting out the music for the new radio programme, editing, remixing, pairing and then seguing the songs. Tomorrow, I’ll start to write the text and hope that I’ll have the time to finish it so that I can dictate it for the next early morning.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta followed by ginger cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed.

Dialysis in the afternoon tomorrow, so I’d better be in good shape for it. I don’t want to go back to three times per week if I can possibly avoid it.

Anyway, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about motorbikes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ll tell you a true (and it really is true, too) story about a friend of mine on the Wirral who is a big biker-type of person.
He had been complaining for quite a while about how his wife didn’t understand him. But one day, things began to improve and he began to feel much better.
"What’s cheered you up?" I asked him.
"Well, our marriage has been on the rocks for a while because of her lack of interest in my hobbies, but things have changed" he replied. "I had a long talk with some friends, and I ended up getting a Harley-Davidson 883cc Sportster for her."
"Blimmin’ ‘eck" I replied. "That is just one hell of a good swap, that is!"

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Actually, you have no idea just how tired I was last night. I fell asleep twice … "or was it three times?" – ed … while I was typing out my notes, and in the end I gave up. I left undone a lot of things that I shouldn’t have left undone, and round about 22:20 I crawled into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, and there I stayed until about … errr … 04:20 when I awoke. I was able at that point to go back to sleep, but when I awoke the next time at 05:13, that was that. By 06:00, I was in the bathroom having a wash.

After the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and my medication, I came back in here to finish off what I should have finished off last night, like take the stats and back up the computer.

Then it was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in my office again and it was the final day so I was preparing to retire. I was slowly going through my things, slowly tidying up. But at one point, I was actually in somewhere else trying to clear the floor of all kinds of papers and everything. It was all little notes and stuff that I’d written years ago and it all went into the bin. I couldn’t believe how tidy I’d made the place. I even found an assignment from one of my University courses and when I had a look at it, I found that although it had received a good mark, the page layout and format of the document that I’d sent was awful, and I wondered how on earth I’d managed to miss this when I’d been preparing it. Then I was back in my office and going through my desk. There were tons of stuff, and I couldn’t work out what I needed to take and what I needed to leave behind. People were asking me what I intended to do. I replied that I had a deckchair, a nice garden and two nice cats. I’ll just sit out and enjoy the summer. Two of us, right at that moment, said that I’d picked the best time of the year to leave. Then the boss came round and asked me if I was nearly ready to go. I replied that I was still sorting out my stuff. She said something like “don’t take the toaster” which was the office toaster that was on my desk. I replied “it’s still on my desk, isn’t it?” because I thought that it was a really offensive thing to say. Then I suddenly realised that it was Friday so I rang up Nerina at her place and asked “shouldn’t we be going swimming tonight after work? I haven’t brought anything to wear”. She replied “I’ll get something off one of my brothers, some shorts or something” but I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Then she told me about this plastic underwear that you could buy. I turned up my nose at that. She tried to persuade me but I wasn’t in the mood to be persuaded. In the end, I thought that I’d probably just go home and make some tea for when Nerina comes home. That’s going to be the best solution but she was still trying to persuade me to wear either her brother’s shorts or some of this plastic underwear.

So having spent all those years during the night reaching the final few days at work but never actually finishing, here I am finally about to cross the threshold. That’s twice in a week or two that I’ve done that, after all of these years.

But whatever this is about plastic underwear? I really don’t know. And as if I really would pinch the office toaster … "perish the thought" – ed …

The nurse turned up, his usual cheerful self (at least, these days) and we had a little chat as he sorted out my legs. He’s all inclined not to come on Sundays to give me even more of a rest and relax, but I’m not quite at that stage yet – although if I fall asleep once more while I’m typing these notes, as I just did five minutes ago, I’ll think again.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Not that I managed to go very far today, though. I was side-tracked … "again" – ed … looking for the one of the many towns named Manton that contains some significant Roman remains, and ended up going on a guided tour of Roman villas in England – abandoned, or burnt, or destroyed, or buried.

You’ve no idea just how many there are altogether. They even came across one when they were digging a driveway into the Council offices in Bromley.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then I went to the lesson. It started off quite well, but it all went pear-shaped when we had a spontaneous test on a subject that had been covered by the class while I was at chemotherapy. That was an embarrassment.

However, I bravely stuck it out until the end of the lesson, but I was glad that it was over.

My faithful cleaner came around later, as usual, and organised the shower for me. And so now, I’m a nice, clean boy again. I can’t wait, though, to have the time to order the handrails for the shower so that I can shower on my own and have more than one per week.

After the shower and I’d dried myself off, the next task was to install the strings of Christmas lights in the windows.

Last year, I was the only person in this whole area who had some pretty coloured lights in the window. And even though I’m not a believer in Christmas or anything like that, it’s still nice to bring some joy and gaiety into a depressing period of the year and it’s a shame that other people don’t make any kind of effort at all.

Consequently, my faithful cleaner (under my supervision) put up my lights in both the windows, and now it looks as if at least one person in the area is celebrating Christmas instead of the whole area being so miserable about it. At some point, I’ll even organise my Christmas tree.

After my cleaner left, I sorted out the rest of the music that I need for my next radio programme, and I’ll organise that over the rest of the week. And won’t it be nice to have a couple of days when I’m going nowhere, so that I can press on.

Tea tonight was mashed potatoes, veg and vegan sausage, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Only small portions, but I managed to eat it all tonight. It’s a meal with foods that are full of carbohydrates and fats so while it’s not a particularly healthy meal, it’s full of energy and proteins so that should help to keep me going while this lack of appetite persists.

And so, on that point, I’m going to be and see how I’ll get on tonight. I could do with another good sleep but, as usual, that’s not particularly likely. We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about sticking it out … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story that I heard when I was in the High Arctic about two nudists who went on a camping holiday in the north of Greenland.
Freezing and shivering to death inside their tent, they were wondering how long they could stick it out before they ended up being frost-bitten.

Saturday 29th November 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

… that tomorrow and all subsequent Sundays until further notice, there will be no alarm call. If Isabelle the Nurse comes along and finds me still in bed, then she will have to sort out my legs while I’m lying there, and after she’s gone, I’ll go back to sleep. I can’t go on like I am at the moment.

What didn’t help was that, after the football, it was a terribly late night. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

There was no difficulty falling asleep either, and there I lay, dead to the World until BILLY COTTON shattered my peace.

Ohhh! How I wish that I could have stayed in bed. I was feeling absolutely shattered. It took a good ten minutes for me to summon up the courage to leave the bed and stagger off to the bathroom.

As well as washing myself, I filled the washing machine with dirty clothes and let it loose while I wandered off for my medication.

In the kitchen, there was yesterday’s washing-up to do before I could do anything else. How I hate waking up to that in the morning, but it gives you some idea of how tired I was last night that I left it. However, once I’d done it, I could make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but there was nothing on it from last night. Not that that’s a surprise, seeing how tired I was. What I did instead was to … errr … crash out on my chair.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise when she arrived. Pressing the doorbell as she does when she arrives awoke me with quite a shock.

After she had given me the final injection of this series, she sorted out my legs and then wandered off. It took me another good ten minutes to be able to stand up and go to make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN and although there was plenty of interest, there was nothing that was worthy of a note in here.

However, our author did put me on the trail of a book written by John Horsley called BRITANNIA ROMANA, written in 1734. It contains information about what was known about the Romans at that time, and also visual descriptions of the remains. Judging by what Codrington has been telling us, a great deal of infrastructure was still standing in Horsley’s day but had disappeared by the time of Codrington.

When I’d finished breakfast, I went to rescue the washing from the washing machine and hang it on the clothes airer. And that almost killed me too, so back in here, I crashed out yet again.

When I came round, at about 11:30, I began to assemble the radio programme that I had been preparing. It took a while, but it’s now finished and ready to go. And so I watched the highlights of Barry v Hwlffordd from last night.

After I’d stopped for my disgusting drink break, I began to make my Christmas cake. And I’ve ended up with two because I made far too much batter. Does anyone want a spare Christmas cake?

It took over three hours to prepare them today, and of course, the week during which the dried fruit had been soaking, and they went into the oven on a low temperature for three and a half hours.

While the cakes were cooking, I made a start on another radio programme. This is another complicated one and is going to take some assembling. Sorting out the music is quite a task and I’ve still not finished that part yet

Back in the kitchen, I switched off the oven and checked the cakes. They are cooked to perfection, and now they need to cool down for a week or so before I can marzipan them, and then another week before I can ice them

But I’m definitely ill and I’m at a loss as to why. I’m totally exhausted, I ache in every conceivable place and I’ve lost all of my energy and enthusiasm. In fact, I’m really surprised that I’ve managed to do so much today, despite how ill I’m feeling.

So ill that, in fact, I made a very small portion of mushroom curry and yet most of it ended up in the waste bin. No dessert either. I just want to go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about baking a Christmas cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … you have to bake it in a fan oven turned to 120° for three and a half hours
When I lived in Crewe, I mentioned it to a local girl who wanted to know the details.
A few days later, I asked her how she had got on with it.
"It was a waste of time" she replied. "I tried what you said but after ten seconds, the cake just slid down to the side."

Friday 28th November 2025 – THERE’S NO DOUBT …

… about it – I really am ill.

Today has been a pretty miserable day as far as I am concerned. And it should have started so well too.

Having raced through everything last night, my notes were online quite early and I was looking forward to a nice, early night and a really good sleep. However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s really pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Like 04:05 this morning, for example.

At about 05:20, I’d given up all hope of going back to sleep and had risen from the Dead. I took full advantage of the early start by dictating the radio notes that I had rewritten the other day, so they were ready for editing.

Next stop was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been out with some friends last night, and we’d been to rescue a car that belonged to one of them. When I went to pick it up, they asked me if I would drive it back. It was a Morris marina, and I couldn’t get the hang of the gearbox. It felt ever so tight to me. However, I managed to move it in some fashion and came into the city centre. I put the indicator on to turn left, but people stopped for me as if I wanted to go up into the church precinct. In the end, I had no choice but to go up into the church. We stopped there and waited for the traffic to die down, then we climbed into the car again, with me struggling with the gearbox to leave. I ended up being stuck behind an old, dirty bus and I suddenly realised that I was in an old, dirty bus too. I had to pull out from behind this bus without hitting it and somehow make my way forward. I pulled out and had to wait for a gap in the traffic. Just as I was about to pull out, a car suddenly appeared. I saw it over my shoulder and the guy with me said to his wife “did you see that? He actually used his shoulder”. He was quite impressed by that. So we set off, but then we had to go to a DIY shop for some DIY stuff for my house. They all set off running but I knew that it was miles away so I ran a lot slower to conserve my strength. But there was an incredibly steep descent and I could have jumped into the bus and let it roll down to the bottom of the hill but I thought that it would be most unsafe so I carried on running. Eventually, I arrived at this DIY place and found that they had all purchased everything and it was all stacked. However, they looked exhausted so and they asked about when we were going to load it. I replied “you need to take a break first because you aren’t going to load anything like that in that condition”. The guy in the shop said that as it was all on a pallet already, he could take it with a fork-lift truck and drop it down at the side of our vehicle.

The part about looking over my shoulder relates to the time when I was chauffeuring in Brussels. I had a General from the Finnish Army in my car and he asked me if I had been a motor-cyclist. I asked him why, and he replied "you’re always looking over your shoulder when you drive, just like a motorcyclist does. "

The friend was, by the way, related to one of the young ladies who come to see me during the night and it’s a disaster that she never put in an appearance. And we had a Marina estate once when I had my taxis. We were going to use it for parcels but, as always, I was overtaken by events.

One thing though was that I never drove “dirty old buses”. I was quite selective about whom I drove for and restricted my activities to Shearings and to a local firm with an excellent reputation.

By now though, I was wishing that I had stayed in bed because I was beginning to feel awful, nauseous and totally exhausted. Nevertheless, I went for a good wash and to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I could no longer concentrate on anything, and it was a very weary, depressive me that crawled into the kitchen when Isabelle the Nurse came round. She gave me my injection and sorted out my feet, and when I told her how ill I was feeling, she suggested that I go back to bed.

Strangely enough, that was my opinion too, but first I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

As usual, I was sidetracked by the Iter Britanniarum as I followed the routes of some of these roads. Interestingly, he talks about a Roman agger or embankment that carried a road that crossed over the River Hodder in Lancashire. I had a quick look on an online aerial map and noticed a LOVELY CURVED EMBANKMENT NOW OVERGROWN WITH TREES, THAT COULD EASILY BE AN AGGER leading to the river, and if you zoom in to the river really closely, you can see what looks like a paved ford under the water.

There’s also talk about a Roman fort at Caersws in mid-Wales “in a bend of the River Severn with three concentric defensive rings” and, allowing for modern erosion by the river, I FOUND THIS.

A little earlier, I’d mentioned going back to bed but I couldn’t even go that far. I staggered onto my office chair in the bedroom and promptly fell asleep again.

When I awoke, over an hour later, I was still feeling ill but I pushed on and edited the radio notes that I’d dictated earlier. So that programme is ready to be assembled now.

The taxi came early to take me to the Centre de Ré-education so I had to wait around for a while when I arrived.

My first session was with the relief physiotherapist as mine was on a training day. She exercised my arms and legs for a half-hour period that passed surprisingly quickly.

The second session was with the occupational therapist but he didn’t really offer a great deal of help and we were finished after fifteen minutes.

After waiting around for a while, I saw Elise the Dishy Doctor. I poured out my tale of woe, and we decided, after a lengthy discussion, to suspend all of the activities at the Centre de Ré-education until the doctors at dialysis decide that I’m fit enough to restart, whenever that may be.

In the meantime, she gave me a prescription for twenty-five sessions of physiotherapy at my own pace in some local cabinet. However, as my faithful cleaner said later, finding one that has a vacancy is going to be a real challenge.

The final session was this standing upright in this frame thing but I abandoned that after twenty minutes and went to look for my taxi home.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and then I collapsed into a chair in the kitchen. After she left, I came back in here and, once installed in my comfortable chair, I crashed out again – until, would you believe, 19:45.

For tea tonight, I made a batch of hummus and ate it with some crackers while I watched the football – TNS v Caernarfon. TNS had the lion’s share of the game, of course but the Cofis kept them out for eighty-two minutes.

Two late goals, one of them with the very last kick of the game, gave TNS another win, and once again, the Cofis played the match without any great sense of urgency going forward. They really are going to have to play better than this if they want to make their mark.

So right now, I’m off to bed. Totally exhausted, but relieved to some extent that I’m only out for two afternoons next week. This is some kind of progress.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Finnish General … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I went round to his apartment once, he had a large stuffed black bear in his hallway.
He told me a story about it that I could easily believe to be true and underlines the misunderstanding when two foreigners are conversing in a third, foreign language.
He was holding a cocktail party and one of his guests, an Italian lady, asked him about the bear, and the conversation continued in English.
"I shot it myself" he replied.
"So is it the complete bear there? "
"Oh no. It’s just the fur "
"So what did you do with the bear itself? "
"We ate it"
And so she went round this cocktail party with stories of the General dragging the dead bear into a clearing in the forest and then sitting around a campfire eating it raw while it was still warm and fresh.

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

… I’d have gone back to sleep after the alarm sounded this morning. It was another one of those days when I have never felt less like leaving the bed.

If the truth be known, I should have gone to bed much earlier than I did, but as usual these days, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied and generally managed to waste a lot of time while I was finishing off the evening’s work. As a consequence, it was another evening that was much nearer 23:30 than anything else, and probably approaching from the wrong side too.

Not that I was all that tired either. That sleep that I had at the end of the afternoon probably had an influence on everything because, apart from everything else, it took a good while for me to drop off once I’d finally made it into bed.

At some point I remember waking up, but it wasn’t for very long and I was flat out, dead to the World when the alarm went off. And what wouldn’t I have given to have been able to have gone back to sleep. However, with the nurse coming around every day, a real, proper lie-in these days is quite impossible.

It was a real struggle for me to rise up from the bed before the second alarm, and then we had a desperate stagger into the bathroom for a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to wash down my medication, and then I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going out with a group of US Cavalry to make a large armed patrol into Native American lands. I was appalled by the lack of security that was going on there. There was a General in charge, and he was insistent that the natives wouldn’t attack because we were so numerous, but I thought that that was a crazy situation to suggest because they will attack when you least expect it, in a manner that you least expect it and a place where you least expect it. You need to be at security all the time, for example, at night, he just set up a kind of camp on the plain and didn’t mount any serious attempt at pickets or guards. About a mile away, there were some rocky slopes. That’s where I would have gone to have my camp at night – amongst the rocks on the slope where you are pretty much hidden from view from what’s happening down in the valley, and you would have immediate defence if there were any problems and you came under attack.

These books that I have been reading about the US cavalry in the late Nineteenth Century are clearly preying on my mind. I must be doing too much reading, I suppose. It’s interesting that I’m happy about giving tactical advice to US generals but seeing the mess in which managed to find themselves in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, it’s not too difficult.

Later on, we were on board a train heading from Italy to Germany. It was one of these super-high speed trains. It was travelling at an incredible rate of speed, and it came to a new tunnel that was twelve and a half miles long so it shot into this tunnel and out the other side. I went and stood outside the carriage for some fresh air after that, but when I looked back in, all of my seats had been taken and there was no room for me. I waited for a moment until we stopped at a station, where everyone alighted except my friend and me so I could sit down again. Then we thought about making breakfast. There was a kind-of grill in each carriage so we made some breakfast, bacon, sausage, things like that. Suddenly, my friend looked at the time and said “we’ll be in Munich in an hour and we haven’t made the beds or anything”. He asked me if I would go to fetch the suitcases, but I explained that I didn’t think that I could manage the two suitcases on my own, so he began to become agitated. “And what are we going to do about making the beds?” he asked.

Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find myself on a train these days, least of all travelling between Italy and southern Germany, much as I would like to. It’s simply a totally impractical proposition, never mind being able to sit outside the carriage.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to give me my injection, and then she sorted out my legs. Her happy mood is still continuing, which is nice. I don’t know what it is that she takes, but I wish that she would give me some.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. We’re up on the moors right now, north-east of Manchester, and I’m still tracking down these camps along the way, trying to identify them.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I rewrote some of the radio notes to make them longer. I can dictate them the next time that I awaken early, I suppose.

My faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. Once aboard, I had to go to the depot to witness a game of “musical chairs” as they swapped drivers around. Once I had my new driver, I could set off, but I was still late arriving.

It took a while for me to be seen, and once more they took a measurement of my dry weight. When they coupled me up, they didn’t want to take everything off but I managed to persuade them. If I’m not back for four days, I want to be ahead of the game as much as possible.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today but she ignored me again. She really doesn’t love me any more, which is a shame. I was left pretty much alone all through the session, something that suits me fine.

The taxi was waiting for me when they unplugged me, so I wasn’t back home as late as I was fearing. I had pasta, vegetables and ratatouille for tea, followed by some of my ginger cake.

While I was at dialysis though, they gave me a booklet that included a recipe for a pear cheesecake, and I reckon that I can make it into a vegan recipe with no difficulty. I shall give that a try one of these days.

But not now because, having already fallen asleep once while I was typing my notes, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep again.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Romans … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was chatting to a friend about Roman numerals
He told me "I have enormous difficulty trying to remember Roman numerals. If you asked me how you write, for example, 1, 1000, 51, 6 and 500, I wouldn’t have a clue. It makes me really angry."
"Is that so?" I asked.
"Oh yes" he replied. "I’M LIVID"

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. there is absolutely no point whatsoever in going to bed early, because all that it seems to mean is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, is why at 05:34 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Last night, having finished off my half-pizza (which did not require any preparation – just warming up) I’d finished tea quite early. And so I came in here, dashed off my notes, did everything else that I needed to do, and was in bed just a few minutes after 22:00. And wasn’t that nice for a change?

Once I was asleep, I remember nothing at all until about 03:30, but I was soon back to sleep and there I stayed until about 04:30. When I awoke at that time, I couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried, and so, after an hour or so, I decided that I’d leave the bed and make the most of an early start.

The first thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And then re-dictate some of them because for some reason, I’d missed off the first twenty seconds or so.

While I was at it, I found some notes that I’d written a while back for another programme and hadn’t recorded, so I dictated those too while I was at it.

As an aside, what I do is that if I’ve written notes and entered them into the spreadsheet that I keep but have yet to record them, I give them a light green background so that I can see them at a glance as I scroll through.

The next task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at Pionsat last night at the football club with the President. We were talking, and I mentioned that there was a British guy who played centre-half for several lower-league clubs and was rated quite highly. For some reason, he had disappeared off the radar in the UK. When I performed a search for his name, it turned out that he was playing for FC Rouen in France. The guy from Pionsat said that that must have been a good career move because there were plenty of British players now playing in France who were making their careers for themselves. He asked me if I knew someone called Mulliner who plays for one of the clubs down south. The name rang a little bell with me but it was all that I could think of. But we were talking about the football club and playing friendly matches. We said that they had one team that played in blue and another one that played in red, and when they were playing against other teams, they had a shirt that was a quartered blue and red that they used to wear and still did when they were playing friendlies.

Blue and red quartered shirts were our old colours for the school football teams. Not that I would really know, because I was only ever selected once. That was the problem when you had two players in front of you for your position, one who was on the books of Crewe Alexandra as a schoolboy and went on later to play professionally for Wycombe Wanderers, and the second who played semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria in the Nationwide Conference.

The only “Mulliner” I know in the footballing world was a goalkeeper who played for several clubs in Mid and North Wales in the Welsh pyramid. As for the centre-half, I can remember his name from the dream and while he’s never likely to have played for FC Rouen, he certainly had a “most interesting” career.

Later on, I was at work and one of the people came over to me with a piece of paper or a notebook or something. He asked “is your friend taking the mickey or something?”. I had absolutely no idea what he meant, so he showed me that on a page in this notebook thing, he’d drawn out the basis of a graph or a table, but he’d made it so small that there was no room to write any figures in between the lines. I looked at it and asked “why didn’t he turn it round ninety degrees or maybe go across two pages in the notebook?”. We couldn’t work out why he’d done this. It would be a puzzle to put any figures into this table. Then he was trying to work out what some kind of hieroglyphics meant at the bottom of the page of this notebook. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was a list of days, and then there was “HD” alongside it, so I asked “I wonder if that’s when he’s planning to take a holiday?”. The guy said “I’m not going to be here by then”. I asked “why not?”. He replied that he’d only come here on a temporary basis to learn the work and he was moving on somewhere else. I said that I was terribly disappointed by all of this because we happened to get on well with each other. He was about the only person with whom I did. He agreed but he was disappointed by the social life of this place. He said that there didn’t seem to be any at all. I replied that most of the parents seem to be far too egocentric and didn’t really want to mix at all at any other time outside the office. The only thing that was any kind of social in any degree was the cricket team, but that only took place in the summer and that was just one night per week, but that was just about everything.

Funnily enough, there was someone with whom I worked who would have fitted this description. He was the only person there whom I liked and we used to play snooker together. As for the cricket, though, I mentioned just now that I never really had the change to play as a goalkeeper (which was my favourite position) at school but when Nerina’s work organisation needed a wicketkeeper for their midweek cricket team, I found my niche. From there, I played a few times for a good-class local cricket team too when they couldn’t find a wicketkeeper.

When I’d finished, I went and organised myself in the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted my reverie when she breezed into the apartment. She gave me my injection and then organised my feet. We had a nice little chat while she was here, but then she moved on quickly.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and started my new book, ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN by Thomas Codrington. It’s an interesting book because it tells us not only about the situation of the roads, but goes into details as to the construction

You can tell how old the book is, though. He notes that "the Roman paving has recently been cut through in a trench for laying a telephone tube along the Edgware Road ". A “telephone tube”. That’s some ancient history of course. It’s harking back to the compressed air systems that existed in big cities for the pneumatic powering of lifts and so on.

But he (and the workmen) pay a huge compliment to the Romans. "The workmen found that it gave them much more trouble to break up than the modern concrete floor above.". Imagine what a typical local council road will look like in two thousand years time.

Back in here, I went to revise for my Welsh and then attended the lesson. It went OK – not as good as some of them have been just recently, but much better than many in the past, But I need to sort myself out because I have notes everywhere and need to tidy them up.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put in an appearance and she helped me have a lovely, warm shower. And you’ve no idea how much I appreciate it.

She also brought in the post, and one of them was a copy of a report from the dialysis centre. It lists all of my complaints and how I’m being over-taxed with medical appointments, but concludes rather ominously by saying "the patient’s morale is quite low. He’s talking about abandoning his treatment. We strongly recommend that he sees a psychiatrist."

Well, your morale would be low if you were going through all of what I’m going through. As for the psychiatrist, God help the person who draws the short straw and is obliged to probe the depths of my dark, subconscious mind.

Once I’d finished, I came back in here where, regrettably, I crashed out again. And for quite some considerable time too. The early morning doubtless had something to do with it, but I bet that the general fatigue had something to do with it and that’s rather sad.

After I awoke, I edited some of the radio notes and assembled one of the programmes. That’s now ready to go and I’ll do the other set during the week.

Tea was vegan pie with mash and vegetables followed by ginger cake and chocolate sauce, and now I’m off to bed, a nice clean boy in a nice clean bed because my cleaner changed the bedding while I was in the shower.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about filling in forms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone from Crewe who once did a “drop-in” at a local factory to enquire about employment prospects.
"But you haven’t filled in our questionnaire" said the secretary.
So the man from Crewe went back outside and beat up the doorman.

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, as all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, explains why I was sitting at my desk working at 03:30 this morning.

Last night, I’d hit the hay at about 19:30 or thereabouts after my totally exhausting day at the Centre de Ré-education. Having a day like that after two days of chemotherapy is not doing me any good at all, and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless giving me all of these exercises to make me better if the effort is going to kill me.

Surprisingly, considering how dead I was feeling earlier, it took an age for me to go off to sleep. But once I’d gone, I stayed gone and an earthquake wouldn’t have awoken me. But at 02:27 we had another one of these “sitting bolt upright” awakenings that I sometimes have.

Despite all that I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep so after an hour or so, I raised myself from the Dead.

We started off with a foot-fest. There had been some matches in the Welsh Cup last night and the highlights were now online.

And how I laughed as TNS – perennial winners of just about everything – were leading 1-0 against Cardiff Metropolitan with just five minutes to go, only to concede two quickfire goals and go out of the competition.

It was even funnier later when Connah’s Quay – perennial runners-up – playing away at second-tier Llandudno, went down and out 2-1.

What with other results today, we have to go back to 2002-03 to find a Welsh Cup winner who is still in the competition.

After the football, I made a start on last night’s blog entry. I was so exhausted last night that there was no possibility of me doing anything. Eventually, the entry went online and then I had to do the stats and the statistics that I also hadn’t done yesterday.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. I was in the north of Scotland somewhere. There was a kind of canal that had been dug artificially from the sea. There was a ferry boat, one of these small, flat ferry things moored at the ferry terminal along this canal that sailed out across to an island just across a short length of sea. I was there in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van waiting to be loaded on, and a tractor appeared. He had something in the bucket at the front and something in the tri-point hitch at the back. The ferry guy told him that if he wanted to cross over to the island, he’d have to hire a trailer in order to take his things onto the ferry. They couldn’t go like that. He said that he would have to go back to pick up a trailer as he only lives at the top of the hill. The ferry guy said something like “it will be in the next price band” when he comes back so “to tell whoever was here that it’s agreed to pay twenty-five bob to go across”, which was presumably the fare for the current price band where we were. Then I was beckoned onto the ferry. There was a weird chiming noise in the distance, and the ferry guy said that that was the local church bells ringing the time. Then, there was an even weirder one almost straight away. He pointed to some tower on the horizon and said “that’s the town clock, that one is that’s striking now”.

Several ferries of that nature have had the pleasure of my presence. Mainly up in Scotland (and mainly in Bill Badger) but more than just a few around the coast of Nova Scotia.

Later on, I was with my niece’s youngest daughter and someone else. We were in my apartment in Granville. We decided that we’d go out for a meal so I collected my crutches and we set out towards the town. We hadn’t gone too far when I realised that I’d left my sac banane behind with my wallet in it so my niece’s daughter volunteered to run back. But then she pointed out the fact that I was in fact wearing it so we carried on downtown and came across a canal again where there was a boat heading up the canal from the sea. We came into the centre and came into a restaurant. It was 22:00 now and we weren’t sure whether it was still serving, but they ushered us to a table. It was an extremely posh affair and we were surrounded by waiters. I said to my niece’s daughter “we’re actually outnumbered here” to which she laughed. They kept on insisting that we had wines and that kind of thing whereas sparkling water was fine for me. Eventually, they poured a sparkling water for me and left the menus. I had the vegan menu, so there was a kind of stuffed tomato that looked nice. For the main course, I was hoping to have a salad. There were pages and pages and pages of different types of lettuce and different types of dressing. I asked the others what they were having, and they made some kind of suggestion but it didn’t ring any bells with me. The third person with us stood up and went over to a different table. She looked at it and came back, saying “that’s a lovely table over there”. My niece’s daughter said “well, we’re here now”. But the other person replied “but I want to go to sit at that table” but my niece’s daughter ignored her and so did I. We carried on looking through the menu and there were still these pages and pages and pages of different lettuces and different dressings, and I couldn’t really find anything else.

There’s no chance of me being in another restaurant. The last time that I was in one was an absolute disaster and I shan’t be doing that again. Besides, my appetite is all to pot these days. However, who was the third person? That’s a big mystery.

After a visit to the bathroom, I went into the kitchen to make my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and to take my medication.

Back in here later, I sat down in my chair and that was the last thing that I remember until the nurse came at 08:30. Not that that is any surprise. It was an early start.

The nurse gave me a lecture this morning. I mentioned my ongoing dispute about the hours that they expect me to be available for treatment and he was most unhappy. He thinks that I should be grateful for all of the effort that everyone is making towards my eventual recovery and accept everything with a smile.

But that’s the difference between me and the medical profession. They want me to spend all of my life having treatment and I want some quality of life.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast. That included the two croissants left over from the last batch that I made and, warmed in the microwave, they were just as delicious.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

Some of the things that she writes are appalling, and I shudder to think what today’s World would make of them. The female Afro-Caribbean servant of one of the officers’ wives had been scared almost to death by an attack on the fort by the Native Americans and was refusing to go outside. The solution proposed by the officer’s wife was "to flail Laura into subordination by the help of a trunk strap.".

She asked the author to go to help her, and she did! And judging by the style of her writing and her description, she quite enjoyed it too.

Mrs Grummond told us at one stage that her "father was a slave-owner, but one of the better kind.". If the treatment of Laura is an example of the treatment meted out by one of the “better kind”, what on earth must the treatment have been that was meted out by one of the bad kind?

After the breakfast; I had a job to do. I sorted out all of the dry fruit that I need for my Christmas Cake, weighed it, chopped it into smaller amounts and mixed it in a large glass bowl. Having done that, I made a marinade of rum essence, brandy essence, lemon juice, orange essence and vanilla essence in water, added it all over the mix and stirred it well in.

It’s now in the fridge, all soaking in, and it’ll stay there like that for at least a week.

This afternoon I made a start on writing the notes for the radio programme that I’ve been preparing. It was a slow, laborious effort and I’ll have to finish it tomorrow.

We broke off for the football – Caerfyrddin v Colwyn Bay in the Welsh Cup.

Caerfyrddin are in the second tier and Colwyn Bay are in the Premier League, but with all of the cup upsets this weekend, a shock result might have been on the cards. However, Colwyn Bay ran out 3–1 winners without too much difficulty. They were always one pace ahead of the home side.

Tea tonight was two taco rolls with cheese, tomato and mushrooms followed by ginger cake and chocolate soya sauce. And now I’m off to bed, cough and all, because my cough has suddenly come back.

But seeing as we have been talking about the football on Friday night … "well, one of us has" – ed … the grandstand at Maesddu for the Llandudno v Connah’s Quay game was full to capacity, except for one empty seat.
"What’s with the empty seat?" asked one of the stewards
"I bought it for the wife" said the man sitting next to it "but unfortunately, she died."
"Well, couldn’t you offer it to one of your friends?" asked the steward.
"I did, but they couldn’t come" he replied. "They are all at the funeral."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: crash out

Thursday 18th December 2025 – FOR THE THIRD …

Wednesday 17th December 2025 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

Tuesday 16th December 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Friday 12th December 2025 – WELL, THAT WAS …

Wednesday 10th December 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

Saturday 6th December 2025 – MY CHRISTMAS CAKES …

Friday 5th December 2025 – I’VE DONE IT …

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 – ISN’T IT NICE …

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Saturday 29th November 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

Friday 28th November 2025 – THERE’S NO DOUBT …

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

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