… is 13:00 tomorrow. At least, that’s what time I’m expected to be present and standing by my bed. The operation will presumably be rather later than that.

and that’s a shame. I was hoping for an early start, while the knife is still sharp, but it’s not to be. The taxi is coming for me at 12:15 and then it’ll be “panic stations” for the next God-knows how long.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a horror of hospitals, tubes, pipes and the like. Since all of this began in 2015 I’ve been living my nightmare almost every single day and believe me, it’s not made me any more accustomed to it.

Something else to which I am not accustomed is “going to bed early”. It won’t be happening today but it did last night. Being in bed before my target time of 23:00 is a very rare event these days indeed.

And I slept the Sleep of the Dead too, all the way through until 06:15 when the glass lorry came to collect the glass from the recycling bin across the road.

And if you want to know a good definition of “noise”, stand outside here when he drops the contents of the bin into the back of his lorry.

He made such a racket that I was thinking of getting up to face the day but discretion is the better part of valour and I curled up under the quilt again to have my money’s worth

When the alarm went off I headed to the bathroom to sort myself out and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were having some kind of holiday, people who were handicapped or disabled in some way or other had gone to a holiday camp. There was a compere there trying to introduce everything. He was dressed in sandals and socks, and his sandals were far too big for him. He was generally crooning away there and I thought to myself “look at the state of him”. I happened to mention it to a couple of other people who wee in one of the rooms that they should have gone to look at him but they thought that there was nothing happening in the other rooms so I told them that they’d be surprised. There were about 20 people altogether milling around in the three or four different rooms. Things looked as if they might be starting to liven up, and not before time. While I was back there with my head stuck in the door looking at what was happening in that room someone noticed me and said that they had an invitation here for the Duchess of Claibourne. I told them to pass the invitation to me because I knew all about it. She’s being asked to prepare to appear on a TV programme, something like “Tomorrow’s World” or something like thzt and I know all about it. Even so it was still surprising that they’d asked these people to look after the Duchess of Claibourne when their own meeting was pretty poorly attended and there wasn’t a great deal of anything going on with the proceedings and last night it wasn’t until 23:00 that they could go to bed (… fell asleep here …) so in one of the rooms with some of the people in it there was a room with a drinking container with a handle on it for people who needed it. There was something going on in there but I fell asleep while I was trying to line it up to see what was happening so I missed the beginning of what was going on with all these uninspiring people being here and being in charge of the organisation.

As for who the Duchess of Claibourne is, she’s a character in a series of books written by someone called CS Harris and I can safely say without fear of contradiction that I’d absolutely no idea that there ever was such a person, real or fictitious, and I’ve never read a book by the aforementioned author. Where the name has come from in my dream I have no idea. But there was a lot of talk about 15 years ago about these holiday camps for disabled people, so it’s taken quite a while to come round to feature in a dream. Quite frankly, I can’t think of anything more ghastly. I’d rather stay at home, I reckon, the presence of the Duchess of Claibourne notwithstanding.

When the nurse came round she bandaged me up, had a little chat and then left. I have the impression that she’s trying to raise my morale right now which is nice of her. I could certainly do with it. It’s a shame she won’t be there in Avranches to hold my hand.

After breakfast I came back in here, and then had to track down the details about my next Welsh course. I have to sign up before the end of the month so I thought that I’d do it today.

With a little help from one of my friends I managed to find the correct course (at least, I hope that it’s the correct one) and while I was at at, I found a week’s course with another provider that starts when my next Summer School finishes and goes over what we (should have) learned this year.

One of my plans was to redo this year because I’d missed most of it with my various appointments and to do it with another provider to save embarrassment, but this seems to be the best of both words. Not to mention that it’s only going to cost £15:00 and I even have 50% discount from that.

In the future I’ll be looking out for a few more short courses like this. I’ve probably done half a dozen or so at least and it keeps me off the streets.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door too. She’d been into town this morning and they had the disinfectant stuff that the nurse needs so she dropped off a packet. I need to keep the nurse stocked up with supplies. But this place, there’s so much in the way of medication around here that I could open a pharmacy.

The hospital rang up at this point. They want me there standing by my bed at 13:00 and they gave me a whole list of “do’s” and “don’t”. But frankly I’m past caring. They want me to have a shower, but that’s out of the question of course.

They want me to not only bring my medication but to bring it in its boxes. For God’s sake, I’m going in a taxi, not a blasted lorry.

And then they want me to shave my arm ready. I don’t even know where they are going to make the incision.

My general, habitual lack of preparedness means that I’ll probably get it in the neck when I arrive, especially if the Beast from the Hôpital in the Baie is on duty but I don’t care.

This afternoon I was dealing with the fourth lot of radio notes that I’d dictated. They are all edited now, the final track has been chosen and I was on the point of writing the notes when Rosemary rang for a chat.

She’s back now from gallivanting around Italy and wanted to tell me how she got on so we had another one of our phone calls. Rather a short one today – only one hour and twelve minutes. We’re losing our touch.

After the call I stretched out for a minute and as a result was way late for making tea tonight; hence my lateness tonight.

We had stuffed pepper for tea again, with plenty of stuffing left over for the next few days. So for those of you who say that I want stuffing, I now have plenty, thank you. It’ll do for later in the week.

But not tonight, Josephine. I’m off to bed, ready for my appointment with destiny tomorrow. I mustn’t forget to pack my things, for I’m supposed to be staying the night. But as for that, we shall see.

One of the things that Rosemary and I discussed was adoption. We have some very strange conversations sometimes.
But it did remind me of the little boy who asked his dad "daddy, am I adopted?"
"Of course not, son" replied the father
"Really, daddy?" insisted the boy
"Absolutely" assured the father. "Why, out of a whole orphanage full of abandoned children, would anyone have chosen YOU?"