… excitement, things are slightly back to normal here and I’m feeling slightly better. Still, I couldn’t have felt much worse than I did then.

Last night, I crawled into bed at 22:00 or thereabouts, dead to the World, and went straight to sleep. I was so tired that the last thing that I expected was to be awake at 03:39.

Not to worry, though, because I went back to sleep shortly afterwards. And there I lay, until … errr … 04:46. And after that, there was no chance of going back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried.

In the end, round about 05:50, I left the bed and began to write up yesterday’s notes. But for some reason or other, I was feeling quite nauseous this morning. It was extremely uncomfortable for quite a while.

At 06:29 I headed for the bathroom and had a good scrub up and then went into the kitchen for the morning’s hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and I was really surprised at how far I’d travelled last night. There was something about a couple of Roman towns and a complicated street layout that I was examining. But when I came to take hold of the dictaphone, the dream evaporated and I can’t remember anything more about it other than that

Dreaming about Roman towns is no surprise these days, seeing how much reading I’ve been doing on the subject.

There was another dream too about a friend of mine in the USA. I’d sent him a really long letter setting out all kinds of different reasons for this, reasons for that, and something. He wrote back, saying “well OK then, what is it that you want me to do? I’m working under a lot of difficulty and problems too. I wrote back to say that what I wanted was a Ryobi angle grinder with another battery and to ask whether he could find one for me from Home Depot or something like that. But there was somewhere in this dream that I was wandering down a labyrinth of hospital corridors but I don’t know where this fitted in

There is plenty of Ryobi battery-powered stuff around here and down on the farm. It was my favourite brand of tool for all the work that I was doing and it rarely let me down. It was, however, the circular saw that I burnt out, not the angle grinder.

I was either in the Middle East last night or in a Middle Eastern shop in Brussels. It was run by someone from the Levant, something like that. There was a young boy serving behind the counter. I watched him with a customer and he was doing everything that he should have done correctly. He was doing a really nice job of serving these people. When the people left, his boss came out and gave him congratulations about how well he’d been doing and how impressed he was with the sale. But he did have something to say, so I chipped in and said “there’s always a ‘but’, isn’t there?”. He asked him “what time were you out until last night?”. The boy said something like “in the very small hours”. The owner of the shop gave him quite a rebuke – he’s never going to make a good commercant or shopkeeper if he isn’t going to concentrate all of his efforts on his job and make sure that he has a proper night’s sleep before coming into work.

There are plenty of these Middle Eastern shops in Brussels and Leuven and when I lived there, I was a frequent visitor and bought tonnes of spices from there. I’ve run out of cumin just recently and I’ve no idea how or when I’m going to replenish my supplies now that I no longer go there.

From there, I moved on to Gainsborough Road. I was living back in Gainsborough Road and it was all overgrown with weeds and grass growing through the cracks in the concrete, etc. It was a real mess and really untidy. I was finding it really depressing. It was pouring down with rain outside and I was trying to organise a few things so I went down to the shed to fetch something. When I went into the shed, I couldn’t remember what it was that I wanted to fetch so I went back into the house again. I looked at the time and it was 10:35 and I wondered what was happening down at the taxi office. Whether they had come in to work, whether they were working or something like that because the ‘phone in the house hadn’t rung at all at that point. I hoped that there was someone down there. Then I suddenly realised that I wasn’t at work. I thought that I’d better ring my boss and tell him that I was ill, or something like that, and that I’d be in that afternoon. However, I couldn’t remember the ‘phone number. I was sitting there, drumming my fingers on the table trying to recall the ‘phone number, and then I thought “I’m seventy-one years old. What am I doing going in to work? Why am I supposed to be going into work? Why haven’t I retired already? At seventy-one, this is absolutely ridiculous!”.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I did actually retire from work in my dreams the other week. So how come I’m still thinking of going? I’m quite impressed, though, that I can remember my age, even in a dream.

Something else that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that going somewhere to fetch something but forgetting what it was is also a regular habit.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and brought back my empty box. She enjoyed the Christmas cake but found the mince pies rather too sweet for her taste. She’s probably quite right there, because so do I.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE. However, as usual, I was sidetracked down another alley.

This time, it was all about Roman artillery and siege weapons, so I had a browse around in cyberspace to see what I could find. After some searching, I came across DE RE MILITARI by Vegetius Renatus Flavius.

It’s a book about recruiting, training and equipping the Roman Army. The copy is horrible, having been printed in 1767 on transparent paper, but it’s the only English translation available.

Back in here, we had a footfest, with all of the highlights of the games in the JD Cymru League.

And there were some impressive crowds at the matches. The Caernarfon v Colwyn Bay game in the Premier League attracted 1333 spectators, which for a town of just under 10,000 inhabitants, is some good going.

At Ruthun, a town of about 5,700 people, the Vale of Clwyd derby in the Second Division against Denbigh attracted a crowd of 1047, and at Porthmadog, a town of 4,100 or so people, a crowd of 827 saw the Third Division match against neighbours Pwllheli, a town of about 4,000 inhabitants.

After all of that, there was the Stranraer FC Christmas Special, during which, regrettably, I fell asleep. It’s becoming ridiculous, all of this, isn’t it?

This afternoon, I began one or two outstanding jobs, such as tidying up a couple of the drawers in one of the pieces of office furniture. They have been mixed up and in a mess since the removal and it’s high time that I began to sort things out.

The truth is that I can’t seem to find the power pack for the little Roland bass amp. I’ve no idea where it’s gone. It must be somewhere, I suppose, but I can’t see it. Mind you, with the removal that we did in something of a hurry, it’s hardly surprising that some stuff has been misplaced.

When I’d finished the drawers, I began to write the notes for the next radio programme, and I’d completed about sixty percent when it was time to knock off for tea.

Whilst I managed to stay awake while preparing and eating my tea, it didn’t last long. Back in here, while I was typing out these notes, I fell asleep three times and the final time, I couldn’t even see the keyboard when I pulled myself through. So in the end, I crawled off to bed and tomorrow will be another day.

But seeing as we have been talking about pulling ourselves through … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember when I was driving the taxis and I’d heard that one of my regulars was extremely ill.
Consequently, I asked his wife how he was. She replied "I’m afraid he’s at death’s door"
A couole of weeks later, I saw her again and asked how he was
"The doctors have managed to pull him through" she replied.