Tag Archives: doctor

Monday 9th March 2026 – WHATEVER COULD HAVE …

… gone wrong at dialysis today did in fact go wrong. And in spades too! I tell you, I’m totally fed up with all of this, and for two pins, I’d pack it all in and do something else with my time than keep on putting up with it.

In fact, things started to go wrong last night when I fell asleep … errr … riding the porcelain horse before going to bed. As if I don’t have enough trouble trying to be in bed at some reasonable time, last night ended up being completely unreasonable.

As seems to be the case these days, I was asleep quite quickly. However, at some point in the morning before the alarm went off, I awoke. I’ve no idea what time it must have been, because regardless, I had absolutely no intention of leaving the bed at that moment. Not even the combined efforts of Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter could have tempted me out of bed this morning.

In fact, I must have gone back to sleep at some point because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from my slumbers. And once again, we had a real struggle to rise from our comfy bed and face the World.

After a good wash and shave (not that there’s much point in the latter these days seeing as Emilie the Cute Consultant is keeping her distance), I headed off into the kitchen for my morning hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

I was driving somewhere down the Devon and Cornwall peninsula on the coast. As I came round a corner, I could see, way out to sea, three enormous freighters or passenger liners heading out towards the Atlantic. I decided to chase them for a minute and look for a car park somewhere where I could take some photos of them. The first car park that I found, the view wasn’t particularly good. I had to climb up onto a rather large rock where the view was slightly better, but I still couldn’t take a really good photo of these ships – or not as good as I might have had from the vehicle a few miles back. Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me saying “it’s Mr Hall, isn’t it?”. I turned round, and there were two people whom I knew from university. They came over for a chat, and I fell off this rock, but I managed in the end to pick myself up. It turns out that they were staying in the hotel that was behind me. They were telling me about a whole series of new rules at university that basically cut down a lot of the jokes and a lot of the fun that we used to have there. I told them about the ships, and they said that there was a really good viewpoint inside the hotel, so I followed them in. We were talking about luggage labels – how it seems that if you go to an airport and you already have a luggage label on your suitcase, every other airport to which you go for the rest of your life with that suitcase, the suitcase will have a label from the landing crew, but it wouldn’t necessarily have a label if there wasn’t one in the first place. We were talking about good ways to dispose of a body, which was to put it into a suitcase and send it off on a flight somewhere. We went in, but I couldn’t find a way in to this viewpoint. It was one of these traditional hotels with lots of people walking around and very small rooms, but they showed me the way in, which I hadn’t realised was an access, which was through a staff door, and then you could open another set of doors once inside there, and there was a hidden corridor that went all the way down alongside the rooms. I was thinking that if I go down there, at long last I may have a photo of these ships, and that was what I was hoping for in the beginning.

The last time that I was driving down there was back in the 1980s when I took a coach tour that way, but I can’t remember seeing any ships.

The hotel reminds me of where we used to stay when we went to the university for meetings, and the idea that they would change all of the rules to stop people having fun is about par from the course. Even STRAWBERRY MOOSE ended up being expelled after he taunted a British government minister.

The thing about luggage labels seems to have come out of nowhere, though.

There was also something about a Dutch rock musician who had died. He had this Gibson SG guitar, but there was some kind of issue with it, but that’s really all that I remember of that particular dream.

As this dream didn’t really end, I can’t really say anything about this.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, with a big cheesy grin on her face as it’s her last day before her week’s rest. She even had time for a little chat before leaving to finish off her round.

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

Today, we’re discussing the Frankish Duke of Athens and his successors. The first Duke seems to have been able to build up a prosperous territory out of the ruins of the conquest, but as usual, it seems that his heirs went about and managed to undo everything that he had created.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review and then to send off ready for broadcast this weekend, and after a few more tasks that needed attention, I spent the rest of the morning revising my Welsh ready for tomorrow and checking over the homework that I then sent off for marking.

At 12:00, I knocked off and went to sort myself out for dialysis. my faithful cleaner turned up as usual to sort out the anaesthetic and we discussed my idea of moving all of the medication – to such an extent that I forgot my disgusting drink before leaving.

The taxi turned up early for me, and we had to go off to Sartilly to pick up another passenger. We arrived at dialysis early, 13:40 to be precise, and I staggered off to my bed and waited to be seen.

And waited … and waited … and waited …

Sometimes I find it difficult to understand what goes through the head of the planning department at the dialysis centre. Who in their right minds would put two trainee nurses in a room of eight patients without the guiding hand of someone more experienced?

It was 14:50 when I was finally plugged in, in total agony with one of the pins. And I wasn’t the only one who suffered this afternoon either. And at least I was left pretty much alone after that.

The doctor came to see me and asked if he could do anything for me. "How about making me better?" I asked. He didn’t stay long after that.

As I mentioned the other day, they have decreased my dry weight and are taking out the excess water bit by bit. At least, that was the plan. But today, they took out a whopping 2,000 grammes. I’m not sure if that’s all of it, but I’m now down to below my ideal non-active weight. Since I’ve been having dialysis, I’ve lost 8,000 grammes in total, but much of that is down to not eating so much.

When my session of three and a half hours was over, I waited to be unplugged. And waited … and waited … and waited, while the two nurses cleaned up the empty machines from the other people who had left.

Eventually, one of them wandered over. "Has it finished already?" she asked.

"Yes, and for quite a while too" I replied.

"But surely … ohhh! It’s only three and a half hours, not four!" and she carried on cleaning the other machines.

Eventually, I was unplugged, and as I was preparing to leave, she suddenly remembered that she should have taken a blood sample. So here we go again.

It was 19:00 when I was finally ready to leave and 19:10 when the taxi arrived. “That’s what time it was booked for” said the driver, and I could believe him.

Consequently, it was 19:50 when I returned home, having left at 12:50 for a session of three and a half hours. And I bet that the senior doctor, who follows these pages and tries to pull me up if I say anything bad about the service, will have “missed” this entry and nothing will happen about it. But it’s really getting on my nerves.

Tea tonight was the rest of last night’s pizza with birthday cake and home-made ice cream for pudding. And now I’m off to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about ships … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me that in the High Arctic, they once encountered a ghost ship.
"How did you know that it was a ghost ship?" I asked
"There was only a skeleton crew on board"

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Thursday 5th March 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I first told them at dialysis that I’d cut down dramatically on the food that I ate?

It all started after a couple of sessions of chemotherapy when all of the food began to taste of nothing but salt, so let’s say “August 2025”.

Anyway, as usual, no-one took any notice of anything that I had to say, and so little by little, the quantity of liquid to be extracted from my body has diminished and diminished. Today, for example, it was just 200 grammes – a far cry from twelve months ago when they were extracting well over 2,000 grammes at each session.

But today, we have finally had a reaction. When the figure of just 200 grammes came up, they fetched the electricity resistance meter to measure the water in my body, and they came up with a staggering 3,800 grammes. In other words, since they last used the meter on me, and I really can’t remember when it was, I’ve lost 3,600 grammes in weight.

What they have been doing is calculating the liquids to be removed based on the previous “dry weight”.

If you had asked maybe a year ago, losing 3,800 grammes of water in a dialysis session would have been OK, but not having had that much to remove for quite a while, my body wouldn’t withstand the shock all at once. And so they are going to remove an extra 1,000 grammes per session until I catch up with where I ought to be.

But what a performance! No wonder I’ve been feeling so tired just recently.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, I managed to be in bed before 23:30. But only just, as it was 23:15 when I finally crawled under the covers. Not as early as I would have liked, because I’m trying to be in bed before 22:30 to give me eight hours’ sleep, but most of the time, that proves to be an unrealistic target.

So once in bed, it didn’t take long to go off to sleep, and while I remember waking up a couple of times, I was soon back to sleep again. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Eventually, I managed to stagger off to the bathroom where I had a good scrub-up and a shave – I’m not sure why because Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more – and then I went off for my hot drink and medication.

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

We were living in some kind of house with people of every nationality in it. My room was just across from where the Russians were. Every time that I went out, I had to take my crutches from against the wall and they used to bang on the latch of the Russian door. I’m sure that they were annoyed by it, but this was happening every time. We’d been using our rooms as kinds of sales places for selling our national products. Books were one of the most important things and I’d been having book fairs in my room, but on this particular occasion, I picked up my crutches and they banged on the latch of this door, and someone came to the door to see what was happening. It wasn’t anyone from the Russians but it was a friend of mine from the UK. I went in and apologised, but I could see that the Russians were in one part of the room and someone else, much younger, was trying to sell a book to an ordinary person. It seemed that there had been an evolution in how trading was taking place for books and I hadn’t noticed. Then, they began to talk about this other book, and the person, or the victim, I suppose, couldn’t seem to find it so I pointed it out to him. It was above his head on a shelf, but it took him a good few minutes to realise that. There was also something else about other people there who were needing some kind of help when it came to buying and selling books. They were sitting more like passengers in a motorcycle combination, which was at the side of everything rather than behind it.

This is another dream that seems to have come out of nowhere at all. There’s nothing in this dream that seems to relate to anything that I’ve been doing or thinking just recently.

Having said that, though, I did spend about ten minutes last night trying to remember some of the Russian that I used to know and practising a few of the words that I used to know.

Isabelle the nurse was very late arriving today, so I had made a start on the next radio programme while I was waiting. And when she finally did turn up, she was in such a rush that she couldn’t hang around and was soon gone.

That enabled me to make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

The Frankish Crusaders have now arrived in Greece and are busily dividing up the country between the leaders of the Crusade, creating small duchies that alienated the local population and led the locals to make some rather strange alliances in order to try to drive the Franks out – something that created a period of disorder for a couple of centuries.

Back in here, I carried on choosing the music for the next radio programme. Some of it took some finding too, but it’s now all collected, remixed, reformatted, re-edited, paired and segued, and the notes started. Where has all this energy come from?

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then the taxi turned up, early again. Mind you, there were two other people to pick up on the way, so we weren’t any earlier arriving.

And I was really impressed by the number of flowers that have appeared by the roadside these last few days. It’s all looking impressively beautiful out there now.

At the dialysis session, we had the pantomime, as I mentioned earlier, and then I was left pretty much alone to complete my shopping list.

There was, as usual, a delay in unplugging me from the machine, and by the time that the nurse had finished compressing my arm, the taxi driver was here. He wasn’t particularly chatty, so we had something of a silent voyage home.

And isn’t it nice to be back home in the daylight?

My cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment.

Tea tonight was going to be a vegetable korma out of the freezer, but while I was rummaging around in the freezer, I came across an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit dated, would you believe, November 2023. I decided to eat that before it walked out of the freezer on its own

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready for a good radioing morning tomorrow. I have my shopping list to send off and a pile of washing to do. I hope that I remember to do them all.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the stuff in my freezer … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once said that she had problems taking something out of her freezer.
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because every time I opened the freezer door, something in there reached out and closed it again"

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Monday 2nd March 2026 – ANOTHER EXCITING DAY …

… at dialysis, I don’t think. If I’m not careful, I shall die of boredom in there. As if I don’t have enough to do with my time as it is, and when you only have one hand that you can use because the other one is pinned to the side of the bed, it all becomes extremely complicated.

Having been going there for as long as I have, I can see why most of the patients in there just curl up and go to sleep.

Actually, that’s how I felt today, and I almost did fall asleep too, but then again, I had a very good reason to do so.

Last night, it wasn’t quite so late as it has been in the past. By the time that I finished everything that needed doing and crawled into my stinking pit, it was 23:20. Still much later than I would have liked, of course, but still earlier than some have been just recently.

What was the killer, though, was that I awoke at 05:20. And it was a case of leaving the bed at that moment too, without even five minutes to let the bedroom stop spinning around.

While I was up and about, I went for a wash and shave and to dress, and then I came back in here because it was far too early to go for my medication.

Instead, I took advantage of the early start and dictated the radio notes that I’d prepared since the last time that I’d had an early start. There were seven lots of programmes all told, and that was a Herculean effort to dictate them all and then upload them to the computer, but I’m glad that they are all done now and I’m up-to-date from that point of view.

Once I’d finished, I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

I was driving my taxi again last night, and there was something going on in the town centre, so I was there. I must have taken away about twenty fares. One of the very early ones was to go from the town centre with a girl whom I knew who worked in a restaurant there and drop her off at home down the West End. But every other single trip involved a trip down Gresty Road, and I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed to be heading that way. On the way back, on the corner where the Crewe Alex ground is, there was a huge church with lots of tourists milling around there. There were two or three taxis that were waiting there for fares in amongst the crowds, and there was some kind of official, like a tourist guide or something, amongst them. As I kept on going back there to the town centre, I kept on going into a kind of room. At one point, back in this room were some of the people whom I’d taken quite early on in the day, so we had a joke about the trip down the West End because that girl was back there too. I said “I’d have to take a photograph of you,” but she misunderstood it because she was a foreigner, and wondered what on earth kind of photograph I was thinking of. At one stage, I had to go into a different room. I was carrying something. The reason why was that I needed some kind of authority from someone senior, and I knew that the small rooms where the senior people hang out were down this corridor. And out of another room towards the room where I was standing came someone with whom I used to work years ago. We went into his room, and he said “I suppose that you’re going to come out with some kind of comment about photos too, aren’t you?”. Then I suddenly realised that this guy had commented on some photos on a social network, and his comments would not have been the kind that would have been approved today, although thirty or forty years ago, there would have been no remark made. I replied “oh no, but they were rather indiscreet, weren’t they?” to which he just gave a shrug.

This is one problem with living and working in a foreign language. Quite often, you might understand the words but not the actual meaning of the phrase, and this can lead to all kinds of double-entendres and misunderstandings.

But here I am again, driving taxis around Crewe and bumping into old work colleagues. And it’s true about how the UK, and probably many other countries in the Western World, have become more sanitised, and the kind of risqué or oblique comments that we used to use in the past suddenly became banned overnight – round about 1991 and 1992 when we began to have these “political correctness” lessons in the workplace. I remember that a lot of my more humorous cassette tapes that I used on the coaches were completely outlawed

There was also a dream about being down in the Isle of Thanet on holiday. I was walking along the beach, looking up at the promenade thinking “wouldn’t it be great if they dredged this out and they had ships coming along here to moor and anchor right up against the promenade? Then, my mother was talking to my father about the houses in the area. They were alternately grey and white, but we didn’t really know why. We went to visit someone whom we knew, who lived in one of these grey and white wooden wattle-and-daub type of cottage. We went into the kitchen, and I vaguely remember the kitchen from years ago and it looked different to me. She said “yes, there have been one or two changes here. Can you think of what’s missing?”. For some unknown reason, and I don’t know why, I mentioned a bookcase. She looked surprised, and she said “there used to be a bookcase just here”, pointing to an empty space on the wall, “but that’s long gone, and you’ve never seen it. It’s been long gone before you first ever came to this cottage”.

Firstly, there are several places in the World where different colours of houses represent different ethnic groups. Hungary and southwestern Newfoundland spring straight away to my mind, and I seem to recall that Romania does too, or used to.

As for the Isle of Thanet, though, my mother had distant relatives there and every summer, we’d go down there to stay with a great aunt or something, Dolly, Gertie or Mabel. On the Friday night after school broke up, our father would come home from work, we’d all pile into his van and drive through the night and next day down to either Birchington or Hamstreet.

He’d have a few hours’ sleep and then drive back Saturday night and Sunday, ready to start work again on Monday, and that was no picnic in the days before motorways and in a 1937 Fordson van with a three-speed gearbox.

And then he’d come back down for the final two weeks of our school holidays.

Incidentally, many years ago, I went down there myself for a good look around and to visit the places where we used to go. With the M6, M1, M25 and M2, the journey from Crewe to Birchington took just under four hours.

The nurse turned up as usual and was in a chatty mood, hardly surprising because he’s on his week’s break as of this evening. He didn’t stay long, and I could push on, make my breakfast and read my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Our author is coming to the close of the period of the Roman occupation, so naturally we’re discussing the religious disputes and also the gathering clouds on the horizon as Alaric and his Huns, various Visigoths and a few Ostrogoths are heading towards Athens and the other Greek cities.

The next few years look to be fairly bleak from a Greek point of view.

Back in here, I reviewed a radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and, satisfied with how it runs, I sent it off for inclusion in the broadcasting stream. There were a few other things to do, and then I made a start on the next radio programme. All of the music has been chosen and prepared, and I’ve made a start on pairing and segueing it.

My cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then I had to wait for the taxi. He was more-or-less on time but there were two other passengers to pick up, and as one of them was late for her appointment, we had to drop her off first and I ended up being the last to be dropped off.

At the dialysis clinic, it was one of the new nurses who attended to me. She’d had a very bad experience on Thursday connecting me, what with the machine breaking down and all that, so naturally she was extremely nervous today. I tried to encourage her but even so, it wasn’t far short of 15:00 when I was finally connected.

Nothing exciting happened there today apart from that, but the doctor came to see me to see if everything had been OK over the weekend. What could I say? Nothing ever changes around here.

Eventually, hours late, I was unplugged, but at least the taxi was already here. It was the young chatty driver who came for me, although I would quite happily have swapped for my favourite lady driver who had come for someone else. But anyway, we had a good chat on the way home.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me when I arrived, and she helped me into the apartment.

After she left, I warmed up my half-pizza from yesterday and for a change, I had a small baked potato with it. It was followed by an apricot half and home-made ice cream.

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready to catch up on the sleep that I missed last night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about double entendres … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me if I’d heard the story about the girl from Crewe who went into a pub and asked for a double-entendre.
"No, I hadn’t" I replied. "What happened?"
"The barman gave her one."

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Monday 23rd February 2026 – I AGAIN FELL …

… asleep in a most embarrassing situation earlier this evening. So we’ll have to see how far we go with these notes right now before I throw in the towel and head for the hills.

It’s something that is very difficult to explain because last night, I had probably the deepest sleep that I have had for many a long time.

Not that it was early, though. It was another night where I struggled to make progress and once more, it was round about 23:30 when I finally finished everything and was able to crawl into bed.

But once in bed, I remember nothing, absolutely nothing at all, and when the alarm went off at 06:29 as usual, I was in such a deep sleep that I could quite easily have slept through it. It took a surprising amount of effort to reach out over my head to the bedside table to find the ‘phone

It took just as much effort to haul myself upright and sit on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor before the second alarm, and there I sat for quite a few minutes, waiting for the bedroom to stop spinning around my head and for me to find the effort to stand up.

After a visit to the bathroom for a good scrub up and a shave, I headed off into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. Then back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I had been during the night.

There was some guy called Peter McTurk. He’d been found wandering around the streets of Rome as a street child and had been adopted by some rich American woman who had managed to bring him back into society and teach him all kinds of different things relating to civilisation. He’d settled down quite nicely. In 1917 he’d begun to play with a rock band and later on, went on to have his own group in which I was the bassist. This group had a great deal of success, even though it was only something like a high school band. I remember a kind of four-wheeled trolley that you’d push, with a flat bed on it, and it used to take all of our equipment as we were moving about from place to place and unloading the van to go into halls etc. We didn’t have a great deal. One person who figured in it was my girlfriend at the time, but I can’t remember very much more after this.

Fancy having a girlfriend in a dream and not remembering anything about it! That’s a real disappointment.

However, it must have been fun playing in a rock band in 1917. Can you imagine it?

I had another dream similar to the one the other night … "it was earlier this evening" – ed … about playing in that rock group. We had all kinds of rehearsals, things like that, but I can’t remember very much about it from last night, unfortunately.

At one time, we used to have recurring dreams quite often. However, they were never the kind of recurring dreams that I would have liked to have had. For this one, for example, I can’t even remember if the mythical girlfriend from the first instalment put in another appearance.

Isabelle the Nurse put in her usual appearance to sort out my legs and feet. She had a few moments to chat, but it looks as if I won’t see the photos of Carnaval until she’s back on duty in a week’s time or so. She’s working tomorrow, but as it’s her last day before her break, she’ll be in quite a rush.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast. Porridge, toast and black coffee as usual. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

We’re still discussing pottery, and our author is rather puzzled as to why early Iron Age pottery pans are still being found in layers that relate to the close of the Iron Age. The fact that by the end of the Iron Age, there is little pottery from outside the local area suggests that the area was isolated by this time, but this is even more puzzling, bearing in mind that wine jars from southern Spain dating to this period have been recovered and that in earlier iron Age periods, pottery has been found that has evidently travelled some considerable distance

It seems that there are tons of mileage to be explored when considering the considerable remains of pottery that he and his team uncovered at the site.

But while I was in the kitchen, I checked on my cake. Putting it in the fridge did the trick and the filling cream did solidify again. However, not all of it remains in between the two layers of the cake. The cake on its plate looks like a rather large island in the middle of a small frozen lake.

Still, not to worry. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make any mistakes. I just learn a lot of lessons, and some of them are expensive.

And that reminds me. Seeing as we have been talking about my cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … I have received a few requests from readers. Most of them are physically impossible, of course, but one was for the recipe for the cream filling.

So here goes –

  • 150 g vegan cream cheese or thick coconut yoghurt. I used 100 g of plain soya yoghurt with 50 g of coconut oil
  • 75 g vegan butter
  • 200–250 g icing sugar – depending on how thick you would like it
  • chopped ginger to taste
  • powdered ginger to taste
  • 2 tablespoons of syrup or maple syrup
  • A pinch of salt
  • cinnamon, nutmeg, orange, lemon to taste.
  1. whisk up the vegan butter until it goes all fluffy
  2. add the yoghurt and whisk until mixed (not too much or it will separate)
  3. sift in the icing sugar, salt, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange, lemon, then whisk until it goes as thick as you would like it
  4. add in the chopped ginger and syrup, and stir well in
  5. leave in the fridge for half an hour to go really cold.

Back in here, I had things to do. And then I reviewed this week’s radio programme and sent it off. Following that, I reviewed my Welsh for tomorrow and, in whatever time was left, made a start on the next radio programme.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and after she left, I waited for my taxi.

There wasn’t long to wait because today, she was early again. There was someone else to pick up in Granville and another person in Sartilly, but even so, we were still early arriving at dialysis.

It wasn’t possible to find a bed to which I had to walk further than the one in which they installed me today. And once there, I had to wait no fewer than forty minutes for them to come to see me. And then it was to couple me up to an electric machine first to check my dry weight. I had to wait even longer for the session to start.

Once installed, they left me pretty much to my own devices. The duty doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) came to see me.

"Is there anything I can do for you today?" he asked.

"No, thank you" I replied, and carried on reading.

When the session came to an end, the nurse dealing with me found everything else to do except to unplug me. I had to wait an eternity to be liberated. And then the taxi driver had to go to the depot to fuel up the car and collect some paperwork so I was horribly late returning home

Tea tonight was the other half of last night’s pizza with tinned apricots and vegan sorbet, which was just as delicious as always. But tomorrow, I’m going to treat myself to some custard for tea. I know that it’s banned for me, but I don’t care.

So right now, having survived falling asleep on the way back to the office and having kept on going to the end, I’ll finish off everything and go to bed ready for exciting times tomorrow;

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my cake again … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone mentioned about it being cooked on the top and not as well cooked at the bottom.
"What did it say in the instructions about putting it into the oven?" she asked.
"Nothing much" I said. "Just ‘put into the oven at 180°’"
"Well, there you are!" she exclaimed. "Put it in the oven at 180°. That means ‘turn it upside-down’."

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Monday 16th February 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… things seemed to go my way at dialysis and I was back home by 18:20 – a good fifty or so minutes earlier than usual. And if it were like that every session, it wouldn’t be so bad at all.

Mind you, it was rather embarrassing. When the taxi came for me, a good twenty-five minutes early, I was … errr … busy riding the porcelain horse and the driver had to wait a few minutes for me.

In fact, I’ve had many a worse twenty-four-hour period than this last one, that’s for sure.

Things brightened up a little last night, for once. For a change, I managed to complete everything that I needed to complete without being drawn too far out of my way by some kind of distraction, and I was actually in bed just before 22:30, and I wish that I could do that more often.

And once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, and although I had one or two vague recollections of being less-than-asleep at certain points during the night, I was still flat-out when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As is usual these days, though, it took me a good while to summon up the force to stagger off into the bathroom, where eventually I had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I headed off into the kitchen.

After the hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was living in a different apartment building and the one to which I’d moved was much more modern than this. But when someone was cleaning away at the electricity supply there was a breakdown, a complete nervous breakdown … fell asleep here … and in this apartment building, we found that there were extra rooms behind the technical room. Apparently, we should have one of these rooms each, presumably for storage, but no one had known about this. The people who owned my apartment before I did had probably lived here on and off five hundred metres before the present tew could make his objection.

Whatever this was about, I have no idea. It’s hardly surprising that I was in a deep sleep in the middle of it because it makes very little sense at all.

We’d started back at school and we’d only been there a couple of days when we found out that there was to be a huge reorganisation. Of course, we had no idea what this reorganisation was all about or why it was even necessary and there were all kinds of speculation and rumours floating around. In the end, we were called into our class assemblies and we were introduced to two new students. One was someone who lived in New York and the other one – we didn’t really catch where he came from – but it turned out that they were being trained in espionage duties and were to work on the Communist Party in Eastern Europe. But while we were waiting to be spoken to and the speculation was going on, I made quite a few witty comments, in particular in the question of a discussion about keeping your own petrol tanker lorry as a way of hedging against inflation, and the teacher asked me where I’d picked all these up. I replied “well, I had a strange father”. Anyway, these two guys, they didn’t really fit in, and they disappeared quite soon. But someone said that she saw one of them in prison in Den Haag. Apparently, he’d been collecting all of the information and feeding it back to the Russians. There was also a story about a boy in our class who lived in a motor caravan. He’d been given notice to quit practically the same day, so he was digging his heels in, making the field something like his own with his car tyre ruts and so on until he could find a compromise with the girls in the girls’ fields who were playing hockey during the winter.

The part about training for espionage relates to a book that I’ve been reading on and off about the creation of the British Secret Service, and the schoolboy living in a mobile home is presumably a reference to a John Le Carré book that I read years ago about a teacher at a public school who was living in a caravan at the back of the school playing field.

However, there was not much likelihood of our school having a huge reorganisation during the period when I was there. Steeped in tradition going back centuries.

There were a couple of other dreams too, but you don’t need to know about them, except that in one of them, I was still working a couple of years after retirement age, something that seems to be a regular occurrence in a dream these days.

The nurse turned up as usual but he didn’t stay long. He had his blood kit with him so I imagine that he must have had a queue of patients at his office waiting to give blood samples.

Once he’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

Not that I advanced very far, though. I came across an interesting report that told us that last year, advances in radiocarbon dating techniques revealed that the battle-scarred dead in what Mortimer Wheeler called “the War Cemetery” didn’t all relate to one incident. It seems to show that there were at least three, and maybe more distinct phases of warfare, only one of which might possibly fit in with Wheeler’s theory of a Roman attack.

Incidentally, the new report doesn’t fit in completely with Sharples’ interpretation either. Nevertheless, he’s not above taking another sly dig at Wheeler, commenting that he was making "a subjective impression which conveniently suited the historical interpretation applied to the evidence."

Back in here, I revised my Welsh, even though there’s no lesson tomorrow, and then began to track down the music for the next radio programme.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and as I mentioned earlier, the taxi was really early to come to fetch me for dialysis.

The wind outside was such that I had to leave by the back door, where the cars can pull up right outside the building in the alley reserved for the fire brigade. That’s much more convenient for me than being bowled over by a gale-force wind.

We had to pick up someone else along the way but even so, I arrived at dialysis at 13:25. There was quite a queue of cars but luckily I was in the small room with only four beds, of which three (including mine) were occupied.

The nurse was busy finishing off the first arrival when I went in, but the lady who was second wanted more time to prepare so I was seen straight away, which was nice. There was no time for me to apply the ice pack, but I didn’t care. The sooner I start, the sooner I finish, even if it was one of my favourite nurses.

Once I was up and running, I was left pretty much alone, although the doctor on duty turned up to see me just as I was about to be unplugged. Of course, I wasn’t going to stay around to talk.

The taxi was waiting for me, which was also nice, so I was back here really early.

But once more, there’s chaos in the building. Yet another proprietor, fed up with the inability of the House committee to organise this fibre optic installation, has gone ahead and had his walls drilled, even though, in a historic building such as this one, it’s streng verboten. I decided to throw some oil onto the flames by writing to the committee. It probably won’t galvanise them into action, but we can live in hope.

Tea tonight was the rest of the pizza, followed by jam roly-poly and vegan sorbet. That will keep the lupus from the porte for a while, as they might have said in Ancient Rome.

So right now, I’m off to bed, early, I hope. A good sleep will do me some good if I can manage it, but this decent twenty-four-hour spell can only last so long.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the nurse and his blood-sample kit … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of back in the old days in Transylvania –
"Blood samples should be taken at the office between 08:30 and 09:30. If you are unable to attend, please let us know and we will send a bat."

0

Monday 9th February 2026 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… little excitement, things are back to normal now, or, at least, as normal as they can be. Mind you, I’m not ruling out crashing out once more before I finish today’s notes.

As to what happened yesterday, I really don’t know. I was actually feeling quite perky but then, all of a sudden, this dramatic wave of fatigue came out of nowhere and swamped me completely. Three times, I’d gone off with the fairies … "although not in a manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … and I simply couldn’t carry on.

At that moment, bed was the best place to be, and so off I went.

It didn’t take long for me to go off to sleep, but I’m sure that you are aware of what happened next. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … and I’ll leave you lot to fill in the rest of the sentence.

So there I was, at 04:00, wondering what to do next. I tried to go off to sleep but to no avail, and at 05:30 I was up and about.

Off I staggered into the bathroom and from there into the kitchen, even though it was so early, where I made my hot drink and took my medicine.

Back in here, determined not to waste the morning, I dictated the outstanding notes that had built up over the last week or so for a couple or three radio programmes.

Well, almost, anyway. As I was dictating the third and last set, the ZOOM H8 stopped recording, and I hadn’t noticed until I’d finished dictating.

Consequently, I re-dictated the notes and once more, it stopped without me noticing until I’d finished this lot.

Subsequent enquiry revealed that the memory was full. I needed to upload the contents of the memory onto one of the backup discs, and do you have any idea how long it takes to upload 64 GB of data?

While it was being busy, I made a start on finishing off last night’s notes, and now they are online for you to peruse.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted me in mid-flight and I had to wander off to have my feet and legs receive her tender ministrations. It’s her last day today for a week so she was quite happy.

In fact, she’s off for eight days because she and her friends have a float at Carnaval and they will be parading on Tuesday.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

He’s still discussing pottery, and not just pottery discovered at Maiden Castle but all over Europe. While it’s nice to have the scene well and truly set, it can be overdone and we can drown in a wealth of unnecessary detail.

Once breakfast was over, I came back in here and finished off my notes and then transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was a Jewish family summoned into the town from out in the countryside. They didn’t really know why but they were obliged to come all the same. One family set out to arrive but the eldest son had to stay somewhere along the road with one of their vehicles that had developed a flat tyre but the rest of the family arrived. The father, who was a little suspicious of the sons noticed some kind of army convoy around in the city and as it set off, he decided to follow it to see where it went. But somewhere in the middle of this, there was something about being in a library where there were all these books on different medicines. It was interesting to note that of all of the different recipes, there was only one company that made its recipes completely open to the public. They were for the three medications that I used to take regularly back in the past so I took the recipes and went to have a read of them. Then this family decided to go out and they had to leave a glass of water behind, so what they did was to drop a couple of drops of ink into it and it went a horrible light brown colour, so they left it. When they returned to the apartment later, they couldn’t find their butler. They had to search for him. Suddenly, they found him sitting on the sofa disguised as a pile of old rags. They asked him for an explanation, and he said that seeing as they hadn’t invited him to go out with them earlier, he took a couple of hours off to go to the local museum but the museum was closed so he came home and dressed up in the hope of giving everyone a really good surprise and a good laugh.

As to where this came from, I have no idea. It doesn’t seem to relate to anything that I’ve been discussing, except, of course, the three medications.

When I’d finished that, I had a few things to do and then I prepared for my Welsh course tomorrow. It does no harm to try to forge ahead while I still can.

My cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic on my arm, and after she left, I waited for the taxi.

And I didn’t have to wait long either. He was ten minutes early and he already had one passenger on board. We stopped off at Sartilly to pick up another passenger who travels with me sometimes, and we arrived at dialysis a good twenty minutes early.

Now here’s a thing. Even twenty minutes early, I was last to arrive in the room but another woman, having arrived before me, was still applying an ice pack in preparation, so she let me go first. It’s very rare that that happens, and I appreciated it a great deal.

The doctor came to see me too. He wanted to discuss my cough which, having gone away while I was on antibiotics, is now back again. After some kind of chat, he prescribed yet another course of antibiotics and a couple of other medicaments. After that, they left me pretty much alone.

Having been connected early, I was unplugged early too and the taxi was waiting for me, so I was actually home early. But with the howling gale and driving rain, I was dropped off at the fire escape round the back.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside and after she left I had a few other things to do, and then I went and warmed up my half-pizza, which was followed by fruitcake and soya dessert.

Right now, though, I know that it’s early but I’m off to bed. A good sleep will do me good with my Welsh course tomorrow, but whether or not I actually have a good sleep remains to be seen. Still, if I’m up early, I can always finish off the dictation.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Carnival… "well, one of us has" – ed … one year, they were giving helicopter rides at €10:00 per person.
The pilot was an ex-Air Force pilot and he told the passengers "if you manage ten minutes without screaming, I’ll give you €100:00."
He puts on a show to end all shows and all of the passengers were screaming, except for one little old man who was totally silent.
When they landed, he gave the man €100:00 and said "that was astonishing. You’re the first person whom I’ve ever taken who managed not to scream. How did you do it?"
"It was actually really difficult" replied the man. "I was going to say something when my wife fell out, but €100:00, it’s €100:00."

0

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 – THEY SAY THAT …

… wiser counsel comes overnight. And that’s certainly true in my case, especially last night. And that’s because I had plenty of time to consider it.

Going to bed at about 22:00 is all very well, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a pretty pointless exercise if you wake up at … errr … 01:05.

Last night though, I really was ill. Not in a medical sense, I suppose (even though I am, of course), but my morale had dropped through the floor and it was carrying on sinking. There’s only one place to be when that happens, so I dashed through my notes at an incredible rate of knots, finished off everything else as quickly as possible and then headed for the hills.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, because I really was wasted. However, as I said just now, I didn’t stay asleep for long.

So there I was, tossing and turning for hours, trying to find a comfortable position without much success, but I must have eventually fallen asleep because some company or other sent me a text message at 04:25 and that awoke me.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go back to sleep and there I was when the alarm went off.

As usual, it took an age to summon up the courage and the strength to go to the bathroom, and then I came in here. No medication this morning.

The first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I had some Welsh homework outstanding, and the tutor came to see me – a male tutor, this particular one. I explained that I’d had that many medical appointments recently that it was difficult for me to find the time to do several things that I wanted to do, including the Welsh homework. But I was surprised that he was hardly sympathetic at all. He said “you seem to be putting much less effort into your course just recently”, to which I replied that I was putting most of my effort into my medical issues and it can’t really be helped. He told me that he’d give me until Monday and that would be the final cut-off for the homework period. I had to sort out all of my paperwork after he’d left. I took some bread and cheese and things and went to sit in my van with the paperwork out, but I just couldn’t concentrate at all, time was dragging on and I hadn’t even begun to make any progress. Some of my friends were back in the building and wondered where the butter had gone. No-one knew exactly where it was so I said that I had it. They came over and brought me a little note or something to get well, which was nice of them, but I was just sitting there and couldn’t really function and was doing absolutely nothing whatsoever towards this homework.

This is the story of my life, isn’t it? Being paralysed with inaction when I should be doing things. I can go for weeks like this and then have a sudden burst of energy during which I not only catch up with everything but actually soar ahead.

Round about 07:45, I decided that I’d better go into the kitchen to wait for Isabelle the Nurse who should arrive at any moment. Instead, though, it was the taxi driver who had come early, so I had to quickly put on my shoes and stuff my socks into my pocket.

Halfway across the courtyard we met Isabelle the Nurse. She was on time, but with the taxi being early, she was confounded. And so we ended up with the undignified spectacle of me sitting in the car, feet outstretched outside in the cold and rain with Isabelle the Nurse oiling my bare feet and sorting out my socks while the taxi driver, a passenger that she had picked up earlier and a whole crowd of people waiting for the 08:10 bus looked on with interest and amazement.

You can’t say that I don’t live an interesting life.

So Part One of today’s adventures began, with a trip down to Avranches. We dropped off the other passenger at the clinic and then my driver took me to the hospital. She found a wheelchair for me, and then we played “hunt the doctor” until we finally found her.

This doctor, I think she’s wonderful. She’s a tiny woman of “a certain age”, and while she’s examining your arm and your dialysis implant, she’s complaining all the time about the standard of work that the surgeon did and a lot more besides. Just like my favourite taxi driver, she puts a lot of ambience and atmosphere into her work and I think that it’s great. Today, though, she was rather restrained and I was somewhat disappointed.

It was the same driver who brought me home, although there was someone else to drop off along the way. The driver had to help me into the apartment because my faithful cleaner was with one of her other clients this morning.

Back in here, I grabbed a quick bowl of porridge and a mug of coffee and then headed off for my Welsh lesson, arriving rather later than I intended.

One thing about the lesson, though, was that it went really, really well and I was quite impressed. Spending a couple of hours over the weekend reading through the notes and checking the vocabulary seems to be paying dividends with my course, although I wish that I could remember it afterwards. That’s the problem with having a Teflon brain – nothing sticks to it at all.

So Part One of my day was at Avranches. Part Two was my Welsh course. Part Three was my shower. My faithful cleaner turned up and organised the bathroom for me so that I could have a nice, hot soak. And I needed it too. And I felt much better afterwards, that’s for sure. I wish that I could shower more often, but I’m not allowed to do it unsupervised.

However, all this might change. The handles and restraining bars to be installed in the shower arrived a couple of weeks ago and with them, I’m much more independent. My cleaner and I decided that on Friday, we’ll go round the apartment to make a list of things that need doing, and then I’ll contact the carpenter to see if he’s available.

If anyone else who has visited the apartment can think of anything that I ought to have done, don’t hesitate to let me know because this will be the only chance to do it.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … shower, I suddenly realised that I’d been trying to walk out of the bathroom without my crutches. If only …

Part Four of my day came later. That was at about 16:30 when my favourite taxi driver came to pick me up for an appointment with the heart specialist down in the town. That was quite a hike to his office too but I managed it, just about.

He was running behind time too, so I had to wait for quite a while, all the time standing up because, with no armrests on his chairs in the waiting room, I can’t stand up afterwards. And that’s an interesting fact – since I’ve become disabled, I’m seeing the World in a totally different light than I ever did before.

Eventually, he saw me and gave me a good going-over. And apparently, there’s an improvement since the last time that he examined me. Everyone is worried, and I’ve been having these tests since the announcement that the chemotherapy has failed. It’s nice to have some good news for a change, even though it doesn’t explain why I’m so out of breath these days.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … with a lower red blood count than usual, my heart is having to work correspondingly faster to pump enough oxygen around my body. Even so, there’s no circulation in my feet (hence the daily visits of the nurse, to massage them and rub oil in) and at times, there’s a loss of circulation in my fingers. But as long as the heart can keep up with the pressure, I can keep on going (in that respect, but maybe not in others).

When the taxi dropped me off, my cleaner helped me into the apartment and sorted me out.

In between all of that, I’d been working on the next radio programme. I’d managed to collect all of the music that I need, reformat, remix and re-edit it, pair it off and segue it ready for me to write the notes tomorrow. I’m trying to break the back of at least two every week so that I can build up a pile in advance for when the inevitable happens. I intend to live on, long after I’ve begun to push up the daisies.

For the very first time since I don’t know when, I managed a full meal today. It’s probably due to all of the exercise that I’d had with all of these medical appointments, running here, there and everywhere. I had the leftover Chinese food, from when I tried unsuccessfully to make those spring rolls, in a stir-fry with noodles. And it was delicious too, if rather salty (but then again, everything that I eat tastes of salt since the chemotherapy).

My neighbour, when she came to visit the other day, had brought me some fruit – they might have been apricots – so I had a few with some of that vegan sorbet that I’d ordered for Christmas. And that was quite lovely too. So much so that I’m seriously contemplating ordering a few tins of fruit for pudding in the future, especially as I now have some custard powder.

Back in here, I started to write up my notes, but the effort was far too much for me after everything that I’d done today, the early start, the two medical visits, the shower etc. I fell asleep twice before I’d even finished the first paragraph and even then what I’d written was a load of gibberish anyway … "so what’s new?" – ed … so I called it a night and crawled into bed. I can finish it off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the heart specialist … "well, one of us has" – ed … while he was running his machine over my chest, I asked him "have you found my heart, doctor?"
"Oh yes" he replied. "It’s still there."
"Thank heavens for that!" I said, relieved. "I’ve not turned into a Conservative yet."

0

Monday 26th January 2026 – AS I SUSPECTED …

… when they weighed me at dialysis this afternoon and calculated the figure against the dry weight figure the last time that they calculated it, there were just 19 grammes to remove today.

Telling them that I’ve eaten next-to-nothing this last week or so cuts absolutely no ice with them. Their calculations must be correct, and that’s all that counts. It’s a far cry from the days when they were taking out 2,500 grammes three times per week.

Last night, though, as I said, I did manage to eat something, even if it was only half a small pizza. And I still managed later to end up being late finishing off everything. Nothing that I seem to do makes any difference.

So it was not far short of 23:00 when I went to bed, and once again, it seemed to take forever to go off to sleep.

Even then, I remember it being something of a turbulent night, not being able to settle down. However, I was asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29.

Isabelle the Nurse told me to stay in bed this morning but, with so much to do, I left the bed … "eventually" – ed … and headed off into the bathroom. And I do have to say that I was feeling rather better than I had just recently.

In the kitchen, I sorted out my hot drink and medication, and then came back in here to see where I’d been during the night.

On a eu un deuxième .. – what am I doing, talking in French? We had a second lockdown and everyone was confined to home again. The first couple of days, it didn’t bother me at all and I had plenty of things to keep me occupied. But after a while, I began to feel that I had cabin fever, so I thought that I’d take advantage of the calm by going out for a walk. So I left my house, which was a little terraced house in a pedestrian area and began to walk towards the village square. The first thing that I noticed was a hairdresser’s, with the bust of a woman in a window, with some long, flowing hair on it and a sign “with sadness after 109 years”. However, the hair didn’t resemble at all anything of any woman of that kind of age and even in the 1960s when this style had been the rage, that woman would still have been well over forty and that didn’t look right at all to me. There was another terraced house with a white stucco front and no window, with newspaper cuttings on the front. While I was reading these newspaper cuttings, a couple more people came past so I ended up following them, only to be sidetracked again by some more press cuttings pasted on the end wall of a house as we turned the corner. Having turned this corner, I walked about another hundred yards and found myself in the village square. Across in the corner was a building that I recognised. Although it looked like the village hall, it was in fact the local supermarket. People were queueing to go in, with several people loitering in the vicinity, looking as if they couldn’t make up their minds whether to join the queue or not. I was debating whether to join the queue, to go into the supermarket just for a walk around and maybe pick up a packet of biscuits just for some comfort food when suddenly an enormous dogfight broke out between two big dogs. Neither of the owners of these two dogs could seem to control it. In the meantime, there was a radio broadcast about some event that had taken place. It was on the Saturday in September, a week before the cup final involving Seraing. But there would be no cup final taking place in September – the new season should be well under way so I wondered just what this news broadcast on the radio was all about.

This reminds me of the first lockdown. I had a medical appointment that morning so had to go out, and I’ve never seen the town so deserted. I was half-expecting a tumbleweed to roll out of an alley. And do you remember having to queue to be allowed into a shop?

But leaving aside the question of a cup final in September, there would be no chance of Seraing competing in it. It’s one of the professional football clubs in Liège, although its fortunes have been such that it’s played in the amateur leagues on several occasions just recently. As for Seraing itself, it’s the home of the old Cockerill-Sambre steel mill, and it’s probably the grimiest, dirtiest industrial place that I have ever known

We were coming back from the Auvergne towards Brussels and we ended up going round the bypass of some small town or village in the middle of Burgundy. I pointed out one or two buildings to my companion as we were going past, and I was surprised that I hadn’t driven through the centre, because the centre was extremely old and decayed but was really mysterious and weird at the same time. It was a town that I really loved. At some point, a group of us, who were together by now, stopped and being accompanied by one or two other people, walked through the town and came to some kind of bar or café. My companion made as if to go into the bar so I opened the door for her. However, she stood there at the door and glared at me with some kind of really evil look in her face so I made a laughing remark that “some people don’t like having the door open for them these days”. The guy who was with us gave my companion €2:00 and asked him to buy her a can of pop. She went in, still glaring at me, ordered two small bottles of some kind of alcoholic spirit and another drink. As soon as she had these bottles, the ripped the tops off and drank them both at the same time, followed quite quickly by this glass of beer or whatever it was. I had to remind her about the can of pop, which she eventually bought, and we made our way back. I carried on walking and ended up in the town centre of this really large city. I was on my own and that began to suit me much better because I’d seen a side of my companion that I didn’t wish to see. I began to walk, but then I had some kind of epileptic fit and was bouncing around on all fours on a patch of grass at the side of a pavement. One or two people came over to see that I was OK. One of them was this companion, and she made some kind of crazy remark about taking the wrong acid, but all that I wanted to do was to be there and calm down and let this fit pass, then gradually be able to get up and carry on with my walk. I was in no mood for company at that moment.

We’ve been to this small town or village before, in a previous dream quite some time ago. It’s not actually a real town, although when I was asleep, I was convinced that it was. “It was a town that I really loved”, probably because I’m “extremely old and decayed” too.

And what was going on with my companion was really strange and unnerving, especially when I had this epileptic fit.

I was back somewhere around the centre of France last night. I was in another small town. When I parked the car, I had a walk around the town to find out where the strongest radio signal was. It turned out to be right outside this doctor’s surgery place so I went in there to sit down, thinking that this would be a good place to wait in case anyone wants me on the radio. There were a couple of other people in there. The doctor came out and instead of inviting them into his room, he began to give them a medical examination right in front of me. I thought that this was totally wrong. He tried to make me move so that this patient could lie down where my chair was so I told him that there was another chair over there that he could use. He took this woman over to this other chair. All the time that I was sitting there with this mug of coffee and a young girl came in. She was looking for a place to sit so I asked her to sit next to me, and we began to chat. At that moment, my brother came in and he began to make some really sarcastic comments about me and what I was doing and why I was chatting to this girl. In the end, I just stood up, picked up my mug of hot coffee and threw some of it into his face. Everyone stopped and looked, including my brother, but I just sat down and carried on talking. After a while he came over and apologised but I took absolutely no notice whatsoever and carried on with what I was doing. Then, this girl and I decided that we’d go for a walk together. I found out then that the reason why she’d come into the doctor’s surgery was also because of the strongest radio signal. We went for this walk and it went just around this particular area where the radio signal was. But shortly later, we found ourselves out of the town, sitting down in a lay-by. We were having something of a picnic. My brother came up again and dropped some kind of map on the table. He said that the next day, he was going on a tour around the power stations of Yorkshire, and mentioned one or two. I pretended to be interested, but I wasn’t really, and carried on talking to this girl. After a while, we decided that we’d both get on my motorbike and head back into town and make plans to do something extremely similar the next day

So not only do I Get the Girl last night, I manage to put the family in its place too. That’s a rare event for a dream and I wish that I could do it more often.

The bit about the medical examination in the public waiting room of the doctor’s surgery is interesting, and I would love to know the significance of it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on her last day before her week’s break. She took my temperature, and it’s now down to normal. She wasn’t impressed when I told her that I hadn’t taken the doliprane, but I stuck to my guns all the same.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

It’s not just pottery where the developments have been quite surprising. Talking about wheelwrights for example, he tells us that "at the bottom of Pit LXX, which, from its pottery, had evidently belonged to the later period, lay the remains of a large wheel. It had been, on the whole, coarser and heavier than the wheels found in Pit XXIII,"

It really is surprising, this. Two possible explanations may be that the potters and wheelwrights had so much work that they were obliged to recruit less-trained assistants or, chillingly, some kind of cataclysm in the Western Empire had seen the wiping out of the skilled craftsmen, leaving their untrained assistants behind.

There are probably a dozen other explanations too.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review before I sent it off, and then my Welsh homework followed it into the “out” box.

Finally, I could revise my Welsh but here wasn’t much time.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, followed by a neighbour who was also having a lot of trouble trying to have a fibre-optic connection installed.

There wasn’t much I could do for him, and after my cleaner left, I awaited the taxi.

It was early for once, but it made no difference as we had other people to pick up and drop off, so we were still pretty much at the same time as usual.

Here, I had my discussion about the weight. They were pretty much unmoved by my pleading, although in the end I managed to have it increased to 300 grammes – not a lot but nevertheless …

They left me pretty much alone today, although Emilie the Cute Consultant came to give me a prescription for these antibiotics – the original, presumably, being lost.

The taxi was waiting for me when I finished and, after dropping off someone in Sartilly, we came home. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment. After she left, I warmed up the other half-pizza and ate it, even if I didn’t feel like it. And now, I’m off to bed. I’m absolutely exhausted and I’ve fallen asleep twice already

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pleading … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked a friend why my pleading never seemed to work.
"Let’s face it" he said. "You’re such a miserable pleader."

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Thursday 22nd January 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today.

And for a change, I’m not going to start with “As I have said before …” because you are probably just as fed up of reading it as I am of typing it and as I am of it happening.

But I really was quite ill yesterday. As I mentioned, it was some time shortly after 20:00 (and had I not fallen asleep in the chair after I’d finished my notes, it might well have been not so long after 20:00 too) when I climbed into bed, fully clothed, threw the bedding over me and went straight to sleep.

And there I stayed until all of … errr … 02:30.

After that, I lay there, trying to make myself as comfortable as possible and, if possible, go back to sleep but, I thought, without much success. However, it certainly wasn’t four hours later when the alarm went off at 06:29, so at some point, I must have dozed off to sleep for a couple of hours without realising it.

It took quite a while, much longer than it ought, to extricate myself from underneath the covers, and then I staggered into the bathroom. At least, I was feeling a little better than I was last night.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was in the USA last night and had ended up in a motel where I was waiting for my friends to arrive. The receptionist was a rather simple boy who couldn’t speak very well and I had a great deal of difficulty understanding him. There was an old black-and-white film on the television about a group of people, men and women, who were escaping from somewhere. One or two of them were caught and were rescued. The film was probably from the early 1930s and it was an interesting one so I was trying to watch it but this boy kept on interrupting me. He mentioned something and I said “well, that’s pretty small beer really” to which he said “yes, we have nine of those”. Then he had to open the door for the stairs up to the rooms to let a dog out but the dog came down, looked around, and went back upstairs again so he closed it. At some point, I’d left the motel and ended up in Montreal. I went to look at this huge basilica that was built of brick and was going to photograph it but I couldn’t find a place to park the car. Everywhere was “no parking” and there were one or two police patrols so I thought that I would have to come back and do this on foot again, but I couldn’t think when I’d be able to. I drove a little out of town to try to find a place to see if I could have a good view with a telephoto lens but I noticed that time was running on so I had to abandon that idea too. Then I was walking back to the railway station. The streets were crowded and I was trying to watch this film as I was walking but the film kept on freezing and when it began to move again, it had actually finished. It was really disappointing for me that I’d missed the end. But outside one of the big stores in Montreal was a guy with a barrow with all kinds of things on it from the store such as pencils, paper, writing pads, sweets and everything. As I walked past, I thought that maybe I’d buy a bag of sweets or something to take with me on the train. I thought that I had five minutes so I nipped into the store. It was something like Woolworth’s or British Home Stores. Despite a good search, I couldn’t find where all of the sweets were and I began to feel rather disappointed that I’d have nothing to take with me on the train.

There’s a story about a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I stayed in 2002, that relates to this, but the World isn’t ready to hear it and I doubt if it ever will be. As for the basilica, the big brick-built basilica is actually the Basilique Nationale du Sacré-Cœur at Koekelberg on the northern edge of Brussels and although the view of it and its situation that I had in this dream is nothing like its actual situation, it’s very similar to its situation in a dream that I had a few months ago.

I’d been to Manchester with my niece’s eldest daughter. We’d been roaming around the different TV studios. We’d seen several performances being recorded and we’d even seen a football match taking place in one of the studios there between Llanelli and Y Barri. On the way back, we bumped into one of my father’s friends from Winsford who asked us if we’d had a good time, what we’d done and where we’d been. I noticed that gradually he was separating my niece’s daughter from me and having a very intimate chat with her at the other end of the street. I wondered what was happening between the two of them and what was going on.

This is a kind of situation that I could easily imagine, had it been a different girl (not a daughter of my niece) and a different friend of my father. But the indoor football match is “interesting”, to say the least. There are very few full-size indoor stadia in the World, and certainly none in the JD Cymru League.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual to sort out my legs. She was her usual chatty self but didn’t stay long. I could then go on to make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still telling us about pottery – it seems that there’s a long way to go in this. And I’ve learned two interesting facts about Roman pottery –
Firstly, pottery from the earlier period of the occupation at Trimontium (up to, say, 120 AD) is of better quality than the later period (from, say, 140 AD until 180 AD). That’s unusual. You’d expect it to be the reverse.
Secondly, even in 1909, the examination and cataloguing of Roman pottery had reached such an intense degree that even without the potter’s stamp on his wares, they were able in many cases to identify the potter, his workshop and even the period during which he was working.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. But I had noticed that my health was starting to slip back again and my cough, which had calmed down for a moment, had now returned with a vengeance.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and after she left, I waited for the taxi to take me to dialysis, all the time feeling weaker and weaker.

It was actually quite a struggle to walk to the car and even more of a struggle at the other end to walk to my bed. By now, I was freezing cold and eventually, they were obliged to bring me a blanket.

That made very little difference, so they took my temperature – thirty-seven point seven degrees. The nurse telephoned the doctor, who told her to check it again in an hour.

After an hour, during which I became even worse, she checked the temperature again. This time, it was thirty-eight point four degrees. She telephoned the doctor again and Emilie the Cute Consultant came a-running.

She performed various examinations (including a Covid test, which was negative) and took several samples and said that she’d let me have the results tomorrow and that she’d send any prescription necessary directly to my chemist.

When the taxi came for me, I could barely walk out to it. It was a most undignified stagger. However, I made sure that the driver wore a face mask because I don’t want to infect her with whatever I’ve caught. When I sent my message to my cleaner giving her an idea of when I’d be back, I told her to wear a face mask too.

While I was at it, I sent a message to Isabelle the Nurse to tell her to wear a mask when she calls tomorrow. I don’t want her to spread my viruses around her patients.

When I arrived back here, it was 19:20, and by 19:25, I was in bed, fully-clothed yet again. There was just time to take off my shoes, but no time (or desire) to make any food. Once in bed, my cleaner threw the quilt over me and went on her way, and I went straight to sleep.

Round about 23:30, I awoke, and thought that it might be a good idea if I were to post an entry to say that at least, I’m still alive. Alison must have read it quite quickly because we ended up having a little chat about our health problems. She has a few of her own right now. We’re all growing old and it’s sad.

After that, I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep.

But before I doze off again, seeing as we have been talking about face masks … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked someone why it was that doctors and nurses always wear face masks around the hospital.
"Is it to prevent the spread of infection?" they asked.
"Oh no" I replied. "It’s that if ever they make a mistake or do something wrong, you can’t identify them and bring them into Court."

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Tuesday 13th January 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why they send me on these wild goose chases halfway around the country and back so that some specialist in some hospital somewhere can tell me exactly what I already know and have known for several months.

As if I don’t have enough to do with my time.

And especially if it means crawling out of bed at some ridiculous time like 05:00.

Yes! 05:00! So last night I went without any food for tea, dashed through my notes, which were on-line at 20:27 precisely, the earliest time … "and by a long way too" – ed … that they have ever so been. And by the time that I finally made it into bed, it was just coming up to 21:00.

And when was the last time that I’d been in bed that early when I’ve not been feeling unwell?

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s an absolute waste of time going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So there I was, tossing and turning in bed, trying desperately to go back to sleep at just before 02:00.

That was a waste of time too, and I lay there, semi-comatose, until the alarm went off at 05:00 when I hauled myself out of bed and staggered off into the bathroom to make myself look pretty.

And that was also a waste of time.

The taxi came a few minutes early and luckily, it was one of my favourite drivers, the one who “presses on” like an old-school taxi driver and always has plenty to say for herself. She helped me finish my packing and then we set off.

So far, I’d been without food for almost twenty-four hours and without drink for about fifteen hours. I work on the principle of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out during the journey” — after all, four hours or so in a taxi is a long time. Nevertheless, I packed a couple of slices of my “energy flapjack” and a small bottle of water in case I have a diabetic crisis along the way.

We had a good run and a good chat all the way as far as Mantes-La-Jolie, in between Rouen and Paris, and that was where we hit the traffic and the farmers’ demonstrations. A wrong turn on the prif led us out on the autoroute towards Rungis and Orly further complicated affairs, and what was looking at one stage like an easy 09:45 arrival for my 10:30 appointment turned out to be a panic-stricken 11:25.

Having to find me a wheelchair (it’s a different building so I didn’t know where the doctor was and how far I’d have to walk, and we were already hours late) and having to understand the unnecessarily complicated system of lifts didn’t help matters.

While we were stuck in traffic, I’d telephoned the doctor to say that we’d be late, so he let in several patients ahead of me, which was quite natural. Consequently, it was 12:25 when I was finally seen.

He poked and prodded me, put all these needles into my muscles and passed an electrical current through them to test my nerve reactions, and then examined the results.

Before he began to test me, he asked me how I was feeling and whether there was any sign of improvement. I told him that I was feeling lousy as usual and I was sure that there was a definite deterioration since my examination last January.

His conclusion was "I’m very sorry to say that there is no improvement, and you are right about the deterioration."

As I said just now, I could have told him that without having to go all the way to Paris. What a waste of a day!

While I was there, I asked him about the stabbing pain in my foot. He told me that as my nervous system is slowly breaking down, things like this are to be expected and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. He actually put it into a more scientific explanation, but that was the gist of it.

My chauffeur was waiting for me when I came out, and after I’d been to warm my feet, we headed to the car. Getting out of the wheelchair was exciting, but in the end I managed it and we headed for home.

On the way back, I fell asleep twice, which is no surprise considering my bad night, and we arrived home to disappointing weather. In Paris, it had been bright sunshine, beautiful clear blue skies and quite warm for the time of year. Here in Granville, it was overcast, raining, windy and cold. At least we’d had no hold-ups on the road to delay us.

My faithful cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment and instead of a disgusting drink, I had a caffeine-packed energy drink. And I needed it too after over twenty-four hours of nothing to drink.

Having disposed of that, I came in here to listen to the dictaphone notes. I was actually surprised that there were some.

I can only remember fragments of this dream but there was something about being at home. We were in Vine Tree Avenue and there was something about the weather, but I can’t remember what. Then, my mother came into the living room to find out what we’d been doing. In this little box, I had a very, very small puppy. My mother asked about it and I replied that I’d found it somewhere. She had a look at it, and she agreed that it was really small, and because of its small size, we could keep it. There was much more to it than this, but I can’t remember anything once I awoke.

What interrupted my reverie, as I found out later on, was that in reaching for the dictaphone, I dropped the battery charger and all of the spare batteries onto the floor from off the little table behind the bedhead I shall have to pick that up in due course. But me with a puppy? Not that that’s ever likely to happen. Dogs and I just don’t get on. Give me a cat or two … "or three or four" – ed … any day.

Tea was the other half of Sunday’s pizza, which I wolfed down because there was football on the television, Y Barri v Llanelli. Y Barri scored a goal after two minutes but surprisingly, Llanelli, well-adrift at the foot of the table, managed to equalise.

It was only delaying the inevitable though, as Y Barri scored four more before the hour was up. You could see than Llanelli had effectively abandoned the game after that because their heads went down and they lost interest in chasing the ball, but Y Barri, once more, refused to turn the screw and played possession football for most of the rest of the game instead of going for the jugular.

That was disappointing.

And so, with aching foot and totally exhausted, I’m off to bed.
granville
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my trip to Paris and the Neurology department … "well, one of us has" – ed … the doctor told me "there’s some good news and some bad news#34;
"What’s the bad news?" I asked.
"The bad news is that you are going to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life"
"And what’s the good news?"
"I can get you a fair price for your crutches."

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Monday 12th January 2026 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … a good night’s sleep is the cure for all ills.

And so this morning, on awakening, I was feeling rather better than I was yesterday. And it kept on going for some considerable time too, something that surprised me.

Last night, though, I wasn’t well at all and fell asleep as soon as I’d finished my notes. And there I sat on the chair for a good half-hour, dead to the World before I awoke. Consequently, I was rather late going to bed.

Mind you, I managed to sleep right the way through until about 06:10, and I could, I suppose, have forced myself out of bed and had an early start. However, I decided to make the most of the extra twenty or so minutes in bed and lay there until the alarm went off.

It was, as usual, a struggle to leave the bed and to stagger into the bathroom; however, I had a good wash and a shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

In the kitchen, I sorted out the medication and made my hot drink and then put into the fridge the vegan pie and the half-pizza that remained. They had been cooling overnight on the worktop.

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

There had been some kind of meeting going on in Granville and we all ended up in the local town entertainment hall place. There was an enormous number of us, probably one hundred and fifty people all crammed in, and the woman in charge said that she would telephone our next-of-kin so that they could come to pick us up. This was late at night so we all sat there and waited. Time began to drag on and by the time that it was daylight, no-one had left and we were all sitting there waiting, a huge crowd of us. Round about 08:30, a girl came in to pick up another girl whom I knew. When she picked her up, they somehow managed to cram into this really small container like a vacuum cleaner thing and drifted off towards the door. I got down on my hands and knees and wished her good luck, because I knew her, and asked if there was any room inside for me and she could drop me off at my place, but she didn’t reply and drifted round to the door. Then I felt that I couldn’t stand up again and it took me an awful amount of effort to pick my way back to the chair on which I had been sitting. The two people sitting next to me were discussing the situation. They felt like no-one was going to come for us at all and that we’d end up being taken to lunch somewhere in the vicinity and it was all part of the plan, which totally confused me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I tried to attract the attention of the woman who seemed to be managing the affair to ask her if she’d telephoned for my taxi because they were usually fairly reliable to come to pick me up, but no matter how hard I tried to attract her attention, she wouldn’t come over, and I couldn’t stand up to go along to see her because of all of my mobility problems, so we were all just sitting there.

Once more, I meet a girl whom I know but can’t think of who she is. This seems to be becoming a recurring feature too these days. However, the rest of the dream is rather surreal and obviously means something somewhere, but I’ve no idea what.

Isabelle the Nurse was early today, and she had time for a little chat. She’s off now for seven days and she’ll be working on her costume for Carnaval. I don’t want to know what it is though. I prefer to be surprised when she takes photos of herself and her float out in the parade.

After breakfast and my nice nut bread, I came back in here to do a few things and the rest of the morning, I spent doing my Welsh homework. It’s a shame that I won’t be at the lesson tomorrow but Paris calls.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi.It was late arriving today, mainly due to there being a new driver who hasn’t been here before and so had lost the way.

Consequently, we were late arriving at dialysis.

It was the new girl who attended to me and in the end, she needed help to plug me in. I told her not to worry because we all have to learn somewhere and somehow. And then they left me alone.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, but she didn’t stay long. There wasn’t even time to tell her of all my problems, which was sad. However, I doubt if she would have been willing to soothe my fevered brow.

The taxi was late coming to pick me up too, but it can’t be helped. It was one of my favourite drivers so we had a nice chat all the way home.

My cleaner was there to help me into the apartment, and after she left, I came here to write up my notes. No food tonight though. With an 05:00 start and an 06:00 pickup for four or so hours on the road (and then four or so hours back) I’m going straight to bed when I’ve finished this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about vacuums … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe was appearing on “Mastermind”.
One of the questions was "if someone made a sound and you were in a vacuum, would you hear the sound?"
She replied "would the vacuum be switched on?"

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Thursday 8th January 2026 – WE HAVE ALL BEEN …

… bombarded with alerts and warnings from just about everyone, from the French National Government down to the corner shop, about the storm that is heading our way. And the siren … bombarded with alerts and warnings from just about everyone, from the French National Government down to the corner shop, about the storm that is heading our way. And the siren sound that the Government and Préfecture use on your mobile ‘phone to alert you will do much more than John Peel’s “View Hullo!” ever did to awaken the dead and the fox from his lair in the morning.

But anyway, more of that anon.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … err … apartment, it was another late night for no particular reason. Everything seemed to drag on and on and to complete some of the tasks, this steam-driven computer is simply not rapid enough. For example, I’m having to type my notes into a text file and then upload it via “cut and paste” because it’s quicker than watching the cursor crawl along as I type into the interface.

So it was 00:10 when I finally made it into bed last night, and I can’t say that I’m sorry. And although I awoke once or twice during the night, I was flat-out asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As seems to be usual these days, it took a while to pluck up the courage to leave the bed and head to the bathroom for a wash and shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

After the hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And despite it being only a short night, I had travelled miles.

I was with one of the nurses from dialysis last night. We were discussing religion. She was concerned about the number of visits that priests and people were obliged to make to their congregation, rather than the congregation going to see the priest. I explained that, in general, the people who required the visit of the priest were the dissenters. She asked what I meant by that. I explained that these were people who did not necessarily believe in the literal word of the Bible and didn’t take the literal word to be the exact truth. I gave her a couple of examples, such as when Jesus said “go forth and multiply”, that didn’t mean that you had to leave the meeting and go out and have sex, or anything like that. It was a case of putting some kind of logical interpretation onto those words. As we were doing that, we were walking round the side of the church, then round and into some kind of hall. There were lots of people there, and I noticed that a couple of them were girls whom I knew. They were secretaries for someone or other, so I wondered what they were doing here and why they had come. Had they come with their boss or anything like that? However, the dream drifted away before I reached the point of asking them.

Religion is, for some reason, a very touchy subject for some people. The number of people in the World who have been killed because of religion must be horrendous. It’s sad that many religions that preach “tolerance”, “understanding”, “respect”, “peace” and “love” will massacre at the drop of a hat anyone who interprets the religion differently. Everyone reads their sacred text and interprets it differently, and there is not one single way that is “right” or “wrong”.

We were going to watch a Welsh Premier game between Y Bala and another team. It was the biggest crowd that I’d seen for years. There were probably three or four thousand people there. At one corner of the ground, there was a group of noisy fans who were chanting and shouting, and creating a great atmosphere. I even saw my oldest sister’s husband. I thought that this would be something if he’s coming to watch a game in Wales. Y Bala ran out onto the field, to lots of applause, but the other team came out in some sort of horse-drawn caleche. When it reached the centre of the field, a group of about eight or nine people went to take the body off the wheels to put onto the floor, but it was too heavy and at one end, they dropped it, so of course everyone cheered. Eventually, the teams lined up for the start and the game kicked off. I was standing on the side of the ground. The game had only been going for about five minutes when suddenly, there was a huge torrential downpour. There wasn’t very much in the way of cover at this ground so the whole crowd practically dispersed. I went and stood inside some kind of in-let in a wall, chatting to someone else who was there. Gradually, my attention was distracted by some kind of newspaper article about, how at Wells Green, a huge quantity of gold had been dug up. Apparently it was the contents of some kind of ship and had been collected between the period 1810-1816 and had been buried when there had been some kind of problem with the ship, whether it was towing another one or whether another one was towing it. I thought that it was an astonishing thing and I was determined to find out more about it. In the meantime, the rain stopped and the crowd slowly gathered again, but the players were off the field. Presumably it was half-time. When a player came out from the back behind the bar and was ready to merge into the crowd, someone asked him what the score was. He said that it was sixty-five for six sixty-seven for eight, whatever that was supposed to mean. We couldn’t understand it. The player was dressed in his civilian clothes, almost as if he was no longer going to take part in the game, and no-one seemed to have an explanation for that either

You aren’t ever likely to find a big crowd at a game played at Y Bala. With a population of only two thousand or so, they could all fit into the ground at Maes Tegid, and with plenty of room to move around. The fact that the club has made it to the Welsh Premier League is an achievement in itself. You will, however, find plenty of rain. It’s one of the wettest places in the UK , with, on average, about fifty-three inches of rain each year.

Incidentally, Wells Green is about sixty miles from the sea, so any ship that found itself there really would have a problem.

I was doing another pick-up for Shearings, picking up in three or four towns. I had the coach ready and was ready to go. It was a route that I knew quite well and I’d done it on several occasions. I knew that today there were going to be problems because in one of the towns, there was a market and all of the town centre was closed up, so I was trying to work out how I was going to arrive at the pick-up place. One of the guys from the office came along and said “never mind. I’ve drawn a plan for you and I’ve put it in your paperwork”, which was nice of him. So I set out and went to the first stop where half a dozen or so people boarded. On the way to the second stop, I had to stop at a road junction, but for some reason the brakes were really heavy on this vehicle. I just managed to slither to a halt right on the line. Some tractors coming across from the right-hand side of this junction had their indicators on for turning right, but instead of turning right into the road that was directly opposite mine, they turned right into a particular field on that corner. Then, we set off when the lights changed and I had this really long sweeping curve which I took far too wide and almost ended up in the hedge but I managed to keep going. We stopped for two minutes at someone’s house, I’ve no idea why. The mother came out to talk to the daughter who was on board the coach, but the coach was now a little Renault 4 type of van with a rollback canvas hood. I went round and quickly dusted off the vehicle, which caused some amusement from this mother. I explained that it had to be done. Then, ready to go again, I climbed into the vehicle and looked at the map that this guy had drawn for me. It was nothing like useful because he’d assumed that I went into the town a certain way, but he’d just shown me a quick diversion around one particular street, but that was nowhere near where I actually do go into the town. I go in a different way. This map that he’d drawn was of no help to me whatsoever. So we set off, and we were coming into the edge of this town. We could see all of the ancient fortifications and the city walls, a really heavy, complicated thing all overgrown with mould and ivy. As we approached the city wall, ready to go into the medieval town, I was still wracking my brains as to how I was going to arrive at this pick-up point.

This is becoming a regular theme these days, isn’t it? Driving coaches to towns where there are all kinds of chaos in the town centre on a market day or something like that.

I had a vague memory of Emilie the Cute Consultant. She was telling me that my weight had climbed right back up again. I replied that I was convinced that the weight reading the last time was incorrect, rather than being a problem with my weight. However, I didn’t write that down and that’s all that I seem to remember of that.

This is connected to a discussion that I had on Monday. There is less and less liquid to extract these days. It’s true that I’m controlling my liquid intake very carefully, but that’s not the whole story. I’m eating less and less so I’m sure that my “dry weight” is going down. But as they only check it once a month, I shall have to wait for the next control.

Isabelle the Nurse was late arriving today. Apparently, she’d bumped into my cleaner outside and they had had a little chat. I have heard a little rumour that all is not well in certain quarters and that there is a story likely to unfold at some point.

She caught me in the bedroom working, and that was inconvenient for me, but there is no argument when she has made up her mind about something.

After she left, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast, and managed to eat everything today, which makes a change. But I was running late for just about everything. There was plenty to do after breakfast, which meant that there wasn’t much time left to work on my radio programme before my cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic.

It was round about then that the ‘phones went berserk with alerts. Major storm warning, batten down the hatches, 18:00 curfew, no-one moves. Gusts of wind up to 160 kph expected.

Bearing that in mind, she applied the anaesthetic quickly and shot off to do her afternoon’s work to be back before the storm hit.

As usual, when there’s a rush on, the taxi was late. We also had to go to pick up someone else so we really were late arriving at dialysis.

Luckily, I was seen quite quickly and I managed to persuade Emilie the Cute Consultant to reduce the time. After much discussion, she agreed to knock fifteen minutes off, so that I would be finished before 18:00.

No internet today for some reason, so I watched NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH, another Launder and Gilliatt film with the dynamic duo of “Charters and Coldicott”, followed by half of ROME EXPRESS starring one of my favourite actors, Gordon “Inspector Hornleigh” Harker.

In the end, I was disconnected at about 17:50, which made a nice change, but the panic amongst the taxi companies to deal with the unexpected flood of passengers meant that I had to wait half an hour for mine to turn up. Luckily, it was one of my favourite drivers so we had a nice chat all the way home.

At Granville, the wind had already sprung up, so I had to be dropped off at the rear entrance to the building where there is the fire escape. The car can come right up to the door there, so it saves me the twenty-metre walk in the teeth of the gale.

My cleaner helped me into the building (and I needed it too) and after she left, I made tea – pasta and veg in tomato sauce with a vegan burger. But once more, I left some on my plate.

Back in here, I had a little “relax” for fifteen minutes, and then, hearing the wind increasing in velocity, I made an executive decision, which for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is a decision that if it turns out to be the wrong decision, the person who made it is executed, and decided that I’d go to bed while the going was good. If the velocity increases, the chances are that it will be too noisy to sleep later on.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the wind … "well, one of us has" – ed … they were still out on the golf course playing away as the wind velocity increased
One player was taking an age measuring up his shot, calculating the wind and the direction from which it was coming.
"Get a move on, can’t you?" urged his partner
"My wife’s over there" said the other. "I have to make this shot absolutely perfect"
"Does it really matter that much?"
"Ohh yes. If I don’t get it right, I might miss her."

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Monday 5th January 2025 – WHAT A NIGHT …

… that was!

When i checked the time at one point, it was 02:15 and I was still up, working. And it’s been a very long time since that has happened, a very long time indeed.

The irony of it all was that it could have been an early night. I’d finished my notes early and had done everything else quite rapidly that I’d needed to do, but I was … errr … detained.

Earlier in the day on Sunday, I’d been doing some housekeeping on the hard drives and I ended up with a massive 335 GB that needed to be transferred from one external drive to another.

However, I had unfortunately forgotten just how slow this computer is compared to the desktop one. A task that would have taken three or four hours went on – and on – and on, and by about 22:45, when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still grinding away with hours still to go.

It was really out of the question to stop it, because I’d just have to start all the way from the beginning again, so I decided to let it run its course and to find something else to do while I was waiting.

So there I was, trying to find a lot to do because it just kept on going. Round about 02:20, it finally ground to a halt and no-one was more relieved than me to crawl into my bed after all that. I didn’t need much rocking, that’s for sure.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I decided that that was rather over-optimistic so I switched it off and curled back under the bedclothes. I’d reset it for 08:00, but when that went off, I did likewise.

The nurse, surprised to find me still in bed, awoke me to sort out my legs, and then threw the covers back over me and left. I was disappointed that he didn’t read me a bedtime story, but I don’t suppose that you can have everything.

Back to sleep I went, to awaken finally at about 10:00. It took me a good half-hour to summon up the energy to leave the bed, and I crawled off into the bathroom for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

It was rather late to think about breakfast, so I just had half a bowl of porridge and a coffee to keep the lupus from the porte, as they would have said in Ancient Rome.

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and no-one was more surprised than me to actually find something.

I was in my Welsh class last night and we were doing some revision. We came across a revision exercise and I’d had a look at it beforehand so I knew a little bit of the answers. She asked this woman the first question, but th woman couldn’t think of the Welsh word for “couple”. The teacher in the end suggested dyllint or something. So she answered the first question, and I was expecting the second question to be passed on to someone else but instead, she asked the same woman. I thought that if she’s asking the same person all these questions, what does she have lined up in store for the rest of us? If I haven’t revised it, I’m going to be looking very foolish. I was sitting on a bench by the docks and there were fishing rods and everything all around me. There were two little girls sitting on a bench. I knew who they were but i just couldn’t put a name to them. I noticed that every now and again, one of them was giving a glance at me so I gave her a little wave and next time, I gave her a little wave again. She said “Eric, could we come to sit by you?”. I said “well, I have a class exam at the moment but you can come and sit on this bench with me afterwards if you like when I’ve finished this exam.

This must be a premonition because I didn’t have time to revise my Welsh this morning ready for class tomorrow. I’ve no idea who the little girls were, but they obviously knew me. And As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what would I be doing with fishing rods?

By the way, the Welsh word for “couple” is cwpl

Once I’d done that, I went into the kitchen to prepare for dialysis. My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic, and in return I gave her the other half of her Christmas present that had been delivered yesterday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Believe it or not, I’d forgotten that I was going early for this X-ray. But it made no difference because the taxi was late arriving. Apparently, in all the snow that we were having, my driver had taken ninety minutes to come from St.Lô instead of the usual forty-five.

There were two other people to collect too, one in Sartilly where the roads hadn’t been cleared at all, so the time was just out of control.

To make matters worse, there was no-one at reception when we arrived at the hospital and we had to wait fifteen minutes for someone to appear.

There was no-one at X-ray either so it was another long, uncomfortable wait for someone to appear. So never mind my 14:00 appointment at dialysis – it was 15:09 when I was finally plugged in.

While I was there, I was introduced to Julie the Cook’s replacement. Unfortunately, she doesn’t bake so we’ll have to find other things to talk about.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, which was nice. She’d seen the X-ray and there’s no obstruction or infection, so she’s at a loss what to do next.

Eventually, I was liberated and ws able to come home, hours later than usual. It was the young chatty guy who brought me home so we had an interesting conversation all the way home.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me in the sub-Arctic conditions and she helped me home. And after she left, I had the other half of yesterday’s pizza followed by a slice of Christmas cake. I must finish that off too. However, we’re back at the “everything tastes of salt” stage and it was all most unpleasant.

Right now though, even though it’s tremendously early, I’m going to bed. I’m hoping for a good sleep to make up for last night, but I doubt it very much. We can but hope. The biggest problem right now is the pain in my foot, and it’s killing me. It’s the worst that I’ve ever known it to be.

But seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … when she told me about the results of the x-ray, I asked her "so how do I stand now?"
"Well, " she replied, after a moment’s thought, "having watched you staggering about on your crutches for the last eighteen months, I’ve been wondering that myself."

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Monday 29th December 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little better today.

But there again, that’s not too difficult because I’m convinced that I couldn’t possibly have felt as bad as I did for two days running.

You’ve really no idea of how I was feeling yesterday evening. Not eating any tea is a testament in itself because that’s something that very rarely happens. Instead, I just wrote out my notes and by 21:30, I was in bed.

Being awake at 02:45 was definitely not part of the plan though. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pretty pointless going to bed early because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

This time, however, I was lucky. I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly, and there I lay until about … errr … 05:45. Having checked the time, I decided that I’d give it ten minutes and then make an early start. However, what I remember after that was the alarm going off at 06:29.

And after that, the next thing that I remember was the repeater a few minutes later. That’s the first time that I’ve actually been asleep for the repeater alarm, as far as I can remember.

It took a good few minutes to haul myself to my feet and head off into the bathroom. As well as having a wash and scrub up, I also had a shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis today.

After the medication and hot drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was walking home from the bus stop – I’d just alighted from the bus – and a dark green MG Midget went past and pulled up at the side of the road just ahead of me. As I approached it, the driver hopped out. He was one of the people from work. He said “come on, Eric, hop in. I’ll take you home”. I thought that that was nice of him but I didn’t have far to go. But I hopped in anyway, and I asked him about the car, if it was a 1967 model. He replied that it was a 1969 one. I thought that it was in very good condition for its age. We drove a little way further along Rope Lane and turned into Vine Tree Avenue. Eventually, I managed to tell him where to stop and he had to reverse a little way. I pointed to our house and said that that had been our family home as children since 1956. My brother came out then and helped me take my shopping out of the car. The driver then asked if he could have a drink of water. That was all that I needed because the house was probably in a total tip and I didn’t want anyone from work coming in because I didn’t want details of my private life like that being the subject of discussion, but there was nothing that I could do about it except to let him in. He came in and went up to the bathroom. I went into the living room and all over the floor were bottles and jars and things so we started to have a quick tidy-up. There was a huge pile of plastic bottle tops, so I asked my brother where he kept them. he opened the door so I put them all in there. Then the guy came down and said “quick, find me a chair!”. I asked “what on earth has happened?”. He replied that he was putting his contact lenses in but he’s put them in the wrong eyes. He needs to change them. I had to find a chair then and let him sit in the kitchen. I thought “this situation here is going from bad to worse”.

Why on earth would I suddenly start to dream about a former colleague, about whom I haven’t given a moment’s thought in over twenty years? But this idea of living in total chaos is nothing new, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It seems to be how I spend most of my life.

There was a situation where I was in the clutches of some evil guy. He’d imprisoned my sidekick, a young girl. He was trying to find out a few things from me that I wasn’t all that keen on telling him. Then his sidekick came in and suggested that the two of us, my sidekick and me, be put in the same room together. If we were locked in there for a while, things might change. Eventually, the boss agreed and the sidekick took me off. When we reached the room where he’d locked up my sidekick, he opened the door and let her out. He said to the two of us “right clear off while I go and sort him out”. We didn’t need telling twice. We dashed off down the stairs to the half-landing and caught the lift. The lift was quite full but we squeezed in, reached the ground floor and cleared off. It was pouring down with rain outside, and I thought that I had well over an hour to drive now so I’m going to leave the top down on the car. We climbed aboard a bus and it set off, but we had to stand, and we were standing near the back. When it arrived at the bus stop near the car park, we pressed the bell and went to alight but there were too many people in the way. The bus was just about to start off again so my sidekick shouted and he stopped again. We managed to climb out. I could see my car on the car park. It was the yellow Mustang, covered in dust from its long drive across the desert abd currently being soaked in rain. When we climbed out of the bus, there was an old lorry there, a four-wheeled lorry with a tipper body on the back, an old Dodge, and it was carrying licence discs from the past. The earliest one was 1966. There was even one from 1935 that said “two times”, which made me think that there must be an identical lorry to this one somewhere in the vicinity used by the same person. It was nice to see an old lorry like this, and even at that age, it wasn’t all that unusual in the USA to see lorries of that age driving around – these old Dodges

And where has this all come from? It reminds me of nothing whatsoever that is relevant to anything recent. However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall I did once DRIVE THROUGH AN AMERICAN DESERT IN A YELLOW FORD MUSTANG

Isabelle the Nurse came around as usual to sort out my legs. It’s her last day for a week so when she left, I wished her a really nice break. It’s her oppo tomorrow for a week. I wonder how cheerful he’s going to be.

Then it was time for breakfast and some reading. I’m still on this Roman military engineering right now. But as usual, I was sidetracked off into reading about the Roman Emperor Caligula. And what I read drew some very disturbing parallels with a certain person in a position of power across on the other side of the North Atlantic Ocean. It’s really uncanny. HERE’S ONE TYPICAL EXAMPLE

After breakfast, I came back in here where there were things to do and then a radio programme to review before sending it off for broadcast. With what time was left, I began to edit the next radio programme notes and they are now almost all completed.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was late arriving but as I was the only passenger, we still arrived on time. Even so, I had to wait forty-one minutes before they could come and sort me out.

They asked me how I was feeling so I explained my woes. They insisted on a full blood sample and a few other tests too. They asked me if I would have a full COVID test. My usual response is in the negative but seeing as it was Emilie the Cute Consultant on duty today and remembering what had happened in the past with her requests for COVID tests that I didn’t want to take, I didn’t dare refuse.

She came to see me later, telling me that what they had examined so far had been negative. However, she gave me an appointment for an X-ray on my chest and lungs to see what’s going on with this cough. For that, I’ll have to travel back in time because the appointment is dated 5th January 2025. Still, that’s not going to be a problem for someone as intelligent and resourceful … "and modest" – ed … as me.

Unfortunately, she didn’t hang around chatting very long. The days when, eighteen months ago, she was perched on the edge of my bed chatting away about nothing are long gone.

There was some bad news at the dialysis centre today too. This was the last time that I shall see Julie the Cook. She lives forty-five minutes away from there and the travelling is getting her down, so she applied for a job at a local hospital within walking distance of where she lives. She’s been accepted and she starts in the New Year. I wished her luck, of course, but it’s sad to see one of this very cheerful, pleasant group of nurses fly the nest. In fact, the only reason that I go to dialysis is to be cheered up by them, and they do a wonderful job.

Eventually, late as usual, they unplugged me and I headed for home. The taxi was waiting and it was an interesting drive back because the driver was one of those interesting people who has a lot to say for himself. We always have some very good discussions.

Back here, my cleaner helped me into the apartment and after she left, I made tea – baked potato with a taco roll filled with salad and vegan cheese. Only a small portion, but I managed to clear the plate. I had some steamed Christmas pudding for afterwards and that was nice too.

But thinking about steamed puddings, I wonder how a steamed fruit pudding or treacle pudding, or even chocolate pudding, would turn out. I shall have to experiment. And that reminds me – I still have some fruitcake and the rest of the jam roly-poly in the fridge too.

Back in here, I began to write out the notes, feeling better than I had for a while, but found myself crashed out in the chair after a while. I couldn’t keep on going, so once more, I abandoned the notes, to be finished in the morning. This is becoming ridiculous.

That “feeling better” feeling didn’t last for long, did it?

But seeing as we have been talking about Caligula … "well, one of us has" – ed … he was infamous for his … err … excesses.
One day at the Circus Maximus in the middle of a chariot race, he notices a small boy amongst the crowd who looks exactly like him. He sends for a Praetorian Guard to bring the boy to him
"Tell me" he says. "Did your mother ever visit Rome?"
"Oh no" replies the boy."But my father did, years ago."

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Monday 22nd December 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… again!

After yesterday’s long and marvellous lie-in, it didn’t take us too long to revert to our usual habits, did it? As in “wide awake at 03:45”.

That was rather a shame because for once, I made a determined effort to finish everything early. And I did too – except that I fell asleep on my chair at some point. By the time that I’d awoken and made myself ready for bed, it was 23:15. That is, however, still earlier than some have been just recently, and I was soon asleep.

Waking up at 03:45 was definitely not part of the plan though.

Once I was awake, I tried everything that I could think of, in order to go back to sleep, but nothing seemed to work. In the end, I decided to make some use of an early start, so round about 05:00, I arose from the Dead and carried on with the editing of the radio notes that I’d dictated yesterday. I was glad that I did, too, because that programme is now all ready and assembled. All it needs is the joining track to connect the two halves, but that’s been chosen and the text written, ready for dictation when I next have an early start.

When the alarm went off, I went into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

Next stop was in the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink and my medication, and then back in here to see where I’d been during the night. I was back on the taxis again last night. I’d had to go somewhere to do a lot of things but I can’t remember what but my father gave me some money towards it. So I set off to do these things that I’ve been asked to do. Coming back, I went round to one of my former bosses. he was talking about going back into the taxis again and we talked about sharing my car – that I’d do the day shift and he’d do the nights, or vice versa. He asked me how it would work. I told him to never mind, and I’d try to work out some kind of procedure. On the way home, I stopped at the top of Clifton Avenue (or was it Clifton Street?). There was a yard down there at the back, down one of the entries where I was going to go. Before I went, I took out the account book that we had and went to photograph it, or one of the pages of it, which I was going to use to divide up to show the jobs that I did and the jobs that he would do when he took over, with one page for each day between the two of us. I went to photograph it, but it was really dark and the photo came out all blurry. I thought “never mind. I’ll do this in the daylight sometime”. But there were several people coming up the avenue or road there where I was parked. It was really quite a noisy street. There was one couple who were very quiet and didn’t say anything very much, but there were two guys coming up there who were laughing and joking. I was rather concerned about having my camera in my hand at that time of night with those two about. There was a third couple who were coming to a house at the top of the hill. They were boisterous of the kind that you have when you have had a considerable amount of drink. The next thing that I remember, I was in a car on my way to take some people to Oswestry.

There wouldn’t ever be any danger of me allowing someone to drive my car, apart from Nerina, of couse. Nerina was actually quite a good driver, but then again, she had had plenty of practice. The description of the “upper class” terraced houses from the end of the Victorian era around the Clifton Avenue/Clifton Street area is surprisingly accurate, even down to the alleyway and the yard.

And I did several trips in taxis down to Oswestry and that area.

Later on when it was dark, I was back inside the school. There was no-one around and all the lights were off. I just had a small torch with me that I used, to see where I was and park myself correctly on the road. After a few minutes’ discussion, we’d finished preparing the car for Nerina so the other guy came along to have this penalty shoot-out. He tried three shots, and Nerina saved one, and he missed the other two. He thought that this was going to be a really strange enterprise, and in the end I talked to the aforementioned former boss, and he agreed to drive when I was not driving. Then we talked about this bed in either Clifton Avenue or Clifton Street, about how we can divide up the jobs and the day between the two of us

But whatever is this all about? It seems to be something of a continuation of the preceding dream, but it doesn’t ‘arf shoot off along quite a tangent.

The nurse was early today. It’s the final day before his break so I imagine that he wants to be finished early. He didn’t stay long, either, and was soon on his way.

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

Well, when I say that I “read some more”, there wasn’t all that much more to read. That book is now finished and tomorrow, I’ll be starting something new. I hope that it’s something interesting.

Our author Thomas Codrington seemed to have managed to bog himself down in a mass of confusion the closer towards the end we came. I wonder whether it was one of these projects that sounded so good at the beginning but saw him lose interest as time passed by and he was unable to resolve some of the inevitable problems.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I attacked my Welsh homework. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. this is probably the toughest assignment that I have done, but I think that I might have broken the back of it now. Another good day should see me finish it, I hope.

At 12:00 I knocked off so that my faithful cleaner could apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then to await the taxi. For a change, it was bang on time but it was to no avail as we had to go to Sartilly to pick up someone else.

We were a few minutes late arriving at the dialysis centre and to make matters worse, there was a medical emergency going on. Consequently, it was 14:45 when I was finally coupled up.

There were a few interruptions, including from one of the doctors (but not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately), and it wasn’t until 18:15 when I was finally uncoupled.

It took a while to sort me out, but the driver was here and waiting. One of the young, chatty guys, we had a good talk on the way home and it was quite an enjoyable drive. Back here, we met a neighbour who had a lot to say for himself, so it was round about 20:00 when I began tea.

Not that it took too long to make. It was the half-pizza left over from Sunday and just needed rewarming, and followed my more vegan fruitcake and mango sorbet.

Then, I made a start on soaking the white beans because tomorrow, I have a cookery festival, all on my own, with baked beans and vegan Wellington on the agenda.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep yet AGAIN!

But seeing as we have been talking about my trip home from the dialysis centre … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the things that we were talking about was the superior nature of German technology.
It reminds me of that old joke "how many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb? "
"I don’t know. How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb?"
"None. A German lightbulb is correctly engineered and so never needs changing."

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