Tag Archives: dream

Wednesday 21st January 2025 – THIS TIME TOMORROW …

… I shall be having my fevered brow soothed by a bevy of nubile nurses while I’m tucked up in my comfortable bed in The Land of Grey and Pink – I mean, the Hospital Pitié-Sampetrière in Paris.

Actually, I probably won’t be, but there’s no harm in wishful thinking, is there? As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s only my imagination and my dreams that are keeping me going.

To tell the truth, I will almost certainly be in a bed in a hospital in Paris, assuming that we don’t have a calamity along the route. But as for the rest of it, who knows? And who really cares? As long as I have my imagination I can continue my desperate struggle against reality.

And the desperate struggle against fatigue too, because I have to be up and about at 06:00 in the morning. I have dialysis tomorrow before I leave for Paris, so that means a taxi at 07:45 and a session on the bed in the dialysis centre starting at 08:30.

At 07:30 this morning though I was still struggling to come to terms with being on my feet. When the alarm had gone off at 07:00 I was deep in the Arms of Morpheus and it was a real struggle to rise to my feet. However I made it into the bathroom just in time before the next alarm call went off.

There had been a lot of perspiration during the night so I needed a good wash. Emilie the Cute Consultant told me that the perspiration was usual, but if it carries on, I shall need a water bed. Then I can sail into the bathroom. Or paddle my own canoe. Or be up the creek without a paddle. I dunno.

After the medication I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My brother had a MkIV Cortina. He’d had an accident in it and damaged one wing. He came to see me to see if I had another MkIV wing. At that moment I had about three MkIV Cortinas, a pale blue one that I was using as my run-around which was something of a wreck. It had no MoT or insurance. Then there were two others, one of which was a reasonably good car and the third one that I was planning to rebuild. He came round to ask if I had one so I replied that I hadn’t. Everything that I had was spoken for. Nerina said “why don’t you give him the one off the blue one? You’ll be scrapping that soon and it’ll save you the time in dismantling it if he were to take that”. I replied “that’s the car that I’m using to drive around at the moment. I can’t give him that”. We had quite a big discussion about t which became quite heated. In the meantime my brother was wandering around in the garage and came across a wing for a MkIII Cortina. he said “I’m going to break your hearts now” he said “and I’m going to take this”. I said “come here” and went into my workshop. Scrabbling around on the worktop I found the washers and bolts that had been used to hold it on. I was scrabbling around and ended up with about ten at that particular moment. He said “that’s OK, I’ll take those”. I sorted out some washers for him but he didn’t seem to want very many. I thought that a MkIII wing on a MkIV would invite lots of comment but he didn’t seem to care. But there was a question that he’d asked me about “was Ford bringing out a new car to replace the Granada?”. I replied that I’d not heard anything. There had been no executive meeting so no-one seems to know as yet.

In theory of course, a MkIII wing will fit a MkIV Cortina because they have the same chassis and A-post arrangement but as I said, it’ll look rather strange.

But I was, and still am, a big fan of the Cortina MkIII, IV and V. Practically the same car from 1970-1982 with all the mechanical parts interchangeable, they did me proud when I had my taxis. Not only did I have the cars, I’d pick up MoT failures, dismantle them for spares, sometimes repair them and until I had my health collapse after my big car accident, I was always ahead of the game.

There are still several Cortinas lying around. There’s an almost-immaculate MkV estate keeping a MkIII 2000E Cortina and a Citroen “traction avant” company in the warehouse in Montaigut, a “rare as hens-teeth and worth a fortune” MkIII 2000E estate in the barn on the farm, and an old rotten MkV saloon down the field that was going to be cut up for spares but it’s lost in the undergrowth now.

All the same though, that dream was disappointing. Nerina was there, as of course she is entitled to be, but once more we were arguing. We spent so much time arguing in real life – if only we’d stepped back, breathed, and began to talk to each other, things would have been so different. And my brother was there once again. How disappointing is that? Why can’t I summon up any one of the Fearsome Foursome to come to me during the night?

As for the Ford Granada, that relates to something that is running in a thread through my mind somewhere right now, relating to nothing in particular. But no MoT or insurance on a Cortina is a thread that’s been running through my dreams for ages, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

The nurse was early today. It’s His Nibs starting his seven days. He’s not impressed with my early start tomorrow (neither am I as it happens) and told me to keep my socks on during the night. That’s not a sound policy – not at all.

After he left, I made breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

As I suspected, I’m right about him working up to a crescendo. With no sense of embarrassment or responsibility he’s laying in to all kinds of people. Not even the Astronomer Royal is exempt from his scorn. It really is quite shameful and how his publishers accepted it I really don’t know.

Back in here I revised for my Welsh class and then went for the lesson. Once more, it seemed to pass off quite well. However, that was then, when everything was fresh in my mind. Give me half an hour and it will all have evaporated from my teflon brain.

After lunch I had a few things to do and then I pushed on with this radio programme that I’ve been trying to finish since Sunday. Now it’s all done as far as I can, the 11th track is chosen and notes written ready to dictate on Saturday night when it’s quiet.

The next trick will be to finish the one that I started at the end of last week and have it ready for dictation on Saturday night too. I need to snap out of this depression and lethargy and push on.

And that’s the first time that I’ve said that since dialysis started.

While we’re on the subject of the radio … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was the radio programme for this weekend to review and send off, so I listened to it to make sure that it was OK.

It’s just as well that I do this because I’ve been caught out before by people dying in between the recording of the programme and its transmission. And not that I’m bragging, but this programme was recorded in May 2023.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Delicious as usual.

But then I had more food to make. The food in the hospital is dreadful, I’ll be arriving late, there’s never any food that I can make. So I’m in the process of making some bread and I’ve cooked a lentil and potato mix that’s in a plastic container that they can bung in the microwave when I arrive. I have to be prepared.

Right now though, I need to be prepared for bed if I’m going to be up at 06:00. I don’t fancy that in the least, but I can always sleep while dialysis is going on.

But in our Welsh class today we were discussing War poets. And one thing that most of us had in common was that we all had had to study War poets for our ‘O’ Level English Literature exam, and without exception, it destroyed any love of poetry that we might have had.

We all agreed that it was so depressing and so miserable, but it seemed to us that the examiners were working to their own very private agenda. It wasn’t until I discovered the works of AE Housman that I began to develop a love of poetry, but I never ever want to hear another War poet again as long as I live, if I live that long.

On the other hand, I can listen to this all night and next day too – one of Housman’s poems SET TO MUSIC

Another thing that we were discussing was the early television programmes. And I remember when the BBC, in an economy drive, was selling them off to independent producers.
At one meeting the Director asked the Sales Department for the accounts.
He asked them "What did we get for ‘Larry the Lamb’?"
"According to our accounts" said the accountant "we got four shillings per pound"
"And the guy in the historical records" said the Director. "What did he get for ‘Muffin the Mule’?"
"Eighteen months, I think" replied the accountant.

0

Monday 20th January 2025 – YET ANOTHER THREE …

… and a half hours under the dialysis machine today, and that might soon be changing. They are talking about increasing the dose to four hours. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … we seem to be moving slowly towards a climax and the overall prognosis isn’t that good.

In fact, things must be even more serious that I imagined, because they sent Emilie the Cute Consultant to break the bad news to me. And considering that she has been doing her best to steer clear of my bedside these last few weeks, that must have been some effort.

It was some effort for me to go to bed last night too. It was even later than normal when I finally hauled myself out of my chair and went into the bathroom to prepare for the night. I was definitely not feeling like sleeping and I lacked the motivation and energy to haul myself out of my comfortable chair.

Eventually I managed to make my way into bed and there I lay trying to go to sleep and trying to chase the black thoughts from my mind. And as it happened, I did neither. So there I lay, being tormented, for several hours.

When the alarm sounded I was fast asleep so I must have dropped off at some point. And what an effort it was to haul myself from my bed. It’s a good job that the nurse is coming, for I could quite easily have stayed in bed until I don’t know when.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and shave and even applied the deodorant in case Emilie the Cute Consultant should come to see me, and then went to take my medication.

Back in here I went to listen to what was on the dictaphone but to my dismay there was nothing at all, and that’s really disappointing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on (or comes off, but I should be so lucky) during the night.

Isabelle the nurse came around, her last day for this round. She had a few things to say, but nothing of too much importance. She’s going to spend the week packing for her ski holiday soon and also working on her Carnival float.

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our author has spent probably 100 pages attacking the idea that Wissant was the port from which Caesar sailed to Britain (not that it matters much, as the book is about Britain, not Caesar), insulting the people who believe that it might have been, and lampooning the people who have changed their opinion over time.

And here we are, on page 579; with a statement "for I myself once argued that the Portus Itius was at Wissant. But my knowledge was then imperfect.". Not a word about why his knowledge was imperfect, not a word about why he once believed that Wissant had been Caesar’s port, not a word of the factors that he had considered at that time, not a word of why he had rejected them, not a word of criticism of his own ideas and not an apology to those whom he had lampooned for changing their mind.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I shan’t be sorry to reach the end of this book. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of interesting facts in there but by God! What a struggle it has been to wade through the mass of invective, insult and abuse to find them.

It seems to me that he is working himself up into a crescendo and I wonder how it’s all going to finish.

Back in here I had things to do, like my Welsh homework for example. I like to do half of it in one week and the other half the following week so as to spread it out. But what I’m going to do at some point is to read through all of the homework that I’ve done, and make a dictionary of words that I have already forgotten. As if I don’t have enough work to do.

My cleaner took me once more by surprise. She was late but I’d lost track of time anyway. And we hadn’t even finished when the taxi came for me. There was someone with an appointment at Avranches at 13:00 so these new Securité Sociale rules means that because my trip falls within this 45-minute window, I have to grin and bear it.

Not that I am complaining, because as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s all free, and this is the only country in the World as far as I am aware where such a service is provided for the likes of me.

One advantage of being there early was that not only was I the first of the afternoon shift to arrive, I was first in bed and consequently first to be plugged in. And strangely, the first pin didn’t hurt at all and the second only marginally so, even if they had to take out the pin and reinsert it.

Having said that though, I began to know more about it as the anaesthetic wore off.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and we had an interesting chat. "How are you today, Mr Hall?"
"Very well now that I’ve seen you" I replied. And she had the decency to giggle and blush

So we chatted, all about work though, not one of those intimate personal chats that we had last summer, and she broke the bad news to me. But at least she confirmed that Saturday’s dialysis is no different than any other day so it’s not that which is disrupting my sleeping patterns.

"Would you like me to prescribe a sedative for you" She asked.

It seemed to me that that referred to my earlier comment so I restrained myself, with great difficulty I promise you, from saying something like “what I really need is someone to keep me warm and cosy in bed. When’s your next day off?”. You should be proud of me.

Instead I replied "no thanks". All that I have left these days are my dreams and they seem to be fading right now which is a shame. And never mind restraining myself, it will be other people restraining me if I carry on like this. But ask me if I care.

While we’re on the subject of dreams … "well, one of us is" – ed … I crashed out as usual once the pump started sucking my blood out and went away with the fairies (although I did nothing worthy of any comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine)

There I was, in some building in which I’d been before. Someone came to pick me up and when he took me outside I found that he was to take me away on a motorbike. He had left the engine running so I told him that that had been a very dangerous thing to do around here

The building reminded me of somewhere in (I think) either Cleveland or Buffalo … "IT WAS BUFFALO" – ed … in the USA where I’d passed through on my mega-voyage around North America after having dropped off Kit at her University at Windsor.

And as for motor bikes, we’re either talking about motorcycle taxis again or else it’s to do with crossing the Atlantic on a motor bike, something else that we’ve mentioned recently.

When I’ve been awake, I’ve been tidying up a long-forgotten site on the internet. That all started with a search for someone whose name cropped up there and when I followed it up, I was surprised at how out-of-date this site was. So I did some of it, and there’s plenty more to do.

Don’t you ever become fed up of finding all of these tasks that you need to do that totally distract you from what you were trying to do in the first place?

With starting early, that usually means finishing early. And I was certainly unplugged early. But all of the rest went haywire as the compression burst and we red-washed the entire wall of the Clinic by my bed.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the taxi that came for me had to wait another ten minutes to take someone else too.

So once more I ended up being late home but at least it was the nice female taxi driver, the one with twins at the school here, so we had a nice chat. I hope that she’s the one who takes me to Paris, either her or my favourite lady taxi driver who gives me a running commentary throughout the whole route.

It’s freezing outside again here so I was glad to be indoors again. With about 20 minutes to spare I edited some more of the outstanding radio programme that I should had completely dealt with on Sunday.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya yoghurt. Plenty of stuffing left, but I’ve no idea when I’ll finish it, what with going to hospital in Paris later this week

So now it’s bedtime, ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow. And hoping that I’ll have pleasant dreams involving Castor, TOTGA or Zero, or Moonchild whom I shall add to the Terrible Three and make a Fearsome Foursome.

But before I go to bed I’ll give you an exclusive scoop, one that you’ll hear nowhere else, on the handover discussion between Trump and Biden in the Whitehouse (and that’s not a spelling mistake, although that will soon change) this afternoon
"You just watch" said Trump. "I’m gonna be a goddam Emperor"
"You can’t do that" said Biden. "An Emperor is someone who rules an Empire, and the USA isn’t an Empire"
"Well in that case" said Trump "I’m gonna be a goddam King"
"You can’t do that either" replied Biden. "A King is someone who rules a Kingdom, and the USA isn’t a Kingdom"
"Actually" continued Biden "with you in the White House, Donald, the USA will be just fine as a country"

0

Sunday 19th January 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… what at first might sound like a really quiet day but it really wasn’t. I might not have seemed to have done much but I haven’t stopped. Not even for a moment.

After I’d finished writing out my notes I had some dictation to do – to dictate the notes that I’d written earlier in the week. That didn’t take too long and after I’d watched a couple of TV interviews on the internet, I crawled off to bed. I’d actually made it (for once) before midnight so with the lie-in until 08:00 I was going to have a decent sleep.

And I didn’t turn over or turn round much either. It did take an age to drop off, but once I’d gone, that was it.

Whatever it was that awoke me, I’ve no idea but at 07:45 I was wide awake, bolt-upright, 15 minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

And so, if I’m awake and there’s a possibility of recording an “early start”, then why not? When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was actually in the bathroom sorting myself out. How many times is this since dialysis began that a Saturday morning has been an “early start”?

After the bathroom I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, to find out where I’d been during the night. We’d been on a holiday, on a cruise. The cruise had come round ready for people now to start the homeward leg. There was a fair bit of grumbling amongst the passengers about, first of all, parking the cars. There was some strangely-worded statement about people not turning up at the office, which, if interpreted in some way, meant that there was no parking for their vehicles. I somehow felt that it meant that one couldn’t go along and queue inside the office while you were waiting to be signed in. Everyone had his own interpretation on this. We talked about cars parked in a long-term car park for ages, and people with fork-lift trucks lifting them out of the way to put their cars in their place. We came back from this excursion and had to change out of our wet clothes into dry clothes. everyone else had done this and was drifting off on board and I couldn’t get out of my clothes. I couldn’t push my feet through my trouser legs. Everyone was drifting further and further away and I was still struggling. There was one guy and his wife still there. He’d been criticising some of the arrangements because he’d noticed that it was a very early start that morning. He’d posted something on the Group’s chat site that “I bet that it will be a packed lunch and cup of coffee on board the train for our breakfast rather than a sit-down meal in the hotel”. He’d been summoned by the Cruise Director and given a lecture and telling-off, so he reckoned that that was exactly what was going to happen. Eventually I managed to put on some kind of clothing and was able to catch up with the throngs although it was most uncomfortable. Then I heard that the rumour that this guy had started had actually been the truth. We were all to board the train and we’d be given a packed breakfast and cup of coffee once we were on board. The walkway over to this train was a narrow, rickety bridge suspended over a huge gap that was probably over 100 feet down. With all the people on this bridge swarming towards the train I was thinking that this bridge wasn’t going to withstand the pressure and we’d all go crashing down to the ground.

Whatever the story about the car park is, I’ve no idea. When I read this I had an image of a car hire office at the airport in Montreal, but don’t ask me why that vision came into my head because I can’t think of any comparable incident. Changing out of wet gear into our normal clothes was something that we did twice a day (at least) on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR after we clambered out of the zodiacs that ran us around in the various bays and straits up in the High Arctic. However the struggle was usually when we had to put on our gear and rush for a zodiac that we might otherwise miss and all our friends and fellow-passengers would leave the ship without us. There wasn’t a chat group for the passengers though – sometimes we were in places where not even a satellite wi-fi system would work.

There was however a passerelle or “walkway” that collapsed – AT RAMSGATE IN 1994 but I was nowhere near that at the time. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and didn’t stop for long. She didn’t have very much to say today, except that the weather really was freezing this morning, which was what I expected.

After she left I made myself breakfast, and then took my time eating it while I read MY BOOK.

Once more, I wasn’t going to waste neither my time nor yours posting more of the same old same old, except to say that at one point he describes with absolute and utter derision the argument of someone whom he freely admits is described as "at the head of living students of English history"

He spends page after page after page scoffing at the idea that Wissant was the port from which Caesar set sail (as if it matters in a book about Britain) concluding with "the claim of Wissant to be identified with the Portus Itius cannot be admitted.".

That was his position in 1907. Having spent page after page in treating with derision the writers who have changed their position over the years, in May 1909 he submitted a paper to the Classical Review, giving "strong reasons for preferring Wissant".

There was bread to make next. I had soup to make later and so I need a fresh bread roll. And that’s the advantage of the air fryer – I can bash out a bread roll whenever I like.

Today’s soup was broccoli stalk soup, with potato, onion, shallot and various herbs and spices, using up the last of the water from the blanching exercise of last weekend.

Heaping in a pot of soya yoghurt gave it that final touch, even if I did forget the black pepper and the tiny pasta elbows. Nevertheless, it was delicious and I’ll make more of that any time. If you want the recipe it’s HERE but it now has a shallot added to it too.

After lunch I came back in here ready to start work but first there was the football – Stranraer v East Fife. East Fife won 2-0 with the first goal being a foul and a wicked deflection, and the second being a handball. And if you think that I’m making it up, you can see for yourself in the HIGHLIGHTS. And you can hear the best TV football commentators in the entire country while you watch the game.

After that I settled down to edit the notes that I dictated last night but I didn’t get far. Someone came on line to whom I wanted to chat and this desultory chat went on until late in the evening, meaning that I could only edit the notes in the pauses between the chats.

We did however stop for tea. I’d taken a lump of dough out of the freezer earlier and it had been defrosting. Later on I rolled it out and put it onto the pizza tray ready to assemble.

Once it had risen I attacked the base and put on the tomato and pepper sauce, the olives, onions and mushrooms, sprinkled it with herbs, put on the vegan cheese and then a couple of nice rows of cherry tomatoes cut in half.

This one was nothing very much different than any other that I have baked but for some reason it tasted by far the best that I have ever made, and the cheese melted wonderfully. If only I knew the secret I’d make many more of those.

So tonight I’m off to bed, and tomorrow we’ll all wake up in a New World where the people of Canada and Greenland will be looking for the rest of the World to save them. Being threatened by a madman armed to the teeth backed by a crowd of paranoid lunatics is no way to live.

While we’re on that subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of Trump’s aides dashed into his office. "I dreamed about you last night" He said.
"Really?" asked Trump. "What was it?"
"Well," replied the aide. "You were being driven down Pennsylvania Avenue. People were cheering, flags were waving, kids were dancing and everyone was partying "
"Wow" Replied Trump. "That must have been wonderful. But tell me – my hair – how was my hair?"
"We couldn’t see" replied the aide. "We couldn’t get the lid off your coffin."

-1

Saturday 18th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE HOURS ..

… and thirty minutes of sheer, unadulterated agony this afternoon as once more, one of the nurses managed to find the “sensitive spot” in whatever it was that they did in that hospital in the summer.

Whatever else happens in this hospital, I can’t go on like this. I’m sure that dialysis isn’t supposed to be this painful.

At least I can console myself that I’m not suffering as much as the guy who usually comes with me on a Thursday and Saturday. I asked why we hadn’t seen him for a few days and was told "he comes in an ambulance now. He’s had a bad fall"

The only fall in which I’m interested right now is to fall from my chair into bed as I’m exhausted.

It was another late night last night. Just as I was going to bed, a “Traffic” concert came round on the playlist and that’s another “must” to stay up and listen to, especially when there’s an 11-minute version of SOMETIMES I FEEL SO UNINSPIRED and almost 10 minutes of DEAR MR FANTASY.

Anyway, once we returned to normality I crawled off to bed, with the words of Steve Winwood echoing around my head –
"sometimes I feel like my head is spinning
Hunger and pain is all I see
I don’t know who’s losing
And I don’t care who’s winning
Hardships and trouble are following me".
My head is definitely spinning, I can certainly feel pain and while I’m not suffering any hardship – those days are long gone – I’m definitely being followed by a heap of trouble right now. What is worse is that it’s all of my own making too.

Those troubles kept me awake once more and it seemed like an age before I finally drifted off to sleep.

When the alarm went off this morning. I was away on my travels, with a shower that I had to repair so the first thing was to drain the tank. I profited from that by having myself a nice hot shower. I disconnected the shower hose so the pump was on the wall in the bathroom so I took off the pump from the wall and lowered it down a little. This forced the water out of the pump which then drained into the bath. I put the shower pump down, about halfway down the wall so that it was about halfway down to the level – so the water in the tank was halfway down, and put the pump there so that it was drained off the top half. I was sitting there contemplating what to do next when the alarm went off. I was really disappointed because I was enjoying that.

So don’t tell me that all of my nocturnal skills, about which I have so boasted in the past, have deserted me during this crisis through which I’m going right now. It’s the one thing on which I could rely in the past and with the right kind of support, I could have made millions from the skills that I never knew that I had

It was a desperate struggle to rise to my feet and go into the bathroom before the next alarm went off but I just about made it. And then a desperate discovery – that I’ve run out of clean sweaters. Nothing else for it but to put last week’s back on. I have just about enough of other clothes to have a good change but I really am going to have to overhaul my wardrobe. What am I going to do with all my Arctic clothing for a start?

Having washed and shaved, I put the bedding from last week into the washing machine with a selection of other dirty clothing and let the machine do its stuff. Then I wandered off for my medication, remembering to take my “sunlight” Vitamin D.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what else has been going on during the night. There was something about an extremely valuable – well, not valuable but a historic plate that was of great significance between me and some young lady and I don’t know who she was. I had to keep it safe so I hid it under my coat but as I moved, I broke it. A V-shaped piece fell out of it. I was thinking “how am I now going to repair this so that it will be the correct type of plate and that no-one will notice that it’s damaged.

In fact, I really didn’t know who she was. She didn’t resemble anyone whom I might know at all

There was also something about people who were working in Crewe Works. They had to cycle a certain way around the Queen’s Park and would reach a point where someone was waiting. When they reached that point they would have to turn round and cycle back towards the Works. They couldn’t take a short cut by turning around earlier but they all had to go to where this particular guy was standing in the middle of the road.

“Queen’s Park”, or, at least, the road around the back of it by the Golf Club, and “Crewe Works” – that is, the Railway Works – are playing something of a role in what’s going on right now in my mind so it’s inevitable, I suppose, that they should put in an appearance at some point. No sign of Moonchild though. She didn’t come dancing through the shallows of the river into my dreams last night

But what’s sad about this is that I can remember when half of the town was covered in the various branches of the Railway Works and when every boy in the town was destined to become an apprentice in either “The Works” or “Royce’s”. The town was flooded out with bicycles at chucking-out time, and how much like a ghost town it was during “Works Week” – all that was missing were the tumbleweeds. Nowadays Crewe is a ghost town all the time, but for different reasons. There is nothing whatever left of its railway heritage and even the big multi-storey “Rail House” is empty and threatened with demolition

Isabelle was in and out in a new world-record time today. She doesn’t seem to be so keen on stopping and chatting as she used to. Perhaps word about me is filtering around the town

After she went, I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

For a change, I’m not going to post any selected comments because firstly, I don’t know enough about the subjects that he’s discussing – it’s all conjecture unsupported by any evidence anyway, and secondly, because his invective and abuse has become tiresome to read and even more tiresome to repeat. I shan’t be sorry to finish this book and start the next one.

Back in here I carried on with the radio notes and they still aren’t finished. Once more I was caught in flagrante delicto by my cleaner who surprised me by her arrival when I wasn’t expecting her. She fitted my anaesthetic patches and we didn’t have long to wait for the taxi to come for me.

Just me in the car today with the driver. Apparently the other passenger who usually accompanies my on a Saturday has had a bad fall and goes to dialysis in an ambulance now.

Everything was running horribly late at the Centre today and it took hours to plug everyone in. That can’t be why it hurt so much because the first pin went in much less painlessly. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it at all.

As usual, once the pump started up I crashed out and I was away for quite a while. So much so that my coffee that had been brought to me while I was asleep was stone-cold.

Before crashing out though, I was hallucinating again as I did the other day. This time there was something about me being on board a Spanish Galleon but I didn’t stroke it this time to see if it was real..

That miserable doctor was on duty today and he managed a brief “hello” as he passed by my bed. And that was my lot. I must be thankful for that, I suppose

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in and how I wish that it wasn’t. The same driver who brought me was waiting to take me back and we had a guided tour of his Head Office at Marcey les Grèves on the way home. I’m convinced that he is in some way charged with the running of the place in some capacity.

Anyway, he’s confirmed that I’ll be picked up in principle at 07:45 on Wednesday for my trip to dialysis followed by my taxi to Paris at lunchtime afterwards.

It’s freezing outside tonight, literally freezing, at 0°C so I was glad to be in the warmth indoors even if climbing up these stairs doesn’t seem to have become any easier just recently.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with baked potatoes and salad, which was nice as usual, especially when followed by chocolate cake and soya yoghurt.

So now i have to dictate what I wrote earlier in the week and then finish off the lot that’s half-way done sometime. I need to go back too and review the couple of weeks that are missing and have another think about what I’m going to do. I can’t leave it until the last moment to come up with a plan.

So I’ll do that and then go to bed – to make the most of my little lie-in

But in the radio programme notes that I was writing, I was writing something about Caravan’s album A BLIND DOG AT ST DUNSTAN’S
St Dunstan’s was a Charity in London created to care for Blind People and is famously known for its hotel in Brighton which was praised for its "magnificent views over the Downs and out to Sea" – the sense of irony being totally lost on the writers.
But the title of the album relates to a story that one day a little boy saw a male dog mount a female dog.
"What’s that big dog doing, daddy?" asked the little boy
"Well," stuttered daddy nervously, "the dog at the bottom is blind, and the one on top is helping him, pushing him along to St Dunstan’s."

0

Friday 17th January 2025 – YET ANOTHER DAY …

… when I haven’t advanced anywhere near as far as I would have liked. Whatever happened to that spurt of energy and enthusiasm that I had when the dialysis first started?

After I’d finished my notes I’d tried to be ready for bed quickly but, as usual, a concert on the playlist came round to disrupt me. It was another Lindisfarne concert and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can’t ignore a Lindisfarne concert.

Consequently it was quite late yet again when I crawled into my nice fresh bed, still clean from Wednesday night when it was so delicious.

Being left alone with my thoughts is not a good idea for my long-term wellbeing but in the short-term I’ll just have to clutch the memories as they go flying past, and live out in my imagination how I would have liked things to have been – carpe diem and all of that – instead of how things did – and didn’t – turn out. That’s the big advantage of having a shocking memory but a vivid imagination. I can do this kind of thing with ease.

Eventually I managed to fall asleep and while it wasn’t as static as the previous night, I didn’t move around very much. But once more, we had a phantom alarm call at 06:25 this morning. I wish that I knew what was going on.

After that though I did manage to go back to sleep and was well away when the alarm went off at 07:00.

It was another struggle to haul myself to my feet, but it has to be done and I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

Into the kitchen for the medication and then back in here to sort out the stuff on the dictaphone. And here we go. What’s been on my mind finally penetrated the subconscious last night. I wondered when it would. We were all at some kind of dance and I ended up dancing with Moonchild (who made her first appearance in my dreams). While we were dancing the music suddenly changed to a very slow dance so I took her in my arms and held her. We had this slow dance and there I was, with Moonchild in my hands. There was also something about going into the kitchen because the pots needed filling with raisins and we weren’t sure how to do it. A girl and I had done it at the start. We figured out that 100 pots at just under 500 grammes would be sufficient but for some reason everyone seemed to be doubting that.

Yes, so there was Moonchild, DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER … PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH THE GHOSTS OF DAWN, WAITING FOR A SMILE FROM A SUN CHILD and making her debut in my nocturnal rambles as I held her tightly in a dance.

Except that she has been here before, but a long time ago and I’d almost forgotten all about it. But whether or not she should appear at this moment, it’s difficult to say. You might say that I have “mixed emotions”, and that’s certainly true, but not in the sense that they usually mean.

But what the hell is happening here? Why has all of this suddenly appeared these last few days?

Isabelle the nurse came to sort out my legs. Once more she was in something of a rush and didn’t stay long. I could press on, make my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Shame as it is to say it, I’ve become depressed with the author’s continual insults and vitriol that he’s heaping onto his colleagues. I really don’t know how his book ended up in print without the publisher having to take on some hefty legal insurance. Today he writes that a contemporary "again shows himself a most troublesome witness. Unfortunately this meritorious geologist, who laboured hard to elucidate the geographical questions connected with the ancient history of East Kent, was a bad writer"

He’s also criticising a couple of his contemporaries for their remarks. One author, he says, "quotes no authority and gives no reasons" for his conjectures and another author "also without giving either authority or reason" posts a certain position with which he disagrees.

And then a couple of pages later he devotes several thousand words to a section of the Kent coast without himself quoting one single reference to back up his comments.

So I despair.

Back in here I had a few things to do and all of that took me much longer than I was anticipating. It’s one of those things that the more you do, the more you have to do and the more you end up doing.

As a result, I was late going for my lunch today and had hardly made it back to my desk when my cleaner came to do her stuff.

Eventually I could press on and finish selecting the music for the next radio programme. That’s all remixed, edited, paired off and segued, and I’ve even written some of the notes. But I wanted to be much farther down the line than this.

What finally held me up was that Rosemary called for a chat. Not that I’ve any objection to speaking to friends – quite the reverse in fact; but there we were. And it was only a small chat today – one hour and eighteen minutes. We’re losing our touch.

Tonight’s tea was different than usual. We had salad and chips of course but I’d found some strange things in the freezer that I’d bought in NOZ ages ago and needed to be eaten. So I had half a packet of those tonight and they weren’t bad at all. I wished now that I’d bought a few more packets.

But this leads me on to the next thing – that there is stuff in the freezer that I don’t know that I have and was probably brought down from Mount Ararat when Moses docked his Ark there. One day I’ll have to make an inventory.

But not right now though because I’m off to bed. My two left-over pies are freezing in the icebox in the fridge and they’ll go into the freezer tomorrow, and then there’s all the washing to do. I’ll be glad to get to dialysis for the rest.

But while we’re on the subject of mixed emotions … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was talking to someone whoe mother-in-law had recently died.
"What happened?" I asked
"She was driving along the A259 near Folkestone" he said "when the cliff collapsed and the road, the car and the mother-in-law crashed down into the sea. She was buried under hundreds of tonnes of rubble"
"How do you feel about that?" I asked
"I have mixed emotions" he replied
"Why is that?"
"She was driving my Vintage Bentley at the time"

0

Wednesday 15th January 2025 – MARGARET THATCHER …

… once said something like “anyone can do a good day’s work when they want to. The secret of success is doing a good day’s work when you don’t want to”.

That’s not exactly what she said but I reckon that it’s near enough and if that’s the case, then I have failed miserably today.

Don’t ask me why, but I’m thinking that today in Sunday and it’s not just once but several times that I’ve been thinking that it’s Sunday. I’ve certainly been lethargic and sloth-like today as maybe I would have been on a Sunday back in the olden days. These days I don’t have the time to waste like this and it’s really depressing to see by how much I’ve fallen short of my aims.

As you might expect, after the chaos at Cae y Castell on Deeside last night, it was horribly late when I finally finished everything that I needed to do and crawled off to bed.

Not that there was much time to sleep because once again we had a phantom alarm call. I’m so convinced that these are real because they sound just like an alarm but it’s clearly not anything in my bedroom. I’d try to identify it if I could but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m usually flat-out asleep when it sounds and even though I do sit bolt-upright, by that time whatever noise it is has long-since stopped.

So resisting the impulse to climb out of bed I curled up back under the covers and went off to sleep again.

When the alarm did finally go off I was no-where near ready to leave my stinking pit. And that’s another mystery – why is it that I feel so much more energetic and more ready to leave the bed and spring into action when it’s a phantom alarm call?

So anyway, I eventually found the willpower to crawl off into the bathroom and clean myself up ready for the day, and then go into the kitchen to sort out the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There’s something stuck in my mind about someone talking about apartment-sharing, saying that he was ready to share an apartment with someone. This was after something had happened concerning a roundabout in the middle of the countryside in the ancient times. I can’t really remember any more about this but I have all this stuck firmly in my mind

Well, that’s what I dictated any as for what it means I’ve no idea. Ancient times probably refers to the book that I’m reading right now but I can’t place the rest. However it does strike a chord about something about which I’ve been thinking this last few days and which I briefly mentioned in passing a few days ago, dating back to my brief stay in Elm Drive. However some things are best left behind, dead and buried, even if I am brooding on some of them somewhat right now.

Isabelle the nurse came round rather later than usual today. She was quite busy, as you might expect and didn’t stay long. Nevertheless she was quite chatty and talked about the chaos in the town with all of these roadworks.

After she left, I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our hero is busy lashing out left and right at all of his contemporaries. He’s demolishing all kinds of theories about Stonehenge and proposing one of his own which is just as incorrect (and maybe more so), and then arguing about the location of the mythical tin mines of the Phoenicians at Cassiterides.

To be honest, his flailing about is becoming rather difficult and off-putting to read, with the increase in personal attacks and the abuse that he is heaping on his colleagues. He makes a lot of interesting points, but they are swamped by the invective. But don’t worry – only another 300 or so pages to go.

What’s interesting though is that he’s quoting a lot of sources for his criticism, and I am busy tracking them down and downloading them. My virtual library is expanding rapidly.

Back in here I had things to do.

First off was to telephone Paris to argue with them about a convocation to attend next Wednesday. "We don’t do that here" they said, although their colleagues in Neurology do.

It’s important to have one because I need to book a taxi and it’s no good my saying “we’ll pick up the paperwork when we arrive” because if the hospital cancels the appointment mid-trip, there won’t be any paperwork and I’ll have to pay the taxi myself – €1600 – rather than the Securité Sociale picking up the bill.

And in case you are thinking that it’s far-fetched, regular readers of this rubbish will recall back in 2020 or 2021 in the middle of a train strike and so I drove overnight all the way to Leuven for an appointment, only for them to cancel it just as I pulled into the city after a 700km overnight drive.

The best that could do was to confirm it by voice over the ‘phone so I could ring up the taxi company. They knew about the change of day for my dialysis from Thursday to Wednesday, but they had me down for the afternoon, not morning. So I had to change all of that and book a car to Paris, hoping that it will all go to plan.

Having done that I was well on my way when the ‘phone rang. It was the taxi arriving to take me to dialysis."It’s tomorrow". I said. "but it’s on Wednesday next week, but in the morning".

So I had to ring up the Dialysis Centre to make sure, and then ring back the taxi company for them to put their records straight. At least, being early and wrong is better than being wrong and late

Next interruption for my plan to finish my radio notes was for lunch – flapjack and fruit. And then the cleaner came round to do her stuff.

That included the shower of course, so there’s a nice clean me with nice clean clothes ready to climb into a nice clean bed because the bedding has been changed too which I was showering.

We had Christmas cake break later with another one of these horrible drinks, and then I have been making pies. I could make three nice-sized pies from a roll of this flaky pastry, and my filling really is excellent.

It’s

  • lentils
  • split peas
  • potatoes

soaked for an hour in the slow cooker on “high”, rinsed, and soaked again for 18 hours in the slow cooker on “low” with herbs, spices and flavouring

And then I fried in the big wok the following –

  • onions
  • shallots
  • garlic
  • a tofu block
  • a tin of sweetcorn

When they were all nice and cooked, the contents of the slow cooker were tipped into the wok with the fried stuff, simmered to boil off the excess liquid, and then a handful or two of oats to bind it all together.

So three pies in the fridge ready to bake tomorrow, and a pile of filling in individual sized containers freezing for next time, and a ladleful of it added to my leftover curry to try it out.

And with naan bread, rice and veg it was excellent and I had no room for pudding. And in any case, believe it or not (because I find it hard to believe) I crashed out at the table.

So tomorrow it’s dialysis, but for tea I’m going to eat one of my pies with potatoes, veg and gravy. They should be delicious and make me feel better after what will be a very painful session. And I’ll finish the radio notes tomorrow too if I am lucky.

But while we ‘re on the subject of curries… "well, one of us is" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall when we were on THOSE FERRIES ON THE OUTER BANKS off the coast of the USA and encountered all of those pelicans.
One person on the ferry went to a restaurant on Okracoke Island and asked to try the Pelican Curry that was on the menu.
When I met him later I asked him how it was.
"I won’t be going in that place again" he said.
"Why not?" I asked. "Wasn’t it any good?"
"The meal was great" he replied "but the bill was enormous."

0

Tuesday 14th January 2025 – I AM TYPING …

… these notes during a pause in the football.

It’s hardly surprising that there’s a pause either because, as the score is proving, trying to play a game of football as banks of fog come rolling from the Dee estuary across the stadium at Cae Castell is producing some extremely unpredictable, and for Y Bala who are defending the river end, some extremely unfortunate moments.

After an hour of playing hide and seek the players have gone off the field in the hope that the fog will roll away. But even if it does, there is no guarantee that it won’t roll back.

It’s ironic that it’s happening to Y Bala. The final round of the first half of the season should have been played weeks ago but their pitch has been alternately under snow, ice and water on so many occasions that after several postponements that led to the postponement of the final round of matches, the game against Caernarfon that we watched on Saturday, was played at a neutral venue, Llandudno’s all-weather stadium

All the final round games were postponed until tonight, but now Y Bala’s vital match against Cei Connah is swathed in fog and all the players are in the dressing room waiting. There’s no guarantee that they will be back out either.

So while I’m waiting for things to happen, after finishing my notes last night I stayed up to listen to yet another concert (I’ve forgotten who it was) and then at about 00:30 I gave it up as a bad job and crawled into my bed. I can’t keep going as I used to.

Once in bed it took a while to go to sleep and there I stayed until about 06:35 when I awoke, once more drenched in sweat. There’s definitely something going on with this dialysis that I don’t understand.

It goes without saying, I suppose, that I went back to sleep again. I was certainly asleep when BILLY COTTON awoke me from the Dead.

Being awake was one thing. Leaving the bed was quite another thing completely. Mind you, I did (just about) beat the second alarm. And then I staggered off to the bedroom

After the bathroom it was the kitchen for the medication. And while I remembered the stuff that I can only take on a non-dialysis day, I forgot my blood-thinning medication. I’m definitely losing my touch, and probably my mind as well.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night I was stacking things inside the van. It was already quite loaded. There was me and there was another person, a girl, helping me. We had some long, thin wooden boxes probably about two metres long, to put in the back. We were carrying them one by one. Someone suggested that we’d advance much quicker if we were to take two or three at a time between the two of us. We tried it with a couple but it was much wore awkward. Positioning them in the van was a problem because the girl with me always wanted to carry them on her left-hand side which meant that she was having to fight with the back door to put them in when she arrived. That was becoming rather difficult. We stacked them inside quite high. There was already a lot of things in there so we thought that we’d better find some way of strapping these in against the side of the wall or the other things that are already in there, strapping them up against them against the side of the wall that way so that they didn’t fall over because if they were to fall they would be quite something of a problem inside and the whole inside was something of a mess.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. She was small and lively, but not anyone whom I recognised immediately. However, stacking stuff into vans was the occupation of a lifetime once upon a time and regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing a few photos of how I used to travel around Europe in the past.

Isabelle the Nurse is on duty for the next seven days. She is much more cheerful and was telling me about the float that she and her friends are building for Carnaval. She’s not telling me what it is though – it’s to be a surprise and won’t be unveiled until the day of the parade.

It’s now been announced that the football match has been postponed, which has now completely upset the timetable for the rest of the season. And I can press on, hours later than I was hoping.

So after Isabelle left I made my breakfast and then read some more of MY BOOK

His polemic by now is raging out of control and he condemns one of his colleagues in a manner that is quite unfitting in a published work, saying that "he blunders in a way which makes me hesitate to accept his statements about archaeological details that I have not myself studied" – a pretty outrageous remark for any academic to make, especially about a colleague.

He goes on to ask "How then would the professor and the doctor explain the fact that in the round barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds there was a reaction in favour of inhumation, seeing that Canon Greenwell 8 found in them 301 interments of unburnt and only 78 of burnt bones ?"

Christianity has been around for 2,000 years, but there are still plenty of Jews about. Protestantism has been around for almost 600 years, but there are still plenty of Catholics about. And going back to the “Dark Ages” of early Medieval times, there are many recorded instances of Christian Princesses being married to heathen Kings.

History shows us that several religions can live perfectly well side-by-side, and there’s no reason to suppose that things were different in Neolithic times. It’s quite possible to have two religions and two forms of dealing with dead bodies living in co-existence.

Back in here I revised for my Welsh lesson and hen went to class. We had, for the first time since I don’t know when, a full house of students and the class moved along smartly. I was once more quite satisfied with my progress, although my lack of memory is greatly hindering my vocabulary.

After the lesson it was lunch and a slice of flapjack with fruit, and then a very long and involved video chat with a friend in the UK who is carrying out a special project for me. We ended up discussing his holiday to Canada and, to my surprise, he liked everything that I didn’t and vice versa.

It was a Rosemaryesque conversation that lasted over an hour and it was very pleasant. It’s the only way that I get to see my friends these days and I do miss them all. Anyone else who wants a video chat some time, let me know.

Christmas cake break, very late, was next along with that disgusting protein drink, and then I started to work on the next radio programme. All of the songs are chosen, re-mixed, paired and segued and I’ve even begun to write the notes. That’s a job to be finished tomorrow I hope, in and around the shower I suppose, because it’s shower day tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a very rushed taco roll with rice followed by chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert. Rushed because there was football on the internet. But I did remember to organise the lentils as well as some split peas that I found.

It’s the last match of the first half of the season as I mentioned earlier, the round having been postponed because of the issues with the pitch and the weather at Y Bala which has seen the Caernarfon game postponed three, or is it four times?

That match was played at Llandudno on Saturday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and so the final round, having been postponed while that game was still unplayed, took place tonight.

Both Cei Connah and Y Bala needed to win in order to qualify for the European playoff section of the league, and it was the Nomads who took advantage of the conditions. The first goal was an audacious lob from near the halfway line when a gust of wind lifted the fog briefly and enabled a Nomad to see the Bala keeper off his line.

They scored two more goals while Bala offered nothing whatever at all. It was all one-way traffic. But the match being called off saved Y Bala’s bacon. Some of tonight’s results mean that Cei Connah can’t possibly qualify, but Bala could if they have a good win. So if the match is replayed on Thursday, it might favour Bala.

cat in commentary box cae castell fflint cymru 15 January 2025But before I leave the story of the football match, there was a new recruit to the commentary team this evening.

Please excuse the poor quality but it’s a screenshot taken in the fog and so nothing will ever come out correctly. However it goes to show that gate-crashers can get in anywhere.

That is, except my bed (unless it’s Castor, TOTGA or Zero of course, and maybe Jenny Agutter and Kate Bush) because I’m going to climb into it in a moment, alongside STRAWBERRY MOOSE who keeps me company as much as he possibly can.

Tomorrow I’m radioing again and showering and pie-baking too. Maybe even bread-making. I’m certainly keeping myself busy.

Today, our Welsh class was discussing war. We were being asked about our family in wartime so I told them the story of my great grandfather who, after having long-since retired after his service in India and South Africa, dyed his white hair black, lied about his age and joined the Canadian Army in 1914, and also of my mother who served in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

I didn’t mention my distant great-great-cousin or whatever relation he was who was SENTENCED TO DEATH because, being a devout Quaker, he refusing to fight

One woman, the teacher from Nantwich, told the story of her father who was an Army dentist in Syria and the Western Desert in World War II.
One day he had to examine a group of volunteers to see if they were fit to join the Army and fight. One of them he was obliged to reject because his teeth were rotten.
"Blimey!" exclaimed the unlucky volunteer. "I know that we were expected to kill the enemy, but I didn’t know that we had to eat them afterwards."

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Monday 13th January 2025 – I AM HORRIFIED …

… by how much *.html coding that I have forgotten.

It was almost 30 years ago that I wrote my first web page and after a couple of years of practice I was even teaching *.html 4.0 until new technology evolved faster than I could absorb it.

Nevertheless I soldiered on, upgrading to *.html 5.0, and both of my websites and the thousands of pages therein are entirely written by hand, with the only templates in there being those that I designed and wrote myself.

The design of the sites was last changed in 2007 and not since, because there isn’t much point. *.html 5.0 has long-since reached the peak of its development and still works fine. All that I have done is to introduce elements of Javascript as I have gone along, once I’ve mastered parts of it.

But today, I was on the point of adding in a couple of new features and do you know, I couldn’t even remember how I’d actually designed my site. Despite making the coding abundantly clear, with plenty of notes, I still had to pick the coding of a page apart to give me some idea of what I did.

And then I ran aground over a simple piece of Javascript.

But it’s slowly coming together and here on my blog, on the right-hand side, you’ll notice a “buy me a coffee” button. Something that has also happened today is that I’ve had the bill for my web-hosting and domain name registration so I’ll be passing around the begging-bowl. Renting my own piece of cyberspace is not cheap.

Something that didn’t happen last night was going to bed early. It was, as usual these days, much later than usual. It might, and indeed ought, to have been a little earlier but just as I was on the point of going to bed, a “Curved Air” concert came onto the playlist.

The first piece of music that I ever played in public was the piano riff to BACK STREET LOVE and Sonia Shaw can come and sing to me any time she likes, so the song, and the group, have a special place in my memory.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep and although it was something of a mobile night, I don’t really remember anything much at all, and I was certainly asleep when the alarm went off.

Once I’d hauled myself to my feet I staggered off into the bathroom and sorted myself out, including having a shave just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon at the Dialysis Centre, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was taxiing last night on a motorbike. I picked up someone at the station in some town or other to take to the University. He sat on the back and we set off. When we came to the first bend, which was a turning on the right at some traffic lights, the lights were against us so we had to stop. When they changed to green I’d forgotten how to turn corners on a motorbike and I had a panic attack. In the end I managed basically to manoeuvre us around which was all an inconvenience but all my knowledge of riding a motorbike had been shot to pieces. I was on the wrong side of the road, the bike wasn’t sounding very nice. In the end the guy tapped me on the shoulder and said “if you just pull up here and drop me off, I’ll walk the rest of the way”. The Fare was £1:40 but he gave me £2:00, asked for the change from £1:60 and wanted a receipt that said “Fare £1:40, damages £0:15” and I’ve no idea why. I felt really embarrassed that the motorbike was showing me up today. It really really was a shame.

In Paris and many big cities there are motorcycle taxis that are available to hire. It’s much quicker for them to filter in and out of the traffic. In North America it’s illegal for a motorcycle to filter down through the traffic, which rather defeats the point of any motorcycle taxi, or any commuter motorcycle if it comes to that. And bearing that in mind, it’s amazing just how many quite common and normal things you aren’t allowed to do in “The Land Of The Free”.

But suddenly realising that you’ve forgotten how to ride a motor bike is not an ideal situation in which to be when one is halfway down the road. But at least it wasn’t a road in Crewe. I can still see the image of the road and it was down a hill at some traffic lights and a right turning underneath a railway bridge, something similar (but not identical) to coming down Wood Street towards King Street in Longton.

Thinking about it all though, long afterwards, this sudden panic attack about forgetting how to ride a motor bike is something similar to forgetting all about how I built my website, isn’t it? Bizarre, hey?

The nurse came round for his last day for a week. He was soon in and gone which was fine because I could push on and make my breakfast.

So armed with porridge, toast and coffee, I attacked MY BOOK.

We’re having a splendid argument about the name of the Isle of Man … "Isle of PERSON" – ed … today. Our author notes that Pliny called it Monapia and Caesar called it Mona and so the argument that is currently raging is whether it was the Brythons or the Goidels or the Belgae who so named it.

However, the “local” Welsh name for the Isle of Anglesey is Mona, and what both places have in common is that they are islands. Could it be, maybe, that Mona is simply an old word in an extinct language for “Island”?

He doesn’t seem to consider that possibility at all. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the word afon pronounced “avon” is Welsh for “river” so one could easily imagine a Roman or a Saxon or a Norseman asking a local “what’s the name of that place?” and the person replying in his own language “it’s the River”. And so we have the “River Avon” in several places in England.

Could the same thing not have happened when Caesar asked a local “what’s the name of that island?”. “Ohh, it’s just the island” he might have replied in his own language. Maybe I’m barking up a gum tree too, but I’m surprised that in all the 805 pages of his work, our author never even considers the possibility for a single moment despite everything else that he considers.

Back in here I attacked this website amendment that I wanted to do – a task that shouldn’t have taken me more than ten minutes. But when my cleaner came along two hours later to fit my patches, I was still far from finished. I have something that works in principle, but it’s not how I want it.

The taxi was late again, and once more it had these other two women in it. There’s no doubt that these new Social Security regulations are making everyone tighten their grip. No more squadrons of taxis streaming along the road between Avranches and Granville, and I can’t say that I’m surprised. In any case, we didn’t have a taxi today but the little Ford wheelchair carrier. And if I were back taxiing again, that’s what I would have now.

Being late at the clinic meant that everyone else was plugged in so I didn’t have to wait. The first pin was quite painless but the second, although not painless, was much easier and much less painless than Saturday. Mind you, as the anaesthetic wore off, then I knew all about it.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me today. She asked if I needed anything, and I thought that it was a shame that I was in a public ward and not in a private room. She did bring me a prescription from the dietician for more of this awful drink. I suppose that I’ll just have to keep on going and learn to like it.

But a strange thing today – I was off having more of those hallucinations that I used to have all those months ago. And during one of them I felt as if I was stroking a cat. The “fur” felt so realistic too. I’ve no idea what that was about.

Once I was unplugged I had to wait for a few minutes for my car. But that was OK because it was the chatty blonde girl – the one with the long straight hair – who brought me home and I like travelling with her.

But it was freezing when we arrived back here and my poor cleaner was frozen to the marrow waiting for me. She watched as I climbed up the stairs, and now another part of the handrail is coming loose. It won’t be long before I’ll be stuck in this apartment for good.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with pasta, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Plenty of stuffing from the pepper left over for a couple more meals. And then I’ll hopefully have my vegan pies ready by then, if I remember tomorrow to soak the lentils overnight.

So Welsh lesson tomorrow. And I’m not in the mood. However I suppose that I’ll have to do my best.

But while we’re on the subject of motor bikes and hospitals … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of the nurses today told me about a woman who had been rushed to hospital as an emergency.
Her husband had been riding a motor cycle and the police stopped him a few miles down the road.
"Excuse me, m’sieur" said the Gendarme. "Your wife fell of the pillion a couple of miles back"
"Thank heavens for that" said the man
"Thank heavens?" asked the Gendarme with a puzzled air
"Yes" replied the man. "I thought that for the last few minutes I’d suddenly gone deaf"

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Sunday 12th January 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to put his lentils in the slow cooker overnight ready to make his vegan pies today?

That’s right, folks. Brain of Britain strikes again!

What I’ll have to do, if I remember, is to put them in the slow cooker overnight on Tuesday so that they are ready for baking on Wednesday. I can’t leave things another whole week or the pastry will walk out of the fridge on its own.

The thing about the lentils is that you put them in the slow cooker on high heat, and after about an hour when they begin to boil, you drain them off and rinse them. Then put them back in with fresh clean water and a variety of herbs and spices, and leave them on a slow setting for twelve hours by which time they should be cooked and taste nice.

Then fry some onions, shallots, garlic and a block of tofu (chopped finely) in a wok with herbs and spices and anything else you like (I used a tin of sweet corn last time),.

When it’s cooked, tip the lentils in and then simmer it right down with a stock cube, and then add a few handfuls of oats to stiffen the mix, and there you have your filling for a vegan pie. Mine will of course be different because I’ll probably be adding other stuff too, but I never know what, until the final moment.

That’s the thing about vegan cooking – you can experiment with all different kinds of things to see how it all ends up.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I’d finished my notes I had some dictating to do – the eleventh or “missing” track from the programme that I recorded before Christmas, and then the one for this famous concert that I’ve been pasting together from a collection of off-cuts.

After that I should have gone to bed, but onto the playlist came Neil Young and a mammoth 16-minute version of DOWN BY THE RIVER and how is it possible for anyone to go to bed when Neil Young is singing “Down By The River”?

There once was a girl who "could drag me over the rainbow and send me away" but that ship sailed a long time ago.

So last night we ended up with a “Neil Young Live” playlist and it was horribly late once more when I went to bed.

Once in bed though, I stayed in bed fast asleep with just the odd awakening here and there. But I was definitely asleep when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE aroused me from my slumber. It’s not just “Peel’s view-halloo” that “could awaken the dead” or “the sound of his horn” that “brought me from my bed”.

Bearing in mind it’s Sunday and I’ve had a small lie-in, I can’t hang about and I was straight into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for today.

Back in here there was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing some 3D modelling during the night, making figures and shapes. I wanted to make the shape of a girl but when I looked on my workspace I already had made a shape that I wanted so I had to rework it into a different shape. While I was doing that the first girl disappeared so that meant that I could make this figure back into the shape that I wanted at the start. When it was finished there was no enemy or anything in sight so I just had to make any kind of poses on a hillside. Then this other girl came to join her and this was when it began to be complicated. I decided that I’d better rework the new arrival and make some other figure that wouldn’t be similar to the one that I had.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any serious 3-D modelling. But now that my adventure down in the Auvergne is over, there’s no real need for it – certainly not in this apartment. It might come in handy if ever I decide to join a Virtual World community but I don’t even have the time to cope with all of the problems that arise in this World, never mind another one.

And then I was staying in some boarding house somewhere. I’d only not long arrived. It had been concerned with a road accident in which a vehicle pulling out onto a main road had sent a small child hurtling through the air so everything had come to a standstill. I found myself at the front of the queue where I could see a car parked in the middle of the road, a person on his ‘phone and a small child lying in the roadway so I imagined that everyone would be ‘phoning the police and ambulance. There was also something quite interesting. At another road junction was a guy digging a hole in the road from underneath. To protect his head when he came out he had a wooden box that he put over the hole and he put his head in it to work. One car came over and flattened it. He raised his head again and another car stopped. This was a side-lift fork lift truck and it began to lift up this box. It lifted up this guy and his girlfriend with it and pulled them out of the hole. This began a huge argument and dispute with a lot of name-calling. When I arrived back at my little hostel place whatever there was another couple there being interviewed for signing in. They were two young people, quite tall, quite well-built and speaking in a North American accent. After they had signed in, they came into the room where the rest of us were sitting and asked if there were any other Canadians in here. I was on the point of working out whether I should speak to them in English or French to see whether they were Québecois or Anglophone.

That was a totally strange dream too, tunnelling up to the road surface and putting a box over your head and then being pulled out by a side-life forklift truck. There’s no doubt that my dreams are usually quite interesting, even if I have no idea of what has brought them to the forefront.

The nurse was late today. He’d probably had a lie-in too . He didn’t hag around long, so I could make my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Apart from the usual scything and scathing remarks directed at his contemporaries, he notes that two of his colleagues consider that "a tall, broad-headed, dark-haired, light-eyed people ’, whom they regard as the descendants of the men of the Bronze Age ’, formerly inhabited Aberdeenshire, but were driven inland by later blond immigrants, who were shorter and had narrower heads ….. But is it the fact?" and then devotes a couple of pages in rubbishing their theories.

However, remember a week or so when we were discussing the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONhirs" – ed … and “nothing”? It looks to me as if his two colleagues do have some kind of case worth arguing.

On page 428 of his book, he attacks the arguments of a colleague by saying that "Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed ; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness"

However, on page 445, he attacks another one of his colleagues because "his arguments, which I have examined fully elsewhere, do not prove that the dominant Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves"

Leaving aside the question about “intermarriage” and that any cross-breeding of invader and native inhabitant is more likely to be by violence than by a priest turning up to bless the union, I’m trying now to work out how “crossbreeding” can cause one characteristic to be inherited to some great extent but not another to at least the same extent.

Back in here afterwards, there was football to watch. Clyde peppering the East Fife goal with shots and East Fife just having three shots on goal. Anyone care to guess the score?

And why was I watching that game? Because, once more, Stranraer’s game was postponed. And that’s just as well because Stranraer seems to have lost half its team in this transfer window so far.

Once the football was finished, I had the soundtrack of two radio programme notes to edit.

The first one was quite straightforward and hardly needed anything at all editing out – just the odd second or two which is no big deal.

The second one was this complicated concert and its notes. That overran by well over a minute and it’s really ironic that part of the vocal introduction that had given me some of the most difficulty was one of the parts that ended in the bin. It’s always like that, isn’t it?

The joins however where I’ve had to fade songs in and out and edit in a few rounds of applause seem to be done perfectly. I’m listening to it right now and I’m really impressed with those. But strange as it is, I’ve been using this sound-editing program for ten years and I’m still finding out tips and hints about it and making it work better for me.

There were several breaks – for making soup and a bread roll for a start. It was a beautiful leek and potato soup today with a pot of soya yoghurt and plenty of black pepper stirred in. The fresh bread roll, hot out of the air-fryer, made all the difference.

Later on, there was pizza dough to make. That went well too, and there are now two balls in the freezer and the third I rolled out, assembled and baked. And that was perfect.

So what’s going to happen at the Dialysis Centre tomorrow? Will it be another three and a half hours of excruciating agony? I don’t see what else it could be. In any respect I’m not looking forward to it.

But going back to these stone circles … "well, one of us is" – ed … archaeologists were puzzled by a strange, fossilised spiky animal that they had unearthed when they were excavating a stone circle somewhere
The took it to the Natural History Museum and found the curator. They asked him if he could identify it
"We found it when we were excavating that stone circle" said an archaeologist. "Do you know what it is?"
"Now that you told me where you found it, of course I do" said the curator. "It can only be a hengehog!"

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Saturday 11th January 2025 – WHAT A CALAMITY …

… this whole day has been. Everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong today, but these days it’s becoming par for the course. I’m beginning to think that I must have kicked a black cat or walked under a ladder somewhere on my travels, and it all seems to be coming home to roost.

Even going to bed last night. It was well after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out before I staggered off into my stinking pit. But at least I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed, snug as a bug in a rug, until 07:00.

When the alarm went off, it took me quite a good few minutes to gather my wits which is a surprise seeing how few I actually have left these days, but even so I managed to beat the second alarm to my feet and headed off to the bathroom

Clothes-washing this morning. My night attire and undies went into the sink after I’d finished washing myself, and the clothes had a good wash through. And there they went, onto the octopus that hangs from the shower rail.

In the kitchen I had my medication, remembering not to take the anti-potassium stuff, and then I tidied up all of the shopping bags that were lying around all over the place. The place has to look tidy at least occasionally, even if I can’t manage that all the time.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Once more back on Middle Earth with a bunch of men and women and in this theme I dreamed that women were people and apologists being shown around. One question that came up was about some visitor to here from a while ago who was sitting on top of a plank that was on top of a paint tin that was stuck on the top of some kind of column. He was doing this in the 13th Century. They were pointing out to him that he had people listening on the news and watching on the television watching what he was doing and he had to hold his foot in his mouth in a certain position when the cameras were filming him so that it would provide an illusion with the camera. They asked him why he was there and whether he followed TNS. He replied “no, it was the other European teams that interested him like Y Fflint and Connah’s Quay” where he could follow them and experience the real atmosphere. But even in the other clubs the opportunity to speak Welsh was presented to him by having to carry out the PA reports in Welsh. The aim of this plank on this pot of paint was so that he could balance it in the one direction so that it wouldn’t actually fall off the plank. He could sit there and watch it or rugby if he so desired, sitting on his plank and have been sat there, really … indecipherable … that was a free seat or something. He was sitting on a big expensive paid type of free seat that didn’t give the right results.

Whatever that was all about, I really have no idea. None of it makes sense, especially the bit about Y Fflint qualifying for Europe. But quite honestly, this was one of the strangest dreams that I have ever had, and I’ve had a few of those.

The nurse was early today and he had a few things to say for himself. But he didn’t stay long and I could press on and make my breakfast

Armed with my porridge, toast, purée and coffee, I had another read of MY BOOK. Our hero is certainly letting his polemic run away with him now and is making no effort whatever to hide his contempt of his contemporaries.

He’s also tying himself up in knots with the different strands of the Celtic language.

There are two principal strands, the “P” strand which is Welsh, Cornish, Breton and maybe Galician; and the “Q” strand, which is the Irish, the Manx and the Gael. There are certainly similarities between the two, for example, there are surnames. In Wales, “son of” is “Mab” (mutated to “Map”) and in Scotland it’s Maq (modernised into “Mac”) which is why in Wales a surname might be “Map Hywell” which over time has become “Powell”, or “Map Reece” – now “Preece” whereas in Scotland it’s “MacAdam” or “MacArthur”.

The Welsh name for the British Isles is “Prydain” (from where “Britain” comes) and our hero is trying to tie the name in with the name “Pict” for the Pictish inhabitants of Northern Scotland, with the argument that they were “Q Strand Celts’ who were formerly the settlers of the whole island before the “P Strand Celts” arrived. But what I don’t understand is that if they were the “Q strand Celts”, why do they have a name that begins with a P?

It’s perfectly true that some of the very early Mediterraneans like Pytheas reported their name, but surely he would have found it out by speaking to them and asking them, especially if the name of the islands had been taken from their tribal or generic name and later mutated into Britannia.

Sometimes I find it very difficult and confusing to follow our author’s arguments.

Back in here I carried on with my radio programme editing and by the time that I’d finished I had something that might actually pass muster. And if it works, it really will be impressive.

It wasn’t that I actually finished but that my cleaner came along and surprised me again. She soon had my patches on me and after a little chat she left me to await the taxi.

And wait. And wait.

Eventually there was a ‘phone call. It was my driver. "I’m sorry I’m late, Mr Hall. I’m in Avranches. I’ll be another half-hour".

So where does that leave me with my anaesthetic?

After about 25 minutes another driver turned up. He’d come from St Hilaire du Harcoet to drop someone off at St Pair so they sent him here to pick me up on his return journey. At least that’s the one big advantage of being a client of one of Normandy’s biggest taxi companies. They have drivers everywhere.

We had to pick up our other passenger too, and then we had a really rapid drive down to Avranches.

Horribly late at Avranches, everyone else was already plugged in so I was seen straight away. The first pin went in totally and absolutely painlessly. I didn’t feel a thing. As for the second, that really hurt. However, it wasn’t working so they had to take it out and insert it again.

And if, dear reader, you ever want to know what pain is all about, I recommend that you go to your local Dialysis Clinic and ask them to try that out on you.

So swathed in ice to deaden the arm and the pain, I could relax.

There was football on the internet and with the lightning-fast connection there, I could watch the game in comfort. Y Bala v Caernarfon, with the winner taking a gigantic leap towards the European Qualification playoffs.

This was actually one of the best games that I have ever seen. Y Bala were the much more technical team but the Cofis are one of the fastest teams in Europe and while their style is more “agricultural” they can tear a more static team to shreds.

And this was precisely how the game went. It was one of non-stop action and excitement and the Cofis caught out Y Bala several tims with their lightning pace. And they made two of those attacks count. You can see the highlights of the game HERE

So now, Y Bala must win their final match this half season against Connah’s Quay (which the Quay must do too) on Tuesday night, and hope that Caernarfon lose at home to Y Fflint.

Eventually I was unplugged and, hours later than usual, the taxi was already waiting for me. It was one of my favourite drivers too and we almost always (except last weekend) have a good chat.

We were halfway home, on the by-pass around Sartilly, when her data head pinged. “Pick up Mr … for Granville”.

That’s the guy who is dialysed with me and he must be ready. This is going to be a very long night for the driver so "it’s OK. Let’s do a U-turn at the next roundabout" I suggested. No sense leaving him waiting and making the driver’s day any longer than it has to be.

As a result, it was after my usual tea-time when I arrived back. And as a result, everything is running really late, yet again.

There’s stuff to dictate of course, and then I’ll go to bed. But I’m never going to have this early night that I need so badly.

But this thing about asking other people to tell you what is someone’s name can lead to all kinds of confusion.
Once upon a time I had to write down a woman’s particulars.
When I finished she asked me "do you want my husband’s name too?"
"That’s right" I replied. "I need to have his name. What’s he called?"
"Well" she replied "There are a lot of names that I call him. But if I told you what they were, I bet that you wouldn’t write them down on your form."

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Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

… like pretty hard work.

The piece of music, all 65 minutes of it, is not the original. It’s been hacked around quite a lot and the joins in between the pieces are awful. Consequently today, I’ve been tracking down the original sound recording.

And now that I have it, I can see exactly why it’s been hacked about as it has. It’s for a very good reason. Consequently I’ve decided to run with the hacked-about version and see if I can improve the joints, but it’s not easy. Not at all.

Actually, it was easier that that to go to bed before 23:00 last night. And how long is it since that has happened? I’d finished quite early everything that I needed to do and once I’d backed up the computer I went and sorted myself out ready for an early night.

Once in bed, it was totally painless. I was out like a light and remember nothing whatever until just about a couple of minutes before the alarm went off, and I’m not sure why.

Nevertheless I didn’t move until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good piece of scrubbing.

After that it was into the kitchen to take my medicine, including the powder that I’m supposed to take when it’s not Dialysis Day. Honestly, I’m so confused with all of this medication, when I’m supposed to take it and why.

After that I came back to listen to the dictaphone to find out what was on it. And to my dismay, there was nothing at all thereupon. However there was a lot of this medieval, early medieval, Roman kind of stuff going on last night all through my head. There was so much of it that it wasn’t possible to collate any of it. I just kept on going from one thing to another without a pause.

There was also something about another civilisation, a rabbit and a cat flap. And whatever all of that meant I really have no idea.

The nurse was early today. He clearly had no blood tests or injections to carry out. We had something of a chat this morning and then he cleared off, leaving me to it. I could then go to rescue my bread that I had kept away from his evil cutches and then prepare breakfast.

There was MY BOOK. to read too. And our hero is stuck, trying to read the enigma of the extinct Iberian People. They had a language all of their own that is yet to be deciphered. He’s trying to link it to the Basque language and while there are similarities, there aren’t enough to draw the conclusion that one is linked to the other.

He’s busy trying to probe the theory that the Basque people came from the Middle East via North Africa and the Straits of Gibraltar rather than the established route via Turkey. There’s some mileage in this but he has then to explain why the Celtic people were pushed West into Galicia rather than North, back into France from whence they came.

Nothing that he has found – the barrow culture, the burial customs, the size of the skulls and so on add up, but it’s not stopped him carrying on his aggressive criticism down into a level of personal attack and ad hominem.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then attacked the radio editing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not an easy programme to edit. Huge lumps have been cut out – and for good reason too, as I discovered when I finally found the master tape

Consequently it’s been a very, very slow process of trying to reassemble it into some kind of spontaneous, simultaneous concert without the missing bits (that are missing for a reason). Some of it went together really well, but other parts are not so good.

There is one thing though, and that is that I’ve managed to write the notes for it. However, I have a feeling that I’m going to have to make them longer so as to fit some of the large gaps that I’m sure that I’ll be having to make in the music before long

There were the usual interruptions today. Lunch of course, with my slice of nice flapjack, and then my cleaner came by to do her stuff, so for a few hours I had a nice, clean apartment.

There was Christmas cake break too with some of that disgusting protein drink, but the final interruption was the LeClerc delivery. I’d reviewed my order this morning, added a few things, taken away a couple, and then sent it off. So there I was, at 17:00, with a room full of food.

Some of it needed to go into the freezer straight away, some needed preparing before I could freeze it, some needed going in the fridge and then there was a head of broccoli and 2kg of carrots to wash, prepare, blanch and freeze.

There’s now a broccoli stalk and about a litre and a half of carrot and broccoli water ready to make some soup, but I’d forgotten about the leeks that I have left over. So it’s leek soup this coming Sunday followed by broccoli stalk soup the following weekend.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with chips and falafel followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. And we’ll keep on eating that until it’s all gone and then we’ll make some more, seeing as LeClerc delivered some more cocoa powder.

But I really need to be more adventurous in my baking. That apple cake that I made a few months ago, for example, that worked quite well. But what else can I make that’s simple but different?

On Sunday I’m going to make some Vegan pies wit that flaky pastry that’s left. I’ll make a base of lentils, tofu and oats, maybe some potato and I’ll have to think of what else I can put in there

However, I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed because I’m exhausted. It seems that the more sleep that I have, the more I want.

In the meantime, seeing as we’ve been talking about ancient, dead languages … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Earl of Carnarvon discovered some writing that he didn’t understand on the wall of the inside of the Great Pyramid.
So after he died, he fund the ghost of Jean-François Champollion, the French hieroglyphics expert, who told him to tell him precisely what he saw.
"Certainly" said Carnarvon. "It’s ‘sacred maiden’ ‘hippopotamus’ ‘triangle’ ‘crocodile’ ‘rising sun’ ‘sacred maiden’"
So Champollion goes away to work out his translation, by reference to the Rosetta Stone.
Twenty years later Champollion contacted the Earl of Carnarvon to say that he had succeeded in translating it.
"What does it say?" asked Carnarvon eagerly
"It’s Tutankhamun leaving a note to his architect" he explains. "The first part asks if the architect can explain to him the difference between the door to the lavatory and the flap on the letter box"
"What did he say?" asked Carnarvon
"He said that he couldn’t right at this moment"
"So what did Tutankhamun reply?" asked Carnarvon
"He told him that he’d better find someone else to post his Pools coupon"

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Thursday 9th January 2025 – IN A STARTLING …

… new development, putting the pins for the dialysis machine into my arm was totally painless. I’ve no idea what went wrong or went right, but here we are.

Mind you, that was at first. When the anaesthetic began to ease off I knew all about it. And so if it proves anything at all, it proves that this anaesthetic does actually work. And that’s good news too because I was beginning to have my doubts.

As for going to bed before 23:00, it’s not a question of having my doubts but more one of an absolute certainty that I’m never going to make it into bed by then.

A concert from the Marshall Tucker Band stopped me dead in my tracks last night, and it’s not just the Southern Rock music, but Southern Rock played sometimes on a flute, and in that, the Marshall Tucker Band is unique. But of course, what helps are the songs. Good old country-rock songs played with an energy that you don’t find in many places, and with Toy Caldwell on guitar.

If you’ve never heard them live, have a listen to BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAIN SKIES. "CAROLINA’S WHERE I’M AT, AND I’LL ALWAYS LAY MY HAT …". And I wish that I was at Carolina right now, for not the least of reasons that I can catch up with Rhys. It’s years since we last saw each other.

Anyway, have a listen to SEARCHIN’ FOR A RAINBOW. I can listen to Southern Rock music all night.

After the Marshall Tucker Band I went to bed, and there I stayed until about 06:55. I say “about” because I didn’t know the time. I’d just awoken and was musing on the idea of showing a leg but instead the alarm beat me to it.

After a trip to the bathroom for a wash and shave I went into the kitchen to take my medication, remembering to forget the anti-potassium powder that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of these dreams that goes on for ever. It concerned a group of people, probably in their 30s. There was one woman quite in love with one of these guys but somehow or other they never quite hit it off. They had some kind of business together, this entire group did, and it involved cars. One Monday morning they went to check the cars and they found that her car had travelled 7,300km that weekend. They checked the tacograph and found that the tachograph had been removed. They checked the time, and it had been removed at something like 04:00 so they were trying to figure out exactly where the car had gone. They worked out that Vietnam was halfway of the distance so the car could have gone to Vietnam and back. There was certainly someone whom this woman knew in Vietnam so they were busily trying to work out how to approach this when they had another incident that required them to send another car to Vietnam. They thought that they would send this girl to see if she could repeat this journey. This Vietnam journey was more complicated because the woman to be picked up might not want to come. A couple of hours later they saw the woman and without saying anything about the tachograph they explained this new job to her. She understood it and seemed to be happy to go. They said that this woman must get into the car at all costs. “You should be prepared for difficulties but you shouldn’t hit her too hard”. This woman’s eyes opened and exclaimed “too hard?!?”. They explained again that “it’s because she has to climb into the car at all costs and you shouldn’t feel squeamish about having to persuade her. You have to do exactly what’s necessary to make her get into the car no matter how unpleasant it might possibly be to you”.

If someone can drive from Europe to Vietnam and back in a weekend they deserve a medal. And in any case, Vietnam is a darn sight more than half of 7,300kms away. However, that dream really was a vivid one and for some reason or other it’s stuck in my mind. I can’t see what relevance it has to anything that’s been going on around here.

The nurse was late coming today. He was armed with his blood-testing kit so that means that not all of his patients have given up on him and are waiting for Isabelle the Nurse. Apart from that though, he didn’t stay long and was soon gone. I could get on and make my breakfast.

MY BOOK is grinding along slowly. The author has spent this morning pooh-poohing the theories of several other writers on this theme, who probably at the same time were expending their energies pooh-poohing his theories.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a reviewer who said that his book was "a flurry of argument and counter-argument" and I can certainly see what he meant.

Back in here afterwards I spent some time tracking down some music for the next radio programme. That’s all remixed and re-edited now but it needs to be cropped down as it’s likely to overflow my one-hour slot. Once I’ve done that tomorrow morning I can write the text, and then dictate everything on Saturday night.

Once again, I was caught unawares by the cleaner who came without my realising what time it was. She fitted my patches and then I had to wait for the taxi to arrive.

It was a new driver today so he was late, and wasn’t sure where I lived. Then I had to show him where our other passenger lived. Once we were all together we had a good drive down to Avranches.

With late starting, I was late arriving but as everyone else was early they were already plugged in so I didn’t have long to wait.

The dietician came to see me this afternoon, and someone brought me the details of an appointment that they have made for me with the heart specialist – in June. They believe in keeping up to date with everything. But that date is after I will have regained possession of my apartment downstairs. Look how quickly time is approaching.

But apart from that, they left me pretty much alone and I spent the time preparing an order for LeClerc which I’ll send off in the morning.

The girl who compressed my arm after the dialysis was over had volunteered because she wanted to talk to me about air fryers. And we had quite an animated and lively chat.

Being late starting meant that I was late finishing, but that was good news in a way because the driver who brought me home was a lovely young girl, complete with long brown hair, whom I hadn’t seen before. She was a very lively character and insisted that we speak English so that she could practise.

She has a love of travelling but hasn’t been far yet and is afraid of flying. However she has a burning desire to visit Canada, and I resisted the temptation to say that I’d carry her in my arms all the way there. Had I been 40 years younger and in good health, I wouldn’t have needed asking twice.

Back here my faithful cleaner watched as I made my way upstairs. And once I’d settled down I made some dough for bread

For tea tonight, I was doing my “Mr Carmichael” impressions and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. I couldn’t think of anything else to do tonight – I wasn’t in the mood

So right now I have things to do and then I’ll go to bed. The bread has finished baking so that’s one less thing about which to worry I suppose.

But this talk about carrying the girl across the Atlantic in my arms reminds me of when I stumbled upon that woman at that lighthouse in Labrador.
She looked at me, looked at the car, a Chrysler PT Cruiser, looked at me and asked "have you driven from Baie Comeau in THAT?!?" – bearing in mind that the road from Baie Comeau to the Labrador coast was 1800kms of the worst-ever roads in the World.
"Ohh yes" I replied. "It’s not the car on roads like this, it’s the driver who makes the difference. And for my next visit to Canada, I’ll be crossing the Atlantic on a motor bike."

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Wednesday 8th January 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something today that I haven’t done several months – namely, I have crashed out this afternoon.

And crashed out royally too. It was one of those really deep ones where it was as if time and space all stood still as I plunged into the abyss. And there I stayed for a good 40 minutes. I’ve no idea what’s going on but there have also been one or two other signs that the dramatic effects of the first few sessions of dialysis are now tailing off and I’m regressing.

That’s pretty bad news, as far as I am concerned. I really had hoped that this dialysis would have solved many of my problems, but apparently not. What wouldn’t I give to be back fully fit and healthy again? Even the really sad me who had to live at Liz and Terry’s for four months when I was totally unable to fend for myself would be an improvement.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I had another long, late night as This two-hour Lindisfarne concert went on. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Lindisfarne holds a special place in my heart – and for many reasons too, and I’ll always listen to one of their concerts

That’s another thing. I’ve noticed that over this last couple of days I’ve become very nostalgic for a period that lasted between 1978 and 1979 and for something that I let slip through my fingers. I’ve no idea why that might be either because apart from a fleeting moment in 1994, neither this period nor this opportunity has never entered my head on any kind of scale before.

Looking back, there were several opportunities, nailed-on positive opportunities, that I didn’t see or recognise until it was far too late. It all just goes to prove the old saying that "nostalgia ain’t what it used to be".

Once Lindisfarne finished, round about 00:45, I took myself off reluctantly to bed for a good sleep over what was left of the night.

During the night though, I awoke once, in some kind of panic in case I’d missed the alarm. But reassuring myself that it was 05:20, I managed to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 07:00, I struggled out of bed and had to wait a good few minutes before I could drag myself to my feet and stagger into the bathroom.

After a good scrub, it was into the kitchen for the medication and I’m becoming fed up of this too. I can never remember the days when I don’t take something and I’m becoming so confused by it all. Basically, today I take everything except the Vitamin D supplement – I think.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in the Dark Ages. We were travelling on foot through some kind of woodland at the edge of a forest when a tribe of dark-skinned Neanderthal men sprang up in front of us. They were extremely threatening so we had to defend ourselves. It ended up in some kind of fight as a Wold West film might have done where we managed to repel the attackers and restore peace for the moment. That was the key for us to move quite rapidly off elsewhere but we had someone who was wounded and someone who had died so we had to think about what we were going to do with them. We couldn’t just leave them behind while we made good our escape. That wouldn’t be right at all.

This reminds me of the topics that I’ve been reading over the last few days and that’s probably the source of this dream. There’s also a considerable amount of the LORD OF THE RINGS in here too, with everything going on at the edge of the woodland, like the battle between the Riders of Rohan and the Orcs of the White Hand.

And then I was with VBH, my very first Cortina … "actually it wasn’t, but it was my first MkIII" – ed …. I’d been driving around in it for a while and suddenly realised that there was no MoT on it. I came home, parked up and crawled underneath it to look at the underside. The front and the centre section underneath were in really good condition but the rear passenger side quarter was eroded away and needed to be welded before it went. I thought “that’s another job that’s going to add to the list. While I was underneath it some people game and knocked at the door. They were talking about me and talking about my taxi business so I wondered who they are. They rattled the door really hard so I stood up, shouted at them and told them not to make so much noise. They announced themselves that they were people from the local council and local Tax Office and they wanted to talk to me. So I said “yes” seeing as they wee there, I was there and I couldn’t escape. One or two of the people disappeared and I wondered where they went but the others stayed. A girl who seemed to be in charge took out a large sheaf of paper and began to write a couple of notes that I couldn’t read from where I was, and began to ask me one or two basic questions so I answered them. Then she asked “you don’t have to go anywhere, do you?”. I replied “no. I’m staying here. I’m going to enjoy this” which gave some kind of bewildered look on her face.

No MoT? Crawling under a car? Needing welding? We’ve been there a thousand times, in dreams as well as in real life. At one stage that was the sum total of my life. Not to mention the local Council, the Tax Office, the Police and everyone else after my hide back in those days. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m a different person today than I was back then

But strangely enough, I have a little skill that not many people know – I can read upside-down just as well as I can read right-side up. And that has confused so many people who have had their written notes in front of them when they have wanted to interview me for something or other.

The nurse was early today and he talked about the town’s triathlon. He’s not entering it but the heart specialist who saw me a few months ago – he’s going to turn out. That should be interesting.

After he left, I made breakfast and then carried on with my DNA study.

We’ve been side-tracked now and I’m crawling over a collection of skeletons exhumed from early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Almost all the males in there are of Anglo-Saxon descent and 82% of them are buried with weapons, indicating warriors. The females are almost all native British people.

The reviewer tells us, rather naively, that the Anglo-Saxons must have married local native women. But the complete absence of local native male British skeletons tells us a rather different, more depressing and sad story. The DNA of early Anglo-Saxon but indigenous people, born and bred in Britain, contains mostly male Anglo-Saxon DNA and mostly female British DNA. However the available evidence (or lack thereof) that I’ve quoted is suggestive and I bet that “marriage” had absolutely nothing whatever to do with the interbreeding between the two nations.

When we were in Iceland, we were told that Icelandic DNA is made up of 80% of the male DNA coming from The Scandinavian coast, and 80% of the female DNA coming from Ireland, meaning that boatloads of Norse voyagers on their way to populate Iceland in the 10th Century stopped at Ireland to pick up some females. I hardly think that “marriage” would apply to those circumstances either.

Back in here I’ve had a very slow start back to work and have spent most of the rest of the day editing the radio notes that I dictated before Christmas and assembling the programme. I’ve chosen the 11th track and written the notes ready to dictate on Saturday night. But in the meantime, I have another programme to write and dictate for Saturday night too and I mustn’t start slacking.

There were several interruptions this afternoon too. There was lunch of course with a slice of flapjack and there was Christmas cake break

Of course there was the shower. My cleaner came in to do her stuff this afternoon and that includes helping me in and out of the shower. It might only be once a week, but it’s beautiful to be under the hot water like that. Just wait until I have that walk-in shower downstairs.

Rosemary rang me today too. Just a brief ‘phone call this afternoon – only one hour and twenty-five minutes. We’re definitely losing our touch. She had plenty of news to tell me, which is nice. They were inches deep in frost in the Auvergne last weekend and heavy snow is forecast any day soon.

To be honest, I miss the weeks of all of that hard winter weather, half a metre of snow that would fall overnight and a couple of weeks of temperature round about minus 18°C

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with naan bread, rice and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Totally delicious as it usually is.

Ordinarily right now it would be bedtime but just this minute onto the playlist has come another one of my favourite concerts.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m a really big fan of Southern Rock with its lead guitar solos that can sometimes last several weeks. One of the more underrated Southern Rock bands, apart from Widespread Panic whom I saw in South Carolina with my little Mexican friend in 2005, is the Marshall Tucker Band and their concert from Boston in 1976 has just come round.

So that’s me lost to the World for 75 minutes while I lose myself in the music. And it’s a good job that I have the music because otherwise I would have been lost a long time ago. And I bet that many of you wish that I would get lost now.

But going back to the story of the people knocking on our door, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I come from a big family. My mother told me once "one day, someone came knocking unexpectedly on our door"
"Who was it?" I asked
"It was someone collecting for the local kids’ orphanage" she said
"So what did you do?" I asked
"I gave them two of mine" she replied.

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Tuesday 7th January 2025. DO YOU KNOW …

… what I discovered today? And that is the carafe for my coffee machine is not big enough to take all of the water that can be put in the reservoir of the machine. So ask me how I know this.

That’s right – it’s been one of those days where things seem to be going in every direction except the direction that I want. Not that that’s unusual because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s the kind of thing that is the normal method of procedure around here.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Last night after I finished writing my notes I was going to go to bed as I said, but as usual, something came up to disrupt me. Round onto the playlist came a concert from Colosseum.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall this concert only too well. It’s a rather complicated concert with a lot of holes and involuntary fadings but it’s one of the top five live concerts that I’ve ever attended so it won’t ever disappear off the playlist.

It needs editing, rebuilding and remixing and that has been my project on both my trips to the High Arctic. The plan was that when everyone has gone to bed late at night and I’m on my own, up in the observation lounge on the top deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR looking at the snow and ice, I could be editing the concert without having to worry about being distracted. It’s not as if there’s much traffic out there amongst the ice late at night.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it didn’t happen like that. On both trips, in exactly the same place on the ship and exactly the same place in the ocean and at the same point in the concert, something (well, someone, actually) came along to disrupt me and I’ve been swept off my feet and carried along on a tidal wave of unstoppable events, and that was that.

Still, it’s a good concert so I stayed up to listen to it, and it was rather late when I went to bed.

During the night I awoke just once, at 05:40, But I was soon back asleep again and there I stayed until the alarm went off.

Hearing the alarm was one thing – lifting myself out of my warm, comfortable bed was something else completely. However I managed to beat the second alarm to my feet and staggered off to the bathroom for a good scrub up.

Into the kitchen next for the medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And there was something on there, but you really don’t want to hear about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

However, whatever it was that went on, there was something about all of this taking place at the seaside. It was this place that I used to visit with Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz”) on the north-eastern coast between Sunderland and Newcastle. I can’t remember the name of the town now … "it’s Seaburn" – ed ….

The nurse was early – probably because no-one wanted a blood test from him today. But he was telling me that he took part in the bain des manchots on New Year’s Day where everyone dresses up as a penguin and runs into the sea.

bain des manchot or penguin or some such donville les bains granville manche normandy franceAnd if you think that I’m joking, in 2019 a couple of us interviewed the penguins for the radio, and here’s a photo of one of them from back then to prove it.

However, it just goes to prove my point that there are some people who simply don’t have both paddles in the water.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

We’re having a big discussion about heads. And the author reckons that he can identify someone’s origin – whether they are Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Saxon etc, by the shape of their heads. Or, more accurately, the measurement of the diagonals on the interior of the skull.

That got me thinking. His idea is all well and good for 1907 but I wondered how it stood now that we have DNA to guide us along.

So hunched over a bowl of porridge I tracked down a site that talked about genetics in the UK.

Now, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we talked several days ago about stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and I was of the opinion that new waves of immigrants pushed the established population westwards and northwards, and that subsequent waves continued the process.

And there, right in front of my face in this document that I read was "British Neolithic individuals had a small amount (about 10%) of Western Hunter-Gatherer excess ancestry when compared with Iberian Early Neolithic farmers, suggesting that there was an additional gene flow from British Mesolithic hunter-gatherers into the newly arrived farmer population: while Neolithic individuals from Wales have no detectable admixture of local Western hunter-gatherer genes, those from South East England and Scotland show the highest additional admixture of local WHG genes, and those from South-West and Central England are intermediate"

So compare that with what we were discussing, the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and “none at all” and there you are!

Back in here I revised for my Welsh and then, armed with an overflowing coffee pot, I went for the lesson.

Once more, the lesson went quite well, especially as Brain of Britain revised the wrong module AGAIN! How many times have I done that before? And we have a new recruit joining the pack today. She used to live just up the road from where I lived as a tiny baby.

What with another member who was a teacher in the town where I went to Grammar School, someone on a summer school from there too and someone else from a summer school who lived in Wistaston, a suburb of Crewe, this World is becoming far too small for my liking.

After the lesson was over I went for lunch – another slice of this really good flapjack that I made, followed by some fruit. There’s no doubt that this flapjack is the best that I have made to date.

However, I’ve been looking at the dates that I bought to treat myself over Christmas and never got round to eating. There must be a recipe for a date loaf on the internet somewhere, and I wonder how it would work. With my oven, whatever it is, it’s bound to be difficult.

After lunch I had things to do, but I was interrupted by my cleaner bringing me some shopping, and then by my Christmas cake break. For a change, I didn’t have my hot chocolate. I had one of these disgusting protein drinks that I’ve been prescribed. That’s a different type of disgusting to the disgusting anti- potassium powder that I have to take several times a non-dialysis day

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the stuffing, with rice and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. And it was lovely too. Tomorrow is a vegan curry with the rest of the leftover stuffing.

So ordinarily I would think about going to bed right now, but a Lindisfarne concert has come round on the playlist so it’ll be a while yet before I retire.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about DNA … "well, one of us has" – ed … I had a relative (by marriage, not by birth, I hasten to add) who sent off his DNA to be analysed.
I asked him "what did the results say?"
"Actually" he said "they came back marked ‘rejected’. "
"When was that?" I asked
"Three days ago" he said. "The day that all the newspaper headlines were something like ‘Missing Link Between Humans and Apes finally discovered’"

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Monday 6th January 2025 – BACK AT WORK …

… as of today, and more of the same old stuff that characterised last year – namely that I wasn’t able to do anything because the medical issues interfered with my progress.

What interfered with my progress last night though was that a good concert appeared on the playlist just as I was thinking of going to bed. Shame as it is to admit it, I can’t remember which one it was now, but last night I enjoyed it to such an extent that I stayed up to listen to it, consequently it was quite late when I went to bed last night – again!

We somehow managed to survive the night without any phantom alarm calls upsetting our rhythm, although I do recall being awake once or twice at some point. However, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was deep in the Arms of Morpheus

It was quite an effort to haul myself out of bed in order to beat the second alarm but I went nevertheless fairly rapidly (for me, anyway) into the bathroom to sort myself out.

As well as Yours Truly, there were some clothes to wash and a shave to have just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me. I even applied some deodorant after the events of Saturday in the taxi when no-one spoke to me. You can’t ever be sure.

Into the kitchen next to take my medication, and it’s nice to do that – in fact it’s nice to re-adopt my old habits – without having to rush around at all. I’m fed up of always being in some kind of panic.

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night. It was something like the end of the month and there was an inventory of surgical interventions so everyone had to meet at the centre of the place where they had been hospitalised in the past and declare their reason for going. I was there waiting to be called when I heard a couple of girls say “there he is. Let’s take him and we can deal with him”. They came straight for me. I wondered whether they were the two twins whom we’d met on that island a few months back. These girls certainly meant business so I had to try to hide. After a while they worked out where I was and they stood outside saying things like “if you really are serious about waiting for the things that come you should go to Route Départementale n°9” – something like that, but itemising these lists, capitalising them and deals with them accordingly to make them all work as much as possible.

Returning to your place of business or place of origin sounds rather Biblical to me. But what twins did I meet on which island a few months ago? I have no recollection of any of that. But I hope that those twins bore a very close resemblance to THE FAMOUS TWINS OF AUSTIN POWERS. And if they did, I’m sorry, really sorry that I can’t remember them. And as for Route Départemental n°9, if there is one, it’s nowhere near anywhere where i have ever lived or travelled, but the RD 2009 is the road from Riom to Vichy which I have driven on many occasions.

I wondered why I awoke again quite dramatically and had this horrible feeling that no alarm had been set for Monday and I was going to miss my taxi that was going to take me to Dun Laoghaire and then Dundalk. I have no idea what I was going to do now. I just went to make sure that the lettuce was OK. I put some lettuce in the icebox so that it will keep and will be crisp when it comes round to deal with it and I should be able to place them on a map with no particular problem

If I did awaken dramatically, I have no recollection at all of it, and I’ve no idea why I might be going from Dun Laoghaire to Dundalk. However, it was a project of mine, long-abandoned, to profit from the collapse of the ferry network to the UK after Brexit and the positive flooding of the seas from Cherbourg, Caen and St Malo direct to the Republic of Ireland by catching a ferry direct to the Republic and, armed with a rucksack, a bus pass and a train ticket, to go to explore the island.

It was interesting nevertheless to see in the newspapers the whole raft of different redundant ferries being given berthing trials on those three French ports and in the Irish ports in the run-up to Brexit. This was to see which ones would be suitable for the Irish companies to buy so that they could run them direct without having to pass through a British port. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we even had one given a try-out in the port down here.

However – “icebox”? I’m dreaming in American – or maybe Canadian – now. Probably a reminder of happy times staying with my relatives, either with my niece in New Brunswick or my cousin in Ottawa. And that reminds me – I have a Fender bass and combo amp over there somewhere that I must repatriate.

Then there was a dream about orcs moving all around the countryside causing all kinds of chaos so I had a look at my arm to check on what the nurse had done and stayed done but I found that my little kitchen place and rest room had been wiped out by the rest room and checking, or the moist of the checking that what they had now was a really big car park (…fell asleep here …)

It’s no surprise that this dream, based on LORD OF THE RINGS that I’m currently watching disintegrated into a pile of nonsense. But for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, I don’t actually fall asleep because I’m already asleep when I’m dictating. What happens is that my dictation tails off into silence and then you’ll hear a snore. And I’m sorry for doubting you, Percy Penguin.

Did I dictate that dream … "no you didn’t" – ed … about me being in Gresty on my way back home and going to bed and there was some kind of discussion somewhere about someone’s homework? In the end I decided that I was going to help that person, whoever it was, to do that homework because there was something in there that interested me. So next morning I was in bed and someone came up to see me and asked about something. I replied “the reason why I’m still here was because I’m hoping to give you a hand with the homework” so whoever it was who came to see me asked “would you like a cup of tea?” to which I replied “yes” so they wandered off presumably to make the tea

Helping someone with their homework? What help would I be? And tea would be no use for me either. However, note once more that I’m “back in the family”. I wish that they would leave me alone.

There was no-one here to fit my anaesthetic patches so, regrettably, I had to do it myself. And that was the most disagreeable task that I have done for a while. I couldn’t look at my arm at all. I had to close my eyes, tear off the plasters that they had fitted on Saturday and put these patches on with my eyes closed and hope that I had found the correct place.

The taxi was on time for me. It was the young chatty guy and he already had a lady in the back, so the three of us had a lovely, lively ride down to Avranches. And it would have been even livelier had the driver of a car at a roundabout not switched his indicator off at the very last minute just as we were about to pull out.

So they took me to the clinic and dropped me off where I discovered that I’d forgotten to bring all my paperwork with me. It didn’t take them long to call me in but the process lasted for an age. We had an interesting chat though while it was all going on.

Back outside, I had to wait and wait for the taxi to come. he had another person with him and we had to pick up a third too. They were going to Granville but I was being hurled out at the Dialysis Clinic as they drove past.

It was 13:00 when I was finally plugged in and that’s long after the anaesthetic patches have ceased to have any effect. You don’t need me to tell you how the plugging in went.

The good news is that Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me and we had a chat for a while. I even gave her a demonstration of how to access a password-protected file on a website – not that I would ever do such a thing in real life, perish the thought and all that. But what a wonderful course T223 was.

She asked me if there was anything else I wanted. I could of course think of a few things, but that wasn’t the moment to mention them, I reckon. Not when one is plugged into a medical machine.

Some other good news was that I struck gold again today. I was looking for something on the internet concerning the Norse voyagers and came across a whole pile of literature that I had missed. Most of it is available on MY FAVOURITE SITE but some is only available to Academic researchers and my Academic connections have long-since lapsed.

As I said yesterday, this pile of stuff that I have to read is growing longer.

The taxi that was to bring me home kept me waiting for a while before it turned up, with the result that I was only about 45 minutes ahead of where I would usually be. And that’s after spending almost a whole day out. It hardly seemed worth it.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. There is plenty of stuffing left over which is good because many regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they have suggested that I want stuffing, and now I have plenty.

So bedtime ready for my Welsh course that restarts tomorrow, not that I’m looking forward to it at all. But I have to keep up.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the story of the Fertility Clinic. Emilie the Cute Consultant mentioned the story about a woman who went to the Clinic because her husband had lost interest in her.
"Here" said the doctor. "Take these pills. Slip one in his coffee and he’ll soon be back to his teenage years "
A week or two later he saw the woman walking down the street. "How did you get on?" he asked
"I slipped one into his coffee" she said "and it was wonderful. The sparkle came back into his eyes, he threw me across the table, tore off my clothes, tore off his, and gave me a really good seeing-to just like he did years ago"
"That’s wonderful" said the doctor. "But are there any side-effects?"
"I don’t know if it’s a side-effect" she replied "but they won’t let us go back into that café."

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