Tag Archives: early night

Monday 28th October 2024 – I’M FED UP …

… of this blasted dialysis and the pain that it’s causing me. Everything that could go wrong at the Clinic did go wrong today and during my three and a half hours coupled up to the machine I was wracked with non-stop pain.

What made it worse was that of the three teams there, it was the team that I consider to be the best that was there on duty this afternoon.

There’s going to have to be some dramatic improvement in the way that things work in there because if it carries on like this, I shan’t consider the 18 hours per week that I waste going to the Clinic to be worth the effort.

It’s all very well saying that they are doing their best to keep me alive, which I’m sure they are, but if I have to spend the rest of my life in pain like this three times per week, then I’d rather not bother.

One consolation though was that I was in bed before 23:00 last night, which was really nice. In fact, it was a good half-hour before and that was something for which I’d been longing.

However, I failed to make the most of it. There I was, wide-awake at 06:00 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, even applying a liberal helping of deodorant. I know that Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, but that’s no reason not to make an effort. I even changed my clothes.

Back in here I had a bash at transcribing the dictaphone notes. This was another one of these chaotic houses with lots of things happening and lots of people living there, all their lives intertwined etc. People kept on changing beds and bedrooms for some reason or other. I know that a couple of girls changed their bedding and ended up in a bed where I had slept. I pretended to forget that it was a bed where I was no longer sleeping, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, but I’m not!. Next morning there were the usual things that needed doing but I was quite looking forward to the evening because I hoped that the beds would be like they were last night and I could carry on. I had a whole variety of tasks that I needed to perform. Round about mid-afternoon I decided that I’d sit down and put my feet up for five minutes because I was tired after having had very little sleep the previous night. I sat down and put up my feet, and the next thing that I remember, it was bright sunlight and there were a lot of people about. I looked at my watch and it was 07:35. It must have been the following morning and I’d slept. I went in and everyone was having breakfast. I thought “I’ve missed my chance again, haven’t I?”. While I was wandering around looking for people I ended up in some woman’s room. She was sitting there. She’d had an accident, her glasses were broken and roughly where her glasses were broken there was a huge scar in her head. She looked quite a mess. I told her what had happened but of course I left out the part about in bed, just the part about me falling asleep. She thought that it was quite funny and told one or two other people. It was really quite funny too, especially the way that it stopped me doing what I was hoping to do.

Actually, it wasn’t all that funny. For once in my life I managed to Get The Girl … "not ‘arf ‘e did!" – ed … and then miss out on the second occasion due to crashing out. It really is unbelievable although regular readers of this rubbish will recall the unbelievable part of it being that I actually had some good luck for a change. Quite usually the second part of that affair is par for the course where I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But chaos? It sounds just like home.

And then the vogue of child painting was starting to come into effect, people having their children painted by well-known artists. Where we were living there was the occasional quest, seeing as my wife could do painting and I could write verses etc. Then of course we began to receive real-life commissions. One of them was this small child aged about three. I sat him down and tried to make him calm etc but it was clear that mathematics was just not his thing. He yowled and yowled all through this ceremony and made a right mess of this photo because there was never ever a correct moment to take it

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … although I’m asleep when I’m dreaming and dictating, I usually have some kind of vague recollection that is triggered when I’m typing out the notes. But for this dream, I have no recollection at all. Not a single bit. I’ve no idea at all what to make of this.

Finally, another dream in the long-running saga of new houses. I finally moved into my new house and was slowly settling in. I’d had a look at the one that I’d had in Winsford and they were in a terrible state so I had a look at the windows of mine and they could do with some attention if not replacing so I took out the two at the back of the house, the dining room and the rear bedroom. I began to clean up the one in the dining room and made a pretty nice job of it. I fitted it back in ready to paint but I noticed that now the sun had gone in and there were really heavy storm clouds. It was starting to rain so I took the ladder to go to fit the window back in the bedroom but the rain beat me. We had this torrential rain but I continued, trying to make this ladder work against the rear of the house but I was having so much trouble because I can’t do with ladders very well. The rain went and the rain stopped so in the end I tried to go round to the front of the house but I couldn’t work out how to get there. I tried a couple of ways but there was no obvious way to go round to the front.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve had several dreams about new houses, in one of which I had actually bought two new houses and couldn’t make up my mind in which one to live. But it did remind me of my house in Winsford and while I was at the Dialysis Clinic I came over all nostalgic about my little house. I wonder how my life and my future would have panned out had I not moved to Gainsborough Road in Crewe and stayed in Winsford.

But that’s not all, although you wouldn’t thank me for posting anything else, especially if you are eating your meal right now. As Thomas Allen Reed once said, "It was fortunate for my reputation that it never afterwards saw the light"

Isabelle the nurse came round and she collided with my cleaner, and they both came in together to assail me. My cleaner wanted my health card for the chemist and the nurse wanted to deal with my legs. They both did what they needed to do in here and left together.

After they had gone I had breakfast and read my book. We’ve now finished the speeches and we are having a lecture on geology. And I have to say that if anyone wants to take up the study of geology, they’ll do much worse than read this lecture because it’s fascinating.

In fact it’s the first geology lecture that I have ever seen where mathematical calculations are well to the fore, but if you don’t want to carry out the calculations you’ll have just as much interest looking at the diagrams.

Back in here I spent some time going through my live concerts and dating them as best as I can, and then I made a start on my Welsh homework. Even though there’s no lesson tomorrow (half-term) I want to crack on.

My cleaner came early to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s just as well because the taxi was early once more.

And here hangs a tale, because it was a driver who has taken me before. She’s usually quite chatty but today she hardly said a word and was rather snappy when she did. She had one of those auras that I could sense before she even said anything, and it wasn’t a good sensation at all.

At the Dialysis Clinic the nurse connected me up painlessly, but the machine didn’t work and nothing that she tried would make it.

With the aid of the portable x-ray machine they worked out that the needles hadn’t gone into the tube in my arm so they took them out and tried again. By this time though the anaesthetic had worn off.

Eventually they had a good contact but the machine still wouldn’t fire up. They eventually managed it but only if the pipes were in a certain position so they taped them in that position to my arm. At one stage I had five nurses and three nursing assistants standing round my bed and it’s a shame that I was in no condition to enjoy it.

That’s all very well, but you try lying like that for three and a half hours without moving your arm even half an inch. Eventually, they were so fed up of coming to deal with the plaintive wails of the machine every time I winced with pain that they rigged up a cradle with some kevlar padding.

Then I had no choice but not to move my arm

When I could I read through my Welsh and then finished off my “Curious Church Customs”. I’ll have to find a new book to read, something like HORRID CRIMES OF BYGONE CHESHIRE to see if any of my relatives are in it, and not as victims either.

The trick cyclist came by. She asked me if I was OK and when I replied that I was, she cleared off elsewhere and left me alone, which suited me fine.

With all of the excitement everything was running late, and when they came to unplug me, the compression on my arm failed again and once more the place was like a slaughterhouse

It’s no surprise that I was glad to see the back of the place and climb into the taxi to bring me home. It was another new driver and I ended up having to give directions after she took a wrong turn

My faithful cleaner was at her post again to help me out of the car but I managed the first flight of all thirteen steps without using my hand to lift my leg. If I can do that for a whole week I’m going to try the second flight up to my front door

And she had some news for me. One of the medicaments that I need is on special order and the chemist has had to send away for a box. So what’s the betting that that will be changed in a few days?

In the absence of a pepper, I made an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit for tea. I had one helping with pasta and veg, and there are three more that are destined for the freezer

The apple-cake has almost all gone now, so I might persevere with a cake in the air fryer. The chocolate cake which I cooked and which is almost all gone now, ended up being something of a success despite the misgivings that I had at the start.

So now I’m going to be brave and go to bed, even though my arm is quite painful. I’ve warned my cleaner to take her ‘phone to bed and expect a phone call because I’m not convinced at all about how this compression is going to work. I don’t suppose that I shall have a wink of sleep.

But there’s a guy who comes to the Dialysis Clinic in an ambulance because he has lost both his legs.
He was looking on with interest at this pantomime this afternoon and eventually we struck up a conversation
"have you been coming to the Dialysis Clinic for a long time?" I asked him
"Ohh no" he replied. "I lost my legs during the War."

0

Sunday 6th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again. And you have no idea how hard I have worked either.

It actually began last night after finishing writing my notes. Straight away, I dictated the notes for the two radio programmes that I prepared during the week so that they were ready to edit today.

Even having done that, I was still in bed before 23:00, which made a very nice change from how things usually are. And with a potential lie-in until 08:00 today I was set for a really good sleep.

And I actually had some of it too. It wasn’t until about 06:15 that my eyes first opened. Disappointing, I know, but 7.25 hours of uninterrupted sleep is something that is very rare indeed.

From then on until 08:00 I drifted in and out of sleep. Flat out when the alarm went off at 08:00 but it was still a struggle to force myself out of bed.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to start transcribing the dictaphone notes but the nurse came early today. He was in something of a rush.

He probably set a new record for being in and out which suited me fine and I could crack on and have breakfast. And carry on reading MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright, has now left Kent and is in Ludlow and Western Shropshire, scrambling over the Iron-Age hill forts in the Clee Hills

Back in the late 1970s, feeling totally fed up of just about everything, I drove into Shropshire, left my van parked on a car park and walked miles to a Youth Hostel near Much Wenlock.

From there I walked all the way down the Wenlock Edge, the Long Mynd and the Clee Hills stopping at various Youth Hostels on the way, totally alone, just communing with nature.

Eventually, after a week or so, I found my way back to my van and drove home, a cleaner, fresher, more focused person. It’s amazing just how much good a week of that could do.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And guess who turned up last night? Yes, it was TOTGA’s turn to put in an appearance. Did I dictate the dream about the sale at LIDL where I bought four saws or something like that because they are the kind of thing that I would use when rebuilding the house? … "no you didn’t" – ed … Later on, we were with TOTGA. She put in an appearance and we were wandering around the supermarket when we saw one of our friends come by. She showed us four lightbulbs that she’d picked up from LIDL. They certainly hadn’t been on sale when I was there so we thought that they must have put out some more stuff so maybe we should go to look. We went in and had a wander around. TOTGA went off for a wander around somewhere else. When I looked she was standing by a tray and there on the surface was wood glue, four big tubs of it at £3:99 each. I shouted down to her to grab hold of the glue and bring it back because that’s the stuff that I use more and more. Of course Nerina had something to say about that but as we explained, rebuilding a house and doing it primarily out of wood – we aren’t going to do it all today but this is the kind of stuff that you can never find when you want it. Having four tubs on a shelf in the shed would certainly ease my ability to progress whenever I feel that I have the time to do it

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I always used to keep my eye open for bargains and quite often I’d see a real bargain that I don’t actually need straight away but in a year’s time I will. So I buy it, and when I do need it, I can’t find it and have to buy another full-price one. If I did find something, it usually meant that my plans had changed and I no longer needed it.

At some point last night I was working for a company and we were planning to launch an advertising campaign. I had several good ideas in my head that I had discussed with an advertising agency but the woman who saw me there was rather frosty and didn’t really pick up very much on my ideas. Instead she suggested something else. We crossed swords on several occasions. A little later on I had to go back to the agency. I wasn’t really looking forward to meeting this woman. Over chatting, she told me that things had gone on in their office and she’d handed in her notice. She didn’t know what to do. In a fit of enthusiasm I asked her “why don’t you come and work for me?” which took her by surprise and took me by surprise too when I said it. We actually sat down and began to discuss one or two things. Later on I began to buy and accumulate office equipment that I would likely need in the hope that it really would come to fruition.

In the past I’ve worked with many people whom personally I didn’t like but because they were so good at their job it was in fact a pleasure to work with them. Skill and proficiency are to be admired in everyone who displays it.

There was also something about driving a lorry through Crewe with a ladder on the back. I’d been to pick up this ladder and put it on the back of this open-back lorry and was driving it back home. I could see that it was really unsafe on there and wasn’t actually compressed . It was fully-extended, which I thought was strange. I stopped, took the ladder off having seen a convenient terraced house round the corner with a blank wall. I struggled to carry this ladder and went to prop it against the side wall of the house so that I could collapse it safely but the ladder was too long and overhung the gutter. The street was on such a slope that the ladder was canting over to the left. I thought that if I’m not going from one crisis to another, it’s certainly starting to look like it here. I’m going to have an enormous amount of difficulty putting this ladder into a safe condition.

In my mind’s eye right now I can still see where all of that happened. It was going down Derrington Avenue near the turning into Hammond Street. And strangely enough, ladders is not my best subject either when it comes to DiY and building.

Having dealt with all of that, I set to work. And without too many interruptions I bashed out two complete radio programmes, including the extra tracks and notes, and they are now finished and ready to go – sometime in … err … May next year. Something else that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … is that I want to be as far ahead as it is reasonably possible to be, so that my programmes can live on, even if I can’t.

One interruption that I mustn’t overlook was lunch. My cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich on fresh bread tasted delicious.

It was about 16:30 when I finished so I had my hot chocolate and coconut cake (I do like that, even if it’s not politically correct) and then made an apple cake. In the absence of a recipe, I made a basic oil cake, added a pile of desiccated coconut and raisins, and then diced an apple into small pieces.

Today, I tried an experiment. I decided that instead of stirring everything with a spoon, I’d make it in my food processor. After all, no point in having it and only using it to make hummus. And it did actually make it all mix up so much better and so much more evenly

Once it was mixed up I lined a baking tin and poured the mix in and left it for a while to settle.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … kitchen table I kneaded the pizza dough that had been defrosting since lunchtime and then rolled it out onto the tray.

Once everything was ready I switched on the oven and when it was hot bunged the cake in. Never mind your “40 minutes” – it was 75 with my oven. It’s a tabletop oven and it’s not very reliable or accurate.

15 minutes before the cake was ready I assembled the pizza and then when the cake was done I swapped it with the pizza and cooked that.

And wasn’t that delicious too? It would have been even nicer had I remembered the cherry tomatoes. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

The only task that remains to be done is the Welsh homework, but that’s a job that I’m going to try to do at the hospital. I may as well try to do some good while I’m there.

Off to bed now, and who will come to see me tonight? It’s Zero’s turn so I’m keeping my fingers crossed just in case.

So while we’re on the subject of things doing some good … "well, one of us is" – ed …whether it’s working at the hospital or walking over West Shropshire, I’m reminded of the time that Nerina went to a Health Farm.
"It’s wonderful here" she told me on the ‘phone. "I’m feeling a different woman!"
On that point I could have agreed with her, but I thought that I’d best keep silent and keep my activities a secret for as long as I could.

0

Friday 4th October 2024 – IT’S GOING TO …

… be another late night tonight.

In fact it’s going to be a rather long day because not only is it going to be a late night, it was an early morning too. When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already just about to begin to make the bread after having had a good wash.

Then again, it was an early night last night. Somehow I managed to have everything finished by 22:30 and it wasn’t many minutes later that I actually climbed into bed.

Once in there, it didn’t take me long to go off into the Land of Nod. All in all, it’s about time that I had a night like that

It was about 06:00 when I awoke again and couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how I tried so in the end I gave it up as a bad job, climbed out of bed and went off for a good scrub down.

Having finished that I went into the kitchen, scrubbed down the worktop and began to make the bread. I decided against trying to make some bread rolls, for the rather prosaic reason is that there’s no room in the freezer to stock them and it’s pretty pointless making just one.

But once again, the dough didn’t rise as much as I would like. That’s bizarre because the pizza dough goes up like a lift so there’s nothing wrong with my technique. All that I can think of is that it’s the flour. This stuff is the special bread flour, while the pizza dough is made of the cheapest plain flour, so that’s quite strange.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night. It wasn’t as exciting as last night unfortunately. I was sure that I had just been spotted by the police as I was driving using my ‘phone at the same time so that’s one point on my licence and a fine that I could well do without. Even worse, I hadn’t been paying my mobile ‘phone bills for a while so the ‘phone company is now going to start to chase after me. And then the car didn’t have any tax or MoT so I had a feeling that the book was now going to be thrown at me and they would be intent upon making me suffer for this. I sat down and thought about how I could clear all of the bills and all of the backlog but it would be the end of April before I had any money available and that’s a long time to wait and I didn’t think that anyone in these kinds of organisations would wait that long. As I was walking through Belgium … "Brussels actually" – ed … around the Inner Ring near the old theatre that had been boarded up I was thinking about all of this and wondering whether the fines from the traffic police or the fines about the mobile ‘phone would come first and how they would all affect my driving licence. I reckoned that I would be in for a very bad six months before things would ever improve

Fortunately most of my transgressions occurred before the days of mobile ‘phones, ANPR and computerised police forces. I would have been totally out-of-place and totally unprepared for the modern World. When I think back to how we used to behave back in the late 60s and early 70s, I’m reminded of Daniel Gooch and his "whatever would be said of that mode of proceeding today?"

But it’s a shame that I didn’t meet that girl from last night again. That reminds me of Lee Jackson singing YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS

The nurse was in a good humour again this morning and was in chat mode again, although he didn’t say anything important . Mind you, he gave me some instructions about more supplies that we need. We seem to be running low yet again

After he left I gave the bread its second kneading and then went to make breakfast and carry on reading the REPORT OF THE EXCAVATION of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Holborough.

We’ve finished our examination of early Anglo-Saxon grave goods with specific reference to pot-hangers, and moved on to pathology lessons, having a master class on skulls with specific reference to dentistry. There’s no doubt that if I could absorb all of this book I’d be an expert on Anglo Saxon physical history. It’s one of the most fascinating books that I’ve ever read.

After putting the bread in the oven I came back in here and started work.

Today I’ve been a very busy boy. I’ve cracked on and completed all of the notes for the next radio programme. That burst of energy took me completely by surprise.

And there was a couple of pauses too. Firstly, I had to take the bread out of the oven when it was finished. It’s not perfect but it does look really good, that’s for sure.

Rosemary rang me up for a chat. Just a small one today – one hour and thirty-four minutes

Then there was a leisurely lunch – cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwiches on fresh, soft, delicious bread followed by a pile of fruit. The bread really was nice.

The cleaner came down too and had a good blitz through the apartment. Now it looks as if someone actually lives here, which is always nice

My afternoon hot chocolate was rather late today, and back in here I rather regrettably crashed out while I was doing something else. Only for about 20 minutes though, so I can’t complain too much. A few weeks ago it would have been for a couple of hours.

Tea was a rather rushed chips, salad and vegan nuggets. Rushed because we had football – Penybont v Barry Town

After their famous victory against TNS, Penybont somehow managed to lose against Llansawel, the bottom club in their following game, and when they went 1-0 down early in this game I thought “here we go again”

But whatever Rhys Griffiths put in their half-time cuppa, I wouldn’t mind a swig of it because they ran out 4-1 winners in the end. And we were treated to some of the finest goals that you would ever see

The standard of football was excellent – over the last couple of seasons we are really seeing an improvement in quality – and Penybont were the better team. But 4-1 is something of an exaggeration because Barry were much better than that.

And once more, this was another game where both I and the commentators thought that the referee must be refereeing a completely different game to the one that we were watching.

So right now I’m going to go to bed. I want a good sleep as tomorrow I have two lots of radio notes to dictate so it’ll be a late night.

But the match tonight made me feel rather sorry for Barry Town who deserved much better than to lose by three goals. It reminded me of Harry Carpenter trying his best to console Ken Norton after he had been badly beaten in a boxing match by Mohammad Ali
"Cheer up, Ken" he said. "Without you, it wouldn’t have been much of a fight".

0

Wednesday 18th September 2024 – THE LATEST NEWS ..

… coming out of the UK is that you can’t be prosecuted for implying that someone is a coconut.

It was news to me that you could, and if you think that it’s a joke, as I did when I was told, I can assure you that IT’S PERFECTLY TRUE. Someone was prosecuted for implying that someone was a coconut.

The interesting part about this is that it wasn’t the “victims” of the “insult” – the then-Prime Minister and the then-Home Secretary – who made the complaint, but a third party who was offended that that the two people concerned were so attacked.

The implications of this are quite frightening. If cases like this can be brought in re, it means that there doesn’t have to be any proof of offence. It just has to “appear to the judge that …”

Not only that, I can only think of countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Thailand where it’s an offence to make any criticism of the ruler. And that looks just like what is happening in the UK right now.

Really, when I think of some of the names that I have been called in the past and none of you lot have rallied to my defence and lodged a prosecution, I would have been happy to have been called a coconut instead.

As yet, as far as I’m aware, no-one as yet has been prosecuted for calling someone a banana. But wait until someone calls the current incumbent of the Prime Minister’s office a lemon. Then we’ll see some legislation.

In East Germany years ago they had an approved list of insults. And, for example, it was against the law to refer to “Americans” without using the adjective “degenerate” or to refer to the British people without using the adjective “servile lackey running-dog”.

So is the UK going to go down the East German route and publish an approved list of fruit?

Years ago I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain with its strict and invasive border controls, and how the West spent 35 years trying to persuade the Eastern bloc to dismantle its controls. And 30 years later we have controls at western borders that are far stricter than anything that I ever encountered in the East.

And the west spent 35 years trying to persuade the East Germans to demolish a border wall, and then 30 years later the Americans build their own.

And now we have people prosecuted for calling our leaders in the West a fruit … "are you allowed to use that word?" – ed …

The West is becoming more and more like the Old East every day and one of these days I’ll finally after all this time hear someone in the West (apart from me) admit that maybe the Soviets had a point.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I finally made it to bed before 23:00 last night.

And it was just as well too because I was exhausted. I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow and apart from the odd bit of tossing and turning I slept right through until the alarm went off.

At the first raucous rattle I staggered to my feet and when the bedroom stopped spinning round I headed for the bathroom to sort myself out

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night. While I was asleep a voice said “are you into …?” and stopped there. I asked “into what?” but of course no-one replied. But there was something going on about the army again. I’d taken some kind of food mixture and assembled it to make some kind of pudding and taken it in what would have been a third of my work to somewhere where this dream paused and I fell asleep. But I had this altercation and I’ve no idea what’s going on here but here I am regarding a couple of railway locomotives somewhere on the edge of town outside Scotland, a strange man asking me strange questions but as far as I can see there’s no-one about at all, in the street, in the shops anywhere. It’s totally deserted

That sounds as if it might have been really exciting and it’s a shame that it didn’t continue because I would have loved to have learned more about what was supposed to have been happening here. Who the man was, what he was saying and what he was meaning, that was bizarre too. But I definitely heard him quite distinctly.

Since he and his mates have moved out of their headquarters at 2011 he’s not really had a base to work from. Places always being obstructed by something or other but here where they are now it seems to be their home for good and they are pretty permanently installed. All the local village tribes are taunting them out and trying to make them come out and attack them the same way that the Native Americans did to Fetterman and his mates

It looks as if I’ve missed off the start of this dream or else it refers to another dream at some time. I’ve noticed that a few times – that a dream that I have seems to refer to one that I had a few days earlier. But then this is the point of this exercise anyway.

I was somewhere in North America and had been given a job. I had to write out the different types of driving licence, different types of vehicle and the type of licence that you need to drive each type of vehicle. There was a group of people around there and some guy was giving me instructions and another guy, he’d already made a start and said “it should take four seconds for each entry”. I thought “what planet is he living on?”. When he dictated what he’d been writing it was much longer than four seconds for a start. Eventually everyone cleared off . There was just a girl and me left behind. She ws doing something there similar. I sat down and made a start. It was much more complicated than I imagined and took much longer than four seconds for each entry. She kept on coming up with small problems in the work that she was doing, stopping asking me for help and advice. I thought “we’re going to be here for ever at this rate doing this. Nothing like four seconds per entry at all”. There was someone in fact who was a famous Creole restauranteur person who’d imported cookery into the USA. I had to write a little biography about him and how he was killed, and someone else with their Harley Davidson motor cycle. It was the kind of thing that was taking for ever. I could understand why no-one else wanted to do it.

30 or 40 years ago I would have welcomed the opportunity to go to work in the USA and in fact in 1998 I was on the shortlist to fill a vacancy at the New York office. But these days it seems that a monster has been let loose. 20 or so years ago someone opened Pandora’s Box over there and now they can’t fit the lid back on.

The nurse came around later and we had an exciting conversation.
"Which do you think is more effective?" I asked. "The anaesthetic cream or the patches?"
"You’ll find the patches easier to apply" he said
"That’s not what I asked" I retorted. "Which is more effective?"
"The patches will be easier for you to apply" he replied

And so we went on, getting absolutely nowhere.

Then he cleared off, left me on my own and I made breakfast.

My book is talking this morning about the Traprain Hoard, how the latest coin in there has been dated to AD425 and how there are religious relics in there that bear all the identity of having come from Gaul.

The speculation is that it’s loot from a pirate raid on a church in Gaul, but that seems totally bizarre to me. Why go all the way there at all kinds of risks?

AD425 corresponds very well with the collapse of organised proto-Roman society in the north of England and so my theory is that someone, maybe a Roman soldier, brought the religious relics from Gaul when he was transferred to the north of England, and left behind when the legions were withdrawn in AD410. The undefended north of England then fell victim to a series of raids from the north that destroyed organised society and carried off anything and everything of any value.

Back in here I’ve been radioing today. I’ve written all of the notes for the music that I chose yesterday. I’ll dictate that on Saturday night and edit it on Sunday in between all of the baking that I need to do.

As well as that, I’ve been doing some work on my Jersey notes, trying to tie them in with the relevant photos and write some text. I need to get back into all of the good habits that I used to have 20 years ago

Another thing that I did was to try to arrange some physiotherapy. My preferred place won’t take me because the taxi wouldn’t be authorised to take me there, but the one that I tried that was within the authorised range never returned my calls.

And that’s not the first time that I’ve tried to spend money somewhere and no-one seems to be bothered enough to want to earn it.

My cleaner came round too to do her stuff and the place now looks as if someone lives here. It’s nice when it’s clean and tidy, and it’s a shame that I have to go to spoil it.

Tea tonight was another delicious leftover curry with naan bread and I ought to make this more often because it’s really nice, especially when there’s some soya yoghurt mixed in with the curry.

So I’m off to bed, where someone is bound to call me the name of a fruit during the night. Rather like when I first came to France on a school exchange in 1970 we Brits were described by the locals as les Rosbifs – “the roast beef” – and no-one was in the least bit offended.
"Do you call us that because we’re strong, muscular and tough?" I asked in all innocence
"Ohh no" came the reply. "You want to look at yourselves after you’ve been lying in the sun for half an hour"

0

Saturday 3rd August 2024 – SO WHERE DID …

… Saturday go?

As for me, I didn’t go anywhere. I spent most of the day on my chair here in the office and much of the time I was fast asleep. It was pretty much a repeat of last Saturday, and the Saturday before that.

It seems that this Saturday thing is becoming a habit, and I don’t understand why

It’s not as if I had a particularly late night last night. To my surprise, and probably yours too, I was in bed by 23:00. Not by much, it has to be said, but enough to make it worth celebrating.

And I was asleep quite quickly too. In fact I had hardly begun my little night-time mantra before I was off with the fairies

But a strange thing happened this morning. I heard the alarm go off so I switched it off and after a stretch and a yawn, I pitched myself up onto the side of the bed.

Usually, I wait for the second alarm to go off, by which time the room and bed have stopped spinning so I can get off. But today – no second alarm.

So after several very long minutes I went to check the phone to make sure that I’ve not switched it off by accident – and there it was, still switched on, and the time was 06:55, five minutes before the first alarm is due to go off.

And it did do off on time too. So what was it that had awoken me earlier? Now there’s a mystery if ever I saw one.

In the bathroom the first thing that I had to do was to wash my watch. I’m bleeding from the wrist right underneath where the watch sits and there’s blood all over the watch. I can see this being an endless process, waking up in the morning and wiping the blood from somewhere.

We can’t go on for much longer with all of these blood-thinning products. I can see serious problems ahead if ever I have a real injury.

Having had a good wash and remembering to wash my shorts this weekend, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been for a walk around a seaside town with a friend of mine. We were appalled by the state of the beach. It was nothing but a huge rubbish dump and the smell of urine was overpowering from the water. We walked around for ten minutes and wondered how on earth the people living in the area could possibly put up with the stench that was driving me berserk. Then I set out for home. As I started for home I was overtaken by one of these Crosville Ford Transits that was heading into town. I was walking but found that I could keep pace with it. We walked all the way to Shavington with his bus just in front of me. It pulled into Shavington and went in round behind the Pony Express place at Sugarloaf Corner but I took the short cut across the front of the chip shop where I bought some chips for supper … fell asleep here … so there I was back home again with this Ford Transit bus again about 20 yards away. I wondered “what on earth was this doing? It’s travelled all the way from the top end of Crewe with no passengers on it at all to come into Shavington and then just sit here and do nothing

And I could really and honestly smell the stench of urine during this dream. It was overwhelming

Later on, I dictated One confusion was the number. It was 3230-whatever but I kept on saying the number wrong, getting the order like the numbers in the wrong place but eventually I managed to sort it out with a bit of confusion.

This obviously relates to something, but I really have no idea what. But as we know from past experience, I seem to be missing out on a lot of dreams that happen but I seem not to record. One of them was that famous dream a couple of months ago involving Castor, and we can’t not record dreams where she, Zero or TOTGA are involved. That would really be the end

The nurse didn’t take long to sort me out today. She was in and out in 10 minutes, her usual cheerful, bubbly self. She wants me to wash my puttees tonight and use the clean ones starting tomorrow, and showed me a few unhygienic marks on these. I wanted to tell her that that was her fault, not putting the plasters on the right places, but I reckon that it’s probably not a good idea to antagonise unnecessarily the person who puts the antiseptic and plasters on my wounds.

After she left I had breakfast and carried on reading my book about someone’s walks around Montana in 1910 and 1911.

While I’m reading, I have the internet running in the background and looking up all of the places that he visited and seeing just how many changes there have been in the 100-odd years since he wrote. It’s a fascinating study and, as I’ve said, so many of his observations and notes that he made from talking to the elderly settlers who had come there when the territory were first settled have failed to make it into modern historical reminiscence.

So much of this early pioneer history has been lost, and will be forgotten for ever as long as research today is just being conducted with the aid of Wikipedia and nothing else. I have a feeling that people are going to forget how to research.

It’s all very well people asking you “what did you learn at University?”. I leaned far, far more than just whatever there was on my course and, surprisingly, the place where I learned the most was in “OUSA Debate” and the other big Current Affairs chatroom whose name I have forgotten but will remember the moment I press “publish”.

In here I sat down to plan out my day, and the next thing that I remember, it was 12:43 and I had a splitting headache. I’d slept for about two hours, just like that. No recollection whatever of anything.

Falkirk’s match against Queen’s Park was on the internet so I watched the Bairns beat the Spiders and then made myself a sandwich.

Back in here after lunch I started to edit the notes that I’d dictated about John Mayall.

By the time that I’d finished this afternoon I’d assembled the programme and choosing the 11 tracks and the text from scratch I ended up 81 seconds over my hour.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I always include in my notes a lot of filler so removing 81 seconds of it was time-consuming but not defeating.

Now I have a programme assembled that features many artists who played with him before he left to live in the USA and if all goes according to plan it will be broadcast next weekend.

Remember, you can hear me and my programmes at LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS on Friday and Saturday at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK time and 15:00 Toronto time and there are podcasts recorded to hear later if you miss them.

The excitement was obviously far too much for me because I crashed out yet again and that was depressing. I need to be doing much better than this. I can’t keep on falling asleep.

But anyway I recovered just in time for tea – another one of my favourite breaded quorn fillets with baked potato and salad. The lettuce was looking rather sad but nevertheless I used what I had to. I just can’t seem to keep lettuce for any length of time.

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to dictate the next batch of arrears, put my puttees in to soak and hope that I can make it back in here without knocking my legs and bleeding to death

But before I go, I have to say that I have been taken to task about some of the humour that exudes from these pages. Someone seems to think that they are becoming far too full of smut.
"Don’t you know what good clean fun is?" wailed one contributor.
Well of course I don’t so I e-mailed her back. "You tell me. What good is it?"

0

Monday 22nd July 2024 – I HAVE NO IDEA …

… what on earth is going on right now with my flaming body.

It’s quite obvious that whatever time I decide to go to bed, it’s making no difference whatsoever.

For example, last night I FINALLY made it into bed at something like a reasonable time

However, I was wide awake at 05:15 (not OUT OF MY BRAIN ON THE TRAIN unfortunately) and up and about at 05:45, long before the alarm went off at 07:00.

You really can’t make up a story quite like this.

To complicate matters further, although I did crash out this afternoon at one point, it was for just about 20 minutes or so, not several hours like on Saturday.

So I dunno. But I wish that I did.

Last night I’m not quite sure what happened either because for some reason or other I’d finished everything that I’d needed to finish by 22:10 and that’s certainly a new departure for me. As a result, I had a leisurely stroll through the evening and at 23:00 I was already tucked up in bed with STRAWBERRY MOOSE

It didn’t take me long to drop off to sleep either which was also nice. But regrettably, I was soon awake again, as I mentioned earlier.

There’s no point lying in bed tossing and turning and being unable to sleep. I may as well be sitting on my chair unable to sleep watching Clyde stuff five goals past a hapless Edinburgh City at Meadowbank. That’s not exactly productive either but with a mug of instant coffee for a change, it was rather nice.

At the final whistle I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was working in a design bureau, working on some kind of design for a hovercraft. We’d had some kind of office party the previous evening and everyone had had quite a lot to drink and it had all passed off really well. This afternoon they sent me to tidy up. I began to collect up bits of drinks etc and taking them downstairs for people to finish off. Someone noticed that there was a bottle missing. It was the Nuits St George wine that someone had brought. I said “if it’s that ‘Jeux Sans Frontières’ stuff I didn’t bring that down because it was pretty awful rubbish” and everyone agreed with me. They all wanted to know what was happening with a bottle of Special Brew lager that I’d brought down. I discreetly, but with a bit of a show to give them a bit of a laugh, smuggled that up to my desk. One of the girls there looked at one of her colleagues and said "that ought to make his hovercraft go a little faster".

Apart from the fact that it’s been over 30 years since I last drank any alcohol and it will be another 30 years at least before the next one, working in a design bureau on a hovercraft is yet another string to my rather comprehensive night-time bow. But anyone who knows anything at all about me will know that it’s a total waste of everyone’s time expecting me to tidy up anything anywhere, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall

I’m not sure if I’ve dictated this … "you didn’t" – ed … but we had some kind of office meeting that ended up as a football match between two teams. It was quite fiercely contested but at the end it was a 2-2 draw. While this had been going on there had been some tidying up in the office. Someone found some files that should not have been there – they should have been filed away in the ‘distrained’ for years. They’d been extracted from the main run and were waiting to be taken downstairs to the storeroom. While I was there I volunteered to go to do that. That caused a few raised eyebrows because there was a Government propaganda film on at that time too that we had to watch. Downstairs, I found that all the cupboards had been locked and, even worse, the handles had been taken away so that you couldn’t open the door (… fell asleep here …) it was some kind of murderer

And putting things away too? I don’t understand this, just as I don’t understand the significance of the final couple of words. I’ve obviously missed something somewhere.

(I found myself dictating into my hand again). I needed some work doing. A company came and gave me a quote but they needed to record my bank account details it wasn’t possible to do so I told them to make a charge of £5:00 and I’d pay it with my credit card. That way the card details would be entered on the file and they’d be there ready for use. On the final invoice, make a deduction for the £5:00 that I’d paid at the start. That way everything would be all nicely arranged. They’d have all of my details on the file anyway which I thought was an easy way of resolving the situation but for some reason they wanted to make it much more complicated than it ought to have been for this question of the £5:00 and the question of the bank account details.

The simplest solutions are quite often the best, but sometimes they seem to be the most complicated for some people. But in this respect, I suppose I ought to begin thinking about the work that I need doing on the apartment downstairs, like the bath ripping out and a walk-in shower installing. Only about 10 months and if the agents have done their job, I can move in.

When the nurse came round he organised me quite quickly which was difficult because there was a lot to do. He thinks that this wound in my arm is weeping blood but it’s clean and not going septic so there’s no cause to worry.

However, I suppose that that’s why the hospital wants it checked every couple of days.

On that subject, there’s going to be some kind of “issue” tomorrow. I’ve had a letter inviting me for an appointment wit ths surgeon – at that private hospital. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have vowed never to put a single foot on the premises of that maudit établissement ever again.

So tomorrow I’m going to ring him up to tell him, and to tell him why. Fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice, shame on me.

After the nurse left I had breakfast and then a leisurely start to the day.

Once I’d awoken properly I made a start on the fourth of the five lots of dictation that I did on Saturday night. That’s now completely edited, the programme is assembled, the final track is chosen and the notes for it written, awaiting dictation.

And then I waded into the fifth one and that’s over halfway through. Hopefully I can finish that by tomorrow lunchtime and I can get on with other things. I have something in mind for this week that’s quite exciting.

My cleaner stuck her head in here to drop off the letter from the hospital and for a chat. She seems to be quite cheerful and perky today which is good news.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg. And I think that at some point this week I may have to send off a food order. supplies are holding up but you can never allow yourself to run short when you are in no position yourself to go and stock up.

So let’s see if I can have a decent sleep tonight and a nice lie-in tomorrow morning

Not much chance of that though. I’ll have to keep on bashing away at this until I move downstairs. And then I’m going to buy the biggest microwave oven that I can find.
… "why would you want to do that?" – ed …
"So that I can put my bed in it. That way I can have my eight hours sleep in just twenty minutes."

0

Monday 15th July 2024 – SO H-HOUR …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Sunday 26th May 2024 – I CAN’T GO …

… on like this much longer. I really can’t.

You cannot imagine the amount of pain I’m in from the muscle in my right leg and you cannot imagine the amount of effort even the most simple of everyday tasks is taking me.

Crawling into bed at night is a nightmare and one I’m in I’m stuck in that position and can’t move at all. And then there’s this stabbing pain every so often that starts in the sole of my right foot.

One thing that’s certain is that I’ve had enough of all of this.

Last night I was actually in bed quite early – well before 23:00. And how happy I was about that too. If only I knew what was coming.

It was 04:15 when I awoke in agony and couldn’t find a comfortable position, couldn’t move, couldn’t turn over, couldn’t do anything

Nevertheless I decided to stick it out until the 08:00 alarm but I gave up round about 06:00 and crawled out of bed. So much for the early night and possible lie-in.

After a good wash and clean-up I found another early-bird so Liz and I had a good chat on the internet for quite a while. Liz is also planning on joining the Air Fryer Assembly and was picking my brains, such as I have these days.

Once the nurse had been and gone (and been persuaded to do my blood test on Monday) and I’d had breakfast Liz and I carried on out chat for a while and then I came in here.

At first I didn’t do much except transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. People who were believed to be British spies or spies for, the UK were being denounced by another spy organisation from the Midlands as unfaithful. The authorities were taking every step within their powers to find these members who were … fell asleep here

That’s no surprise given what I was reading last night. There was something about The Disappeared – the missing victims of the IRA terror squads – and then about a police sting that went wrong in the USA when a County Police Undercover Unit “busted” the Undercover Unit of a neighbouring County

Later on I was rolling through all the history of Billy the Kid during the night. All about the different women with whom he was consorting, about the different stories about his end, the different stories about his grave and so on. I was churning it over in my mind ready to dictate when I would remember something else so I’d start again – and again, and again. And this went on for several hours while I was asleep in the very early morning and I never actually managed to dictate anything about it.

Then I couldn’t do much because I crashed out again, and for a couple of hours too. That’s no surprise given the early start that I’d had.

Lunch was late today as you might expect after all of that. It had taken me a good while to come round into the Land of the Living today – longer than usual in fact, and that’s long enough.

Once lunch had finished I spend the whole afternoon , yes the whole afternoon baking

Right now I have a pile of pizza dough, a whole pile of naan bread dough and I also baked myself a flapjack.

A flapjack with a difference too because while I was hacking some figs about with the food processor I had a few squares of chocolate in there too.

It’ll be intriguing to see what that tastes like, all mixed up with the honey

There would have been biscuits too but I ran out of time, of patience, of energy, of enthusiasm etc.

The pizza dough was delicious and the pizza excellent but I had other preoccupations so that I couldn’t really enjoy it

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to crawl into bed, pains and all, ready for tomorrow and my blood test. And this must be the very first time that I hope that they’ll have found a serious anomaly so that they can do something about it

But it all reminds me of my namesake the Arctic Explorer Charles F Hall in the second half of the 19th Century who lived up to the family tradition by being murdered by his expedition crew.

He was once treated for frostbite “in an embarrassing place” and when he asked why, told his interviewers "the USA’s Admiralty Board told me to stick it out as long as I could, but I must have misunderstood"

0

Wednesday 10th April 2024 – TODAY HASN’T BEEN …

… any easier today than it was yesterday. I fact it was probably a darn sight worse.*

And that’s a shame because I was actually in bed earlier than I usually am and earlier than I would like to be For a change it didn’t take long to finish off what I need to do, and I was wracking my brains thinking of things that I might have forgotten to do.

But one thing about it was that I was doped up to the eyebrows with painkillers.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I usually eschew painkillers but I really was in so much agony that I just couldn’t carry on any longer.

It’s not my style, I agree. I think that painkillers do more harm than good, but in bed, I’m not likely to find myself in any mischief, especially as TOTGA, Castor and Zero have stopped coming to visit me during the night.

So doped up to the eyebrows … "you’ve said that once" – ed … I went to bed. And that probably explains why I went to sleep, didn’t awaken until 06:15 and left nothing on the dictaphone except a rambling account of how grateful I was.

It really was for once a good night’s sleep because I felt absolutely nothing at all. When the alarm went off I staggered out of bed, dressed myself and checked my blood pressure – 16.3/10.5, which compares with last night’s figure of 17.4/10.2. I’m not surprised that the pressure has gone down after last night’s chemically-induced sleep.

Next thing was to take the medication, the usual piles of it too. My friendly neighbourhood cleaner will be along at some point to verify the medication that I have.

Having arranged the room, the nurse came along to give me my rabies shot, or whatever it is. And then to bandage me up with the putties so that I look like something out of Ancient Egypt

On Sunday I shall have to make another one as nice as that. It will be really nice if that one is so good.

Don’t let anyone tell you that strong black coffee keeps you awake by the way because back in here I really was gone with the fairies. I had the guitar out for a short while to have a play but didn’t go far with it.

It was 13:35 when I finally awoke and then I had lunch and a good wash with change of clothes to make myself look pretty.

To my surprise I’d been away with the fairies during the morning. I was involved in some kind of crazy science fiction dream involving some mad scientists and a chemical. But there were two of me and one of them was dishonest and ready to fall in with the plans of the scientist and the other one of me was more honest and was intent on thwarting his plans

And that4s a story with a little history behind it that deserves to be told one of these days but will have to wait until the expiry of certain periods of Statute of Limitations in the UK.

There was also something else about the Welsh Premier League and attendances. I was actually out on my way to a ground to watch a game and was driving through Whitchurch although it was no Whitchurch that I ever knew and a discussion on attendances began. Someone had seen a paper with a figure given of 4,000 and whoever it was couldn’t believe it but I replied that until their current problems Aberystwyth could easily have that kind of figure as their support.

Not that that’s ever likely to happen either. The record crowd in the Welsh Premier League is 3250 at Porthmadog who came to see them play Bangor City, but where are those clubs now?

Mind you, at a second-tier match at Old Road in Llansawel there were 1201 spectators who packed into the ground to watch them beat Rhydaman, lift the Championship and prepare for their first season in the top flight for almost 30 years.

Wouldn’t it be nice though if 4,000 could pack into Park Avenue to watch Aberystwyth? However, with a League with no money, no real publicity, no real budget and operating under a mainstream media blackout thanks to the rugby clubs who pull all the media strings in Wales, It’s no surprise.

While my cleaner was here I carried on with yet more radio notes and then after she left my favourite Auvergnats turned up again for more cake and chat. This is becoming a habit. I don’t like sharing my cake, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Tea tonight was another delicious leftover curry with naan bread, rive and vegetables. I’m really spoiling myself these days

So having done all of that, I’m off to bed. The pains have come back to some extent but I’ll try without painkillers tonight and hope that I’ll be OK

But talking about mummies and my puttees reminds me of the tomb that archaeologists discovered next to the Dead Sea in the Middle East.
"I wonder what it was for" asked one of the archaeologists
"That’s easy" replied another. "Being next to the Dead Sea, it’s probably a deceased Pharaoh’s weekend retreat"
"What do you mean by that?#34; asked the first
"It’s easy" said the second one. "This is where they’d all come to unwind after a busy week in the pyramid"

0

Wednesday 9th August 2023 – THERE REALLY ISN’T …

… any point going to bed and trying to go to sleep early if I wake up at 03:00 and then can’t go back to sleep again. It really does defeat the point.

However, I did manage to go back to sleep again, but not for long and when the alarm went off I was already up and about (after a fashion).

Once I’d had my medication I attacked the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I was down in the jungle last night with a pair of socks or something that wouldn’t behave themselves. It was like if I took them off they would keep on attacking me each tme that I turned over in bed or something like that.

Later on I did a lovely turn on the football pitch last night. A foul or offside or something was given in our favour so I went back to take the kick but the full-back decided that he’d take it and kicked it upfield. It was a really weak kick and 3 or 4 different players scrambled for it including me. I reached the ball and managed to flick it behind me. I turned and caught everyone totally unawares – including me – and had a shot at goal which hit the post, came back in but unfortunately broke back up the field. We were all caught out by a breakaway back down the field into our penalty area.

I was going away to a music festival at another point. I’d made enquiries and found out the pitch where my friend from the Wirral and his wife were staying which was one of the ones in the middle in a depression or hollow somewhere. I’d arranged to have a pitch very close nearby. We went down there and were one of the first to arrive. We had to sort through all our things to erect the tent. Then I decided that I wanted a shower. The only way to have a shower was to actually have a shower on your bed. My bed was in the middle of 2 or 3 others so I had to prepare for the shower, rig up a hosepipe or something then sit on my bed and wash myself with the hosepipe. The idea that this was going to ruin my bed and bedding never entered my head all at the moment. There was more stuff than this too, including something about the security arrangements. There was a company called Fitz Security that was doing it but I can’t think now what brought that into the conversation during the night.

Back at this folk festival again. It’s now mid-afternoon, everyone is arriving and starting to set up. There’s a food stall being set up somewhere and people are starting to queue for it. Again there’s much more going on than this but I can’t remember it. Some of it relates to the kind of food that was in some cases rather unpleasant.

Actually, if I were in the UK at the moment I would be on my way to a music festival even as we speak. It’s “Cropredy” this weekend, the Fairport Convention festival in Oxfordshire.

Did I dictate the dream that I was working for a taxi company? … “no you didn’t” – ed … A woman turned up and awoke me out of bed. I had to hunt around for my dressing gown. I was most uncomfortable but I let her in. She began to talk about another taxi company, how she’d seen their adverts everywhere and how she was looking forward to maybe working for them etc. I realised that she’d come for an interview at the wrong place. I let her carry on for a while. Suddenly she disappeared, I can’t remember how, during the dream and the interview finished. Then the boss came home and I told him about this incident. I also told him that the immersion heater wasn’t working again and I’d tried to fix it but I wasn’t able to. He was annoyed with having no hot water. he had a look around. The office was quite shabby. he asked “when are you going to paint it as you promised?”. I asked him what colour. he replied “lemon”. I said “yes OK. I’m glad about that. I don’t like white”. We made arrangements that I’d start to paint the place.

There was also something about a Zeppelin type of thing. It had a leak and there was condensation inside the gasbag that was leaking out in drips of water. We landed the Zeppelin, stripped down the valve and installed a new one, fitted it. That seemed to make the matter worse. In the end we went to a Government office where we could maybe find the parts. We were sitting around there for hours. In the end one of the women with us managed to buttonhole one of the clerks to ask him about it. He replied that these parts are special. They’re on the secret list and can only be sold to people who are bona fide citizens of the UK. The guy had a strange foreign accent so I went over to the woman and we had a laugh about the idea that the parts can only be used by bona-fide British people but can be sold by just about anyone in the whole wide world. It didn’t make any sense. We carried on chatting and ere there for quite a while talking about nothing in particular

We had a long rambling dream about being up in the Arctic ready to fly back. We had to wait for a couple of weeks while the weather ship went to pick up some weather information. It went all the way across to Greenland, round the Davis Strait and back. I grabbed hold of one of the officials and asked about the possibility of going out on the weather ship the next season next year. They said that it was simply not possible but I harassed and harangued them and generally tried to insist but it was no use at all. I was there for ages trying to convince them. Then we flew back. We arrived at the airport. I was with Nerina. As we left the plane she said that she’d forgotten something and she’d see me after Immigration. We had to run all the way round this spiral staircase thing going through different rooms, round and round to our left all the time down these stairs. We reached the bottom and had to board a bus. After the long descent down the stairs we boarded this bus. There was just one other man and me. He asked what I thought about the flight. I replied “I can’t remember anything at all about it. I remember boarding the plane and having a cup of coffee. The next thing that I remember was coming in to land at Fredericton and I had a cup of cold coffee”. He didn’t realise that we’d landed at Fredericton and was surprised when I told him the name of the town. He said “you’re wrong about the coffee. You had to go to the machine yourself and put a token in etc”. In the meantime the bus was going down the road at quite a rate of knots into the city. Suddenly it came to a spot where there was a car parked on either side of the road, a lot of cars on one side and just one on the right-hand side. They hadn’t left enough room for the bus to go through so it came to a grinding halt.

There’s no doubt about it – you’re certainly getting your money’s worth with this.

There was the Welsh homework to do and then we had the lesson. It passed reasonably well today, but we have a long way to go of course.

The strange thing was that while I was awake in the middle of the night I was working through my Welsh from yesterday. It’s preying on my mind, I suppose, and I hope that some of it might stick. I can’t remember any of the vocabulary though.

The cleaner came around too and we had a little chat in the middle of everything.

When the lesson was over I attacked another radio programme. I’ve chosen all the music, paired it off and even written the notes for about half of it. I really don’t know what’s happened to me.

Tea was leftovers with a half-helping of curry from the freezer and a naan bread. I won’t be bothered by any vampires for the next couple of days either – that new batch of garlic butter than I made is pretty good.

So now I’m going to try to go to bed early again, and hope that I can have a better sleep than last night. I haven’t paid all this money for this course not to take any benefit from it.

There’s plenty of other stuff going on too so I have my work cut out right now. At least it keeps me out of mischief.

0

Tuesday 8th August 2023 – TODAY WAS RATHER …

… better than it was yesterday.

At least I managed to keep on going without actually falling asleep at some point.

Mind you, it was pretty much touch and go at a couple of points during the day and I’m absolutely wasted right now, to such an extent that I’ll be off to bed in a moment, well before my usual bed-time.

In fact, last night I was in bed earlier than usual and despite another turbulent night, I was actually up and about before the alarm went off. Only a couple of minutes before, but it all counts.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I had a listen to the mountain of stuff that was on the dictaphone from the night. I was having the silliest of arguments in LIDL. I was there with my brother – we’d gone to buy a few things. I went up to the cashier’s desk to pay whatever I’d selected. I had to hunt for my money in my little bag thing. While I was doing this the machine began to spew out a load of £5 notes. I asked the girl what it was doing. She replied that it was preparing your change. I replied that I’d not paid anything yet. She replied “no but it prepares your change while you organise yourself”. I told her how strange this situation was. A security guard came over to see what the hubbub was about. I explained and he explained too to this girl but she didn’t understand why we found it so strange. I said that I could just take the money, say goodbye and leave my shopping here now, couldn’t I, and not pay you at all. She still didn’t get it. The subject came round about magic and magic beasts, demons, wizards etc. I said “would you like to see my demon?” and I indicated to my brother to to the the bag on my back and pull out STRAWBERRY MOOSE. Instead he came out with a giant stuffed rat. I asked “Isn’t Strawberry Moose there?”. He replied “no” so I wondered where he had gone because I was convinced that I’d brought him into the shop. It was the strangest argument that I’ve had for quite some time.

There was then a group of is in Crewe walking down Walthall Street. I was as usual chatting up a young girl who was with us. We walked past a group of people standing at the side of the road with a stock car. They were talking about North Carolina so I asked them if they came from there and if they raced there. They replied that they did. I went to ask them if they knew someone whom I knew there but I couldn’t think of his name. I asked them if they knew such and such a town where he raced. I couldn’t think of that name either. We had the most astonishing conversation. I was trying to talk to these people but I couldn’t remember anything. We talked about the towns, how they were scattered out and round, how one town was pretty much the same as the other. This chat went on for quite a while. In the end a couple of my friends had moved on down the road. I went on to catch them up. The young girl was having her watch adjusted by another member of our party. It might have been her mother or something. It was a kind of fitbit that gave a printout on a piece of paper like a till receipt. They were fitting a new paper in it. When she finished the woman patted her on the head and said “right, you can run along to Eric now”. That was a comment that took me completely by surprise.

Later on I was back with the group of people from earlier, including the young girl with the black curly hair. I finally managed to persuade her to come round to my apartment and maybe even spend the night with me. Much to my surprise her mother didn’t make all that many objections to the idea at all. She even had a quiet little word with her about one or two things. That was something else that took me completely by surprise.

So there I was, with my meal on the plate, all poised and at the ready, and I’ve no idea what happened that caused it all to melt away just before I had my fork stuck in it. Just my luck, isn’t it?

Finally I was down at the bottom of Middlewich Street by the funeral parlour at the Cumberland bridge and there I met my journalist friend from Philadelphia. She was expressing her dismay about the new manner of speaking where people today are so touchy and easily offended about things that people write that don’t even concern them, and I was agreeing. In fact, in real life, I’m sure that there are more than just one or two people with nothing better to do than to crawl all over the internet looking for ways in which they might possibly be offended.

The Welsh lesson passed quite quickly today and we made a few long strides forward.

Regrettably though, I seem to have miscalculated, or they have. My three months away, either in Canada or in hospital, were right at the start of this year’s studies, but we’re only doing half a year – the second half. I really wanted to go back and redo the beginning of the course.

When the lesson was over I had my hot chocolate and then finished off all of the radio notes for the programme I’ll be preparing at the weekend. I might even start the next one tomorrow – who knows?

For a change, I managed to eat all my tea – a taco roll with some of the left-over stuffing. There’s not much left so I’ll have a leftover curry with a naan bread for tea tomorrow.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly exhausted and an early night will do me good.

Here’s hoping for a nice little voyage or two in the company of some good friends. As Guildenstern said in “Hamlet”, “dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream”

0

Monday 20th February 2023 – AND IN WHAT IS …

… turning out to be a desperate run of dreadful nights, last night was probably about when I reached the nadir.

Although I was in bed quite early bearing in mind my 06:00 start, there was no possibility of going to sleep.

Hordes of people swarming up and down the street outside at all kinds of hours on their way back to the caravanettes parked on the car parks around here. Even at 05:00 they were still coming back from whatever was going on down in the town.

And when I did manage to go off to sleep at some strange time of night, I went on so many travels that I’m surprised that I ever made it back home again afterwards. A girl from school came to see me last night. I can’t remember who she is now. We were both learning Welsh together. During the lesson she’d been exhibiting photos and writing captions for them. We had a translation to do and our teacher was wondering why it took us so long. I explained to the girl first of all that we have to identify the words and then translate them and then arrange them into some kind of lucid sentence. I showed her 3 or 4 books that I’d bought recently that didn’t seem to help me at all with any grammar or any vocabulary. I remember one that I showed her and said “that was 50p wasted wasn’t it?”. We had a bit of a laugh. She said “I don’t think the teacher understands exactly how difficult it is for non-native speakers to grasp the principles of a foreign language”. I wish that I could remember who she was.

There was someone else at some point trying to import a Moldavian diesel engine for a project that he was building that had been interrupted by the war. He described everything that he had to do, such as take out Moldovan nationality etc. But as I started to dictate this I had the stabbing pains in my foot again so I missed an awful lot of most of what he was saying. I know that it was an incredibly complicated procedure.

This next one was a dream where many students at a school in a class had to find a Will because someone had allegedly died. They found a Will but after investigation it turned out that it didn’t belong to that person at all. There was also a tv remote there that wouldn’t change the television. They found out in the end that it was the wrong remote. There were all kinds of strange things going on about removal and substitution of documents and things. These students turned out the classroom but couldn’t find what they were looking for so they started hunting down through the school. I made a few suggestions. I doubted that the document had been destroyed because it had value other than for what they were trying to use it etc. It was a really weird supernatural kind of dream involving all these children and went on for what seemed like hours while they searched for everything and tried to make sense of what was going on with these substitutions

And later we were back in that dream again. There was something about the discovery of a motorbike in the forest and something to do with the casserole lid off the huge casserole frying pan. I can’t remember what was going on in this second part of the dream very well either.

Then I had a garage somewhere on the Pointe du Roc where the zigzags are that climb up the hill. A little yard on the right where you can park 3 cars. It wasn’t very convenient but that was where I was. In this particular dream i’m left the carpark outside this particular building. There was a police car there dealing with a pedestrian and another vehicle. I went off in the Senator, discussing with someone about the yard, saying that it was very small but it was all that was available etc. When I came back into the car park the policeman was still there but one of these guys was wandering around. I asked him what the policeman was doing. He replied that he was waiting for someone else to come. I was wondering what was happening about this with the policeman being outside our building trying to sort out whatever was happening.

And we’re still going onwards. It was late at night. I had to go to do some shopping. The only place was the petrol station so I did some shopping there, a few bits and pieces. I didn’t think much of the pears. They also had banana bread but it was sold in packs of 10 or 20 loaves which was far too many for me. I collected what I wanted. To check out you had to go to a window and hold up your products while she scanned them. I asked her if she found it extremely difficult, which she did because she was never sure if she’d scanned everything that the customer had. I moaned about the bananas and this bread. In the end I cashed out and started to go home.

Finally I was in my apartment building. It was a completely different building and a completely different apartment than this, much more modern. I had to go down and out again. When I came back I lost my way. I couldn’t remember where the lift was. Eventually I found it and went upstairs. I suddenly remembered that I had Marianne’s apartment that she’d left to me. I’d started to decorate it a while back but had somehow run out of energy. That was still waiting to be worked on. I could be doing that instead of messing around. Then it was the Annual General Meeting of the House Owners’ Association. There had been arguments about people weairing striped shirts and a few other things so there was a huge rebellion at this meeting. Everyone was coming along to overthrow some of the ridiculous rules about what you could and couldn’t do. It was so busy that I put my coffee down on this seat and couldn’t find it again because there were so many people all around. I was chatting to someone about my coffee. They said that I should be careful because I’m likely to be sued if it burns someone. I remember having to go to fetch endless cups of coffee because I was so thirsty. I had about 3 or 4 cups of coffee during this meeting.

How about that lot for a series of nocturnal rambles?

The crowds going past here at 05:00 awoke me (I must have been asleep at that point) and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep. So by the time the alarm went off at 06:00 I was up and about, medicated and working on the radio programmes to finish them off and get them out of the way.

And when I’d finished them I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme or two but at some point I dozed off to sleep again, which was no surprise given how much sleep I didn’t have during the night. I was away with the fairies for about an hour or so and I was surprised that it wasn’t for any longer.

However, before I dozed off I managed to have my toast and coffee for a late breakfast. And I do have to say that the break that I baked in the air fryer on Sunday, although it wasn’t as aerated as it might have been, was absolute perfection. The best that I have ever made, I reckon. I was really proud of that.

There’s another bread roll as well but I’ll be having it on Wednesday because tomorrow I’m going to have a bash at making pancakes for breakfast and see how they work out.

So with the music for one programme chosen, remixed and paired off already I turned my attention to the dictaphone notes, and that wasn’t the work of five minutes, as you can tell. It took quite a while to type them all out. But what was interesting was that no-one from my family came to visit me in all of that.

But there again, neither did any of my favourite characters and that’s a disappointment. Still, you can’t have everything. Mind you, I wish that I knew who that girl was. The name “Simpson” rang a bell but I can’t remember any girl with that surname whom I might have known at school.

Tea tonight was another stuffed pepper. Quite delicious as well. I’m getting to be quite good at making the stuffing for these. It was only a small one, so I was rather glad that I’d had some soup with pasta at lunchtime. It had been a very long day today and I was actually quite hungry.

There are a couple of things that I have to do right now and then I’m off to bed. To dream about making pancakes and hoping that they turn out as well as I would like them to.

But before I go to bed, I’ll just leave you with a woman who has just posted in a “Shipping” group on my Social Network that her father worked for Cunard. I replied that my father put a great deal of effort into his work as well.

0

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 – THERE’S A NOTICE …

… on the end of my bed that says Valrisico.

Just in case your Flemish is deficient, that means “risk of falling” and so it’s nice to know that they are at last taking notice of the other ailments that I have.

In fact, this afternoon I was taken down to the ground floor where they performed a scan on my right knee.

Mind you, I wasn’t impressed with them down there. The technician called the Professor for a closer look so the very helpful Yours Truly asked the Professor if he would like to hear the history of my right knee because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my right knee DOES have quite a history.

His response was “I would but I don’t have the time” and he strode off with an air of arrogance that I didn’t quite understand or appreciate.

And I was only trying to help him with his diagnosis.

They took so long that I was pressed with an urgent need which is embarrassing. My trolley-pusher had to make a detour so that we can pick up a bottle.

And it was just as well.

While we’re on this subject I have been making regular trips to ride the porcelain horse. And of the 5kg that I put on with all of these perfusions, I’ve lost half of that already.

Last night round about 22:00 I fell asleep of my own free will. Not too much use unfortunately because through the night they kept on coming into my room to measure my temperature, take my blood pressure and a few other things.

At about 01:30 I gave up trying to go back to sleep and lay there suffering. Once everything finally quietened down, I took my sleeping pill and that was that until about 05:00.

When I awoke I had a really dry throat to I ate one of the oranges in the stock of fruit that I’m creating and it was the most delicious thing that I’ve eaten.

During the night I was in North America, in my niece’s house, sitting in the living room. I was the only one in the house because I was ill. Suddenly I heard footsteps outside, the door opened, someone came in and went upstairs. There was a lot of moving around up there, then they came back downstairs again. My niece who had appeared from nowhere said something to whoever it was and whoever snapped back in a most disrespectful way to her.

Today I had a good wash and shave and then a doctor came to see me about my leg. While he was at it he mentioned these viruses and infections and I gather that I’m likely to be here for a while yet.

He didn’t say much about my knee but he obviously saw enough to arrange for a scan for me. But we’ll have to see what unfolds.

The food was good again and the staff are quite friendly as I have said before.

But right now even if it’s only 21:00 I’m off to settle down in bed. There’s a sleeping pill here but I’ll try to go to sleep naturally. It’s a shame to waste the sleeping pill in the midnight stampede.

0

Tuesday 1st November 2022 – AND IT REALLY IS

… a bad news day today.

A doctor has been to visit me to say that I’m seriously ill

This is the problem with this lack of immunity. People have been catching this and feeling much better three days later. I’ve been seriously ill for 13 days and in intensive care for 6 days and any improvement is “slight”

Basically they are astonished that I travelled so far and in such strange conditions with this illness that is engulfing me, and frankly, so am I.

For a change, last night was much better They gave me a different sleeping pill that I took at 20:00 and the next thig that I remember was that i was 00:30. That was definitely one of Bill Oddie’s “powders that would paralyse a bear” and I’ll take a few more of those.

Later on I was back to sleep for a few hours and there’s even something on the dictaphone too. I was with Maria and Nicole last night. We were on our way somewhere and met a group of young boys. Eventually we arrived at her place of work. It was a job involving slicing carrots. They were working quite hard but every hour or so someone would bring them an ice-cream. I thought that this was a really good place to work by the looks of things because we were new in Canada and any job would be good so we decided that we’d ask. In the meantime Nicole was lying down on a bench and the supervisor went over to her to find out why. She said that she hadn’t been given any carrots for a few minutes. The supervisor didn’t say anything. We went over to see the guy. I told him of my qualifications. He said that with an HGV you need to be certified in Canada. In the meantime as a part-time thing I’d be driving the coach for them taking people home after their shift. I’d done it a few times but he obviously didn’t know. He came back once in the coach, and old Plaxton Elite. They were all hanging around out of the back of the building where I wanted to put the bus so we began to talk about some rally that was taking place – “did I know so-and-so from Evans Radio who was coming in a steam roller?”. That rang a bell with me because I knew someone else who was going to come in a steam roller so we chatted about that for a while

Later on I was with TOTGA. She was dating someone else whom I knew. The three of us were walking somewhere. She was smoking a lot that annoyed me a little. We wandered off on this walk and came to this fertiliser, salt and other chemical distribution place with piles and piles of sacks. I’d visited this place in the past. She went first and the lights came on so she ran back. I told her “come on, there’s no problem” and we walked through here down towards the canal where she stopped to have a cigarette. I’d walked this path dozens of times all the way down to the next bridge and back. On occasion I’d continued over the hills to the end and round over there for ages on some of the hills I’d roamed upon in the past during a dream

There was far more to it than this but you don’t really want to know about it.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 I was already working and I kept that going for a few hours. Not for long though and by 14:00 I was back in bed.

A couple of doctors have seen me (it’s Bank Holiday here)and they have finally taken out the perfusions and the ports that they put in. And with all of the intravenous stuff I’ve been having, I’ve gained 5kg in 5 days and that’s really depressing

There’s a downside to having finished my perfusions. They were placed on a portable stand which was good for clinging on to. Now it’s gone along with the perfusions so it’s a desperate stagger across the room and I’m sure that it will end in tears.

But anyway it might only be 19:30 but seeing that I’m in bed already, I’m going to try to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day

0

Sunday 15th August 2021 – THE OTHER DAY …

belle france baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall… when discussing all of the boats that were out there on the water, I believe that I mentioned how I would love to be out there when the harbour gates are near closing, in order to witness the stampede as the boats all headed back for port.

And sure enough, this afternoon I had my wish, and a lot sooner than I was expecting as well. The tide is advancing quite rapidly and even though this is my usual time to be out, you can see the mad dash for home already.

Belle France is well up there in second place to that cabin cruiser in front, but on the outside there’s a speedboat coming incredibly quickly, making quite a wave as he does so.

boats heading for harbour port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallRound on the pther side of the headland, things are much more advanced.

There are at least five and maybe even more small boats in the photo just here, all dashing for the port de plaisance while they still are able to do so.

Nobody would want to be stranded out in the bay during the night, especially if they have work to go to in the morning.

Not too many people out on the sea wall watching them though. I would have expected this to have been one of the best free entertainments going.

Last night I did without any kind of entertainment – free or otherwise – after the football. At the final whistle I staggered off to bed and that was that.

At 06:19 I was awake but if anyone thinks that I’ll be leaving my bed at that time of day on a Sunday they are mistaken. Even 09:10 is a bit optimistic. 10:40 is much more like it.

Ordinarily I would have said that that was a good sleep but there is tons of stuff on the dictaphone so I must have been quite disturbed (as if I’m not disturbed enough as it it).

I started off at the home of a couple of friends last night, doing a load of moving for them or something like that. I’d gone to her office room to talk to her but she was busy on the phone so I went into his office room kind of thing and he wasn’t there. I thought that I would wait for him to come back and I started listening to music and I thought “He has loads of LPs so I’m sure that he has loads of live cast-offs that would do for a live concert”. There was a box of strawberries and cream by the side of his computer and I was busy eating my way through those and scrolling through his Facebook screen. Suddenly I saw a message that he had sent me about Welsh Premier League football and I could see my reply under there. I thought that I’d better not be confused in this subject comes up again because I’ll be replying as someone else instead of me and reading my own replies. When they did come down they looked so young and it was very hard for me to believe that it was them. I couldn’t believe it. They were talking about everything, about how we don’t need to go out for a meal tonight but we can go for breakfast tomorrow somewhere. I said that my partner (and I couldn’t think of her name) was having to teach this afternoon but I’d been watching “Alfie” and this started off with some guys going to rob the home of a policewoman or something but the robbery had all gone wrong and several policemen in there and there had ended up being a gunfight and all these guys had gone to prison and been sent down for an enormous length of time. The Michael Caine character had to flee the country with his girlfriend and she was telling him all this bad news about everything else that was connected with this but still going wrong. He was pretty powerless where he was to actually do anything about it

This flat (and I wish that I knew which flat is was that I was discussing) is ideal for the kind of thing for a weekend retreat where you can come away from Paris on Friday and be here Friday night, and not have to go back until Sunday night and spend every weekend down by the sea.

A little later I was on my way to a football match and I arrived in Chester and was running late so I had to take a taxi. I went to the local rank but there were only little electric telephone box-type cars so I said to a guy standing near it “is that yours?”. Another guy immediately leapt out of a vehicle and asked “taxi?”. I replied “yes but just give me a minute to make a phone call. Is there a phone handy?”. I had a discount card that I needed to ring up to book. he showed me over to a phone but said “there’s still 12 minutes left on the meter. Where do you want to go? I said “Deva Road” so he replied “come on. We’ll get there before this runs out”. He ushered me into a red Rover V8 and drove me there. We had a bit of a laugh in the snow about how uneconomical his car was, everything. He said that it wasn’t that bad. As I got up the steps to the football ground, I did a bit of shopping and started to walk back. I didn’t go to the game at all if there had been one.

A group of travellers turned up in Palestine, amongst them a three year old boy that was donated by some parent in some emergency but when they got to Palestine they didn’t have a clue as to what they were going to do so they built some kind of meeting centre or something like that to show at least that they weren’t going to waste any time.

Somewhere as well there was a story of two 9-year-old girls who used to go around all these rock festivals and blues festivals filming the events. Their mother would form them into some kind or promotional video. I was there somewhere with a girl and I introduced her to people like John Hite and someone who wrote a lot of songs, Creedence Clearwater Revival (do I mean Bob Hite of Canned Heat?). I said “there you are, you have to meet John Hite and a few others and that’s something to tell your friends, isn’t it?”. She replied “most of my friends wouldn’t even know who people like that are”.

Later I woke up in a panic thinking that it was 16:00 and I had a flight back to Europe in an hour and I had so much to do. I grabbed all of my things and shot off to the airport and then spent quite a lot of time trying to find a place to sit down and sort myself out and pack everything. A couple of people came to join me and we were talking about the lack of seats in this place. The discussion drifted on to airports in North Carolina and the rudimentary facilities there, some experience that I could share with these two people as well.

As well as all of this, someone had asked me to do some tiling for him. I’m not very good at tiling but I went along to have a look. At my place I’d tiled on top of a piece of lino so I found a piece of lino and cut to size and cleaned up but instead of using soap I’d used fat and it made a right mess of everywhere so I had to take it out. There was fat all over the floor so I prepared to mop it up. Then he came in. He hadn’t really twigged on what was going on but he was inspecting it as much as he could and how I knew what was going to be done to the right size so that I’d cut off a piece of lino as a template. He went to look at it. I told him that it was wet so he said “we’d better open it out to dry” so he opened it out on his balcony. He asked me “your insurance liability is up to date, isn’t it?” Unfortunately I didn’t have any and I was beginning to regret having said that I would do this job for him the way that he was going on like this.

After the medication I came back in here to check my mail and then I went off to have a look at the view now that the tide is on its way out.

boats baie de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd that’s the view that greeted me looking out across the Baie de Granville and the English Channel this morning.

After the really wonderful few days that we have had, summer is now apparently over and we are back in winter again.

It’s pretty pointless trying to look for car ferries and sailing ships in that lot just there. It was raining too, the first time for about a week, and that didn’t help matters at all. We could have had Godzilla and the Loch Ness Monster out there this morning and I wouldn’t have seen them.

rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThe view down the coast was, if anything, even worse.

We can just about make out the white beach huts on the promenade at the Plat Gousset but our view doesn’t go very much beyond there right now. The Rue du Nord is swathed in raincloud too.

Hopefully the view will be better on the other side of the headland in the lee of the wind. The rain might not have reached there yet.

spirit of conrad aztec lady port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd while we might not have any rain, the view isn’t all that much better, which is a shame.

However Aztec Lady is back in town. She’s the blue boat over there that goes on a few exciting voyages every so often, although the current travel regulations have curtailed much of the more interesting sailings.

To her left, bow-end on to the camera is Spirit of Conrad, the boat on which we went down the Brittany coast last year. The last time that I’d heard of her, she was over at the Ile de Chausey but I met her skipper yesterday so I assumed that she had come home.

suzanga baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnother boat that was on her way home this morning in all of the bad weather is the trawler Suzanga.

She’s the new boat in town, having only recently arrived from the shipbuilders in Turkey, and she’s already out there earning her keep.

That’s several new trawlers that have joined the local fleet since I’ve been living here. It shows that contrary to all expectations, the local ship owners are rather optimistic about the future of the fishing industry here, and that’s always quite a good sign.

Positive thinking seems to be in rather short supply these days among some people.

zodiac port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallDespite the miserable weather, there’s plenty of activity in port this morning which is nice to see.

There were several zodiacs loitering aroind in the neighbourhood, almost as if there was a cruise ship like THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR anchored somewhere offshore.

But the girl who was driving this one came in, went up to the harbour wall, said something to a few people and then turned round and sailed back out again. So what was that all about then?

passengers boarding zodiac port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallMeanwhile I could see the heads of some other people down there and they looked as if they were sitting in a zodiac, but I couldn’t really see because the house roofs were in the way.

It took about 20 minutes for them to decide what they were going to do and I had to wait around all that time because there wasn’t anything else going on that I could see that would occupy my mind.

Eventually they threw a rope to someone on the quayside and they moved away, so that I could see what was going on.

people on board zodiac leaving port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThey set off in the tracks of the one that had left earlier.

And I know that my expedition friends would be having heart failure seeing a moving zodiac with people standing up in it as it travels, even if they are hanging on to something.

The way that they pitch and roll and sway in the sea means that they aren’t as stable as they might be with a high centre of gravity when people are standing up. Everyone should be sitting down and luggage goes at their feet to keep the centre of gravity lower still.

By now I was becoming rather wet (as if I wasn’t wet enough before I started) so I headed for home and a nice hot coffee, and then start work on yesterday’s journal entry.

dropping off passengers blocking rue st jean Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAt some point or other during the day I was interrupted by noise from out at the back.

The streets around the old town are closed today as it’s the book fair, and there was a breakdown lorry trying to gain access . The driver had gone off to seek assistance but in the meantime, another car had come past him and then inexplicably stopped, rather selfishly, to let out his passengers while he goes to park the car.

Never mind that the road is narrow enough so that no-one else behind him could go past. That’s clearly unimportant as long as he’s OK.

The selfishness of some people never ceases to amaze me.

Writing my notes was a long and arduous task today, and took much longer than I expected. I even had a rather quick lunch to try to make more time but as you probably realise, something like that seldom seems to work.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThis afternoon I went out to have a look at the beach to see what was happening down there.

No afternoon walk seems to be complete without that these days.

The tide has come in quite quickly but there are still plenty of brave souls down there trying out the beach, sitting around and sunbathing.

There didn’t seem to be anyone actually in the water this afternoon but that’s not to say that there weren’t any.

kayaker baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere were other people in the water though, but in a different fashion entirely.

Like this kayaker for instance. He must have paddled his canoe quite a long way to end up here, and now he’s going to have to turn round and paddle himself all the way back, and pretty quickly too if he wants to find a slipway or launching pad still in the water.

And is that a fishing rod that he has poking up behind him? It can’t be all that comfortable fishing in a kayak. And where would be put his catch?

great cormorant baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallSomething else that was out here like piffy on a rock was this strange creature.

It’s actually a Great Cormorant and he’s a long way from home. His breeding colony is probably the one across the bay on one of the small islands facing Cancale. Several of those islands – the uninhabited ones – are know to be breeding grounds.

They were much more widespread than that at one time but predators like foxes and rats have seen off several colonies. In fact there’s a plan for the Ile de Chausey for a mass eradication of non-indigenous predators.

hang glider cemetery Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd when you compare this photo of the one that I took down the coast earlier today, you’ll see a great difference.

Of course, the rain cloud has now passed on to better things and the weather is so much nicer. In addition to that, the Bird-Men of Alcatraz have awoken and they have come here with their Nazgul to have an afternoon’s adventuring.

One of them has just taken off from the field by the cemetery and at the moment he’s fighting to gain control of his Nazgul, after which he’ll be heading this way.

yacht ile de chausey Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere didn’t seem to be all that much going on farther out at sea this afternoon but I did scan the horizon.

At one point I picked up something large and dark out by the Ile de Chausey and although I couldn’t imagine it being anything else other than the sail of a yacht I took a photo to check when I returned home.

Sure enough, it is a yacht although it’s too far out to see if it’s anyone we know. Black Mamba isn’t in port right now but she’s apparently in Cherbourg right now so I doubt that it might be her.

belem english channel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallHere is someone else who we might have seen over the last few days out there in the English Channel.

Unfortunately the weather is nothing like as clear as it was yesterday morning for us to give a positive identification but thinking that it might again be the training ship Belem, I made a note of her position.

Sure enough, when I returned, I could check on the historical radar plot and Belem was indeed at that spot round about that time of the afternoon.

hang glider pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was nothing else going on out there of any importance (apart from the mad stampede that you saw earlier) so I pushed on around the headland.

As I crossed over the road, one of the errant Nazgul went swooping by over the top of the old bunker so I stopped to take a photograph of it.

And then I ended up in a mad stampede of my own down the hill chasing after my camera’s lens cap that I had unfortunately dropped.

Luckily I managed to avoid being run down by a car coming up the hill towards me. We both would have had a surprise.

f-gbai ROBIN DR 400-140B pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallAt this point I was overflown yet again, this time by a mechanical device and I wondered why it had taken them so long to find me.

This is one that we recognise, having seen her many times just recently. She’s the Granville Aero Club’s Robin DR 400-140B F-GBAI going out on an afternoon flight.

She was first picked up on radar at 16:01 (my photo is (adjusted) 16:14) and she did a few laps around the Ile de Chausey and then up and down the coast before disappearing off the radar again near the airfield at 17:50

chausiaise joly france port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallThere was no change in occupant at the chantier naval today so I turned my attention elsewhere.

The ferry that we saw coming over from the Ile de Chausey, I wasn’t sure who she was. But I can tell you who she wasn’t because the older one of the two Joly France boats is sitting there at the quayside already with a load of people on the path just above her as if they have just gone ashore.

And here on the other side is the little freighter Chausiaise. So it can’t be any one of those two. But we’ll find out in a couple of minutes.

belle france entering port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric HallAnd it didn’t even take that long before we were to find out.

Around the bend, alongside the sea wall and into the harbour came the brand-new Belle France, crammed to the gunwhales with people from the Ile de Chausey.

There were quite a few people on the sea wall by now admiring her as she appeared, and quite rightly too because not only is she a beautiful machine, she’s a sign of faith and optimism that there’s plenty of life left in the port.

And with the uncertain future surrounding the Channel Island ferries and the gravel boats, then this is good news.

man taking photograph car park boulevard vaufleury Granville Manche Normandy France Eric HallOne thing that I have to do before I finish.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my pages are littered with inter alia photos of people taking photos. Today we had a large family group with a photographer who was taking pictures of them, with tripod and all.

This was far too good an opportunity to miss and I had to add a discreet shot of the event to my little collection.

Back here at the apartment I finally finished my notes from yesterday and then I joined up the tracks for the radio programme for tomorrow.

When that was done I attacked my pizza which was delicious. I haven’t made anything else though because I’m off on Tuesday to Leuven.

And now seeing as I’m exhausted, I’m off for an early night ready to start work tomorrow. Radio first of course, and I also have the injection man coming as well. I wonder if that will kickstart me into life for my trip to Leuven.

0