Tag Archives: early start

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following day.

And so no-one should be surprised to learn that at 05:50 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Mind you, there was a reason behind it all, as you will find out for yourself if you read on a little further.

But last night, as some of you may have realised if you logged on early, I was simply overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with pain, overwhelmed with discomfort, overwhelmed with everything. In the end, I abandoned my notes and went to bed.

It didn’t take much rocking last night either, and I was soon asleep. But not for long. Round about 03:00 we had one of the fiercest storms that I have known since I’ve been here, and we have had a few.

This storm was wicked. It was lashing down with rain and the howling winds at probably over one hundred kilometres per hour were making mincemeat of the car park. No-one could sleep through this racket.

Round about 04:30, it all calmed down, only to spring up again from a different direction. This was full on to the front of the house and it was so powerful that it blew my windows open. I had to climb out of bed to close them.

After sitting on the bed for fifteen minutes thinking, that was when I decided that there was no point in staying in bed. Instead, I dressed … "at a very leisurely pace" – ed … and began work.

First task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

This is another dream that I seem to have forgotten from during the night. I know that I was in it, and there was something about bottling something or putting things in jars and putting them on one side. Out of the stuff that we had made, there were four of these huge flip-top bottles and two ordinary ones. They had to be taken away, stocked and generally looked after. This is where it was all confusing, with us putting them into the van to take them away. There was a lot more to it than this. There were scenes when I was in bed, another scene where I was sulking and the tied cottage that we had, and I wish that I could write more about it.

This is another dream that I would have loved to finish. You can’t leave me on a cliffhanger like this

I went to a rock concert with a friend of mine and one or two of this friend. This was a friend whom I’d had for years and for some reason, he was extremely depressed, something that affected him quite often in the past. It was really going on late, this concert, and at the end of it, the three of us left. My friend turned to me and said “I don’t think that I’ll be having any more Cortinas again. I asked him “why not” and in the end, he explained that in his opinion, they were far out of date now and he needed a new, modern car to keep up and all that stuff. As we walked into town, he made it perfectly clear that he and his friend were going off in one direction and I should go off in the other. It was a cold, rainy thing but I started to walk away. I noticed that it was getting light and the birds were singing. At that moment, I went into Boots the Chemist and wandered around looking at the products for a while. I really wanted some deodorant but instead, I bought a packet of tomatoes and a huge packet of crisps. I paid for them at the checkout, which was quite funny because the cashier lost my bag of tomatoes somewhere on my conveyor belt

There is a story about this going back to about 1974 when I was “sent off” from a pub crawl, but that’s another one that the World is not yet ready to hear.

However, I did have a friend who once was so overwhelmed at work that he took a holiday not knowing where he was going and ended up being lost. And the incident at Boots at Crewe – the interior is very suggestive of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago of a shopping mall in Montréal, but the outside was definitely the Crewe British Home Stores.

When the nurse came, the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t even lift an eyelid, never mind barking at him. He allowed the nurse to stroke him and then the nurse turned his attention to me. He didn’t actually stroke me but massaged my feet and legs with the cream and put my elastic compression socks on my feet.

Then, after another stroke of the beast, he cleared off on the rest of his rounds and I could make my breakfast.

The next book on the list is RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge, an author whom we have encountered before.

He starts off his book by saying "this work is nothing more than a report on certain excavations, and as such, follows the modern pattern of being as colourless as possible. In the last century, a similar work would have included musings on the brevity of life, scraps of poetry and various other frills. Now, archaeology has become so stern a subject that I have not even dared to describe our feelings when a skull at Hollywell Row began to walk away with a young rabbit inside it."

He goes on to add "most readers would surely prefer the older method" and he’s not wrong there, because I know what I would, except when the author goes berserk with his remarks.

Lethbridge also makes the remark that "it would seem probable that male skeletons without weapons in this cemetery and others of the pagan period are those of slaves". Slavery was quite common in those days. These slaves were usually captured in battle or criminal slaves doing penance for their crimes, and, believe it or not, some people actually gave themselves voluntarily into slavery.

That latter phrase is certainly true, whether modern people like to admit it or not. But the life of a peasant in early Mediaeval times was a struggle between life and death, with not much margin between the two. But if your crops failed and your wife and children were starving, what options did you have? The duty of a lord was to feed, clothe and house his slaves, and it was better than starving to death. And let’s face it – the life of an early mediaeval peasant was not much more than that anyway.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase.

At this point, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I came in here to go through my Welsh, ready for the lesson. And while I was breakfasting, our tutor had sent us by e-mail a huge pile of work that we were going to be doing during our lesson. I had less than an hour to go through it and that was rather unfair.

The lesson itself passed really well, although one or two of my classmates laughed when I told them about my Welsh-speaking artificial intelligence character. I still think, though, that it’s an excellent idea for someone who is isolated from the mainstream.

Next on the list was my cleaner, who breezed in to do her stuff and to shoo me into the shower. When I came out, I found that I had a nice, clean bed with nice, clean bedding. And so there will be a nice, clean me inside it tonight … "well, clean, anyway" – ed …

While I’d been at my Welsh class, the new battery had arrived and my friend had taken it out to the vehicle. He’d managed to couple it up and when he turned the key to make sure that there was a current passing through to the ignition circuit, the vehicle fired up as if it hadn’t ever been left unattended.

So after I’d come out of the shower and sorted myself out, we went over there for a triumphant drive around the car park.

However, our plans were blighted. The handbrake has seized, with the callipers stuck to the brake discs. That’s a nuisance. So near and yet so far. It seems that every step we take to advance, a new problem comes along to stifle us.

Not everybody agreed with this, of course. We’d attached the Hound of the Baskervilles to a lamppost behind the bus shelter, and when we looked around, we found that there were two schoolgirls making a big fuss of him and he was enjoying every minute of it. The girls told my friend that they thought that he was “magnifique”.

Back in here, I cleaned myself up and began to make the dough for tonight’s pizza. We’d missed out on a pizza on Sunday and I can’t possibly go two weeks without one. And while I was cooking, we were chatting about an electrical company and its website, and I was having a lengthy conversation online with an old schoolfriend from my Shavington days. It’s nice to catch up with friends from years ago.

One of the subjects that we were discussing online was “The Dockers’ Umbrella” – the Liverpool Overhead Railway that ran close to the docks from the latter part of the nineteenth century to December 1956 and so nicknamed because it allegedly sheltered the dock workers from the rain as they went to work.

The pizza tonight was acclaimed by my friend as “the best you have ever made”, and who can argue with that? He did also mention that “you look really tired tonight” and that will be the subject of later discussion.

Back in here afterwards, I had a few things to do, and then I started on my notes. However, after about five minutes, I fell asleep at my desk. When I awoke, I carried on and then fell asleep again. I lost count of how many times I fell asleep whilst trying to bring my notes up-to-date, and in the end, I gave it up as a bad job and hit the hay. There’s always another time to finish them off.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that electrical website … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend from Shavington that part of the menu on the site was “watch batteries”.
He asked "and what about it?"
I replied "we were there for half an hour looking at them but they didn’t seem to be doing anything."

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Monday 1st June 2026 – AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS …

… of lovely, pain-free feet, the pain in the sole of my right foot suddenly erupted again at dialysis and erupted in spades too. I’ve been in pain for most of the afternoon and evening, and I wish that it would go away.

What’s worse is that I really had thought that I’d finished with all of this, but “no”. It looks very much like “back to the drawing board, Cecil”.

Not like last night, though. I was late again going to bed. After midnight, and more, I reckon. But I didn’t need much rocking last night either and I was soon asleep.

And there I lay, dead to the World, until about … errr … 06:00 when I awoke. When the alarm should have gone off at 06:29, I was up and about at my desk working.

First thing to do was, of course, listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

We were back in Roman times again, and this time, it involved a girl whom I knew who was taken in somewhere where they took them because of her mental health issues. She’d been seeing demons and all of that kind of thing. She told her daughter that they needed to be placed somewhere to be looked after. This is one of these dreams again where I reached for the dictaphone and fell asleep again before I began to dictate it so I don’t know really what I’ve missed.

It’s a shame that I didn’t catch all of this dream, because this is another one of those dreams with a story behind it that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There was a group of four of us who used to hang around together. There was me, Laurence and a couple of other people. We’d all been told that we needed couselling. We went to see a counsellor who told us that we could attend a group meeting on such-and-such a date at such-and-such a time. We’d no idea at all what to expect but we made ourselves ready at the appropriate time for this counselling. However, one of our members dropped out and left an empty space so we decided to sign Roxanne up and see what she made of this so we added her name on the paper and we had to go back to the doctor’s for another interview and he interviewed Roxanne while we were there. He decided that she was fit enough to go so the four of us were ready, but Roxanne seemed to be quite enjoying it. So we turned up, and it was this village hall. It was huge, with probably 200 people there. But as the meeting started, my crucial role was diminished and diminished. So we sat there and we were listening to this guy on the stage talking, brining up his friends one by one to add to what he’d been saying but the hall was so noisy and there were kids running about so it never ever reached our ears. So sinking to our knees, we got into these bowls with our knees and tried to move forward but we couldn’t. One by one, he was inviting people down to give their witness. On one occasion, he said that this one is a judge now amongst everybody. Then he called out the Venerable Harry Dean. As this guy walked down towards the front, Roxanne looked at me and said “the vegetable Harry Dean?” and everyone around us burst into laughter.

This is just the kind of thing that I can imagine Roxanne doing. She would ask a question in a very innocent way but there would be a smile behind her lips that it wouldn’t surprise me if she knew exactly what was going on and had made the mistake deliberately.

The dream, though, reminds me of one of these revivalist meetings in the Deep South of the USA. I never actually managed to visit one, but I heard all about it.

There were a few other things that needed doing, such as checking my e-mails. And amongst them was the monthly report from the shipping group whose “Bay of Granville” shipping detector is installed in my apartment. The little set-up here is apparently covering an area of over two hundred and sixty-three square kilometres, which is not bad going for the equipment that I have.

When I heard movement from the kitchen, I went in there to see what was going on and ended up with a mug of hot coffee and my morning medication. And for some reason or other, we ended up having a lengthy discussion about computer passwords.

The Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t bark at all when he heard the doorbell with Isabelle the Nurse on the other end. Mind you, he did look up when he had a belly rub, as if to say “don’t stop! Don’t stop!”

After Isabelle left for her week’s break, I made breakfast. And while I was eating, I was also reading the last of NOTES ON SOME OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF FRANCE by Charles Roach Smith.

To finish off his book, he’s reading some Carolingian tombstones found in a cemetery in Amiens. That’s a long way from the Cher Valley, but never mind.

Back in here, I began to revise my Welsh for tomorrow, but my body had different ideas.

While I was sitting down at the computer this morning, I dozed off. I dreamt that I was in Crewe and someone had brought into town an articulated lorry with goods in it. When I arrived in West Street, the driver climbed into the passenger seat and I took it over. I drove down West Street and turned into Underwood Lane. We had to drop something off at a factory in Selworthy Drive so I had to drive past Selworthy Drive, he had to climb out and stop the traffic behind me and I had to reverse the lorry from Underwood Lane into Selworthy Drive and then straight back into the factory that was there so that they could unload it, and then the driver who had brought it into Crewe could then take over and carry on with the round that he was doing.

There are no factories in Selworthy Drive, nor have there ever been, nor will there ever be. But stopping the traffic for a reversing lorry is par for the course in industrial areas.

There was still time to do some work, so I pressed on but was overtaken by events when my cleaner arrived. She dealt with my anaesthetic and then tidied up a little before leaving. My friend and I hung around until about 12:55, when we went out into the sun to wait for the taxi.

The girl who picked me up is quite nice and chatty, so we talked all the way to the hospital, where we picked up someone else who wanted to go to Avranches, and our chat, which had now become a three-way chat, continued all the way to dialysis, where I was dropped off.

Today, I was in a different bed than usual, but that’s not a problem. This dialysis isn’t about “seeing all of Normandy in a taxi” or “seeing all of the dialysis centre from a different bed”.

As usual, I was the last to be plugged in, but they had a temporary nurse in from St Malo and he was quite efficient, aided by another nurse who applied a “manual garrote” and the freezing spray to numb the forearm.

There was a third nurse in there too and she’s quite chatty. She came over to see how I was doing, which was nice of her. She has a cousin who’s married to a Welsh guy so I’m secretly teaching her a bit of Welsh so that she can shock him when they meet.

During the dialysis, though, I began to feel nauseous and the head began to spin. The blood pressure seemed to be fine, so it must be me. And it certainly was when the pain in the foot started up. That was a flaming nuisance. I was in agony.

There was some kind of relief when Emilie the Cute Consultant came by. She didn’t stop, but she managed a cheerful “Bonjour, Monsieur Hall”. No-one else received such a greeting, so I considered myself honoured.

Last in, last out as usual but at least it was one of my favourite drivers who would be taking me home, and she was already waiting for me. We had another passenger with us who wanted to be dropped off at Sartilly. After that, we chatted all the way back home where, amongst my comité d’acceuil – “welcoming committee” – was the Hound of the Baskervilles.

My driver fell in love with him straight away and she spent ten minutes giving him a lot of fuss. And he enjoyed every minute of it too. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … why don’t some of these women treat me like that?

Back in the apartment, there was a lovely meal of beans, chips and a burger with a bap and also a pile of garnish. My chips were especially good so I asked my friend the secret. He tells me that he parboils them first for ten minutes, so I shall have to try that.

After I’d done the washing up, I came in here to write out my notes, but I was becoming more and more ill as the evening worsened, so in the end, I said “sod it”, abandoned the notes and went to bed. There’s always another time.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about passwords … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend that I once knew a guy who went to use the name of … errr … a certain part of his body as a password.
My friend asked "what happened?"
"He received an error message" I replied. "Sorry, password not long enough."

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Friday 29th May 2026 – WHAT AN EXCITING …

… day we had today.

Electricity power cuts, the Hound of the Baskervilles chasing rivals out of his territory, finally managing to open a car door, making exciting discoveries. You name it – it all happened here.

Not much happened here last night, though, except for the fact that I was late yet again going to bed. And once more, I slept on top of the quilt rather than underneath it.

However, when I awoke at … errrr … 04:00, I was underneath the quilt. The weather had changed and it was now 17°C – a far cry from the 25°C of yesterday. So I lay there, slowly watching the day dawning through the gaps in the shutters.

Round about 05:50, I took the plunge and went to leave the bed. At 06:00, I was dressed and sitting in front of the computer.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

There was something going on with music and last night there were five or so groups of different styles who had to practise rehearsing a country folk song to play the following week in the village hall. I was one of these five groups of people and so were Hawkwind. It seemed from the start that everyone’s music was totally wrong, including “Skip” Spence, he of one time of the album “Oar”, who seemed to pull together any kind of noise at all … fell asleep here … I don’t know what happened after this.

There’s probably a very good reason why “Skip” Spence and his album OAR would appear in a dream, but you’ll have to wait for a few months to find out why.

But this idea of different styles of groups playing the same song is not new at all. It’s been done on several occasions in the past.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

Eventually, I heard movement from the kitchen, so I went in search of hot, strong coffee and I was not disappointed. A mug of the aforementioned was thrust into my hand and I sat down at my chair to drink it.

When Isabelle the Nurse turned up and rang the doorbell, the Hound of the Baskervilles took absolutely no notice whatsoever. Mind you, when it came to having his tummy ticked or his neck scratched, he certainly noticed then. I was beginning to feel rather left out.

After Isabelle the Nurse had finished with me and given the Hound of the Baskervilles a parting stroke, I could turn my attention to making breakfast and reading my new book.

It’s called NOTES ON SOME OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF FRANCE and it’s by, once more, Charles Roach Smith.

This time, he’s on holiday in the Cher Valley south of Tours and he’s exploring some of the many Gallo-Roman remains that are around there.

Incidentally, you should never say “Roman …” in France. I’ve seen warfare break out over this. The French insist (probably rightly) that they were perfectly civilised before the Romans came and that some of the Roman architecture and building practices relate back to them and the Romans took them up, rather than the Romans bringing everything here.

Hence, you should always use the term “Gallo-Roman”.

When everyone was ready, we went outside with a pile of tools. The first thing that we did was to connect the battery up to the vehicle on which we’d been working. After much binding in the marsh, we went to fire it up, but there was not even enough power in it to light the ignition lights.

That was a huge disappointment. We’d been really looking forward to hearing it running. We tried a few tricks and shortcuts and even inspected all of the fuses but there was no light on the Christmas tree, Momma.

We then turned our attention to the door that wouldn’t open. I finally managed to take off the door card on the other door so that I could see it and understand how it worked.

That gave me a much clearer idea of what I needed to do so I attacked the driver’s door. However, nothing I could do would free off the locking mechanism. The door card was right in the way of everything.

Eventually, I lay on the floor and tried again to free off the screw that was holding the door card in position. It took about half an hour, but eventually, I felt some resistance in the screwdriver, and after something of a fight, the door card finally came off.

We still couldn’t free the door, so we soaked all of the mechanism in WD40 and left it for a while. And after a while, still lying on the floor, I attacked it again and, to my complete surprise, suddenly it went “ping” and the door opened. That was success.

We then soaked it in yet more WD40 and when we were confident that the door would open next time we tried it, we went inside the apartment (which was a story in itself) and I had a disgusting drink.

My cleaner came along to do her stuff and she had to clean around us while we were recovering from our exertions. But after she’d gone, we carried on recovering for a while and eventually, we went back out.

The door opened straight away when we tried it and so I greased all of the mechanism and the catches in the hope that they would stay greased. And tomorrow, I’ll do all of the doors.

While we were sorting a few things out in the cab, we came across the huge 100-amp-hour solar panel battery that had been accumulating the charge off the solar panel that was, until a week ago, on the roof rack. I gave it a try and, to my surprise, it was still holding a very good charge.

This is now forming the basis of a cunning plan, more of which anon.

Back in here, we sat and recovered for an hour or so, and just as I was about to start to make tea, at 19:09 precisely, the power went off in the apartment.

It turned out to be a general power cut affecting the whole Haute Ville and we had to wait an age for something to happen. Just as we were on the point of abandoning tea and making sandwiches, the power came back on. And went off. And came back on. Etc.

It was not until about 20:45 that tea would start cooking, and twenty minutes later, we had out chips, sausages and beans with cheese and pepper. It was worth waiting for too.

So now that my notes are written, long after midnight it has to be said, I’m going to do what else needs to be done and then go to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about power cuts … "well, one of us has" – ed … after a recent power cut in Crewe, two Crewe girls were talking.
"When the power went out" said one "I was stuck in a lift for 50 minutes."
"That’s nothing" replied the other. "When the power went off, I was stuck on a moving walkway for over two hours."

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Wednesday 27th May 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… it has been today!

Never mind what temperature it was outside. In my room, with the windows wide open and the sun streaming in, the temperature reached 34°C and I couldn’t touch anything. The armrests and my desk were absolutely scorching and it was really uncomfortable.

Even now, at about 20:30, it’s 28.5°C in here and I am sweating profusely. Not that I’m complaining, of course. We’ve had so much miserable weather just recently that I welcome all of the heat that we are having right now, and long may it continue.

This was actually how the day began. Last night, it was another late night by the time that I’d done everything. But before I went to bed, I closed the shutters in here and left the window slightly open to keep the air circulating.

Another thing was that I went to bed and lay on top of the quilt with only my feet underneath it. And as my feet can testify, under the quilt was like an oven so I’m glad that I wasn’t under there.

It was quite a restless night, as you might expect, although the disturbances didn’t last very long and I was soon back asleep. However, I awoke at 06:05, wide awake, and by 06:11 I was dressed and was sliding across to the chair, ready to start work. Another early start!

And the temperature outside was already 25.5°C, and in here, it was 24.5°C. No wonder last night was a disturbed night, and it told me that this was going to be another one of those days.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I must have travelled miles. No wonder last night was so disturbed.

We were at school in Nazi Germany, and one of our classmates was a Miss Hitler. It turned out that she was Adolf Hitler’s daughter. This was September 1939 and war was imminent, so I went up to her and told her that it’s probably not a good idea to go out of the classroom through the main door where all the English people were but to go out from the side door on the other side where she’d been in the courtyard with the other kids. That was probably going to be better for her. But when I came back, there were two cars parked in the schoolkids’ place. I looked on the windows, and one of them was a big Nazi police car and the other one was a Nazi car but they were interviewing a small, or part of a small man. He was saying about this sting that it was against his human rights. When he mentioned “human rights”, they laughed. He carried on complaining, and in the end they put handcuffs on him and took him away, presumably to a barn or somewhere.

It’s astonishing that a developed country like the UK wants to leave the ECHR. But they are so afraid of a reaction and so embarrassed that they just talk about “the ECHR” and not its full title – the European Convention on Human Rights. If they were to say “we intend to withdraw from the body that makes sure that you have your human rights protected”, there would be a revolution.

Where “Miss Hitler” came from, I have no idea. Apart from the scurrilous and extremely doubtful rumours, Hitler never had any children. However, the idea of the interrogation and the denial of human rights fits in quite nicely with the idea of Nazi Germany.

I forgot to mention that once war had been declared, Miss Hitler came in for a lot of teasing, and my work was cut out all the time, trying to prevent it happening in the classroom, but without a great deal of success.

This is actually how I would imagine it. Kids can be evil at times, especially when they haven’t learned the consequences of their actions.

I don’t know if I dictated this dream, but we had a big banquet-type meal, and Adolf Hitler’s daughter was there because she was at Dane Bank School. However, people tried to drive her away by taunting her or being extremely hated but she stayed at Saxon Cross Roads and so on. So we had this big banquet, and one of the guests was Adolf Hitler. Everyone wanted this dinner to be cancelled, but we argued that if we bring him in to explain his programme, then he can sentence himself to exclusion and we’ll know what he’s doing. He talked about this and he talked about that, and in the playoffs later on … fell asleep here … Anyway, I told one of my friends that I’d sorted out all of the jokes but Hitler answered back. Hitler said that it’s a shame that no German officers had been allowed to attend this meeting to experience real British humour because we were telling jokes to each other and over the PA all that time. In the end, he accepted a bikini and went for a swim in the lake. I told my brother that I had left some references for him and I said to my brother that he was all for teasing him, but I didn’t want that. I wanted it to be a normal meeting, so having purloined his secretary once, I went to the high school and was busy teasing the children … indistinct …

Back to “Miss Hitler” again, after about three hours of sleep. And Hitler putting in an appearance and seemingly appreciating the jokes.

Why he should be interested in a bikini, though, is beyond me, and what do the playoffs have to do with anything?

At some point during the night, I was driving a coach for Shearings. I had to go to drop people off around the north and east of Manchester. I picked up the coach at the feeder depot, and a pile of people boarded, so we set off. But I suddenly realised that I didn’t have any paperwork to tell me where to drop these people off so I had to think about what I was going to do. I knew that some people wanted dropping off at Hyde and I knew where the drop-off point at Hyde was, so I headed for there and dropped some people off. A lot of people had been talking about a guy called Dave Evans. When I was searching through, I eventually found some paperwork that talked about pick-ups and drop-offs at Hyde and one other place, so I imagined that there were only these two places to go to. So I set off for the next drop-off place, which I noticed was to pick up this guy Dave Evans so when I reached there, he was waiting there, so he climbed on board and I put his suitcase in the back of the coach. I had to go for a little walk for something – I’m not sure what – but all of a sudden, while I was away from the coach, it started up and drove away, so I had to run after it, but it was long gone, so I walked and walked down this modern dual carriageway, which was presumably the motorway by Hyde, until I eventually found a shop. There, I changed all my small coins for sixpences and rang up Shearings’ depot. However, I got through instead to the feeder point at Bath and explained to them what had happened. They said that they had heard about this coach being stolen and told me to wait there, and they’d call me back.

This would have been a regular occurrence for some drivers, but for me, if I came back off a tour, I’d be dropping people off all around south Cheshire and north Shropshire and then taking the coach home, ready to feed back in the following morning.

And stealing a coach while the driver has been preoccupied is nothing new, although it has never happened to me. And I can’t think of any occasion when I wasn’t given the paperwork of some description for any job that I had to do.

Round about 07:45, there were signs of activity in the living room so I went to join them, just in time to see my friend start the coffee. That was good timing, I reckon. By the time I’d taken my medication, the coffee was ready and we could begin the day as we intended.

When Isabele the Nurse arrived, she rang the doorbell to announce her presence and then came into the apartment. And the Hound of the Baskervilles took absolutely no notice of the doorbell or of Isabelle the Nurse’s entry. He must now be accustomed to the arrival of the nurses and his body clock must be working fine as far as the doorbell goes.

She sorted out my legs and feet and then, after giving the Hound of the Baskervilles a good stroke and cuddle, she set off on the rest of her rounds and I could go and make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT while the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies.

Today, we have left Reculver for Lympne, or Portus Lemanis, which used to be one of the major ports for travelling to Gaul but is now totally silted up and about a mile from the sea.

He’s terribly confused about where the river went and how “Stone Street” managed to reach the Roman fort there, but that’s hardly a surprise considering that he’s relying on “Richard of Cirencester” again. I wonder when it will sink in that “Richard of Cirencester” and his book were nothing but a blatant forgery.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do so I cracked on with it all. I even found enough time to have an hour on the acoustic bass. I don’t like it much because the action is too high. I much prefer the old Gibson EB3 with its low action, and I’m seriously thinking of bringing it in here and running it through the Roland Bass Cube that I bought a while back in Canada.

There was also time for me to look at the next radio programme. The day that it’s due to be broadcast, there wasn’t much happening, so in some kind of brainwave, I asked my artificial intelligence search engine to find me any albums released on that day.

Surprisingly, it came up with three, which I added to my “births and deaths” file, and then went off in search of music from the aforementioned.

With the bedroom window open, my faithful cleaner stuck her head in twice to see what was happening. The second time, she told me that she was off to Leclerc and asked if I needed anything. Only the washing up liquid refill, which she brought back later.

My friend had gone into town, leaving me babysitting the Hound of the Baskervilles. His task, to prove that he is worthy, was to bring back some onions because we are on the point of running out. And he duly performed the aforesaid task.

It was my turn to make tea, so it was the leftover rice from yesterday with a pile of falafel and veggie balls, all soaked in vinaigrette dressing. And it was delicious as usual.

Back in here, I was writing up my notes when we had a most dramatic thunderstorm. It passed quickly enough but when it was here, we had torrential rain and hailstones. I left my windows wide open to enjoy it, but the Hound of the Baskervilles fled into the bathroom and hid in the shower, where he still is.

So now that my notes are finished, I have a few more things to do and then I’m off to bed. I might leave the windows open again to let the room cool down because, despite the thunderstorm and the winds that came with it, it’s still 25°C in here.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about forgery … "well, one of us has" – ed … a guy in Crewe whom I know once proudly told me "I am an absolute master at forgery. I can forge anything"
"Are you really?" I asked.
"Yes" he said. "I have all the certificates to prove it."

0

Monday 25th May 2026 – THE ALARM DIDN’T …

… go off this morning.

However, there was a reason for that. At 06:29 when the alarm should have gone off, I was at my desk working. I’d switched the alarm off because there was no point in waking up the rest of the household for no good purpose.

In fact, I’d been awake since about 04:00 and, dismal failure that I am, I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter what I tried. I just lay there watching, through the gaps in the shutters, the day slowly dawning. After a while, I thought “this is ridiculous” and heaved myself out of my stinking pit.

So it’s not very often just recently that we’ve recorded an “early start”, but here we are. If I’m too tired later on, I’ll be at dialysis, of course, so if they all let me, I can catch up with my sleep this afternoon.

I suppose that I should have caught up with it last night, but as usual, I was too busy prevaricating to be doing any good about having an early night. For a start, after I’d finished work in here, I had to go into the kitchen for the medication that I’d forgotten and then sort myself out in the bathroom. It was after 23:00 when I finally made it into bed.

For a change, it didn’t take long to go to sleep, and there I lay until about 04:00, as I mentioned earlier.

So, once I was up and about and at my desk, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise, there was something on there.

I know it’s strange, but Keighan Jones, the Trefynnon goalkeeper, who was voted the best goalkeeper in Division 2 North just recently, had left Trefynnon and signed for Airbus UK Broughton and I’ve no idea why because both clubs were promoted and he’d be playing in the Premier League anyway if he had stayed, but I don’t know why he decided to leave and go to Airbus.

With this dream, it was actually rather a case of “deja vu” because he left Trefynnon to sign for Airbus a good while ago. However, being “dazed and confused” is nothing at all new around here.

Round about 07:30 or so, I heard the sound of mus … errr … movement in the kitchen so I went to join the assembled multitudes therein. And I was a couple of minutes early because the coffee wasn’t made. But when it was made, it was delicious as usual.

The nurse came along as usual, just as the Hound of the Baskervilles was dragging his master off for walkies, and they collided in the corridor. And not a yowl or bark from the aforementioned. He’s definitely become accustomed to the nurse. And it’s Isabelle the Nurse starting her week tomorrow so he should be even more happy.

The dog was quite happy too.

After the nurse left, I made breakfast and read some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT.

It seems that as far as Reculver is concerned, he carried out no excavations at all and is merely relying on second- (and in some cases, third-) hand information about the finds that have been made there. But I suspected something like this when I was reading his references to “Richard of Cirencester”.

After breakfast, I came in here and reviewed the radio programme for the forthcoming weekend. It seemed to be OK so I found a few other things to do while it took its time being sent to the radio station.

Later on, I had a really good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later, and then my cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic. I had no idea that the time was passing so quickly. She sorted me out and then took the rubbish across to the bins. I had my disgusting drink and then made myself ready for the taxi.

By 13:00 the taxi hadn’t arrived so, seeing as it was another boiling-hot cloudless day, my friend helped me outside and we stood in the sun, and it was lovely.

The taxi turned up at 13:15 so I piled in, and then we had to go off to Sartilly for our other passenger. Consequently, it was 14:05 when we finally arrived.

As usual, I was the last in so I had to wait, and then the nurses missed their aim when trying to connect me so they had to disconnect what they had done, compress the arm for ten minutes and then start again. It was not far short of 15:00 when I was finally connected.

And this time, they forgot the cold spray so it … errr … hurt somewhat.

There was a lot to drain out today and for four hours at that rate, it was tough going. For half an hour or so, I actually managed to crash out, which was really nice, but it was, as always, at the wrong time because at that moment I had other things to do.

By the time that the session had finished and I was unplugged, compressed and weighed, it was 19:05, and so it was 19:50 when I finally arrived back.

My reception committee was waiting for me, and she helped me back into my apartment where a steaming hot curry was a-waiting. My friend seems to have worked his magic yet again and he can definitely stay as long as he likes.

When I’d finished, I put the leftovers in the freezer for another time and then did all of the washing-up. Back in here afterwards, I wrote up my notes and did everything else that needed to be done, and next I’ll be going back into the kitchen for tonight’s medication. Then I’m off to bed.

That is, if I can. I seem to have become “flavour of the month” with the Hound of the Baskervilles and, instead of being with his master, he’s now lying down, extremely relaxed, at my feet. It’s a good job that I changed my socks.

But seriously, we don’t know why he’s decided to lie down here in my room with me. I must be doing something right.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Hound of the Baskervilles … "well, one of us has" – ed … the other day, the aforementioned was leading a pack of dogs, chasing after two rabbits.
The rabbits slid down a rabbit hole, only to find that the bottom was all blocked up and there was no way out except past the baying hound and his mates.
"What do we do now?" asked the girl rabbit.
The boy rabbit thought for a while and said "I suppose we stay here until we outnumber them."

0

Saturday 16th May 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been, especially after the “what a night!” I had last night.

As I said yesterday … "actually this morning, but more of that ‘anon’" – ed … I came back in here some time after 23:00 and crawled into bed under the covers, the latest I have been for some time.

As usual, it took quite a while for me to go off to sleep, and there I stayed, flat out, until all of … errr … 05:00 or so.

Seeing that there was an hour and a half or so to go before the alarm sounded, I tried my best to go back to sleep, but I failed miserably. By 06:15, I’d given up completely so I raised myself from the bed, went over to the computer and began to type the notes from yesterday that I had omitted to do.

When it came round to finishing, I heard movement from the living room, so it seemed that my friend and the Hound of the Baskervilles were now showing signs of awakening, so I went in there, and we had a lovely early-morning mug of hot, strong coffee. I sorted out my medication to take with the coffee, but would you believe that despite having sorted it all out, I still managed somehow to forget to take half of it. I ended up taking it at about 11:00.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, and she spent more time playing with the Hound of the Baskervilles than she did taking care of me. But never mind – they both seemed to enjoy it. The Hound of the Baskervilles has a very long memory for people.

After she left, we made breakfast, with yet more hot, strong coffee, and instead of reading Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT, we carried on chatting from where we left off last night – my friend and I, I mean, not The Hound of the Baskervilles and me.

Later on, they went for walkies and I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night, and to my surprise, I had.

I don’t know why, but I was dreaming about a song that I’m including in one of my radio programmes in the future. It’s quite a long song and I don’t know what was going through my mind at the time and I can’t even remember the name of it now but I was trying to fit it in and chop it around, etc. Yet in the radio programme that I’d made, it fits in quite nicely, so I don’t know what’s happening in this dream.

It’s impressive that I can remember in a dream that a radio programme went together perfectly and there is no indication of what the song may have been. However, I do know that for most of the evening and night, I had the Little River Band song I’LL BE HOME ON A MONDAY going round and round in my head but that will be going through a good few weeks before whatever is … "or isn’t" – ed … included in the programme that I’ve just finished.

After that, I had my Welsh homework to finish. It’s the homework for the taster lesson for Uwch III next year and blimmin’ ‘eck, it wasn’t ‘arf difficult and time-consuming. I’m determined to go ahead with the course but I can see that for the next two years, I’m really going to have my work cut out. I can’t blame one or two of the others who have decided to go back and do Uwch II again.

By now, walkies were over and everyone was back here, so we carried on chatting. That went on until it was time for walkies part II, so I came back in here and carried on with some more stuff until they came back.

Later on, my cleaner came down to say “hello” to the Hound of the Baskervilles and have a little play with him, to such an extent that she almost missed her bus outside. And then my friend went for a walk into town, leaving the Hound of the Baskervilles to look after me.

While he was gone, a neighbour came round to see me, and he made an … errr … extraordinary proposition to me. There might be more of this anon, in which case I shall enlarge upon my comments. But it really did take me by surprise.

Some time later, my cleaner and my friend came back. Apparently they had met each other on the bus back from town. So we had another round of fun and games with the Hound of the Baskervilles before she went back upstairs to her apartment.

Teatime came around sooner than you might have thought, and so I made chips in the air fryer with burgers on baps. I managed to eat a burger and a handful of chips, but that was about all. I couldn’t manage another piece of anything, no matter how small.

Our chat had been continuing all this time, even as I did the washing up, but round about 22:00 we decided that it was bedtime so I came in here to write up my notes and then go to bed once I’ve done everything else that I need to do. It’s late right now, but tomorrow is Sunday, my lying-in day. However, I did explain to my friend that the aroma of a hot, strong coffee placed on the bedside table behind the head of my bed will usually wake me up just long enough to drink it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about extraordinary propositions … "well, one of us has" – ed … I explained to my friend, when he came back, that it reminds me of the Crewe mafia.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Well, if you have the Italian mafia who make you an offer you can’t refuse, in Crewe they have the Crewe mafia who make you an offer you can’t understand."

0

Sunday 10th May 2026 – WHAT A CHAOTIC …

… night that was! I’m still not sure of quite what happened, but I’ll try to piece it all together as I continue, and we’ll see what we can find.

Last night, having made something of an effort, I finished my notes and had them online by about 21:00. With everything else that I needed to do, it was not far short of 21:45 when I climbed into bed. It was rather later than I had hoped, but a nice lie-in was forecast for tomorrow.

So, well tucked in, deep beneath the quilt, I tried to fall asleep. And tried, and tried, and tried.

Instead of going to sleep, I just lay there, having what they call over here a nuit blanche, watching the clock go round and round and sifting through all kinds of various thoughts and memories of a misspent youth and dozens after dozens of opportunities missed.

At one point, I had to leave the bed to go to stroll the parapet. When I came back, I checked the time – 05:10 – so I surprised myself, and probably you too, by spending an hour or so dictating some radio notes from the outstanding pile.

In fact, I would have done much more, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … one of these new medicaments is giving me a very dry throat and after about an hour, I was croaking like a frog.

Back in bed, I actually managed to fall asleep, but not for long. I kept on waking up, wondering when the nurse would arrive. And when he finally did put in an appearance, I was fast asleep.

He didn’t stay long, but after he left, I was wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep. Eventually, I hauled myself out of bed and went into the bathroom.

When I finally made it into the kitchen, it was just 09:33 and that will suit me fine for a Sunday. I made my porridge and strong coffee, warmed up two of my homemade croissants, which I had today with apricot jam, and read some more of REPORT ON EXCAVATIONS MADE UPON THE SITE OF THE ROMAN CASTRUM AT PEVENSEY by Charles Roach Smith.

His excavations are being hampered by many missing pieces, which he puts down to looting by the local population. He tells us that "when the Government of our country has no regard for its ancient monuments and will not protect them, the ignorant despoilers who pull down Roman walls and plough up Roman camps can no more be blamed than the covetous jobbers who conspire to destroy old buildings and churches to make new ones."

If you didn’t know that this was written 170 years ago, you would swear that he’s talking about HS2, where ancient cemeteries, listed buildings, thirteenth-century churches and prehistoric remains are being destroyed day by day for a failed vanity project that will reduce the time of travel from London to Birmingham by just ten minutes, ten minutes that will then be lost by walking to another mainline station to catch a connection onwards.

He’s also right about his assumption of the Iter Britanniarum. Thomas Wright, our previous author, used the absence of places such as Pevensey in the Iter to justify his faith in the (forged) works of Richard of Chichester. Roach Smith tells us, correctly as it subsequently turns out, "that most of these castra were not constructed until subsequent to the compilation of the Itinerary of Antonius … were clearly brought into the line with what became in later times the ‘Littus Saxonicum’ … there is every reason to infer that they were not at that time in being."

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone and, to my surprise, there was something on there, so I must have gone to sleep at some point.

I was discussing changes to the JD Cymru League again. One of the things that I suggested in respect of the playoffs was to abandon these abysmal penalty shootouts if the scores are equal after ninety minutes and the teams just play on and on and on until someone scores a goal.

These penalty shootouts really are abysmal and if I had the chance to be in charge, I would want teams to play on until someone scores. However, I would go farther and say that any player who had received a booking would be excluded from any time after ninety minutes;

A game between Stoke City and Uruguay would be interesting. Come extra time, there would be no-one on the field to play.

We were then at the JD Cymru League playoffs, at the final. There was one team that was having to have some kind of extreme treatment so that they could carry on playing in the final. I was there with this kind-of trophy. It was like two cermaic segments of a circle or something, bits of a bowl. They were arranged in a sort of cruciform pattern. I had to carry it out to the touchline, something that I was not happy to do because if I were to drop it, I was certain that it would break.

And couldn’t you just imagine me carrying a huge ceramic trophy onto a football field? How far towards the centre circle do you think that I would reach?

Back in here, we had a footfest. One Scottish play-off match after another. I think that there was only two that I missed. There were even some English ones too.

After a nice relax when I didn’t do much, I turned my attention to the radio programme that I started yesterday. All of the music has now been chosen, not without difficulty. It’s all reformatted, re-edited, remixed, paired and segued, and all that remains to do is to write the notes, which I shall start on Tuesday afternoon after my shower. Some of the notes are written already.

At 16:30, I knocked off to make the bread for next week and, even as we speak, it’s busy baking in the oven. When it’s finished, I’ll take it out to cool and then I’ll be getting ready for bed, early as it might be.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my voice croaking … "well, one of us has" – ed … a little boy went up to his grandma and said "granny, granny! Please make a noise like a frog!"
"Why, dear?"
"Because daddy said when you croak, we’ll get all your money!"

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Thursday 7th May 2026 – IT SEEMS TO ME …

… that no-one in the hierarchy at dialysis has the least idea of what is going on there. The nurses and assistants are all adorable and I’d bring them all home to my apartment afterwards if I could, but as for the rest …

On Monday I pointed out that, having gone in there with just a few hundred grammes to lose, they suddenly went into a huge panic, wound the machine up to three thousand five hundred, and the time to four hours.

Today, having carefully managed my intake, it was once more just a couple of hundred grammes. And then they came swarming into the room to wind it up to two thousand. An hour and a half later, they wound it back down to eighteen hundred. So what’s going on? And why all the panic?

Anyway, that was today.

Last night, I mentioned my rather strange night and the fact that I was in bed round about 20:00 or so. Out like a light straight away, there I lay until shortly after 03:00. And to my surprise, I was lying on my back and not coughing at all.
At some point, I must have gone back to sleep because I had another one of these dramatic upright awakenings that I sometimes have, and it was 05:11.

Now here’s something that will surprise you. I left the bed and went to stroll the parapet and then came back in here, sat down at the computer, and started work. I must have been feeling better.

The first thing that I did was to start to write the notes from yesterday, but I hadn’t quite finished when the alarm went off so I abandoned them for now while I went into the bathroom.

After my trip into the kitchen for my medication and mouthful of grapefruit juice, I came back in here to carry on with the notes.

When they were done and online, I turned my attention to the dictaphone notes to find out what had happened during the night.

There was a very long and complicated dream about Steve Tyler and his daughter Liv and I don’t know if I can remember all of it. He was taking part in some kind of event in the USA and there was a parallel event in the UK at the same time. While he was searching the web, he came across a blog written by a girl of about fourteen who was at the UK event, so he began to comment on her entries about the difference between what was happening there and what was happening in the UK. This correspondence went on for hours and days. And then there was something to do with his daughter Liv. She was only something like four or five. He had to go out but couldn’t find a babysitter but there was some kind of place where you could take children where they could sleep overnight. There would probably be twenty or thirty kids in this place with four or five monitors. The kids would be left there to sleep so he took her there. As Liv grew up, she was constantly being warned about her father’s bad habits, substance abuse, etc., and to be very careful about what she took that he offered her. At some point, she decided that she would leave home and go to New York, so she was on a train waiting to depart. She had some kind of irrational fear of losing her money so she was checking it every minute or two to make sure that she had it.

Steve Tyler’s problems are legendary, unfortunately, and the story of his relationship with his daughter got off to a very bad start and ended in a whole web of confusion. The story of a girl of fourteen plays some kind of role in this, but that’s another story for which the World is not yet ready to hear. Being a rock star in the late 1960s and 1970s was a minefield.

I was staying in someone’s house in a commune-type of place. It was early morning and I’d been up and about repairing the lawnmower and one or two other things, including some kind of gauge with a backlight. The woman in charge of this commune place came out and began to roar at me about not having begun to tidy up the garden and weed it. I said to her “you know, all you need to say is ‘Eric, could you weed the garden?'”. She stormed off in a foul mood saying “I shall expect a full apology”. I took the lawnmower back and found that I’d lost half of this gauge. One or two people searched and found one of the bits but not the other, so I thought “I’d look for that later”. Then I had to go to the bathroom but I didn’t feel like going into the house to the bathroom so I went out and walked down the main street. Eventually, I came to the covered market so I went in there. There was a guy sitting there behind a stall so I asked him if he knew if there was a public convenience in the building. He replied “yes”, but that wasn’t the answer that I wanted. Two young boys with him began to smile and joke so I glared at them and they cowered away. He still wouldn’t tell me so I walked away. Eventually, I found what I was looking for but they were so small and tight that it was a struggle to fit in. It had a strange kind of glass there that smoked on the outside when there was someone inside but the person inside could quite happily see what was happening outside. It was very, very strange and weird.

Back in the mid-seventies, I lived in a commune for a while. A very short while. I met some of the most selfish people I have ever met and in the end, I preferred the companionship of the spider in my van.

The nurse turned up as usual and didn’t seem to be all that interested in my day and night yesterday, so we didn’t say much.

After he left, I made breakfast and finished off THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT MONKTON by the Kent Archaeological Service. The remaining pages didn’t have much to say for themselves.

Back in here, I attacked the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. All of the music has now been traced, reformatted, remixed and re-edited and it has all been paired and segued. Tomorrow, I’ll write the notes for it.

My cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was ten minutes early arriving but we had someone to drop off at Sartilly. Nevertheless, I was early arriving at dialysis, but even so, I had to wait for over an hour to be connected.

And just my luck – it was the nurse from the other day but when she saw that it was me, she made an excuse and left me to her colleague.

Then we had all of the shenanigans and I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I was trying to write out a shopping list but all of the traffic coming to my bed disrupted that. Everyone came to see me, even the dietician who now wants to put me on an intravenous drip. No chance of that.

By the end of the afternoon, I was half-expecting the trick cyclist to put in an appearance.

Late again as usual leaving, my driver was waiting so we were home quite quickly, but still horribly late.

My faithful cleaner helped me, and after she left, I came in here to write up my notes.

Now that they are done, there are just a few little things left to do and then I’ll be off to bed. I had a really good start to the day but it all seems to have gone downhill subsequently. So here’s hoping for further improvement tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Liv Tyler counting her money … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the film INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH ON HOLIDAY when Alastair Sim, hanging upside down over a roof edge, loses all of the money in his pocket.
"Oh no!" he replied. "I’ve lost two and sevenpence ha’penny!"

0

Friday 28th April 2026 – RIGHT NOW, IT’S …

… just about 20:08 and I’ve just awoken after crashing out on my chair for a little over half an hour. Not that it’s a surprise, because I’ve worked really hard today, even if I didn’t feel in the least like it. And that’s no surprise either, after the night that I had last night.

Yesterday, I started to write my notes quite quickly and managed to keep on going relentlessly for quite a while. It was a few minutes after 21:00 when I had finished what needed to be finished, and I reckon that by 21:15, I was under the covers in the comparative comfort and warmth of my bed.

It took, as usual, a few minutes to doze off, but unfortunately not for long. I had a dream at about 23:00, according to the timestamp of the recording, and I awoke not long afterwards with another dramatic fit of coughing.

And there I lay yet again, watching the room go round and round until I felt the need to leave the bed to go to walk the parapet. At that point, I checked the time. It was 06:04 – 25 minutes before the alarm.

Back in here, I sat on the edge of the bed until the alarm sounded, and then it took me about ten minutes to summon up the courage to go to the bathroom for a good wash, etc.

In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink to wash down my medication and then came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night.

During the night, I ordered an album online and it finally turned up. At first, it didn’t sound right at all, but then when I took a close look at it, I found that the tracks that I was hoping to hear were originally written by another group and recorded by them. These were the ones that were on this album instead of hearing the ones that I knew, which were on a different one. Consequently, I stayed to listen to them before I made up my mind whether I would accept this album because of its strangeness and its rarity value

What album would this be? I can think of many albums with songs by artists or groups that have been recorded by others and gone on to become much more famous. Eric Clapton reinterpreted probably half a dozen songs by JJ Cale, such as “Cocaine” and “After Midnight”, and Colosseum’s live version of ROPE LADDER TO THE MOON is much better than any way Jack Bruce used to play it.

There was a lot going on with Hawkwind too, but it was after I’d awoken so I can’t make up my mind whether it was a dream or a daydream. It involved three Hawkwind songs, biographies of two Hawkwind members who had very unhappy lives, and a girl aged about ten or eleven sitting in an office colouring a book, obviously on a school break with nowhere to go except to daddy’s work. But when discussing the third song, I awoke bolt-upright (something that I haven’t done for several weeks) so I must have been asleep at that point.

There’s always a place for Hawkwind on my playlist, whether awake or asleep, but I wonder what the rest of the dream has to do with it.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in as usual, full of joie de vivre after her week’s break. She asked me about how things went, so I told her about Friday and how much I hated it. And in her joyful manner, but with a glint in her eys that was far from joyful, she gave me a lecture about how important it is to follow medical recommendations. Much as I like her, I wouldn’t like to be one of her children.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’ve been discussing the household and the finds that have occurred at various places all over the country. It all points to an easy, comfortable life but I bet that in all honesty, the lower classes had nothing like any of these artefacts and their life was a constant struggle.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I had to revise for my Welsh. The lesson passed really well, which is nice. I need to keep on with all of this revision because it is making things better. And as an aside, my homework was described as “a masterpiece”. Seriously.

At the half-time break, I put the washing machine on with a pile of clothes for washing, seeing as I’m beginning to run out here. I didn’t bring many clothes with me from the farm.

After the lesson, I sorted out the bathroom and then my cleaner came along to shoo me under the shower. I didn’t feel in the least like it, but I persevered, and it really was a weary me who steered himself back in here afterwards.

While I’d been in the shower, my cleaner had changed the bedding, so this nice, clean me … "well, clean anyway" – ed … will have a nice clean bed in which to sleep tonight.

Once I’d summoned up the energy, which was not easy, I had the radio programme notes to write. And by the time that I knocked off, they had all been written, all ten of them. No wonder I crashed out afterwards – that was no mean feat, especially when I’m feeling as shattered as I am.

So right now, I’m off to bed and to sleep, if my coughing fits will let me. No food yet again, although I’m starting to see visions of cheese sandwiches. That means that there’s an appetite still lurking around somewhere.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Hawkwind … "well, one of us has" – ed … Nerina once took me to a Hawkwind concert at Keele University for my birthday.
When the group came onto the stage, she dashed to the front, like most kids do (she was several years younger than me).
After a while, she came to find me at the back of the room. "Why don’t you come down to the front? The view’s so much better there" she said.
"That’s as maybe" I replied "but the smell is so much better at the back, hey, man."

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Saturday 11th April 2026 – THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

Most of the day has been spent fighting off wave after wave of sleep, quite often unsuccessfully.

Anyone would think that I wasn’t in bed by 21:30 last night with all of this, but it’s true that I was. Once again, tea last night was just chocolate cake and home-made ice cream, and then I came back in here to write up my notes.

Once my notes were finished, there were the other usual things to do, and then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for bed. As I slid under the quilt later, it was just 21:28, and that made me feel so much better.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep either, and there I stayed, flat out until all of … errr … 03:20. Mind you, that’s almost six hours of continuous sleep and I was happy with that. I even managed to go back to sleep a little later too.

When I awoke again, it was 05:23 exactly. I hung around in bed for a while and then raised myself from the Dead to go to walk the parapet.

Back in here afterwards, in a fit of keenness, I dictated a pile of outstanding radio notes. However, I had this very dry throat, which seems to be a symptom of one of these new pills that Emilie the Cute Consultant prescribed for me, so I binned what I had dictated, went into the kitchen to gargle with some water, and then came back in here to start the dictation again.

By the time that the alarm went off at 06:29, I’d dictated the notes for four “additional tracks” and also the notes for a concert to replace those that I had discarded yesterday.

The next stop was the bathroom, where I had a good scrub-up and then went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, fighting off the first of many waves of sleep, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night. But first, I had to find the dictaphone. Eventually, I came across it underneath the little bedside table at the head of the bed. It looks as if I’d missed my aim after I’d finished dictating something and had been presumably trying to put it on the table where it lives during the night.

There was some kind of new society or something like that which was created. It had all kinds of different social rules with the aim of people living together more happily than they seem to do at the moment under the current system. One of the surprising things about this was that they had “sock hand grenades”, you stuck a brick down the end of a sock and you would wield it around as a weapon and challenge other people in your society to a duel with these sock hand grenades. When these socks weren’t in use, they were hung over what looked like a horse hitching rail that you see outside saloons in Westerns, something like that.

It beats me how people can live together more happily together when they are clouting the living daylights out of each other with bricks stuffed down socks. But bricks or stones stuffed down socks made an effective blackjack during the war when you wanted to remove a sentry from his post without alerting his colleagues. You could have a nice swing from short range if you were to hold the open end of the sock, that’s for sure.

There had been a new artificial intelligence encyclopedia opened on the computer. But this time, instead of people making contributions to the meaning, people would suggest a word and the computer would work out the meaning and insert it. The plan was that people would only request words when they were actually working on a topic that included it. But some of these definitions were not very accurate at all and of course, people were not happy. However, it became quite quickly some kind of established way of job hunting, and people would look for new jobs on this system. Apparently, the keywords were something like “I want to push myself further on”. But this program actually was liked from that point of view.

We’d been talking about artificial intelligence yesterday evening and the rather variable quality of some translators, so that will explain this dream. But it’s true that many of these translators do leave something to be desired. They haven’t been perfected yet.

The nurse turned up, rather later than usual this morning, which is not like him. He didn’t have much to say for himself and was soon back out on his rounds. I could then go to make breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today’s highlights include "the barrows and other monuments of this island, which we are accustomed to attribute to the Druids, belong, not to the earlier Celtic population, but to the later settlers". Seeing as the arrival of the Celtic people is generally dated to the period 100 BC – 0 BC, he’s putting all of these Neolithic (4000 BC to 2200 BC, give or take a bit) barrows and monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury towards being at least contemporary with the Roman occupation of Britain, if not closer to our own time.

That was bad enough, but I really and honestly did groan with dismay when discussing cave-dwellers, whom these days we associate with the Old Stone Age of 10,000 years ago, and I read his "these caves … were probably inhabited in the times of the Roman rule,"

Back here eventually, after fighting off a few waves of sleep at the breakfast table, I had a few things to do, and then I began to edit the radio programmes. However, it wasn’t long before a wave of sleep caught up with me yet again. Wave after wave, in fact, and at one point I fell asleep at about 12:00 and didn’t awaken until the girls came and rang the doorbell at 13:30. If they hadn’t, I’d probably still be asleep even now.

We had a good chat, catching up on old times, until they went out at about 15:30 to take some photographs. I came back in here to carry on … "and to sleep" – ed … until they came back again a little later, and our discussion continued.

After they left, I made the next batch of homemade croissants, and they are now ready for baking tomorrow morning, and then I came back in here to carry on. However, once more, I fell asleep. And there I stayed until teatime, which is ridiculous.

Tea tonight was, as usual, just chocolate cake and vegan ice cream. But I am starting to feel hungry again. I’m going to try to hold out until at least Monday night after dialysis, to see what happens there, and then I might slowly begin to reintroduce more food into my routine.

But not right now, though. I’m going to have another early night and then … "he hopes" – ed … a nice long lie-in. The girls say that they will be round at about 11:30 so I shall have to set an alarm for tomorrow, but I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, and that is that it won’t be at 06:29, that’s for sure. It’ll be enough time to have a good wash and have breakfast before they arrive, and that’s the lot. The nurse can sort out my legs and feet while I’m still in bed.

And before long, I really am going to have to snap out of this chronic fatigue. It’s one of these new tablets that’s causing it, I’m pretty sure, so I’d better hurry up and become accustomed to it.

But at least, today, despite everything, I’ve managed to totally complete four radio programmes, which is better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper. I would have loved to have finished the fifth too, but you can’t have everything, I suppose.

Tomorrow afternoon, by the way, it’s Welsh Cup Final day between Caernarfon and Y Fflint. If you want to watch the game live, THE LINK IS HERE and the programme begins at 15:00 UK time (16:00 CET, 10:00 Toronto time) and the kick-off is fifteen minutes later.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Welsh Cup … "well, one of us has" – ed … a strange fly saw a large group of flies running round the edge of a saucer, stopping to stretch and to limber up every so often.
"What are you doing?" the strange fly asked.
"We’re warming up" replied one of them
"Warming up?" asked the strange fly. "What for?"
"Well, we’re playing in the Cup in half an hour."

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Thursday 9th April 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning. But that’s no real surprise.

Last night, I’d finished my chocolate cake and ice cream really early, so I came back in here and didn’t hang about. I raced through my notes and everything else that I needed to do, and I was in bed not many minutes after 21:30. And I didn’t need much rocking either. I was asleep quite quickly.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what usually happens on nights like this. And even so, 00:30 was rather ridiculous. It’s also a fact that I didn’t go back to sleep either. I lay there, curled up under the quilt, trying my best to go back to sleep or, at least, stay nice, warm and comfortable.

Eventually, I said “sod it” and prepared to leave the bed to do some work, but it was 06:20 by then so there wasn’t really much point. Nevertheless, I had my feet on the ground when the alarm went off, so it counts as an early start – only just.

Having my feet on the ground is one thing – having them moving in the direction of the bathroom is quite another thing. And when I was eventually in the bathroom, I forgot to have a shave.

It was late when I finally made it into the kitchen for my medication, and I made an executive decision – that is, a decision where if it’s the wrong one, the person who made it is executed.

The decision was that I wasn’t going to have a hot drink this morning. With dialysis looming this afternoon and not knowing what will happen, I just had a mouthful of cold water to wash down my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but to my dismay, there was nothing on there from last night. But with a sleep of just about three hours, what was I expecting?

The nurse was early today. He was wondering why I don’t stay in here to have my feet attended to, to which my reply was that I need to eat my breakfast afterwards so I may as well be at the kitchen table.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE CELT THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today we have finally begun to talk about the Celts in the pre-Roman days. But for how long, I don’t know. But he’s another one of these Victorian “experts” who attribute the various hillforts to the Saxons rather than the Neolithic people. He’s not quite so far out with Stonehenge, to which he attributes the Celts rather than, again, the Neolithic people.

In fact, in a most unprofessional manner, he ridicules the early nineteenth-century archaeologist Colt Hoare for daring to suggest that those constructions date to that earlier period.

Back in here, I finished off a few things and then turned my attention to the radio notes. It only took an hour or so to finish them off too. After that, I went to the bathroom for a shave and then came back in here to do one or two other things. That included reading the surprising news that Colwun Bay, Y Bala and Trefynnon have been refused a licence to play in the JD Cymru League next season. The clubs have six days to put right the shortcomings or else they will be in the Cymru North next season.

That would mean that the JD Cymru League would only run with fifteen teams next season instead of sixteen, or even fourteen if Caerau Trelai, currently in fourth position in the Cymru South and who was also refused a licence, finishes the season in one of the promotion places.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi to come for me. It was ten minutes late coming for me but seeing as I was the only passenger today, we soon made up the time and I was even early arriving.

And for a change, I didn’t have to wait too long to be plugged in. But it was one of these connections that seemed to take a lot longer than it ought.

And as for my weight, for the second time in succession, I clocked in at under my dry weight. Nevertheless, I let them take out 500 grammes. I was hoping that they’d take out more but after a discussion with the doctor, 500 grammes was the best that they would do.

They wouldn’t leave me alone either today. The nurses kept on coming by to do this and to do that, almost as if they were keeping a close eye on me. It wasn’t until right near the end that they relaxed their vigilance and I could close my eyes for fifteen minutes.

While I was asleep at dialysis, I was off to Crewe town centre – Boots Corner in Market Street, to be precise. I grabbed hold of a girl – I don’t know if I knew her – and we ran hand-in-hand over to my pushbike which was chained up at the side of Boots. I undid the chain, and then I gave her a “croggy” all the way up Market Street and Edleston Road to Nantwich Road. But then, I ended up making sandwiches, with cheese, lettuce, tomato and a few other salad things.

All of that takes me back many years. It’s been years since I rode a pushbike, and years too since Boots moved from Boots Corner to a modern shop somewhere else in the town.

By the time that I was ready to be unplugged, so was everyone else, so guess who was last. However, at least it was one of my favourite nurses so I didn’t complain.

The taxi driver was waiting for me already when I was ready so I didn’t have to wait, and on weighing myself upon leaving, I was below my ideal non-active weight. At long last. I hope that I can keep it up … "or down" – ed …

When we went outside, I could hear the birds singing. That’s the first time this year. It reminded me of being back in the Auvergne and I felt terribly nostalgic.

We were no earlier arriving back here, and my cleaner helped me back into the apartment. And I needed it too because the wind had sprung up since I’d left.

Once she had left, I had my tea – just chocolate cake and home-made ice cream. I’m determined to keep on with this for as long as I can.

So right now, nice and early, I’m off to bed. And one of these days, I might actually have a good sleep. But probably not tonight, if it’s anything like the last few nights.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the birds singing … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once asked me if I used to hear them when I lived in Crewe.
"Ohh yes" I replied. "Every evening in Spring, round about 18:00, I’d go outside and listen to them."
"Singing?"
"No. Coughing."

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Wednesday 1st April 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke.

Not that that was any surprise. Leaving aside the question of these new medicaments that Emilie the Cute Consultant prescribed for me, if you don’t go to bed until 23:30 and you awaken at 04:00, there’s not a lot of time to go anywhere, is there?

Yes, it was another late night last night. For some reason or other, tea last night took ages to cook and consequently, I was quite late finishing. And then with the writing of the notes and everything else that I have to do, we ended up finishing much later than I had hoped.

Once in my nice, clean bed, I was hoping for a really good sleep. And for the first part of the night, that was what I had. Asleep quite quickly and not moving a muscle at all. However, it all went wrong at 04:00 when I awoke.

For quite a while, I stayed with my head tucked firmly under the quilt, nice and comfortable, but after about an hour, I began to think of all of the things that I could be doing instead.

Consequently, I managed … "eventually" – ed … to crawl out of bed and take my place at the computer.

And by the time that the alarm went off, I had dictated no fewer than five sets of radio notes. That was a good morning’s work, especially as there are only now a handful left to do.

When I’d finished, I crawled into the bathroom to sort myself out and then went into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I checked the dictaphone and then occupied myself with a few tasks to keep me busy.

Isabelle the Nurse arrived as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. She didn’t have much to say for herself today, which is not like her. After she left, I could make breakfast and make a start on the new book.

It’s called THE ROMAN FORT AT BALMUILDY on the Antonine Wall, written by Stewart Napier Miller and concerns the excavations in 1912-1914 of a Roman fort on the Antonine Wall that ran between the Forth and the Clyde in Scotland.

Its ruins were always visible up to about 1820 or so when it was quarried for its stone. With its existence being threatened by the expansion of Glasgow, it was decided in 1912 to excavate it to recover what might be lost. The excavations finished in 1914 when Miller was mobilised into the Army at the start of World War I.

Back in here afterwards, I sat down at my desk, and the next thing that I remembered, it was 11:27. I’d fallen asleep yet again and had been out like a light for a little over two hours. That was a huge disappointment because I had so much to do today, and I thought that, by and large, I’d overcome these rather dramatic crash-outs.

Then again, I suppose that with only four and a half hours sleep during the night, I’d have to catch up on it somehow, some time. So with not having much time to hang around, I immediately attacked the radio programme that I’d been preparing.

There was a deadline for this today – 16:00 for reasons that you will soon find out. And despite a pause for a disgusting drink, by 16:00, I’d chosen all of the music, remixed and re-edited it all, paired and segued it, end even written all of the notes for it. That was probably the quickest radio programme that I’ve ever prepared, and I wish that I could do them all as quickly as this.

At 16:00 I went into the kitchen.

The first task was to make some bread baps – four of them. Two of them were destined for this evening and the other two for tomorrow evening.

While they were proofing after their first knead, I melted a bar of cooking chocolate over an ad-hoc bain marie with a little water. When it had all melted, I put it on one side to cool, and then, when it was cool enough, poured it over the top of my chocolate cake to make a kind of chocolate shell.

That’s going to be my Easter treat and I bet that it will be as sickly as anything. And won’t I enjoy it?

In the meantime, I’d been preparing my butternut squash, scooping out the seeds and filling the holes with garlic and chili. Then drizzling some olive oil over the two halves. The two halves went into the oven to roast, along with an onion and some potatoes.

At some point during all of that, I’d kneaded the dough for the bread rolls and separated it into four equal portions that I then shaped in the form of discuses, which I left to prove again.

When the squash, potatoes and onions were ready, I took them out of the oven and put in the bread rolls. With the squash, potatoes and onions etc, I made a soup using the carrot water that I’d saved from blanching my carrots that I’d ordered from Leclerc.

Once the soup was ready, I whizzed it up, added some plain soya yoghurt and a few handfuls of these little pasta elbows and let it simmer for ten minutes. Half of it then went into my bowl and the other half was put on one side with two of the baps, for tea tomorrow.

And it was absolutely delicious, one of the best soups that I have ever made. And there wasn’t any room for any trifle afterwards either. The soup and bread were quite enough.

And now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a hellish day today. Never mind the crashing out, I’ve been coughing all day, sneezing and I have a streaming head cold, so strong that not even any Vick’s or Olbas Oil can control it. I hope that it all clears up quite quickly because it all gets right on my nerves all of this. As if I don’t have enough problems.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about waking up early … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was back in Crewe, I used to wake up early quite often, even after only an hour or two of sleep.
One of my friends once asked me "whenever that kind of thing ever happened, did you wake up grumpy? "
"Oh no" I replied. "I always let her sleep in."

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Wednesday 11th March 2026 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… really nice tea, even though it took me over two hours to prepare it and then to tidy up afterwards. And consequently, I’m running even later than I was last night, and that was late enough.

So much so that, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing and had crawled into bed, it was about 23:20 – so much for any possible idea of having an early night.

And just as the previous night, it was another bad one, and by 05:20, I’d given up all possible hope of going back to sleep. But not to worry – round about 06:00 I raised myself from the Dead and attacked the two lots of radio notes that I’d written last week. They are now dictated and ready for editing, and there’s nothing outstanding in that respect.

However, there are no fewer than six lots of radio notes that need editing, so I am going to have a busy weekend by the looks of things.

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a scrub-up and then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. And the medication is much better in the drawer opposite the microwave rather than scattered all over the place.

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

There was something about being back in historical times. There was a young boy who was in bed in this house and having to measure how far away from the nearest plug he was in his bed so that we could put the correct amount of cable on a table lamp. For some reason, instead of calculating it from a plug in his bedroom, we calculated it from a plug in the living room and that seemed to go for metres – maybe there were five, six or seven metres. And if we’d taken it from the plug by the bed, it would have been next-to-nothing in the way of cable. But while we were measuring it, we had a metal ruler that was a metre long and a scribe that we were using to mark everything. Part of this route took us outside, and we were measuring in the snow and ice. We were looking at the ice and thinking of how things were frozen up, thinking that we’d better hurry and take ourselves inside again before we freeze in this weather.

It’s not very likely that they would have had table lamps back in historical times, but it’s certainly possible that there might not have been electrical sockets in every room. I can remember times like that in the dim and distant past. And don’t forget that the farm down in Virlet doesn’t have mains electricity or running water.

It would be interesting to know, though, why our route from one bedroom to another took us outside into the snow and ice.

Did I dictate the dream about being in Germany with my German friend? … "No, you didn’t" – ed … We ended up going around one of the supermarkets in his town looking for things that he needed. I saw some Heinz baked beans on special offer, so I went to look, but they were beans with pork sausages, so that ruled it out for me. So we had a good wander around and we noticed a couple of tins of beans on the shelf which were for sale. He asked me if they would be any good, so I replied that there was only one way to find out, so we put them in the trolley. I went to the check-out and waited for my friend who was still looking. I was chatting to the cashier, and he was saying goodbye and talking politely to everyone who was leaving the shop, but no-one seemed to reply to him. He was very annoyed by this. Eventually, we climbed into our car and drove out of the car park into the main street, but we were in Wandsworth by this time. Seeing as we were here, I asked him to turn to the left, which he did. I pointed out a row of shops, which in the past included an Indian takeaway, which was really nice. Up at the junction ahead, the round swung round to the left and headed down towards Wimbledon. Where the Italian restaurant had been, where I used to work, it had all been demolished and it was modern shopping units, things like these tool supply places and DIY hardware fittings places etc. I couldn’t believe how things had changed since the early 1990s when I was working down there. I was really, really disappointed by this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my desperate search for decent baked beans, and it would be just my luck to find a huge supply, only to be thwarted by something like several pork sausages.

A while ago, I was looking at one of these online 3-D mapping sites, checking the area where I used to live in Wandsworth for that couple of months, and I didn’t recognise any of it. How it’s all changed since those days. It was really difficult to believe just how different the area is now, compared to how it used to be.

The nurse came extremely early today. He had several blood tests to carry out, including one on me! Unfortunately, he doesn’t have “the touch”, and as my veins are very small and fragile, I suffer enormously.

Not only that, I should have been à jeun – that is, without any food. However, I’d forgotten, so heaven alone knows what they are going to think at the laboratory when they find my blood full of home-made lemon, ginger and honey drink.

After he’d sorted out my feet, which was also agony because the pain in my right foot has returned, he left, and I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, having finished the accounts of the downfall of the individual duchies, he’s discussing the situations on the islands. It’s, regrettably, exactly the same as on the mainland, with different groups in conflict with others, internal revolution, external warfare, appeals to various European bodies and even craven submission to the Ottomans in order to seek protection from a different Christian force.

It really is difficult to understand why these people couldn’t see that they were signing their own death warrants.

Back in here, I finished off a few things and then, regrettably, I had a little “doze” in my chair for an hour or so. I can’t say that I was surprised.

Once I’d brought myself back round fully into the Land of the Living, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working yesterday. And by lunchtime, I’d finished everything. So this idea of being “up to date” didn’t last any longer than six hours.

After a disgusting drink break, I had a few things to do.

This fibre-optic cable issue is still rumbling on … "and on, and on" – ed … due to the inability of the estate agent’s manager to understand the problem. And now another inhabitant of the building, not exactly known for his patience, has thrown his hat into the ring following the failure of the installation chez lui. It seems that I am shortly to have a visit from a technician nominated by the estate agent, who intends to check the situation.

And not before time, either.

There was also an order to pass to my online retailer, and as a result, my late birthday present to myself should be arriving in about a week or ten days or so. In fact, a part of it should be here within the next couple of days, as it was “en route” about an hour after I’d ordered it.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

A third thing was to reply to a letter that I’d received from the Auvergne. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a letter that I’d received from someone sending me his sympathies for my illness. I’d written back with an update as to my condition, and he’d replied. He’s going to carry out a little task or two for me, something that should come as quite a pleasant surprise to whoever inherits my possessions.

And finally, I’ve had my tax demand for my property in Canada. Looking at the increases over the last few years, property values close to the border with the Great Satan (and you can’t be much closer to the border with the Great Satan than my property) are rising dramatically since the orange utan took power down there.

Rosemary rang for a little chat. And it was a “little chat” too – it only lasted one hour. She’s been noticing the lack of worms in her garden these last couple of years, and the compost that she spreads on her vegetable plots doesn’t seem to break down as quickly as it should. Consequently, she’s planning on ordering a couple of hundred worms from a place in France so that she can dig them in with the compost.

With the time that was left, I chose the music for the next radio programme. And some of that took a lot of finding too. But it’s all now present, reformatted, remixed and re-edited. I can pair it and segue it tomorrow and maybe even write a couple of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a fresh vegetable curry … "well, frozen vegetable curry actually" – ed … with onion, mushrooms, tomato, lentils, broccoli, cauliflower and sprouts in a thick vegan yoghurt sauce with rice, followed by birthday cake and home-made ice cream. And it really was delicious.

However, I might have to smile sweetly at Alison and ask her to take a little trip into Leuven on my behalf because my stock of spices is running rather low right now.

But that’s a job for the weekend because right now, I’m off to bed, hours later than I would like.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my blood test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told one of my friends from Crewe that I had had a blood test this morning.
And so she asked "did you have to study hard last night, then?"

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Saturday 7th March 2026 – THIS REALLY BUSY …

… spell that I had yesterday and the day before seems to have continued today too. Mind you, I let a really golden opportunity slip through my fingers, but more of that anon.

Last night, it was another late night … "as it will be tonight" – ed … and it was again about 23:15 when I finally struggled into bed after I’d finished listening to Colosseum.

Once again, I managed to go to sleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until all of … errr … 04:01 precisely when I awoke. It was too early to raise myself from the Dead so I lay there vegetating, being totally unable to go back to sleep.

At what I thought would be about 05:30, I thought that I may as well leave the bed and dictate the radio notes that I’ve been writing, but on checking the time, I found that it was actually 06:05 and the alarm would be going off very shortly.

That was certainly a missed opportunity – I could have dictated all of the radio notes and been totally up-to-date again in that respect, but at 06:05, it’s far too late to make a start.

Nevertheless, I managed to raise myself into a sitting position, and by 06:20 I was up and about and heading to the bathroom. An early start, sure enough, but not the early start that I wanted or needed.

After a really good wash, I went into the kitchen and now that I have some fresh lemons thanks to Leclerc, I could make my drink correctly and take my medication.

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

I was on my way to see some friends. I arrived in a city and I was on a bus, and because my mobility is restricted, I ended up in a hotel in the city centre in the early afternoon. The first thing that I did was to ask a few questions to a kind of robot writer. I wrote down some questions and it wrote out the answers, then it asked me if there was anything else that I needed. I said that I had to speak to some friends so the first thing that I did was to write “hello” to one of my friends, but I didn’t receive a reply, so I sent another brief message to one of my friends. She wrote back to say that she was pleased to see me and that the papers that I wanted were outside her lock-up garage in some kind of 17th- or 18th-century box, and this is the time when most neighbours won’t really complain about people hanging around there, so maybe I would like to go along and move them. I explained that I was not able to travel and couldn’t make it up there on my own, so she came back with a message “would you like me to prepare a meal for you?”. I was hoping to see my other friend who wasn’t in, but nevertheless I replied “yes, that would be really nice”. Then she told me about how she could make some kind of container. I sent back “what? Do you mean out of a lump of bread?” but she replied “no, out of a lump of butter”. I thought that that was not going to be a very good idea at all, to try to make a container out of a lump of butter.

It’d been a long time since I’ve thought about a robot writer – the 1960s and 1970s precursor to Artificial Intelligence and the display screen.

But of course, there’s the phenomenon of “automatic writing”, where some people can go into a trance while holding a pen, and it’s as if another being takes over and begins to write with your arm, hand and pen, with you having no control over it.

That’s something that has happened to me, and I’d love to know in what language you’d find the words ” XDFVV CHXWD BBBQC”.

Making a container out of a lump of butter would be interesting too. I hope that it wouldn’t be for holding hot food.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet, being really delicate around the sole of my right foot as the pain was back this morning. She was running late for a blood test so she couldn’t hang around.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re dealing with the winding down of the Frankish empire in modern Greece, the attacks by the Catalans, the Navarese and the Genoese, and the capture and sack of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans.

The Ottomans are now preparing to move into Greece, and this is probably the saddest part of the whole procedure

During the morning (and some of the afternoon) I’ve been rearranging the things in the kitchen drawers, making it all more user-friendly. I’ve now ended up with a large drawer completely empty, and my cunning plan is to move all of the medication into it instead of having it lying scattered around all over various shelves and drawers. It will be much nicer, much more user-friendly and a lot less dispiriting when I don’t have to look at it every time I’m in the living room.

There was football at lunchtime, Y Fflint v Dinas Bangor, in the semi-final of the Welsh Cup. Bangor, from the third tier, were hoping to be the first club from their level to reach the final but Y Fflint, struggling in the Premier League, are hoping to win the cup for the first time since 1954.

Unfortunately, despite having done so well to reach the semi-finals, it was one step too far for Bangor. What stood out for me was the difference in quality between the Fflint and the Bangor players, which is only to be expected. Y Fflint were much quicker to the ball and seemed to be able to find a colleague with a pass, even when under a lot of pressure.

But congrats to Y Fflint and commiserations to Bangor.

And also congratulations to former JD Cymru League striker Will Evans, who played for Cardiff Metropolitan and Y Bala. Now playing in the English First Division with Mansfield Town, today he scored a goal against Arsenal to go with the one that he scored against Manchester United a couple of years ago.

Tomorrow, we had a first-v-second division encounter between Caernarfon and Y Rhyl, which you CAN WATCH HERE at 13:15 UK time, 14:15 CET or 08:15 Toronto time.

The rest of the day, I’ve been editing some of the radio notes that I’d dictated in that mad session the other morning. I managed to deal with no fewer than five programmes – admittedly only the notes for joining tracks – and now that’s five more radio programmes totally completed, all the way up to 2nd October. As I said, I want my radio shows to live on after I’ve gone.

There was even time to begin the research on yet another radio programme, in addition to the one that I began yesterday. This one today will take me all the way up to 27th November.

Tea tonight was the last of these breadcrumbed nuggets that have been hanging around in the freezer since Adam was a lad, with vegan salad and a baked potato – with vegan cheese in the slits instead of vegan butter. It was followed by some of my birthday cake and home-made ice cream.

But as for the nuggets, there are a few that I’ve bought recently, and the aim is to take them out of their shop packaging and tip them into an old ice cream container so that they are better-protected in the freezer than in a plastic bag.

But anyway, that’s for tomorrow, maybe. Right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Sack of Constantinople "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one of my friends "did you know that the Ottomans sacked Constantinople in 1453?"
"Really?" he asked. "Who did they appoint instead?"

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Monday 2nd March 2026 – ANOTHER EXCITING DAY …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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