Tag Archives: early start

LIVE: Tuesday 22nd September 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why, but today, I seem to have had one of the better days that I have had for a considerable period of time. Even my cleaner noticed that I was much more bright and chirpy than my normal self.

It surely can’t be the perfusion that I had yesterday? I would imagine that that would take a few days before it started having any effect, but apart from that, nothing else seems to have changed, so I dunno.

It wasn’t the early night either because it wasn’t as early as I would have liked it to be either. It was probably about 22:45 when I finally hit the hay.

And that’s another thing too – looking back a couple of weeks or so ago, I was flat out and desperate to go to bed at some kind of ridiculously early hour, and that’s especially true of the nights when I have had dialysis in the afternoon, but just recently, there have been several nights after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out.

And last night, after dialysis, I would have normally expected to have gone to bed at about 20:30 or 21:00, but I was still going strong at, as I said just now, 22:45. So I’ve no idea what’s happening right now.

But once I’d gone to bed, I managed to go to sleep fairly quickly, but once more, it wasn’t for long. I awoke again at some early hour – I’ve no idea what time because I didn’t look – and couldn’t go back to sleep.

At some point, though, I must have managed it because I remember waking up again. This time I did look at the time and it was 05:52. I decided that I wouldn’t try to go back to bed but I’d have another early start.

By 06:15 I was in the bathroom sorting myself out and then came back in here to start work.

The first thing that I did was to transcribe the notes on the dictaphone. There was nothing on there from last night, but I dealt with Sunday’s dream and there was also something from Monday morning. Those two web pages are now on line, for the benefit of those of you who are here for the dreams and not for news of my really exciting and eventful life.

While I was at it, I checked the stats and there was yet another hit from an artificial intelligence chatbot.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to start her week and, silly me, I’d left the door locked from last night so she had to use the key that I gave her and her oppo the other week. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been locking the door to the apartment at night since I had that strange nocturnal visitor a few weeks ago.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Not very much of it because, as usual, I was side-tracked and ended up reading about the mountains on the fringe of the Mynyddoedd Duon or “Black Mountains” of Breconshire and neighbouring counties. That was much more exciting.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went to class. And surprisingly, it was one of the best lessons that I have ever had, even though it’s only the second lesson of another year. That probably contributed to my good humour, especially as after the lesson a few of us had a group chat on the internet and I managed to keep up with the conversation.

And that wasn’t the only conversation that I had had either. All in all, there was a total of four conversations with different people, and they were all welcome.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment and the first thing that she did was, as usual on a Tuesday, to chase me into the shower. While I was in there showering, she changed the bedclothes on my bed so now, you have a nice clean boy … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … and a nice clean bed.

We also had a good chat about several things, including about the retired skipper who was found dead in a burnt-out apartment the other day.

After she left, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been working on before my holidays. Now, all of the music has been located, re-edited and reformatted, paired and segued. All I need to do now is to write the notes and then that’s ready to go too. And that reminds me – I haven’t checked this week’s radio programme yet so I must do that tomorrow without fail.

On that point, I knocked off for tea. And surprisingly, I was hungry too so I made pasta and veg in tomato sauce with falafel, and it would have been delicious had I not dropped a lot of used oil onto it straight out of the air fryer. So I ate what I could and the incident reminded me to
1) Be more careful with the air fryer
2) Wash the air fryer out more regularly.

And when I did the washing up later, I did indeed wash out the air fryer and I hope that on Friday, when I have my chips, it will produce some really good ones.

But again, I had a meal tonight and half a meal last night, and I’m promising myself an evening meal on Friday. So what IS going on with me right now?

Back in the office, I typed up the notes for tonight and then checked the stats and so on. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, I might actually manage an early night tonight. So here’s hoping that this good mood continues tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the dreams from Sunday night, the first night and a friend … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of the story generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill but actually concerned Noël Coward and Randolph Churchill.
Coward – "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend—if you have one."
Churchill – "Cannot possibly attend the first night; will attend the second—if there is one"

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LIVE: Monday 21st September 2026 – YET ANOTHER CHAOTIC …

… day at dialysis – just the same (give or take the odd bit here and there) as last Monday, and I wasn’t really in the mood for it, because I’ve had a chaotic day too.

Last night, it wasn’t too far short of midnight when I finally made my way into bed, and the good news was that I was asleep quite quickly.

However, it wasn’t for long, though. I’ve no idea what time I awoke, but as it was pitch-black outside, I’d say that it wasn’t much after 02:30. And once awake, I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable in bed so that I could go back to sleep, but nothing seemed to work.

At least, that’s what I thought, but round about 06:05 I had another one of those dramatic awakenings that I used to have regularly at one point. There was no point in going back to sleep at that point, with all of my appointments today, so by 06:15 I was in the bathroom organising myself ready for the onslaught. I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later.

There was actually something on the dictaphone from the night, as I found out on Tuesday morning, so I’ve added it in here.

There was something last night about me being sent to one of these RAF filling station type of places where people go after they have been injured or after they’ve been sick and their position in their regular flight had been filled by someone else. So I’d been sent to this place to meet up with other people similar to form a crew, and then I suddenly realised that I can’t have done that because I wasn’t born until nine years after the war ended so it’s just not possible for me to have been there.

There actually was a place like this at one of the RAF training centres, although it was hardly a “filling station” in the normal usage of the term. Bomber crews were assembled simply amongst themselves towards the end of their training and they usually stuck together throughout their tour of thirty missions. However, if someone were sick or injured, someone else would be co-opted into the crew and when the original member returned to duty, he would find that his place had been taken. Consequently he’d be sent to the “training centre” where he could team up with other people to form a new crew.

However, I’m impressed that within a dream, I can recognise the absurdity of the situation of being in this training centre at least nine years before I was even born.

Back in the kitchen, I put away the washing up from yesterday and made sure that the place looked nice. After that, I finished organising what I needed to take with me and then had a little snooze hunched over the table while I waited for the taxi to arrive.

The car was booked for 08:15, and my doorbell rang at 08:14. Excellent timing, that was. There was just me going in the car this morning. We had patchy fog all the way, not as bad as my chauffeur said it was when she started work at 05:30 this morning.

We arrived at the hospital bang on 09:00, and she pushed me in a wheelchair up to the hôpital de jour. I know that I have said that I won’t go in a wheelchair, but where I was going was miles away from the entrance and, at this time of the morning, the drivers have plenty of other things to do that accompany me, slowly and painfully on foot.

The nursing auxiliary and the nurse fussed around me when I arrived, and wasn’t the latter relieved when I said I had a chemotherapy port? It made her task so much easier and mine too because I could then type with both hands.

By about 09:40 I was up and running with this stuff to stimulate my red blood cells, and I was told that the treatment would last a little over two hours.

The bad news (at first) was that there seemed to be no internet up there, but I had a ferret around and eventually managed to conjure up something, so I watched LLansawel against Trefelin from Friday night. It was a miserable night last Friday, and playing football in a monsoon on a paddy field wasn’t very encouraging. It was something of a lottery out there and I don’t think that the teams could have been too dissatisfied with the end result.

As for the fans, though, it was no real spectacle. It was a long-ball hoof upfield and another long-hoof upfield in reply. I could count on the fingers of my hand the number of passes that found a team mate. I’m sure that in this weather, they would have been better off playing the ball to feet instead of in the air.

After that, I started Connah’s Quay Nomads v Cardiff Metro. I didn’t get to see much of it so I’ll tell you about it later.

During the morning, I had a visit from no less a person than Emilie the Cute Consultant. She came to see how I was doing and, once more, just like two years ago, she sat on the end of my bed while she chatted. The plan that they have worked out is that because they have still not been able to arrange anything with a haematologist, I’ll have to come here every four weeks for this treatment. And right on cue, the nurse came with my next appointment – Monday 19th October at 09:30.

And it really was nice to chat to Emilie the Cute Consultant. It seems that she still loves me.

Round about 11:50, the treatment was finished and the nurse unplugged me. She said that I had to wait for a while to let my head clear and, in any case, the taxi would be here to take me across the road at about 13:30. Waiting wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought, especially as I was brought a meal – stuffed tomatoes, bread, sliced pears and an apple purée. It was better than the coffee earlier, though, which was served in just about the oldest mug I have ever seen.

Round about then, I began to wonder when the nurse was going to come back to apply the anaesthetic on my arm. There was no sign so I asked the nursing auxiliary, who replied that all of the nurses had gone for lunch. So what are the connections going to be like with no anaesthetic, do you think?

The car turned up bang on schedule and took me across the road. I was there at 13:40 but had to wait until 14:30 to be plugged in. Had I known that the wait was going to be so long, I’d have persuaded one of the nurse there to apply my anaesthetic there and then as I arrived.

The connections were nothing like as painful I was expecting. In fact, I’ve had worse than those even when I’ve been covered in anaesthetic, so I didn’t mind too much.

Once I was finally up and running, I was left pretty much alone for the session. The low blood pressure alarm didn’t ring at all – not even once.

However, I was really feeling tired – I’d had a battle to keep away across the road – but here, I did actually fall asleep, only to be shaken awake by a nurse who was afraid that I was busy pushing up the daisies. And another one of the doctors came to see me to find out how I was doing. I’ve no idea what is the reason for this sudden popularity.

The next match to watch was the rest of Connah’s Quay Nomads v Cardiff Metro. Another game played in a monsoon, it was another one of these end-to-end games, but the Nomads’ class showed through in the end and they went on to win 1-0.

The old guy who was rushed to hospital last week was there today, looking much better. However, it was the turn of a woman this time who began to have problems. All the nurses and doctors congregated around her and in the end, my chauffeur was hijacked to rush her over the road to the emergencies.

They had begun to unplug me, but as everyone was finishing at the same time, I was left until almost last. The nurse came to offer her excuses, but I told her that although I don’t mind waiting, I’d be much happier if they left my machine running so that I could take advantage of the extra time.

Eventually, my chauffeur arrived, the young chatty guy. We had someone else to drop off en route so it was a miserable 19:05 when I finally arrived home. My cleaner helped me into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I made a quick tea – just a little potato salad because I wasn’t all that hungry tonight.

So now, having finished my notes, I’m going to try to have an early night for once.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the hôpital de jour … "well, one of us has" – ed … I overheard two of the nurses talking to each other
"I hear that there’s a case of brucellosis just come in" said the one.
"Oh well," said the other. "It’ll make a change from Lucozade."

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LIVE: Friday 18th September 2026 – THIS IS THE …

… last day of my summer holidays today.

The other day, I know that I said that I would start work today, but falling asleep at my desk after breakfast and remaining like that until exactly 11:21 rather made up my mind for me.

It’s understandable though. Even though I crashed out last night by about 21:30 and was well-tucked up in bed, going to bed early just means that I wake up early, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …

The thing that startled me most was hearing the “click” from the immersion heater relay. “Surely it can’t be 06:38 already, it’s switching off and I’ve slept through the alarms?” No it wasn’t. It was 01:10 and the immersion heater was just switching on.

From then on, I just tossed and turned all night until I finally checked the time again – 05:52. That made up my mind so I leapt to my feet … "well, sort of" – ed … and went over to the computer to finish off last night’s notes, which are now on line.

There was time to do a few other things, including checking the stats, where I found that once more, an AI chatbot has visited my website and used ONE OF MY WEB PAGES as a reference. I forget how many times this is now.

When the nurse arrived, he was very disappointed to find me all alone. He’d grown quite fond of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and I’m sure that the feeling was mutual. But never mind. He sorted out my legs and feet and then cleared off on his travels.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

This report, written in 1871 or so, describes the field trips of the members and guests and includes verbatim copies of the “papers” that were read at their lectures. The one that we’ve been discussing today is meteorology, and, bearing in mind that this is 1871, this following quote is bound to be of interest to almost everyone and takes my “earliest mention of global warming” back yet another few years.

"it appears plain from this diagram that our climate has become warmer, the month of January particularly, say from 2 to 3 degrees. There is not so much difference in the summer months, or even of March; but the whole year is somewhat warmer on the average than at the close of the last century."

This is a fascinating quote from a group of committed and determined observers, and it’s a shame that it’s been missed by most modern means of mass communication. And it’s a good indication of the fact that global warming has been around longer than most people realise.

Back in here again, I had a few things to do but found myself fast asleep in my chair yet again, as I said earlier. How I wish that I could avoid it, especially when it takes a good twenty minutes at least to pull myself together afterwards. In fact, I don’t think that it was until I had my disgusting drink and midday medication (and midday plum) at about 12:40 that I was ready to go.

Back at my desk, the first thing was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night.

This is a dream that I can only remember bits of because it all evaporated when I reached for the dictaphone. I was with another younger boy from school, and there was something going on there that I can’t remember. And then I ended up in London again and I was driving away from the city centre and the North Circular Road in a sort-of North East direction through one set of housing after another after another after another, and it basically involved Liz, “that Liz”, not “this Liz” and me, and we were somewhere at some kind of fête and they called the tombola number winners, and it was a ticket that I had, and the prize was something like £113,000. Naturally, we were both delighted. We met someone who was obviously jealous because she began to ask us what we were all going to do with it and all of that. Liz seemed to think that splitting it in half was not the right kind of thing. I think she wanted her daughter to have a share too. She was annoyed when I was talking to this person about splitting it in half and stormed out. I stormed off after her but I couldn’t persuade her to come back in. In the end, she just disappeared. I went to find her daughter, and her daughter and I looked around for a while. Her daughter showed me her wedding photos, and I hadn’t realised that she’d married. That was when I had that bit about driving through London thousands of miles later while I looked to find her, and I remember the road that was dark and damp and all these terraced houses and old-type semis. I pulled up at a house at one point, and another Ford Granada pulled up behind me. I went in, and these two women asked me if I was their taxi, so I replied “no”. The other driver said that he was theirs, but he sounded completely drunk from my point of view.

“That Liz” appears quite often in my dreams, but this is the first appearance for many a long year of her daughter. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I TOOK HER TO CANADA IN 2010 after her mother died. And in any case, neither of them was the kind to make a fuss about money.

However, I’m back in London again, aren’t I? This is becoming quite a habit.

There was another dream about being back in Pionsat. Half of the football club was there waiting for the other half to go for a match. Eventually, they turned up and they went. There were plenty of players whom I knew from before, and not one of them said “hello” to me. They went off, but they came back a few hours later this Sunday morning, but they didn’t tell me how the game had gone.

This is possibly something to do with the merger nine years ago of Pionsat and Marcillat football clubs in an attempt to make a much stronger first XI. However, it didn’t work out that way, but that’s another story.

It’s interesting to see that they don’t notice me. Was I a ghost at that moment? That’s always an intriguing possibility.

When I was working in an office, there was a girl who was working there. She was married and had two children, or was it three children? But her husband was flirting around with one of her work colleagues. It turned out that they went swimming together and doing all sorts of other things together, leaving this girl pretty much on her own, so she used to come along to talk to me about it. I said “I know what advice I would give you, but it’s not my business. She had another friend who used to come along and talk to the two of us, and she made some kind of remark that I hadn’t noticed that I’d started to hold this girl’s hand. I felt “well! What’s happening here?”

I know this girl right enough, and she certainly didn’t have three children. The situation also related to her too, although I was never lucky enough to hold her hand, much as I would have liked to.

But being lucky in a dream is an unusual situation for me anyway. My family usually comes along and puts the spanner in the works long before we get to this point.

And then, of course, I was back in London again and was walking around the streets. I’d parked the van up somewhere on the edge of the city and I’d walked in. There had been some kind of confusion that Nerina and I had won all this money, but a solicitor just picked it up and walked off with it and refused to hand it back. I went to see my friendly solicitor at work, who happened to be there at the time, and had him write out the statement as to what he saw, because I was going to take it to the police. Then I had to walk back to my van through the streets of north-east London that I’ve walked through dozens of times in a dream. I started it up, and I was surprised that it started. I set out to drive away, but I realised that I hadn’t had anything to eat for ages, so I turned round and headed back. There was a bakery that I’d visited when I’d been walking around London in a dream, and with a chip shop next to it. So I parked up there and went off to buy some food.

This looks as if it might be connected to the first dream, although Nerina is there instead of “that Liz”. As for my friendly neighbourhood solicitor, I know him too, and he’s certainly not a solicitor, not by any means.

And back in London again, and in the same street as the bakery and the chip shop that I have visited on numerous occasions in recent dreams.

Having finished all of that, I began to write chapter nine of my story. This is an important chapter, the key in fact to the whole book and, if I’m lucky, the whole series. It’s where the heroine suddenly finds her feet in her new world after her tragedies in the earlier chapters, and it took quite a while to write. However, it’s turned out exactly as I would like it to.

All I need now, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … is to find myself a target audience willing to read it to see what she thinks. So if you have a girl in your entourage aged, say, between nine and twelve who might like to read it, let me know.

Chapter ten will be next, but I’ve no idea when I’ll find the time to write it now. It won’t be tonight because there’s football on later – newly promoted Airbus UK Broughton v established Y Fflint, lingering third from bottom without a win.

This is a game that Y Fflint must be targeting if they are to close the gap that’s widening at the foot of the table, cutting off the bottom three.

My cleaner put her sooty foot into the apartment and did some cleaning in the middle of all of this, and, poor girl, she was here for almost three hours this afternoon. She’s still not convinced that she’s collected everything, even though this is the first ever time that I’ve seen her use a vacuum cleaner. At least, I think that the place is spotless now.

When chapter nine was finished, I fed it through the first of my two chatbot proofreaders, and he liked it very much, so I fed it through the second one. There were a couple of typing errors and missed punctuation that it found, but the continuity and the chronology are holding up really well.

Tea tonight was my usual Friday favourite – air-fried chips with vegan sausage and baked beans with cheese and black pepper. It was delicious beforehand, but since my friend advised me to boil the chips first in order to soften them before frying them in the air fryer, they have come out even better, so I really enjoyed my meal tonight.

Especially when it was followed by a mixture of tinned apricots and tinned fruit cocktail with some of that lovely vegan ice cream from Noz. It’s a shame that I don’t know anyone else who shops there, otherwise they would be getting a weekly order.

And having said all of that, I can’t believe that I’ve had a meal and enjoyed it. God knows what it’s done to my water retention issues, but ask me if I care.

Back in here, there was the football – Airbus UK Broughton v Y Fflint. As I said earlier, this was a match that Y Fflint needed to win to kickstart their season, and indeed they played some really nice football – in fact, they showed much more skill than Airbus did. So what I simply do not understand is why they lost the match 4-1. They were the much better team, I reckoned, and they had the Airbus defence under siege for some very long periods, even after they had had a player sent off.

Mind you, their goal was a cracker. A young lad – Levi Morrison, I think – had just come on as a substitute and was playing right-back. He played a magnificent ball right over the top of the Airbus defence into the path of an onrushing striker who had the simplest of jobs to lash it into the net.

And my “man of the match”? Lassana Mendes, Y Fflint’s Spanish midfielder, who ran the game better than anyone I have seen for a long time.

It has to be said, however, that playing football in a monsoon with hurricane-force winds and the distractions of aeroplanes taking off and landing in the background can’t have been easy.

And whatever happened at Caernarfon? Four players (three from Cambrian United) were sent off, eighteen minutes of stoppage time and a 9-1 victory for the home side. That has to be a game worth watching, and I shall be looking forward to it tomorrow at dialysis.

But right now, later than ever, I’m off to bed. I need my beauty sleep if I am going to look my best for whoever knows who comes along.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about winning at tombola … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time Nerina asked me what I would do if I won the lottery.
"Give you half and throw you out" I said.
"Good!" she said. "Here’s £6:00, half of my win last night. Now clear off!"

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LIVE: Tuesday 15th September 2026 – THAT WAS A …

… much better day today than yesterday was, although it does have to be said that it could hardly be any worse. For a start, I actually managed to go to sleep, which is more than I did the previous night.

Having gone to bed at about 21;00, after having been asleep on my chair for at least an hour, I was asleep quite quickly. And I didn’t need much rocking either. And there I lay, fast asleep, until something rather dramatic awoke me. It was one of these occasions where something makes me suddenly sit bolt-upright, but unlike most of the other times, it wasn’t a subconscious feeling but a real something.

After that, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. After a while I checked the time, and it was 02:48 so the noise or whatever must have been about 02:00, I reckon. But despite all that, I carried on trying to go to sleep, but it was of no use really. For all the good that it did me, I needn’t have bothered to try.

When I noticed that the time was 05:51, I decided that I may as well make an early start out of it all, so I stood up and began to dress. At east, I “tried to stand up” but for some reason my legs wouldn’t work to that much effect, and it took me about three or four goes before I was finally upright. And then, round about 06:00, I was sitting at the computer.

The first job, of course, was to deal with the notes from last night. I thought that it wouldn’t take long to finish them, but I was surprised at how much there was to write. I ended up with almost two thousand three hundred words – that’s about sixty per cent more than the average. Consequently, I was only just putting the finishing touches to them when I began to wake up and smell the coffee.

That brought the proceedings to a rapid conclusion, and I went into the kitchen to try to be sociable.

Hot, strong coffee first thing in the morning is delicious, especially the way that my friend makes it, so I quite enjoyed drinking it while we chatted.

Our leisurely morning was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse. The Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t bark at all – he just rolled onto his back ready for a tickle-tummy, and the nurse duly obliged.

He then attended to me … "the nurse, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed …, and while he was sorting out my legs and feet, we had an interesting chat. But don’t ask me what it was about because I can’t remember now. It’s one of those things that I’ll probably remember about one tenth of a second after I’ve pressed “send” later on.

After saying goodbye to the Hound of the Baskervilles, the nurse cleared off, and the aforementioned … "the Hound of the Baskervilles, not the nurse" – ed …, dragged his master outside for another round of walkies. I stayed behind, of course, and made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

At the moment, everyone is agreeing with everyone else, there’s no dissent, no disagreement, and the World in rural Herefordshire is at peace. They are all admiring the beautiful view, and I am admiring the beautiful prose, such as "the magnificent vertical wall of the celebrated Coldwell rocks, so splendidly wooded, and through which we have wended our way hither"

Back in here later, I revised for my Welsh and then went to the lesson. We have loads of new students in our class, and a new teacher too. But unfortunately she swallows her words so we can’t make out half the time what she’s saying, and she’s nothing like as well organised as our previous one. I also remain unconvinced that she actually knows her subject as well as she ought to.

We shall see.

When the lesson ended, I had a few things to do and also to sort out my clean clothes for a shower, because my cleaner comes today and she usually chases me thereunder. So when she turned up, she gave the Hound of the Baskervilles his usual big stroke, and then I decided on a change of plan.

The temperature was slowly falling, the weather was slowly deteriorating and the wind was slowly rising. So what I thought that we’d do is that the three of us (and the Hound of the Baskervilles as bodyguard) go to do a little job outside that I’ve been trying to do for an absolute age.

So they walked off and I staggered off outside to see what we could do. We attacked this job, and surprisingly, it was completely finished in about fifteen minutes. The most difficult and longest part of the job was my walking back to the apartment afterwards, because the wind was definitely rising now. And today was the first day since spring that I’d work a jacket outside.

Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph.

Back in here, the first thing that I noticed was that we could hardly move around, there was that much stuff in here. But once a couple of things had gone up into my loft space, it made it slightly … "only slightly" – ed … better.

My cleaner organised the bathroom for me, and then she chased me under the shower, so we have a nice, clean boy … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … this evening. And once I’d come out of the bathroom, my cleaner stopped playing with the Hound of the Baskervilles, sorted out the bathroom and went back upstairs to her place, leaving the rest of us alone.

Once I was organised, I came back in here to do some work. However, I didn’t get very far because Rosemary rang for a chat. Only a very short one today – one hour, nineteen minutes and fifty-two seconds.

But one of the things that we discussed was diuretics, of course, and Rosemary suggested that many fruits and vegetables have diuretic properties. That set me off on another trail, and by the end of our chat, I had a pile of recipes and daily food programmes organised by my friendly neighbourhood chatbot, and there was a cheap good-make juicing machine in my shopping basket ready for purchase tomorrow. The idea of drinking more is something that I need to do, so drinking something that actually has a positive effect on my fluid retention has to be a good way forward.

While all of this was going on, my friend was making tea, and we ended up with sausage, chips and beans. And I know that that’s what Friday’s meal usually is, but the Hound of the Baskervilles is going home on Thursday, taking my friend with him, and so he wants to try the sausages once more before he goes.

The pudding of tinned apricots and my vegan ice cream from Noz was exceptionally good. The ice cream is lovely and I wish now that I’d bought some more the other day.

Later on in here, there was yet more football – another basement clash between two newly-promoted sides, Trefelin and Cambrian United.

It was a strange game too. Plenty of skill on offer and yet plenty of midfield slogging too. But the differences between the two sides were evident. Cambian’s defence was magnificent and never looked like being beaten. They were always thinking one step ahead of the ball and not one step behind, as were their opponents, and there was a difference in physical presence. I had to laugh at one point when a Cambrian central defender and a Trefelin attacker leapt for a ball in the air. The Cambrian defender simply stuck out two hands and pushed the attacker out of the way to have a clear header.

That just about summed up Trefelin’s day, but the final scoreline of 4-0 to Cambrian was something very much of an exaggeration.

But what I’m not going to exaggerate is my need to go to bed, so I’m clearing off. Another day of rest tomorrow and then we go again. That is, if I can get some sleep with this wind that is now howling around outside like the devil.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Report of the Woolhope Naturalists Club … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone asked me whether it would be a suitable thing to read to a group of prisoners in gaol.
"Well, it would have its prose and cons, wouldn’t it?" I replied.

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LIVE: Monday 14th September 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

Mind you, that’s not really any surprise, because if you don’t go to sleep, you can’t dream, can you?

Yes, last night was a proper nuit blanche, and it was a shame because, eschewing all luxuries, including food, I’d finished my notes at some kind of respectable time and was in bed fairly early, looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

Instead, I tourné en ronde – “tossed and turned” in my bed for hour after hour, at times in total despair, because I know what “no sleep last night” means for this afternoon at dialysis when I want to watch a football match, or tonight when I come home, or tomorrow morning when my new Welsh class begins – so if there are no notes for tonight when you log in to look, you’ll know why.

However, the time was not totally wasted. I began to plot the next few chapters of my book, and before I’d finished, I’d not only finished this book in my head but written the following two too. So no time is ever wasted.

As well as that, I’m going to claim an “early start” because when the alarm should have gone off at 06:29 (but it didn’t because I’d switched it off), I’d been at my desk working for a good fifteen minutes. It’s a shame that I’m still wheezing and coughing because I would otherwise have got up much earlier and dictated a pile of radio notes. If I’m going to be going to hospital for any length of time, I’ll need to be as up-to-date as possible because dictating in a hospital bed is totally impossible.

Eventually, I heard signs of life in the kitchen as if coffee was being made so I went in to join everyone and had a hot, strong coffee put into my sweaty little mitt. My friend and I chatted for a while, and eventually, Isabelle the Nurse turned up. the Hound of the Baskervilles hardly moved a muscle, but he wagged his tail and let Isabelle stroke him before she attended to me.

Then, before leaving, she made another fuss of him because she’s off tonight on her week off and she won’t see him for a few months.

Once she’d left, the Hound of the Baskervilles had his breakfast and dragged his master off for walkies. I had a good wash and scrub up, and also a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis. Then I went to make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870. Yet again, the Club is managing to steer clear of controversy. Their criticism of another member’s viewpoint is usually expressed in a very good-natured way that doesn’t really cause offence. If I come across a good example, I’ll post it on here for you to see.

When I came back in here, I had the next radio programme to review before I sent it off to be added into the stream for the weekend. I can’t remember what I did after that, but there was still some time to watch a bit of the Colwyn Bay v Connah’s Quay Nomads match from Saturday in the JD Cymru League, played before yet another four-figure crowd, mostly from Colwyn Bay because the Nomads don’t even have their own ground (they share with Y Fflint), never mind any support.

It’s a fact that the crowds that watch two of Wales’s leading clubs (TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads) have an appallingly low level of attendance at home, whereas even Trefynnon, hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table, have managed a gate of four figures this season.

My friend nipped out for his lunch at the local canteen while I looked after His Nibs. He whined for his master, but he soon stopped when his Auntie Cleaner came to fix my anaesthetic. She made a real fuss of him, which he enjoyed immensely.

When his master returned from dinner, my cleaner sorted my out arm and helped me pack. It was a beautiful afternoon too, so after she left, we all went outside to wait, the Hound of the Baskervilles hiding in the shade under a bush. He didn’t even want to lie in his favourite bus shelter in case any of his girlfriends from the local high school across the car park came past.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. Yes, people, this is when the whole day went off the rails.

Having been used this last few weeks when Mrs Dinosaur was here to be picked up twenty minutes early, today was the day when we all caught up and the taxi was half an hour late. The church clock in the walled town was striking 13:30 when she hove into view. It’s not anything that I ever complain about, though. Being terminally ill, I have a service that drives me to my medical appointments … "of which there are thousands" – ed … anywhere in the country and it’s free. I wouldn’t have service like this in any other country in the World.

So we shot off as if the Fear of God was upon us for … ohhh … all of a mile and a half before we came up behind a tractor with a full load of straw on it travelling at 25 kph if it was lucky.

We followed it for a couple of miles, and all the time, I was thinking “why is she going this way?”.

The tractor turned off eventually, and so my driver put her foot down, to run almost immediately to a road barricade.

"Ohh God, yes! They’ve closed the main road for roadworks!" she exclaimed. Well, I know they have, and it will be closed until at least the 31st of December too, which was why I was puzzled.

We ourselves had to take a quick diversion and in the end drove down the road to Champeaux and cut across to the main Avranches road a little further down. Despite all of the setbacks along the way, this was pretty good going. And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … since I’ve been travelling with this company, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

It was 14:08 when we pulled up at the dialysis clinic – the old non-air-conditioned one – in this stifling heat. All of the nursing auxiliaries had gone off to lunch, so I had to stagger halfway around the building before I found the bed list. I was in bed n°12 today, the farthest single room in the farthest ward away from the front door. They couldn’t make me walk any farther if they tried.

After having to sort myself out on my own as best as I could, the nurses eventually came to plug me in, and it was 14:40 by the time that I was up and running. There wasn’t much to extract today, so I persuaded the nurse to wind it up by 300 grammes to give me a head start on Thursday.

And now, finally, I could now sit back and enjoy a couple of football matches.

At least, so I thought. First of all, the nurses came to do a check on my implant to make sure that it was functioning properly. But this was the day when the machine decided not to function properly, and I had three or four nurses around my bed trying to fix it – not that I was complaining, though.

When it was finally up and running, the test took about fifteen minutes, so there was a good half an hour of my day gone, just like that!

Then the doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me. They were going to try something at the hôpital de jour – the “day clinic” – a series of drips, to see if it might work. Well, I’m game for trying almost anything, but I know how this will end, because I’ve been through this before, four or five years ago. It didn’t work then, so I bet it won’t work now, but if they think that it might, who am I to argue?

But I’m glad I saw the doctor because when Emilie the Cute Consultant told me on Saturday that my immune system had broken down, it rang a very vague bell in the back of my mind, so over the last day or two I’d been searching through my papers.

And sure enough, there it was. A vaccination card given to me in January 2016 when I’d had my spleen taken out. I remembered them saying that I’d require three vaccinations every five years for the rest of my life, and there were the 2016 injection stamps and the 2021 injection stamps, but nothing for 2026. It looks as if I had forgotten to have the injections in January.

She took the card, looked at it and said that she’d write a prescription, and when I have the injections, bring them down to dialysis and they would do them.

Once she left, I could watch the football, and the first game was Rhydaman v Cearnarfon. It was, unfortunately, men against boys, this match. Rhydaman never ever looked like doing anything at all, and I don’t believe that they put one single sooty foot inside Caernarfon’s penalty area during the entire match.

Some of their players played with guts and spirit, but you need much more than that in a match like this, and a 0-5 result in favour of the Cofis was not an exaggeration.

The next game was the rest of Colwyn Bay v Connah’s Quay Nomads. This turned out to be another candidate for one of the best football matches that I had ever seen and was another credit to the league. Both teams, intent on victory, went at each other right from the start.

They were still at it right at the end too, and the fans certainly had their money’s worth as the Seagulls clawed their way back from 1-0 down to beat the Nomads 2-1, with Jordan Davies scoring one of the best goals that I’d seen for a while too.

There was even time for part of a third match too – Trefelin v Penybont – but I ran out of time and began to pack away my things when the five-minute warning went off on my machine.

At that point, all hell let loose in the main room. One of the elderly patients had fallen into a coma, and all of the nurses in the building, and the doctor, crowded around to try to revive him.

What annoyed me about this, and I don’t want anyone to think that I am heartless at all, was that one of the nurses ran round and switched off everyone’s machines. I’d have been happy for mine to have gone on for another hour and given me an even better start for Thursday.

And it was indeed another hour, and more besides, until they were able to revive this guy and have him transferred across the road to hospital. And then they could sort the rest of us out.

It was my luck, wasn’t it, to have the nurse who goes around apologising for everything, rather like the maid in A ROCKET FULL OF PYE and it becomes overwhelming after five minutes.

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 they let me out to find that my poor chauffeur and another passenger had been sitting there for over an hour waiting for me. And it was still scorching hot out there too. I finally made it home for 19:25, and my comité d’acceuil – my welcoming committee – had long since, as Longfellow expressed it, "folded their tents, like the Arabs, and as silently steal away.". The taxi driver had to help me into the apartment.

My friend had been cooking, and I had a lovely mashed potato and broccoli bake, followed by fruit cocktail and the last of this batch of sorbet. That means that next time, I can attack my vegan ice cream from Noz with gusto, or with anyone else who happens to be around.

When I’d done the washing up, I came back in here to write up my notes, but I managed to do about a dozen or so lines until I fell asleep. When I awoke a little later, I just crawled into bed and that was that. My notes can wait until tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about four-figure crowds at Welsh football … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember speaking to the FAW’s competitions secretary about the first four-figure crowd – at Cwmbran Town v Inter-Cardiff.

"What was it, exactly?" I asked him.
"Three men and one sheep" he replied.

0

Live: Sunday 6th September 2026 – CAFE AU LAIT …

… is nothing like as good as Café Au Lit, Ay? … "and I bet that that went clean over the heads of most of your readers" – ed …

So when I was awoken by my friend bringing in a mug of coffee to my bedside table, I made no complaint at all, even if I had been fast asleep up to that point.

And “fast asleep” was quite right too. I’d collapsed into bed at about 20:30 and was probably asleep before my head touched the pillow. I was only going for a crash-out of about an hour then I’d wake up and carry on with the notes. That was the plan, anyway.

However, when I awoke and checked the time, it was 03:48 – much later than I had intended. Nevertheless, by 04:00 I was attacking my notes.

They were finished and on line round about 05:10, and I went back to bed. This time, though, I changed from my day clothes into my night clothes for the sake of decorum. And once more, I was asleep before my head touched the pillow.

When my friend brought in the coffee, it was about 08:15, and I hadn’t had three mouthfuls out of the mug before my nurse came to deal with me. And the Hound of the Baskervilles too, as well as his German lessons.

After he left, I finished my coffee and eventually made it into the kitchen, having dressed myself first. My friend was just about to be dragged out on walkies duty by the Hound of the Baskervilles, so I made another supply of croissants.

Once the croissants were in the oven, I set about making my porridge and also the juice for my morning medication. And everything was ready at the same time so I grabbed two warm croissants and put them on a plate to have after my porridge.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged my friend back, we chatted for a while … "with the friend, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed … and then I came in here to check the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it.

There was something about my middle sister last night. She was going to go to school in Paris. She was not really the sharpest knife in the box so we were wondering how she was going to cope. My mother seemed to think that she would cope OK with very few problems at all, but I said that I could imagine her getting herself lost on the Paris underground without any problems whatsoever. I didn’t think that anything augured particularly well in this plan to send her there.

This is one of those dreams that’s so unexpected. I’ve no idea why a dream like this would be going around my head. It’s extremely unlikely that she would have gone to Paris because she was not very good on her own in strange places. Not to mention the fact that our family would never ever have had the money to send her there.

But it’s interesting nevertheless that she appears in my dreams because she is the least likely member of my family to do so.

After that, there were two football matches to see.

They were both in Scotland – the first was Forfar Athletic v Stranraer. The Loons have always been Stranraer’s Nemesis but today, the tables were well-and-truly turned as Stranraer deservedly shellacked the Loons 0-3.

The next game wasn’t so interesting. Greenock Morton and Queen’s Park are struggling at the foot of the table so these three points were vital to both clubs.

Morton have recently signed about six loan stars, so I was looking for a vast improvement, but it wasn’t to be. From what I saw, it was a team that hadn’t knitted together yet, and a 2-1 defeat was about right.

There were several other things to do too, and then I made a start on fine-tuning the captcha. And I won’t tell you the saga about that because you’ll be pulling out your hair just as I would be if I had any hair left to pull.

Round about 13:30 we decided to take advantage of the lovely weather by going for a drive and buying a bag of chips at our favourite chippy in Avranches. So all three of us, my friend, the Hound of the Baskervilles and me, piled into the car like three superheroes and set off.

We went via a couple of garages in the area that were selling motorhomes to see what was on offer, but there was nothing that would fit in my friend’s garage so we didn’t pursue our enquiries. From there we went into the centre of Avranches but to our dismay, the chippy was closed.

Instead, we went to the car park by the cathedral. There’s a big public park there that is another one of the favourite places to visit of the Hound of the Baskervilles so he dragged his master off for another walkies. However, he spent most of his time being fascinated by the fish in the fishpond.

We came back a different way today – via La Haye Pesnel and Folligny, where we went to look at the old railway station and marshalling yard there. The yard was important because it was there that loads coming from the docks at Cherbourg would be trans-shipped to a train going to Granville and was heavily bombed by Stukas on 17th June 1940.

When the Germans arrived, they put it back into commission, and it was bombed by the allies in 1944 during the D-Day landings.

Back at home, rather much later than intended and not having had our chips in Avranches, I made a pizza. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve made one of those so, do you know, I’d forgotten how long the cooking time was? Consequently, we had a “rather crisp” base that, rather than a knife, you needed an axe to cut your way through it, and it spoiled somewhat the lovely taste of the topping.

The pudding afterwards was another one of these new soya yoghurts, and they tasted just as good as the previous ones.

There were still plenty of things to do so I came in here to do them, but as usual, there was an enormous wave of fatigue that swept over me when I was only halfway through my notes, so I posted online what I’d already written, took my nighttime medication and crawled into bed. I can always finish my notes off tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizza disasters … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met a friend who told me that he had burned his pizza while it was in the oven.
"What type of pizza was it?" I asked.
"It was a Hawaiian pizza" he replied
"So next time, put it on aloha temperature."

0

Sunday 23rd August 2026 – ONE THING ABOUT …

… yesterday that I forgot to mention was that when I awoke at 20:30 from crashing out, it wasn’t just the tiredness that I’d noticed. I was freezing cold and all the hairs on my arms were standing up. It was 22°C in here too, so it wasn’t actually the cold that was making me feel like that, but something else.

As usual, the answer to something like that is to go to bed. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, bed is my medication that cures everything. And you know that I’m ill if I’m prepared to miss a live football match in favour of bed.

So I ended up in bed at about 20:30 last night and I was asleep even before my head touched the pillow. But, as usual, not for long. I was awake at 00:30 and awake again at 02:00.

As well as that, I awoke a third time. I’ve no idea what time that might have been, but I couldn’t go back to sleep at all, so at 04:05 I was at my desk working on the computer.

No point in lazing around in bed when you can be working, and I had my notes from yesterday to write, so I dashed them off, put them online, and I was back in bed by about 05:30. I reckoned then that I’d stay in bed until the nurse arrived.

When he turned up, I was fast asleep in bed, so he awoke me and did the necessary with my legs and feet. After he left, I thought that I’d get up in five minutes and go for breakfast.

When I finally awoke, sorted myself out in the bathroom and went into the kitchen, it was 10:10. So much for my early start. I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

It now looks as if he’s summing up, and as he begins to discuss Gothic architecture on the continent, he reminds us that "England, with less of gigantic grandeur in particular buildings, and less of rapid development in styles, gives to all a harmony and purity which is peculiarly her own, and in the course of her slower progress, calls forth forms of beauty unknown to other lands."

All that I can say about this is that anyone who has viewed anything at all of the Gothic architecture on the continent will be wondering what on earth Mr (or the Reverend) Freeman was smoking when he was writing his jingoistic prose.

Back in here, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. That was a very painful exercise because I can’t believe how much I was coughing during the night, all of it recorded on the dictaphone.

This is another dream about roaming around in London. I wanted to buy a guitar for a friend of mine, but I didn’t really know where to go, so I went down to London and had a good wander around in the usual streets, in Oxford Street and so on to try to see if there was anything there. All I could see is the cheap kind of rubbish and crowds of people. I kept meeting crowds of people whom I knew too. Then I began to walk down to Tin Pan Alley, but I was almost knocked over by a taxi. Who should be driving that taxi but Emilie the Cute Consultant. I asked her if she could do me a favour, but she said that she couldn’t because she was too busy working – she had to go back to Crewe shortly. I said “yes, that’s the favour. You couldn’t run me to Crewe, could you?”. She replied that she couldn’t, so I was rather disappointed. However, she said that she’d have a talk with me very soon. I suppose that that cheered me up somewhat, and I carried on towards Tin Pan Alley with these crowds of people.

It seems that “in my dreams” is the only chance I have of seeing Emilie the Cute Consultant, even if she does turn me down. And she’ll “have a talk with me very soon”. That’s the line most people use when they are giving someone the brush-off.

However, being in London yet again would seem to be significant. This is the third or fourth time just recently that I’ve been here during the night. I expect that I’ll find out what it’s all about in due course

We were going off on another adventure, but this time, it was in my old J4 van. There were quite a few of us, including some people whom I didn’t know, and the van was quite loaded. The front of it was full of rubbish so we had to take all of it out and put it in the rubbish bin. That was when we found that this pile of oil had seeped onto the passenger seat so we were there scrubbing it, and the guy who was sitting there was rather disappointed. He was hoping not to get his clothes dirty. In the end, we managed to have it looking something like so we went to wash our hands. I couldn’t find the swarfega for ages, but eventually, when that guy had begun to wash his hands with fairy liquid or something, I produced the Swarfega and gave my hands a good wash with it and showed him the difference between my hands and his.

The J4 had long-gone by the time that I moved into Gainsborough Road, but this was where all of the action was taking place last night.

The guy sitting in the oily seat reminds me of that photo that was doing the rounds a few years ago – the old American politician sitting in his seat that was photoshopped into thousands of other photos all around the World.

After all of that, there was the football to watch. We started off with Penybont against Llandudno.

Whether or not you think that Llandudno’s position, for a newly promoted club, up near the top of the league is a false position, they certainly haven’t come into this league, as some newly promoted clubs have, simply to make up the numbers. They took the game to Penybont just as much as Penybont took the game to them, and in fact, from the kick-off, it took Penybont five minutes and fifty-five seconds to get into Llandudno’s half of the field.

In fact, the first Penybont goal was a marvellous overhead bicycle kick of the kind that was unstoppable, and had I been refereeing, or anyone else for that matter, their second goal would have been disallowed for a blatant foul on a defender

And this is the first game in which I’ve seen a club penalised under this new five-second rule for throw-ins, goal kicks and the like.

The 2-1 scoreline in favour of Penybont was about fair, but they can feel relieved now, just as Llandudno can feel disappointed.

Afterwards, we had Stranraer throw away a 2-goal lead to draw 2-2 against Stirling Albion. Stranraer had the Binos all over the place in the first half, and in the second half, the situation was reversed. Never was there a “Game of Two Halves” to match this one.

The next match was Greenock Morton v Arbroath. Although Arbroath won this game 2-1, this is the best I’ve seen Morton play since Ian Murray took over. And they finally managed to score a goal after about ten games of trying, and it had to be a sixteen-year-old schoolboy playing as an emergency full-back who scored it too, not one of the established professionals.

Finally, the fourth match was Trefynnon v Barry Town. This is the fourth game that Trefynnon has lost – this time it was 3-1. However, they played much better in this game and even took the lead. And had they scored the penalty that they were awarded when the score was 1-1, it all might have been so different.

They kept on playing and going on the attack as long as they possibly could, but the desire to score an equaliser when they were 2-1 down cost them dearly. Having committed everyone to the attack, they were torn open at the attack by a breakaway, and Barry scored their third goal with practically the last kick of the game.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that the field microphone was placed right by the Barry dugout, and we had someone from their bench bellowing out instructions to his players in the loudest voice I have ever heard and using the most disgraceful language that would have been out of order even in the fo’c’sle of a Greenland whaler. It really was a disgrace, and the club should be ashamed of their employee.

Apart from that, though, we had two Cymru Premier matches today that were played with a lot of skill, not like some of the midfield mauls that we saw last weekend.

So no food tonight again. I’ve written my notes and when I’ve done what else needs doing, I’m off to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight at dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greenland whalers … "well, one of us has" – ed … a couple of years ago, a crew member was washed overboard in the Davis Strait and was lost.
A year later, his wife had a visit from the Nova Scotia lifeboat crew. "We have some bad news for you, and some better news" said the skipper.
"Oh" says the woman. "Tell me the bad news."
"A body has been discovered in the sea near Luneburg" replies the skipper. "we can’t ask you to identify him because his body was all covered in lobsters and crabs, but by the clothing, we reckon that he’s your husband."
"So what’s the better news"
"We’ll pull him up again tomorrow and see what the catch is like then."

0

Saturday 22nd August 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a calamity at dialysis today, and it’s as if the World had come to an end. For quite a while, I wondered if I would ever survive the shock.

Yes, that’s right. They forgot to bring the coffee round to the room in which another woman and I were being dealt with. Luckily, we had a very understanding nurse, and once we mentioned the problem to her, she went off and did the necessary. But it wasn’t half worrying.

That’s not been the worst of my worries either, but more of this anon.

Last night, after the football, I spent some time writing my notes, but as it became later and later, I began to think that I’d never finish them at this rate and I’d be here all night. So I called it a day round about 23:30, finished off what needed to be finished off and I was in bed round about midnight.

At some point in the middle of the night, I think that I awoke, but once again, it was the same as has been happening just recently – I wasn’t sure if I was awake or not, if I was still asleep or dreaming or anything like that. It reminded me of that line in THE PRISONER – "by the time we’ve finished with him, he won’t know whether he’s No. 6 or the cube root of infinity".

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

However, I was definitely asleep at 06:15 when someone opened the door to my apartment. I shouted “who is it?”, but the response was that whoever it was closed the door and cleared off. I can see that I’m going to have to take “certain steps”, which might include involving a bucket full of whitewash.

And then we had the usual struggle about hauling myself out of bed and going to the bathroom to sort myself out. I managed to have my feet on the floor before the alarm went off, which counts as an “early start”, but the rest isn’t quite as easy. In the end, I managed it, including a good scrub-up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

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

We went to see some friends who lived in a small seaside port. We noticed that there were three shipping containers sitting on the quayside here waiting to be picked up by some kind of boat. There was a guy there too, and I didn’t like him, but he definitely sounded like some kind of underworld villain, and he was pointed out by my friends as having a place somewhere in Argentina where he’d go to hide every now and again. A few weeks later, there was an article in the local paper about a British guy who lived in Argentina who had been arrested and the police were still looking for three shipping containers. I said to Nerina “I know where they are”. A couple of months later, I was at an auction sale which took place on behalf of the government that was to sell the possessions of this guy, and one of them was his interests in taxis in quite a few councils, so I went along to see what was happening. It started surprisingly cheaply, so much so that I could make an offer and I could bid on it at one time, but the bidding went slowly out of my reach, and eventually some guy had part of it knocked down to him. He wanted an option on the rest, but he needed to have the support of 50% of the people. A lot of people put up their hands but he said that he was one county short. I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound”, and I put my hand up. He said “right, yes, Cheshire! That’s all I need!” and the whole lot was knocked down to him. Then he had a meeting of all of his supporters afterwards, and I went along to see what was on offer. He started to tell us a few things that had nothing whatever to do with taxis, so I wondered what on earth his game was.

This little port, I’ve seen it before on several postcards and photos, but I just can’t put a name to it. It’s a tiny port, and it beats me how they would ever manage to sail a ship into here to take away one container, never mind three.

Argentina doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, but the story of the crook who had interests in taxi businesses all over the UK rings a familiar bell if you were to turn the clock back thirty or forty years and is probably still continuing today, for all I know. But Arsenal FC supporters will be much more clued in to this than I am.

There had been a whole group of us staying somewhere in Spain in a hotel-kind of place, and some friends of ours in the neighbourhood came to visit too. We stayed there for a couple of days, and when we were on the point of leaving, some Spaniard turned up in a strange kind of van. It had some kind of maker’s name on the side that was in initials and we were trying to identify it. I reckoned that it was a Japanese clone of something. It had no roof and no sides where the driver sat, and he was complaining that the starter motor didn’t work and a couple of other things didn’t work and the quality was rubbish. We were there with a dog, and a policeman came. He had an Alsatian, and this dog of ours took a great deal of interest in the Alsatian, and the Alsatian, which was a female, ran and hid. We thought “our dog’s found a new girlfriend, has he?”. In the end, we all piled into my van and we set off for home and to drop off these people on the way. For the past two or three days when we’d gone down this road, there had been some girl struggling to get on her pushbike, and she was still there today, struggling. When we reached the bottom where I’d normally turn left, I did a U-turn and came back up the hill. Everyone was wondering why. One or two people were complaining, but I said “don’t worry, it’s only going to put a couple of extra seconds on your timetable” and I stopped back outside the gates of this house again. Instead of asking someone to open the gates, I had a strange kind of hook made out of an old garden rake. I put that over the top of the gates, climbed up it and went over the top, then dropped down onto the garden. What I’d come to check was to see whether a friend of mine who was supposed to be coming but never turned up had finally made it, because we could intercept him on the way home, but if we went a different way home, we’d miss him for that five minutes while we were getting back on the correct one, so I wanted to make sure that he hadn’t come before I set off again in the hope of trying to meet up with him.

Strangely enough, this is pretty much the same scenery as in the dream a few days ago when I was living up on the Czech/Austrian border

The van could be any one of a dozen French microvans that are on the road today, or maybe one of those tiny Japanese vans that were common on the roads forty years ago. The dog, of course, needs no explanation.

The rest of it, including the girl struggling on her bicycle and my weird “garden hook”, must have some explanation somewhere, and I wish I knew just what it was.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. He didn’t stay long, and once he’d left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Our hero is now back discussing a few foreign edifices of a religious nature, but concludes with "Certainly when we compare these edifices with our own contemporary ones, we can have but little hesitation in esteeming England to have been, during the fifteenth century at least, the chosen abode of Christian art"

He then goes on to list several marvellous examples of European Gothic work but remarks "Our buildings never run into the same senseless extravagance, where nothing but mere excess of ornament is left to supply the place of real art"

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I was hoping to be reading a book on architecture, not a book on art.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on the notes from yesterday. And they took much longer than they ought to do, because from about 10:30 to 11:15, I was asleep on my chair. And I remember nothing whatever about falling asleep. No-one was more surprised than me when I awoke.

By the time I’d finished and put them online, there wasn’t much time for anything else. I had to go to prepare myself for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic as usual, and then I had to wait for the taxi.

And not for long either, as it was here for 12:40. We had to go to pick up Mrs Dinosaur and then we set off nice and early for Avranches, only to be stuck in a traffic queue at Marcey-les-Grèves due to the autoroute being blocked in both directions with holiday traffic coming and going.

However, at the dialysis centre, I was seen to pretty quickly, so by 14:05 I was up and running and could watch Rhydaman v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

There’s no doubt that the Nomads were in a class above Rhydaman, but the latter managed to defend heroically for much of the match and even had several good chances themselves. But even so, a 2-0 victory for the Nomads was only to be expected, and Rhydaman could be proud of their performance.

After that, I was going to watch a second game, but there were too many interruptions and disturbances, not to mention the Quest For The Coffee.

As luck would have it, when I was finished, the nurse was doing nothing much so I was unplugged straight away, although she had jammed the catch on my backpack with my laptop inside it. My taxi was waiting too, so I was home by 18:00.

My cleaner was there to stick a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt, and after she left, I came in here to begin my notes and watch this evening’s football match. However, after I’d fallen asleep for an hour on the chair, I booted that idea into touch, wrote a terse note on my blog and went to bed. It was 20:20.

Now, it’s 05:00, I’ve been up for an hour or so, finished my notes, and I’m now going back to bed to await the arrival of the nurse.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about traffic jams … "well, one of us has" – ed … apparently the queues on the autoroute were caused by an accident. A golfer playing on a golf course at the side of the road had sliced a ball which crashed through the window of a coach, hitting the driver, causing him to swerve and have a fatal accident.
Later that same day, the gendarmes were interviewing the golfer "due to your negligence, you caused a road traffic accident which killed the bus driver, fifteen schoolkids and one accompanying adult" they roared. "What are you going to do about it?"
After a minute’s thought, the golfer replied "Perhaps I ought to tighten my grip, take a shorter swing and incline the golf club head more to the right."

0

Sunday 16th August 2026 – IT HAS NOT …

… been a very auspicious day today. It’s been a day full of tiredness and weariness, and I’ve crashed out I don’t know how many times as yet.

It all started to go wrong last night, as I said yesterday. I was hit with an enormous wave of fatigue and ended up going to bed long before I’d finished what I needed to do. I was asleep quite quickly too.

During the night, I awoke at some point, and I’ve no idea when because I didn’t look. But it was due once more to another one of these mega-coughing fits. The coughing is now back, and back in spades too, unfortunately.

It was another one of these mornings where I was drifting in and out of sleep and not being able to identify which was the real bit and which one was the phantom bit or the sleep bit. That’s happened a few times now, and it’s really unsettling, especially when I’m stuck somewhere in that glorious half-world in between waking up and being asleep.

One thing is certain, though, and that is at some point (maybe the fourth or fifth attempt) I did manage to go to sleep because I awoke properly and correctly. I stayed awake and eventually looked at the time. It was 07:33.

Sunday is, of course, my Day of Rest which usually starts with no alarm and a lie-in, having my feet and legs dealt with by the nurses while I’m still in bed. However, today, I simply couldn’t stay lying in bed. By 08:00 I was up and about, sitting at the computer working.

The nurse was surprised to see me up, which was no surprise really. After his three-week holiday he would probably be expecting to find me in bed. We had a little chat about his holiday, but he wasn’t very forthcoming. He dealt with my legs and feet and then cleared off on his round.

After he left, I made my croissants. I’d used the last of the previous batch last week, so I wanted some more. And while they were a-doing in the oven, I made my porridge and coffee.

The croissants were excellent – the best that I have ever made. They looked wonderful and had puffed up correctly, which made a nice change from the flat ones that I always seemed to have.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s continuing to keep himself out of mischief, although his jingoistic beating of the English drum is becoming rather tiresome. And he’s still hung up on the religious side of the fence. I don’t believe that in four hundred pages so far, there’s been one mention of an English secular building.

And “English” too. He’s not mentioned one building in Wales or Scotland either to date.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, such as to finish off transcribing the dictaphone notes. And they weren’t much use tonight.

I dreamed that I was doing something with this dinosaur exhibition. We were planning to move away from Granville at the end of their period and relocate somewhere else. They had a huge list of places to where they could relocate, and they asked me if I would check out one or two of them in Northern France. This was another one of these long, complicated dreams and it seems to have all evaporated from my mind

This relates to a discussion that we were having with Madame Dinosaur in the taxi on our way to Avranches yesterday about the potential sites that they have all over Europe for their exhibition and the difficulty at times of finding a dialysis centre, especially abroad.

There were a few other things to do, and then I continued writing the notes from yesterday. That took much longer than it ought to have done too, mainly because of the waves of fatigue that were sweeping over me again. At one point, I went to fetch an energy drink, but even drinking that didn’t make things any easier.

When I’d finished it and posted it on line, I started to enjoy my footfest. The first match was Stranraer v Spartans in the fourth tier of Scottish football. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a soft spot for Stranraer FC ever since I caught a game of theirs in the late 1970s when I saw the floodlights on in the ground when I was on a ferry coming back from Larne in Northern Ireland and managed to watch the game.

This was an entertaining game, one that Spartans should have won. But they missed – I don’t know how many sitters they missed – and Stranraer made the most of one of the few chances that came their way, winning 1-0.

The next game was the end of the Cambian United v Y Fflint game that I’d part-watched yesterday. This was a very equal match that Y Fflint didn’t deserve to lose, but when the side from the Rhondda Valley won a penalty in the eighty-fifth minute, then that was that.

After that, it was the turn of Llandudno v Trefynnon. Llandudno, a newly-promoted team this season, were leading the league, mainly because they’d played a couple of teams that were not expected to figure highly in the League’s championship order, and Holywell were one of the newly-promoted teams that were having a wretched time of it right now.

This was one of those games where, again, not much skill was involved. But it was played at a hundred miles per hour from one end to the other, and I was totally exhausted just watching it. Llandudno opened the scoring, and Trefynnon equalised, but as it was coming up to half-time, Trefynnon had a player sent off.

They held out until almost the final whistle, conceding two goals in quick succession, but a 3-1 victory was rather flattering to Llandudno, even if one of the goals was scored by this site’s hero, veteran striker Mark Cadwallader.

There were plenty of other things to do later, but I didn’t feel much like doing them. Not even making bread. I’ll pull half a frozen loaf out of the freezer when I need it. Instead, I did some things that I enjoy doing, which is nice for once.

There was no tea tonight either. I had half a dozen biscuits and the last of those pineapple chunks with a citron sorbet. And how nice was that?

So now that I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed, hoping for a decent sleep for once and that the decision to deprive myself of two means, tonight and last night, goes towards doing something about this weight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about dinosaurs … "well, one of us has" – ed … we were outside the exposition when a dinosaur wearing a crown came out.
"Come and visit our prectacle" it said. "It’s wonderful, magnificent, brilliant, superb, excellent, exciting …"
As Madame Dinosaur was stading next to us, I turned to her and asked "What kind of dinosaur is that?"
"That? It’s a Thesaurus rex"

0

Saturday 15th August 2026 – ANOTHER DESPERATE DAY …

… at dialysis. Once more, the measure was set to go off the scale with excess weight that I seem to have gained since Thursday, but apparently, wiser counsels prevailed. Someone had made an error in the counting.

An error in the counting was the last thing that I needed, to be honest. Especially after the night that I had had. I was in bed later than I hoped, and that’s all that I remember from there. I awoke at some ungodly time – I’ve no idea what time because I couldn’t be bothered to look. But it was as the direct result of yet another extreme coughing fit.

At some point, I must have gone to sleep again because when I awoke, at 04:35, I was actually sitting on the edge of the bed as I usually do when I’m about to get up. So what had happened there? Was it yet another phantom alarm call that had gone off?

Not that it mattered because I was soon back to sleep yet again. And the next time that I awoke, it was 06:20 and quite dark.

When the alarm finally went off, at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor, claiming an early start.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub-up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today at dialysis, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was running the taxis again last night. I was sitting at home while the others were out working when the ‘phone rang, so I answered it. It was a guy asking me if we hired out cars by the day. I replied that we did, but only with a driver. He said that that was exactly how he wanted it, and what would be the charge? I wanted to know what kind of car and what work he’d be doing. He told me that it was maybe 350 miles, and an ordinary car like a Sierra would be fine. I told him that I’d have to ring him back, because what I’d do for a trip like that is to actually hire a car myself and go in that. There was a place in Stoke-on-Trent where you could hire second-hand cars. I went back down to the office and asked the girl at the ‘phone if she had put it through to me. She replied that she did. And she was busy trying to prepare another girl ready to go out. She said that she was having to go to some town in the Czech Republic to pick up a woman and bring her back. I said that if I had known that we had this job, I would have hired a car for that too. I went outside to help her prepare the car, and I told her how jealous she was that she was going on this, so she immediately said “do you want to go?”. (I’d missed out a bit here because she didn’t even know where this town was, so I told her that you get to Prague and then you keep on going towards Russia). I’d told her how jealous I was, so she immediately smiled and asked “would you like to do it?”. I thought “why not?”. I prepared one of the older Cortinas for it. I needed the lead for the SatNav and a few other bits and pieces, but no one could find the lead, so I went into my house, and it was on my desk in the office. I kept on having to run back and forth to find different things like the GPS, the telephone holder, all of that kind of thing. I kept on thinking to myself that one day soon, I’ll be able to set off if I’m not careful, because the delay in not finding things and people not being able to find them, and I was having to come back out to the car to look, it was taking forever.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we were in or near the Czech Republic the other day in another dream, the one involving the three white Volvo 144 estates It seems to be starting to become a regular theme with me. I wish that I knew why. It sounds really exciting to me.

But it’s been ages since we’ve had any dreams involving my indecision. They used to be regular, recurring themes at one time, but they seem to have disappeared, except for tonight.

Stoke on Trent was also a long-running theme at one time, but all of that had long gone too. But the taxis, they are always here with whatever weird kind of job they bring.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up today – her last day for three weeks, so no wonder she’s as pleased as punch. I wished her a really good break and holiday in Corsica.

After she left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s been behaving himself again today, which is just as well. But it’s really boring for me when there’s nothing about his book to criticise.

Back in here afterwards, I had my notes from yesterday to type up. That took me longer than I was anticipating because of these attacks of tiredness that I’m having. But once they were finished and on line and everything else that I needed to do this morning had been done, I closed my eyes for a while.

It was 11:40 when I awoke, and that left me with twenty minutes to start a new project, and then I went into the living room to organise myself for dialysis.

As well as that, there was my disgusting drink and my midday medication to sort out too. My cleaner turned up as usual to sort out the anaesthetic on my arm, and once she had gone, I had to wait for the ambulance.

Mind you, I didn’t have to wait for too long. As my cleaner was walking out to the street, the taxi pulled up, fifteen minutes early, so she showed him where to go. He hadn’t been to pick me up for a while, and he was still thinking that I lived upstairs.

He was early because there was Madame Dinosaur to pick up, so I showed him how to get there. It’s complicated if you don’t know, and if you follow your satnav, you’ll certainly end up miles off your route.

Once Madame Dinosaur was safely on board, we set off in the queues of traffic to Avranches. And as we passed through the village of La Havaudière, at the bottom of the steep dip, the car full of tourists in front of us was “flashed” by the secret radar. The radar there must be bringing in a fortune.

We were early arriving in Avranches, which suits me fine because the quicker I start, the quicker I finish and the quicker I come home – that is, if I arrive at 01:30 and they begin the process of connecting me up BEFORE blasted 14:20.

There was football on the internet for me to watch this afternoon thanks to the FAW negotiating with BBC Wales Sport. This week’s Saturday afternoon match was Y Barri v Cardiff Metro, so I settled down in my hospital bed and made myself comfortable while I watched it.

This was an excellent match played with plenty of skill, and I quite enjoyed it. Y Barri were clearly on top, but we had to wait until the eightieth minute for the only goal of the game. And then, it almost didn’t happen.

Y Barri were awarded a penalty which Jack Shaw took. Former Port Vale keeper Aaron Davies saved it but couldn’t hang on. Shaw picked up the loose ball and hammered it towards the net. Again, the keeper got a hand to it but couldn’t hang on, and Daniel Smith, following up, finally headed it home.

After it had finished, I watched some more of the Cambrian United v Flint game from last week’s matches until it was time to unplug me from my machine. My driver was waiting for me when I went outside, and we would have been home quite early had it not been for all of the holidaymakers on the road.

One thing about dialysis, though, is this – can anyone remember the last time a doctor came to see me? I can’t. It must be a good three weeks and more since a doctor has examined me.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me when I returned. She helped me into the apartment, sat me in a chair and bunged a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she left, there was football on the internet yet again, this time Sgorio’s broadcast of the Caernarfon v Colwyn Bay game.

Compared to the earlier game, this one was nothing but a slogging midfield brawl with very few moments of real skill. Caernarfon ended up as winners 3-0, but that was practically by default as Colwyn Bay offered nothing up front. Louid Robles had an excellent header and Matty Hill had a powerful shot at goal, but that’s all that I remember.

Yesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall the goal that Rhydaman almost scored when time seemed to stand still for a few moments. This evening, it happened again. The entire Colwyn Bay defence and most of Caernarfon’s attack stood frozen in time as Danny Gosset walked through them and drove a good shot into the net, putting his team 1-0 up.

After that, I made a start on my notes, but the heat, the punishing session at dialysis and the bad night yesterday had taken their toll. Round about 21:30, I called it a night and collapsed into bed, having posted on line what I’d written to date. I’ll finish the rest off tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about time standing still … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a conversation that I overheard in the USA a few years ago.
"I don’t understand these time zones" said one man. "I’ve just come from Europe and today, it’s today there, but in Australia it’s tomorrow."
"You should worry" said the other. "Over here in the USA it’s still round about 1750"

0

Friday 14th August 2026 – WHAT A BIZARRE …

… night that was last night!

It was one of those strange nights where nothing seemed real at all, and I don’t have a clue about what was going on.

Although I wasn’t feeling much like it, I actually managed to finish and post on line my notes from yesterday. I don’t know where I found that strength and energy, that’s for sure. And after the notes, I had a few things to do. It can’t have been much short of midnight by the time that I crawled into bed.

Once in bed, I remember nothing at all about going to sleep. Usually, I have some kind of idea as to whether I went to sleep quickly or whether it took a long time, but not last night.

Whatever it was, it can’t have been for long. I awoke because of another mega-coughing fit, but I couldn’t be bothered to check the time, so I’ve no idea what time it was. And then after that, I had no idea what was going on. I know that I coughed a lot, but whether that was in a dream or not, I don’t know

In the past, there have been a few evenings and nights where I was never really sure of when I was awake or when I was asleep, and this one was certainly one of the best examples of that.

One thing that I do know for sure is that I had another one of these dramatic awakenings when I sit bolt upright. Although it was dark, I checked the time and found it to be 06:19. Still dark! How times have changed over the last four weeks. Anyway, I took full advantage of this and had my feet firmly on the floor of my bedroom when the alarm went off at 06:29 so that I could claim an early start.

Having my feet on the floor is one thing, being up and about is something else completely different. It took me quite a while to negotiate my way into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day. But eventually I was washed and dressed, and I came back here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night.

I was in the middle of Crewe with a friend of mine, and we were looking around at the shops. I was saying that when you live here all the time, you don’t notice the changes. Gradually, one shop moves, another one closes down, something takes over, and it keeps on going like that. But if, like me, you’ve been away from Crewe for well over thirty years, I immediately notice the difference. We were discussing this, and there were these two men standing nearby us, tall, blond and in raincoats drinking coffee. I happened to mention something about Eastern Europe, so this guy stuck a coffee in my hand, one of these two guys, and a piece of money. I looked at it, and at first I thought that it was Croatia, but when I looked closer, it was Poland. Anyway, these two guys had cleared off. The coffee that he gave me was disgusting, and I don’t know how anyone could drink it. Anyway, we carried on walking and we bumped into these two guys again. They told us that they had heard us talking about Eastern Europe, and one guy seemed to fasten onto me and the other seemed to fasten onto my friend. The one with me said “come with me,” so I followed him and we had a chat about different things and ended up in the police station. We went up several flights of stairs and at the top under the eaves were a few bedrooms. He asked me what I thought about this and I replied “it’s a little more comfortable than a cell, isn’t it?”. He had loads of interesting books and papers, and I was having a read of some of them. Then, he dropped the coffee that he had made all over his most important papers and had to run off downstairs with this paper to try to save it. Then we went back out onto the streets where he met a few people whom he knew and said “hello” to them. We were just walking around and walking around until we were out on the edge of the town. Then he said “come and meet my mother” so we went back into town and met the people to whom we’d been talking just now. He asked one “is she in?” and this woman replied “yes”, so he went into a building and I followed him, and we went up these creaking, rickety stairs, each stair having a huge flight to it. It was more like mountaineering than climbing stairs. He just walked into this dingy room where this little old lady was sitting. I followed in, and this woman had this old black cat. I stroked the cat and picked her up, and I began to talk to the woman about my cats.

The first part of the dream is certainly true. For someone who knew the town intimately after all these years as a taxi driver, every time I see a photograph of the town, I have to look it up to see where it is. Crewe is nothing at all like I remember it.

As for the two guys, even in the dream, they are the type of people who stand out a mile in any crowd and have “Police” written all over them. I wonder what their interest in my friend and me might have been.

And even now, I can see the interior of this dingy building, with all of the notices written by disgruntled tenants talking about the dangers of living in this building, the stairs being just one. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first came to Granville in 2017, I stayed for a week in a house that had stairs like that.

The British Government was planning on taking some kind of action against another country for some reason and was busy out there trying to drum up allies. I was with a friend of mine and we were having a chat about this, noticing that not a single country had rallied round to whatever cause it was that the UK was trying to fight, and the battleship that they had sent out to sea in an effort to make some kind of spectacle to attract the people was just sitting there in the open doom, I think. Then, it was announced that the Queen was going to hold a garden party at Windsor Castle on one of the days that this marine event was going to take place, so everyone was far too busy laughing at the complete failure of the British to actually go ahead and do something concrete about this

This story is somewhat along the lines of a discussion that I was having yesterday with the taxi driver who brought me home. Regardless of your feelings about Brexit (and mine are still as strong as they were in 2016), the days of the independent nation-state are long over. With aggressive globalisation and selfish power-grabs, you have to be part of a powerful economic alliance to survive these days, or the big boys will pick you off one by one.

I know that we were in our car planning to go somewhere, and we set out. My friend noticed that we had no warning lights whatsoever and wondered what else in the electrical circuit had broken down. I wanted to push on and get to where we were going, but he insisted on stopping to try to find out what this electrical problem was and to see whether we could repair it.

This story could relate to almost anything that I’ve ever done in the past involving motor vehicles. Back in the old days when things weren’t as strict as they are these days, I shaved all kinds of corners off the road traffic regulations and done other things that I wouldn’t even dream of doing these days

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to see to my legs and feet. She’d been doing her accounts last night because tomorrow is her last working day this month, and she needed my health card. However, because my 100% disability ran out at the end of July, the card was no longer valid. She asked me to have my cleaner sorted out today and she’d deal with my card tomorrow.

After she left, I went to make my breakfast, and while eating, I read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once again, apart from banging the drum for “England”, he’s steering well-clear of controversy today. That’s a shame, because I’ll have nothing to moan about.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then suddenly, I awoke and saw that it was 11:05. I must have dropped off to sleep without even realising it, and I’d been gone for about an hour. With the wretched night that I’d had last night, it’s no surprise that I’d gone to sleep again. However, it looks as if we’re having a return to the bad old days of pre-dialysis when I’d go off for an impromptu and unexpected sleep at the drop of a hat at any old time of day.

Once I was awake, I carried on with what I was doing, and when I’d finished, I attacked the radio notes, and despite the usual interruptions of a disgusting drink and midday medication period and the arrival of my friendly neighbourhood cleaner to do her stuff, not only had I managed to finish and have the notes ready for preparation, but I’d also found some time to sort out the next programme too.

The next programme after the one I did today is going to be a concert. I only have an hour for my radio programmes, and for this concert, I have almost two hours’ worth of music and introduction, and I need to cut it down to about fifty-eight minutes so there will be room for my commentary on the front.

So far, after careful snipping and editing, I’ve got it down to about fifty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds, and it will end up even smaller than that once I segue the five pieces of music that I have selected.

Then it was teatime, and the usual sausage, chips and baked beans with black pepper and cheese, followed by two of my slices of home-made fruit bread

When the tea things were cleared and washed away, it was time for the football. Airbus UK Broughton v Rhydaman. These two promoted sides are having very different fortunes in the JD Cymru League. Airbus seems to be doing OK – they’ve already beaten their points tally and number of victories from when they were in the league the last time a few years ago. Rhydaman, on the other hand, are struggling near the foot of the table with just one point.

This was another game played at a frenetic place where I ended up out of breath just watching it. And Airbus had a lovely spell of ten minutes, shortly before the half-time whistle, that I really enjoyed watching.

All in all, Airbus won 2-0, but that doesn’t reflect their superiority. They had two goals disallowed for offside and hit the woodwork three times as well.

Rhydaman also had a glorious opportunity. An attacker, just outside the penalty area, was in possession of the ball when the Airbus defence just froze. It looked as if the attacker had a week to make up his mind what to do with the ball and, in the end, his shot hit the woodwork with a shot so loud that you could hear it here in the apartment without the aid of a TV camera.

Even better, there are two live football matches to be broadcast tomorrow. Y Barri v Cardiff Metro – a win for the Mets will see them back on top of the table – and Caernarfon Town v Colwyn Bay. That game last season attracted the fifth-highest league crowd ever, and I imagine (or hope) that it will be another bumper crowd with the two best-supported teams in the league, only an hour or so away from each other, facing off against each other.

When everything had finished, it was 23:15, so later than usual, I headed for the hills. Here’s hoping that I can have a decent sleep for once.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about policemen … "well, one of us has" – ed … two policemen were called to investigate a shooting.
Shortly afterwards, they radioed back to the station "some old woman here has just shot her husband. Apparently he walked on the kitchen floor while she was cleaning it"
"Have you arrested her?" asked the dispatcher.
"No" replied the policeman.
"Why not?"
"The kitchen floor’s still wet"

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Friday 31st July 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a somewhat better day today, not that you might think so at first glance. However, anything has to be better than yesterday, I suppose.

Last night, I was in bed at something like 22:00, I suppose, not that I looked, and once more, I’m sure that I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. And I managed to stay asleep for a little longer last night. It wasn’t until about 03:00 that I awoke.

Despite everything that I tried to do, I couldn’t manage to go back to sleep and by 05:50 or thereabouts, I’d completely given up all hope. That’s why, when the alarm should have gone off … "which it didn’t because he’d switched it off" – ed … I was sitting at my desk working.

Before that, though, I had to go into the kitchen. I had a thirst that you could photograph so a couple of mouthfuls of water with lemon juice

Back in here, what I should have been doing was transcribing the dictaphone notes from the night, except that there weren’t any, which, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …is an extreme disappointment to me. But never mind. There were the notes from the previous evening, so I transcribed those instead and integrated them into yesterday’s notes.

There were still a few other things to do, and I was interrupted by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse, who was early. We had a little chat about what’s going on in the town and then, when she’d finished, she cleared off on her rounds.

That left me free to make my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And he’s still going on … "and on, and on" – ed … about the superiority of the Northern races over the “Mohammedans”. "The Crusaders then imported, not Gothic architecture as a complete style, but certain forms thrown away on their possessions, but which northern genius at once felt itself capable of employing to some better use".

Be that as it may, a few lines later, he adds "The Arabian architecture in Spain does not present so close an approximation to Gothic forms as that of the east ; to go no farther, the round arch is retained in its most sumptuous buildings. The Spaniard then had not the same opportunities for learning Pointed forms in his own country as were possessed by the French or English pilgrim to the east".

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to complete and then post online. And once again, that wasn’t easy, due to me collapsing with fatigue on several occasions. It took me much longer than I thought and I was glad in the end to go for my disgusting drink and midday medication.

The next job after that was to look at the football news – I’d forgotten to do that last night. And the first thing that I noticed, apart from the last-minute transfers before the season begins, was that UEFA HAS WITHDRAWN FROM FIFA and won’t participate in any more worldwide competitions.

It’s not the only continental football authority to withdraw either. CONCACAF, the umbrella organisation for North and Central America and the Caribbean, is also making plans to join in.

The issue is over the “sale” of the World Cup competition to commercial marketing companies, one of which is a venture capital company run by Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s brother. UEFA has announced that “the World Cup is not for sale at any price” and in my opinion, quite rightly too.

It’s all about the supporters and the teams, and the disgraceful milking of supporters over the last few weeks in the USA has shown what can happen when greedy profit-mongers lay their hands on everything

The scenario that I have imagined is that Trump has, I imagine, seen how much money the World Cup has brought in and has worked out a way of bringing in even more, with his extended family being one of the main earners in this scheme.

On the other hand, it might just as easily be UEFA’s way of revenge for how the FIFA President overturned a red card decision against the American team when their star player was permitted, despite being sent off in the previous game, to play against Belgium after pressure was put on FIFA by Trump.

Then I turned my attention to the radio programme on which I’d been working.

The other day, I mentioned that I had found all the songs that I need. but that, I’m afraid, wasn’t the case. Because of my inability to count correctly, I found that I was two albums short so I had to scour the World for copies, and I eventually, after much binding in the marsh, was able to find them.

Once I’d managed to secure them, I had to reformat and re-edit them and then extract the songs that I needed. Now, at last, I had all eleven.

They have all now been paired and then segued, and all that remains are the notes to write. That’s going to take a while and it’s almost certain that I shan’t have them finished before Monday.

Things might have gone easier and quicker, but my cleaner popped in to do her stuff as usual, and that knocked me out of my stride for a while as we chatted about all kinds of things.

At teatime, I had sausage, beans and chips again – the beans cooked with cheese and black pepper, and it’s delicious. Probably my most favourite meal of all.

After washing up, I was back in here for the football – LLansawel v. newly-promoted Ammanford. The game was quite good, with Llansawel deservedly winning by 2-1, but this new TV company with whom the FAW has gone into partnership is, in my opinion, a total shambles.

There’s

  • no pre-match introduction
  • no team sheets
  • no match commentary
  • just one inexperienced camera crew who didn’t use their zoom lens until right at the very end
  • only one camera
  • no cameras behind the goals or in other positions on the fields
  • no action replays
  • no subtitles to announce the goalscorers
  • no subtitles to announce the substitutions

    • and probably a dozen other things that were wrong with it too that I’ll remember in due course

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we often go to Stranraer to watch the football. They are a small fourth-tier club in Scotland with crowds of about five hundred if they are lucky. Yet their match highlights and commentaries are among the best in the World. If Stranraer can do it, then a society such as NOVIRA should be able to out-do Stranraer quite easily.

After the match, I started to write my notes, but with the game finishing at 22:55, tiredness and fatigue beat me to the end, so I posted what I had written to date and I’ll finish it off later tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the World Cup … "well, one of us has" – ed … an English guy who was planning to go to he World Cup to watch Ingerland play was dismayed to find that the third-placed playoff was arranged on the day of his marriage.
Reluctantly, he put an announcement in the local newspaper – "due to a clash of schedules between my marriage and the England game against France, I’m not able to go. Anyone who would like to go in my place, please contact me."
Someone rang him up and asked "where’s it taking place?"
He replied "St Stephen’s church and her name is Sandra"

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Wednesday 29th July 2026 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was already sitting at my desk. And I had been since 05:50.

It’s not very often that that happens, especially these days, seeing how tired I am, so it’s nice to see it once in a while

Anyway, last night I was in bed by about 23:00 and settled down for a good sleep. But not for long, though. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke because I couldn’t be bothered to look. But the car park light was still on so it must have been before 02:30.

So I lay there for quite a while, tossing and turning, slowly watching the day dawn through the gaps around the edges of the shutters. In the end, I decided that I was never ever going back to sleep so I left the bed. At that point, it was 05:35

Back in here afterwards, it was 05:50 when the computer fired up, and the first thing that I noticed was that there was nothing on the dictaphone. That was really sad, but if you don’t have much sleep, you don’t have much time to travel anywhere.

Never mind. There are always plenty of other things to be doing, and by the time that the alarm went off, I’d dictated the notes for another couple of radio programmes which I downloaded to my computer, ready to add to all of the others that need editing.

But one thing that I am noticing is that there seems to me to be a general lack of interest and co-operation in all of this – a far cry from when we started this radio station seven years ago.

I managed to sort myself out somehow, though, and then I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to turn up.

We had an interesting chat about not very much as she attended to my feet and legs. And then, after she had left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman

We’re still discussing Gothic architecture … "and I’ve a feeling that we still will be in several weeks’ time too" – ed … and he’s still running down the religions and architecture of the Muslims and a few other places besides, as if he doesn’t know of any better.

Later on, back in here, I had a few things to do, and then once they were out of the way, I spent the rest of the day tracing the music that I need for the next radio programme.

It will feature ten artists, this programme, and to my surprise, I didn’t have any music by any of them. Mind you, they are all rather obscure artists who rarely ever made it into the mainstream. Consequently, I had to spend all morning, and some of the afternoon besides, downloading all this music

And downloading it was the least of my problems. Once I’d installed it all on my hard drive, then I had to reformat it all so that it would play on the radio company’s equipment. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either. It wasn’t until teatime that it was all finished.

Mind you, we did have a few interruptions. There was a pause for a disgusting drink at midday, and then Rosemary telephoned me again for a chat. Just like yesterday, it was a short chat today – a mere fifty-five minutes, that’s all, the same amount of time as yesterday. We are definitely losing our touch these days.

So, when everything was finished as far as I could go, I went to make my tea.

When I was tidying out the freezer the other day, I came across a portion of frozen chick pea curry that looked as if it had been in there for a hundred years. Things can’t stay in there for too long so I decided to polish it off. I was hoping to be able to eat the last slice of vegan pie, but that will have to wait for another time

The curry, with rice and veg, was as delicious as I expected it to be. When I was making these curries, I was at the zenith of my cooking powers. These days, with ill health and all of that, I’m quite out of practice. But now that supplies are running down, I’ll have to go back somehow into my previous days at home on the (kitchen) range when I used to make meals in bulk and freeze them in individual proportions. It’s been months since I last did anything like that.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office in my bedroom, once I’d finished tea, washed up and had my two slices of delicious fruit bread, I came back in here to do a couple of things and then to write my notes. And it was wonderful, with the heat of the sun streaming straight through the open window onto my comfortable chair. Even with the fan going and the window open, I was roasting.

However, when I was about halfway through, the usual wave of fatigue washed over me and that was that. I posted what I had written to date and then cleared off to bed before I fell asleep again in the chair

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about radio stations … "well, one of us has" – ed … one day, someone phoned up the local radio station during a request show.
He said "I want to let you know that I’ve found a wallet for a guy named Peter Smith. In it, there are two thousand dollars in notes, two of his bank cards, two credit cards, his driving licence and his identity card"
"That’s very kind of you, sir" said the presenter. "We’ll put a call out to him."
"Oh, don’t do that, whatever you do!"
"Why not? What do you want me to do then?"
"All I want you to do is to play a sad song for Peter. Okay,"

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Monday 27th July 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a big wildfire this afternoon near La Havaudière, between Granville and Avranches. All of the traffic is being diverted and it’s absolute chaos down there right now.

However, for a change, it wasn’t absolute chaos in here. I ended up in bed round about 23:00 and settled down for a good sleep. At some point, though, I awoke. I’ve no idea what time, as I couldn’t be bothered to look. However, there were high winds outside and it sounded as if it might be raining. Not that I cared very much. I just crawled back under the quilt and went back to sleep.

The next time that I awoke, it was light in here so, intrigued, I had a look at the time. 06:15, so I switched off the alarm and slowly staggered to my feet. Yet another early start recorded.

When I eventually made my way into the bathroom, I had the usual good scrub-up, and I remembered to have a shave too, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

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

I was with someone in my house, a girl, and I can’t remember who she was, but she told me that she was having a visitor round later that afternoon. Anyway, before I had the chance to leave, a large Afro-Caribbean-type of man, who came in and simply started to chat. I had a chat with him for a few minutes before I left. Then, just as I was about to go, he said “there’s someone coming up the drive. I think that it’s someone called Lucy”. The girl said “oh yes, that will be the Simpsons.” The door opened and a couple with a little girl came in. It was the little girl’s birthday today so they came into the house and came into the living room. The couple sat down but the little girl went straight over to STRAWBERRY MOOSE and began to tell him about her birthday. Then, her mother gave her a present which said it was from Strawberry Moose. Then everyone, including this man, sat down and had a little game, and that man began to look at the girl’s hair and began to rearrange it a little.

What a strange dream this is. It bears no resemblence to anything that has happened to me in my waking hours. It’s a total mystery to me.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up today as usual and chatted away about nothing as she fixed my legs and feet. Then, after she had cleared off, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And he’s off on his high horse again. When talking about the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As, he tells us that "in the minor ornaments we cannot fail to remark the constant tendency to anticipate isolated Gothic features" What he means to say here is “Gothic architecture copied many features of Arabian architecture.”

When discussing the Palace of the Alhambra, he tells us that "No amount of mere enrichment can atone for the violation of the great law which requires every weight to have, in appearance as well as reality, an adequate sustaining mass. Nowhere is this rule less regarded than in the palace of the Moorish Kings of Granada. A slender column supports a capital of far too great projection, this again supports an overlapping stilt or fragment of entablature, and as if this were not enough to destroy all notions of mechanical support, the arch itself in many cases does not spring immediately even from this entablature, but from corbels overlapping again ; i t is thus cut off from all decorative connection with the column below, and appears suspended in the air without any sustaining power at all. Nor is the effect at all improved when, as is sometimes the case, this stilt or entablature is supported by coupled columns ; as their separation, by dividing the apparent support, even adds to the idea of insecurity."
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … a real architect, being faced with the inconsistencies that Freeman noted, would have immediately gone to investigate the style and found out just why the building hadn’t collapsed.

Freeman’s attitude took me so by surprise that I knocked over my juice glass and the grape juice within it in surprise.

There were also all of the scores from the Welsh football matches over the weekend. Remember the other day when I told you that 53-year-old legend Marc Lloyd Williams had signed for Llanberis? He scored one of their goals in the 8-0 rout of Amlwch Town in the Welsh Cup over the weekend.

Then I came back in here to carry on work. There were several things that needed doing, and then I attacked the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working.

In a mad fit of enthusiasm that I wish that I could recapture for use every day, I finished them all off and they are now ready for dictation, along with about a hundred others. I really must buckle down somehow and clear this massive backlog. But now that my cough is back … "and in spades, too" – ed … that’s not likely to happen for a while.

At midday, I went into the living room to sort out my disgusting drink and midday medication and to prepare myself for dialysis. My cleaner turned up a couple of minutes later to apply my anaesthetic and to make sure that I was ready to go.

To my great surprise, the taxi turned up for me at 12:40, twenty minutes early. I wish that it would do that every day. There was our usual “other passenger” to pick up at the Old People’s Home in Sartilly but even so, we still pulled up at the dialysis centre at 13:25.

Just like Saturday, I was put into a room with two other people, and there was just one nurse to deal with all of us. Even so, I didn’t have to wait very long and I was up and running by 13:55. How I wish that they could do that every time too. And there was a fair amount to take out today. The machine wasn’t working flat out, for a change, but it was near enough.

Apart from the odd low blood pressure warning which, as usual, brought the nurse running, no-one else came to bother me. If there was a doctor on duty, he or she kept his or her distance. There was the occasional glance of the doctor who thinks that he’s in charge and that he runs the show. He kept his distance too. That meant that I could crack on with work, which is always good news as far as I am concerned.

Even better news was that when I was ready to be unplugged after my session, the nurse was ready and waiting to unplug me. When she had finished with me, I weighed myself and found to my delight that the four-hour session on Saturday had done its trick and even though this was just the usual three-hour session, I was finally down to my recognised dry weigh.

At 17:20, I was ready to leave and as the driver was already waiting, with someone else to drop off in Granville, it was looking as if a 18:00 return was on the cards. However, things all went downhill from there.

At the roundabout on the Avranches side of the village of La Havaudière, the road to Granville was closed, with a couple of policemen directing the traffic down a couple of the small country lanes. In the distance, we could see fire engines and police cars.

The narrow roads were total chaos, with long lines of traffic coming both ways. We had to fight our way along as best as we could, and it wasn’t easy. A lorry coming in the opposite direction would block up the lanes for ages while the drivers of oncoming cars sorted themselves out.

To get back onto the Granville road at Le Croissant, where the road was open again, that was chaos too. A huge line of vehicles was blocked by others on the roundabout coming from Granville and going round and round and round while they were trying to make up their minds which way to go.

By the time that we’d rejoined the road, dropped off this guy and dropped me off, it was 18:20, and that was disappointing.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside the premises and once she had me settled in a chair and armed me with another disgusting drink, she went about her business and I made tea.

Tonight, I had a rice salad with plenty of vegan cheese. It should have been “plenty of vegan ham” but I hadn’t checked the packet for four weeks, and when I looked this evening, I could see that it needed a shave before anything else so it went into the bin.

There were slices of my new fruit bread for pudding, and it really was nice – definitely a success, this, with dates, raisins and cranberries.

Back in here, I checked to see what had been going on down the road, and it turned out that a forty-acre field by the roadside near La Havaudière had caught fire and was busy burning away. We’ve had a few of those now, and perhaps a really good dose of rain is called for before the whole country burns up.

Next task was to write my notes for the day but the effects of dialysis proved to be too much and I was overwhelmed by a great wave of fatigue. I posted what I had written so far and then went to bed. I’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the fire brigade … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the two girls from Crewe who had locked themselves out of their house while they were clubbing.
Luckily, they had left a bedroom window open so they borrowed a neighbour’s ladder to climb up.
As they were halfway up, one of the girls remarked "ohh, doesn’t it make you feel like a fireman!"
The other one replied "don’t be silly. Where are we going to find a fireman at this time of night?"

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Sunday 26th July 2026 – TODAY, I HAVE HAD …

… another one of the laziest days that I have ever had, and about time too. I should put my feet up and relax more often, I reckon.

But it wasn’t always going to be like that. I was in bed last night by about 23:15 or so and was asleep quite quickly too. That was despite the howling gale that sprung up during the night

However, I didn’t stay asleep for long. Round about 03:30, I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This is what I found on the dictaphone later.

Someone shouted out Mae’r papurau’n anghywir – “the papers are incorrect” – and something about me being enwog, which means “famous”. I sat bolt upright at that and I’ve no idea at all what they meant by it.

Whatever was going on there, I have no idea. But it was dramatic enough to give me another one of these strange awakenings.

After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep and round about 06:50, I got up and went to the bathroom. Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone but that dream above was all. Outside, the wind had died down but it was damp as if it had rained through the night. That will make the local farmers happy.

With nothing else to transcribe on the dictaphone, I set about doing other things until Isabelle the Nurse came. She was surprised to find me out of bed, so I explained about my sleeping issues. She didn’t say much, just told me about her two weeks off and how she’d had to go to the doctor for her sinuses, and after she’d finished my legs and feet, she cleared off on the rest of her rounds.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast. Porridge, strong black coffee, juice and two of the home-made croissants that I made last weekend. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

In discussing Amr ibn al-As, conqueror of Egypt, and the mosque that he built in celebration, he says "he did not, like Constantine at Rome, or Mahomet at Constantinople, employ an existing building for his new use, and so impress an existing type upon future structures, but erected a new one from the ground in such a manner as might be expected from a horde of invaders animated by the fanatical spirit of their new religion of lust and bloodshed, under a chief whose name is mainly remembered as the destroyer of the noblest library the world had hitherto beheld"

Leaving aside the question of the Inquisition, the Albigensian Crusade, and the Conquistadores in Central and South America for the moment, the Great Library at Alexandria was first burnt by Julius Caesar in 48 BC and secondly, in 272 AD, by the emperor Aurelian. The story of Amr burning the library in 642 AD was not recorded until over five hundred years later, and many scholars, long before Charles Freeman began writing his book, have questioned its authenticity.

Back in here afterwards, I had the notes from yesterday to type, and that took much longer than it ought, mainly due to the number of times I fell asleep while doing it.

And then we had the football. First off was Stranraer v Falkirk. Stranraer are, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, in the fourth tier and Falkirk are in the first. We weren’t expecting too much and the result, a 3-0 victory to the Bairns, was not unexpected.

However, at times Stranraer slugged it out toe-to-toe, and it was difficult to tell who was the tier-one team. Stranraer can feel quite comfortable with themselves after this.

On the other hand, Greenock Morton put up the usual sad, dismal performance against Inverness, going down 1-0 at home. They’ve lost all four games and failed to score a single goal. And on the evidence of what I’ve seen so far, they could be playing until next weekend, out on the pitch all alone, and they still wouldn’t manage to score a goal.

After a disgusting drink, I had a few more things to do, and they took an age to finish, mainly because I kept on crashing out while I was trying to do them. I must have fallen asleep at least three times, sometimes for as long as an hour. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

And then it was baking time. So refuelled by one of these energy drinks, I tackled the question of home-made bread and home-made fruit bread. It took up most of the late afternoon and early evening, but even so, they turned out very well indeed and I can’t wait to get my teeth into them. They look absolutely delicious.

So right now, I’m going to check the statistics, back up the computer and so on and then go to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow and I wonder what’s going to happen there.
I have a bad feeling about it all.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greenock Morton’s dismal performances … "well, one of us has" – ed … a reporter from BBC Scotland Sport rang up manager Ian Murray and asked him how he was going to deal with the issues.
"They’ll be coming in for training on Sunday" replied Murray. "I have a load of traffic cones and the players are going to practise dribbling around them all day"
So on Sunday afternoon, the reporter rang back to ask how things were going.
"Dreadful" replied Murray. "At the moment, the cones are leading three-nil"

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