Tag Archives: El Dorado

Thursday 7th September 2023 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I probably won’t be here.

Well, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not all here and I haven’t been all here for quite a while but tomorrow I shall be somewhere else.

What I have been doing today is preparing for my journey. And it’s taking some preparation too.

There is however some good news. You might think that the idea that my neighbour isn’t going to work tomorrow morning so can’t drop me off at the station on her way meant that I’d have to make other plans.

Before I phoned to book a taxi (yes, I really am that ill) I checked the bus times. The bus from outside here doesn’t for some reason that only the dispatcher will know, go into town or near the railway station. I have to change buses.

There are three places where it’s possible to do so and in the past, I’d miss a bus to the station by a couple of minutes. However I checked today and found that they seem to have adjusted the timetable, meaning that I have a 20-minute wait at the port for a connecting bus.

There’s only 15 minutes to leave the bus at the station and board the train before it departs, so I shall have to hurry as best as I can. But it seems to be the most logical way to go to the station.

If ever I had anything to say about it, I’d have a major re-route of the bus network. It defies all understanding that here in the walled city, where the population density is heaviest, the bus doesn’t go to the town centre, the railway station and the hospital, and stops a good few hundred metres away from the largest supermarket.

So be that as it may, I’ve been quite busy today.

last night was rather depressing because I went on several little voyages that completely evaporated out of my mind when I tried to dictate them. My brain is really turning to spaghetti right now.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the world and had something of a scramble to rise to my feet.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had a chat with Alison and with Liz on the internet and we had a few things to say to each other. Rosemary also sent me an e-mail to say that the internet was down at her place. The Auvergne is definitely “The Land That Time Forgot”.

First thing that I needed to do is to book my train from Brussels to Leuven. I’m not going to have much time in Brussels to buy a ticket when I arrive and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not as mobile as I used to be.

Once I’d done that, I had to track down all of my paperwork and print it off, and then organise my medical folder. I don’t need the stuff that I took with me to Paris last week.

But it really is a sign of the times that even one unnecessary piece of paper in the backpack makes such a difference in my mobility.

There was the backpack to pack too. And we had a slight catastrophe because I can’t find my box of medical stuff that I take with me. I’ve no idea where that might be. I’ve put it somewhere but I can’t think where.

That’ll teach me a lesson. I’m the world’s worst at organising myself so I have to have a place for everything and everything has to be in its place. And if it isn’t, than I am totally lost.

So now that my bag is packed as much as possible, complete with food to sustain me on my journey, I backed up the computer onto the USB key that I take with me when I travel.

And not having backed up the portable computer since my last trip to Leuven, which was in May, there will be tons of stuff to amend and append when I’m on the train tomorrow morning. A mere 2,338 files, to be precise.

There was even time to finish off sorting out the music for another programme. But I’ve not written any notes for it as yet as I’m going to have several days when I won’t have anything to do so I can catch up with it then.

A little earlier I talked about my nocturnal voyages. We were doing a remake of EL DORADO last night. I was accompanying John Wayne on his travels on his horse. Our version was much better than John Huston’s … "actually Howard Hawks’s" – ed. We did so much more in the film and went into it in much greater depth. It was another one of these that went on for absolutely hours but I ran out of steam while I was in the apartment of the girl who was trying to give him false information. It was nothing like the cabin in which the girl was living – it was an office block in a huge complex and an apartment above the Bank that was there, all modern glass and chrome etc. The person who gave John Wayne his information at the sheriff’s office, which was a huge place with lots of small offices was actually one of his ex-wives. She struck me as being quite a nice woman. But I ran out of steam while we were confronting the woman about the disappearance of the gang that we were trying to hunt down.

There was another long rambling dream, however as I mentioned earlier, I’ve forgotten almost all of it. The interesting thing about it was that we encountered the wife of a friend of mine. Her birthday was 5th September. I had another friend who was also a nurse. Her birthday was also 5th September. I thought that that was the most amazing coincidence.

Later on, there was another dream that I’d forgotten, one in which we encountered the body of a friend of ours in the Stores in a castle. She’d obviously been very unhappy and she’d committed suicide but I can’t remember any more of this.

However a little later I had something of a recollection of a few things relating to that last dream. There was something to do with hire cars. Whole fleets of cars had been hired out by big reputable companies but some were so old – quite a few “G” registration cars there as in the mid-80s. They had been hired out for this event. I was interested to know whether they’d hire them out again but the person concerned with whom I was talking didn’t know. All my colleagues at work were making remarks about the vehicle that I’d hired and about me driving it which I thought was awful but never mind! There was also something involving a bowlful of the dirtiest water you could ever imagine but I don’t now where that fitted in.

Tea tonight was fried rice and vegetables with some of those Chinese whatsits that I bought a while ago. It was a really nice tea too and i’ll have some more of those when I can

Actually I ought to have a think about making them myself. They are basically tofu and vegetables wrapped in some of that brick pastry stuff. I suppose that I could make them like sausage rolls and slice them into smaller lengths.

And that reminds me – I need to think about making my sausage rolls at some point.

Before I finished, I diced the remaining carrots, blanched them and put them in the freezer. There weren’t many of them but it would be a shame to throw them out.

So I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow. I shall be in a rush so I need to get a move on. And it will be a long, tiring day which won’t end for quite a while. At least I can sleep on the train, if I’m not too busy with those 2,338 files.

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Thursday 15th December 2022 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… was sausage, beans and chips. And how beautiful it was too. I really enjoyed it.

One of my neighbours was going for a walk down to the shops this afternoon and he saw my note on the door so he came by to ask if I needed anything. Of course, if someone is going down to town on foot they can’t bring back very much of anything so a bag of potatoes it was.

At least my desire for chips is satiated for now and there’s enough for tea on Saturday night.

And in other news, I’ve had to make a start in tidying up the apartment as I’m going to have a visitor on Monday at lunchtime. I’ve finally managed to contact the doctor and he’s going to make a house call on Monday.

It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out once he comes round. What he’s going to say and what he’s going to suggest. At least it’s a start, but then again as I used to say back in the 70s when I was attending auctions as a buyer, it’s not where we start that’s important, it’s where we finish.

And to tell the honest truth, I’m probably finished already.

While we’re on the subject of finishing … “well, one of us is” – ed … I finished early last night and was in bed quite promptly looking forward to a good sleep.

Not that it worked out that way because I still had to leave the bed to go for a stroll down the corridor, and then apart from that I went off on quite a few little voyages during the night. We were living in Shavington and it was all quite primitive. We only had a cold water tap in the downstairs sink so I was trying to work out how I could make some kind of hot water tank underneath the sink with a candle to heat the water. I had a rough idea in my head but but it wouldn’t be particularly good. I spoke to my brother and said that maybe we ought to give it a go. My mother and my sister had been out somewhere. They came back in. We’d been watching a cowboy film but they switched over to watch The Clitheroe Kid. Then the two of them were in bed and were fighting over a sandwich that my sister was trying to eat in bed so I said something like “fancy swapping the TV over on our programme and then not going to watch it”. She said that we could swap back. It was right at the end, a Western something similar to one of the EL DORADO trilogy of films where the fight was over and the young boy was leaving. A young girl who had obviosly been close to this boy was practically in tears about him going but he said that he had to leave. “We’ve had 3 or 4 years of good times but it’s time to move on”. She was totally distraught about the whole idea of him leaving and rather than it being a happy ending it was a really sad, dramatic one. Even in my sleep I could feel how powerful the ending was.

Later on I had some money so I was going to invest it by buying a property in PIonsat, some apartments but it had to be a good quality apartment (not that there’s anything quite like that in Pionsat). I didn’t want to buy any old rubbish. There were several decent buildings in the town so I had a wander around and ended up at the bank. That was almost fraught because there was a traffic hold-up and a lorry decided that it would reverse down the High Street, nearly knocking me over as I crossed the road. In the bank I had to queue. It looked as if someone had forgotten his carrots but he walked off without them so I asked the guy in front of me if they were his. He said “no”. It was then my turn and I started to chat to this girl. This guy slipped a piece of paper “I know all about you” it said. “Don’t do it”. I asked “what on earth is this about?”. He said that someone chatted up a bank cashier and ended up meeting her in an alleyway and finished by murdering her. I said “I don’t remember this”. He replied “no, it was in 1968 so just you be careful”. I couldn’t understand what this guy was talking about. He was clearly not in the same world as the rest of us.

And then it was this summer and I was deciding to go into work very early, having spoken to someone who worked the early shift once this year. It would start at about 05:45 that meant that I would be in there by then. Of course my mother threw a fit, saying that I was never at home to help out. I told her that I was at home 24 hours per day 7 days per week except when I was at work, and going to work was normal. We had quite a row about it. When I arrived at work, rather than find the place empty there was someone around sticking up posters about the Roman excavations taking place in the wood. I was expected to go to work on some kind of bricklaying supervision. I tok myself out and was watching these bricklayers work while I was supervising this little group that I had with me. I felt that I was talking to myself all the time about what these bricklayers were doing. I thought that these few people here must have thought me totally crazy. When I concentrated on the work I found that we had a dip in one of the courses, a quite bad dip. There was no way that it could be rectified and we were going to have to take it all out again. There was one woman from work whom I came across as I was on my way into work who was sitting in a chair at the side of the road. She said “hello” to me so I said “hello” to her and didn’t think anything of it. Then I saw in the paper that she’s actually been in prison and was on some kind of rehabilitation course so I don’t know what she was doing at that particular moment, just sitting by the side of the street saying hello to passers-by unless it was part of her rehabilitation.

As you might expect, we have the family back in the equation but none of my favourite characters. That’s something that I find quite depressing.

When the alarm went off, I was in no mood to leave the bed. In fact if I hadn’t had to go down the corridor one more time I’d probably still be in there now.

Having slowly come round, I made a start on the radio programme that I wasn going to do, but my heart wasn’t in it. It took me much longer than anyone could ever imagine to complete it, not helped by crashing out on a couple of occasions and then a break to call the doctor.

When my neighbour called, I was fast asleep yet again. That seems to have been the story of my day, but I’m glad that he awoke me because tonight’s tea really was delicious.

After tea I had a long chat with Liz on the internet where we put the world to rights for a good while.

So right now I’m off to bed early again, in the hope that one night at least I’ll have a really good night and a good sleep to go with it. And if one of my three favourite young ladies could come and keep me company, then so much the better.

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Sunday 11th August 2013 – “WELL I’LL BE …

… a suck-egg mule”, as the legendary Arthur Hunnicutt said to John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and James Caan in the magnificent El Dorado.

As you all know by now, I used to work for a major pan-National organisation and I used to keep my finger on the pulse of what was going on.

As many of my former “workmates” are constantly in the news and as I know their fashion of thinking, I can usually have a pretty shrewd guess of which way the wind is going to blow.

Many of my predictions on these pages (although not all of them, I have to say) have been proved right and have truly come to pass.

And as you know, I’m going back through my blog right to the very beginning in order to tidy it up, and I discovered that back on January 1st I had made the prediction that you see about three quarters of the way down this page.

What price my predictions now, heh?

Anyway, I’m glad that I had to get up and go to ride the porcelain horse this morning, otherwise I would still be in bed even now.

Mind you, 10:45 am is a decent time to heave myself out of my stinking pit. However, I haven’t done a tap today, except to work on bringing another few early pages of my blog up to current standards and to correct the shortcomings in the importation.

I have however had to amend yesterday’s blog entry.

Annie, who lurks in the background, finally burst into the public eye today (hello, Annie!) to point out that Edith Cavell is actually buried at Norwich Cathedral. Yes, it was only the funeral service that took place at Westminster Abbey.

And so for tea, I had the usual Sunday offering of pizza and garlic bread, followed by humble pie for dessert (and we aren’t talking about Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton either).

In other news, Cécile and her mum might be coming to visit.

There’s tons of small stuff littering the apartment that is too time-consuming to sell and much too good to throw away.

It’s basically free to anyone who wants to come here and pick it up as long as they give me a hand to move stuff and load Caliburn with what’s coming back to the Auvergne.

Cécile’s mum has never been to Brussels and so it seems like a good idea for them to come, take away what they want, and give me a little hand too.

And in other other news, last night’s dream has mostly flowed away out of my memory but I do remember someone stealing the washing machine in mid-wash with all my clothes in it.

That prompted me this afternoon to have a shower and do a machine load of washing. That needs to be up-to-date too if people are coming.

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Friday 19th August 2011 – What I would be doing this evening …

… is to post a photo of where I finished on Thursday with the pointing, and I did go out this morning to take a photo. However, despite a thorough search, I can’t remember where I put the camera afterwards. It’s defnitely getting to me, all of this.

So after working on the web site this morning I went out and did some more searching for stuff that I need for Canada. And I’m badgered if I can find my box of battery terminals. I’ve about 50 somewhere but your guess is as good as mine.

What I’m intending to do is to buy a caravan battery over there, but to have two terminals with me, with a solar charge controller, a multi-cigarette-lighter socket, a couple of 12-volt sockets and a 12/120 volt inverter wired up to it so that all I need to do is to slip them onto the battery and wire the solar panel to the charge controller. Then I’ll be all set up for my voyage. But where are these blasted terminals?

This afternoon, down to the bank to transfer some money, warn them about my visit to Canada (I don’t want to have another cash card swallowed up by “unusual spending patterns”) and to obtain a certificate of no claims for my insurance over there in case I decide to buy a car. I also went to the Mairie at Pionsat to get some info for the radio programmes.

I still had time afterwards to go up the wall, and I’ve extended the ladder almost right up the the apex – that’s about 9 metres and of course I’m 2 or so metres off the ground before I start, being on the roof of the lean-to. It’s decidedly shaky and being up there with no hands on the ladder while I chisel out the decaying mortar between the stones – I’m just not looking down.

The good side of today though was that the solar water reached 40.5°C and I had a gorgeous shower. What a way to start the weekend? I might even to to the swimming baths tomorrow.

For a little entertainment this evening, I watched the John Wayne film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. It’s said to be one of his classics but it’s not a patch on El Dorado or Rio Bravo, his two best films by a country mile if you ask me.

What is interesting though is that She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is set in Monument Valley in the Utah-Arizona desert and it brought back all kinds of happy memories as keen long-term followers of this rubbish will recall that I visited there in 2002 when I was first off work ill, and I’ve never ever forgotten that journey. Yes, this evening I saw all kinds of sights that I had seen in the flesh, as it were. I’m definitely getting to be all broody about North America, aren’t I?

What is even more interesting is that they had the Cavalry marching out of the camp to the tune of “Garry Owen”, but that was in 1950 and they wouldn’t ever dare do that now. “Garry Owen” was the marching song of the 7th Cavalry, the late and unlamented General Custer’s regiment and ought to really have died with him at Little Big Horn because it played rather a sinister role in the American Ethnic Cleansing of Native Americans.

Back in 1869, Custer and his cavalry were on the trail of a small band of marauding Cheyenne raiders but losing the way in a blizzard they stumbled upon the camp of Black Kettle, a peaceful Cheyenne chief whose camp on the Washita River, well within the confines of the concentr … errr … Reservation. Setting his band up on a bluff overlooking the camp, Custer had them play “Garry Owen” while he and his soldiers raided the village, massacring every man, woman and child they could find, inculding a white woman and child who Black Kettle had liberated from a raiding party a short while earlier.

The atrocities that were committed on the dead and dying by the 7th Cavalry, described in all their gory – “that’s not a spelling mistake” …ed – by Custer in his book My Life on the Plains and also by many other soldiers at the battle and they make horrific reading.

Of course, this film was made 20 years before the release of Soldier Blue – the first film to blow the lid off the myth of the “heroic” US Cavalry and reveal them as the butchers and sadists that they really were. Soldier Blue concerned the earlier dreadful and notorious massacre of peaceful and innocent native Americans at Sand Creek – the event that brought home to the native Americans that whether they surrendered or whether they resisted, they were still going to be massacred (as indeed they were) and so they stood and fought.

Such was the horror of what happened at Sand Creek that an American Investigating Committee said of Colonel Chivington and his soldiers that
“(we) can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity; holding the important position of commander of a military district, and therefore having the honor of the government to that extent in his keeping, he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the verist savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty. Having full knowledge of their friendly character, having himself been instrumental to some extent in placing them in their position of fancied security, he took advantage of their in-apprehension and defenceless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man. Whatever influence this may have had upon Colonel Chivington, the truth is that he surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand creek, who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United States authorities”.

Of course, by the time that the Washita came around, some 5 years later, nothing at all of any criticism was levelled. “Manifest Destiny” was now official Government Policy and extermination of the native Americans was all part of the plan.

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