… night that was last night.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past, me still being up and wandering about the apartment (and anywhere else) at 02:15 would be a fairly common sight, so seeing me wandering around at 02:15 this morning would have been nothing unusual – except that I went to bed at about 22:30, had been asleep, and was now wide awake, out of bed and working.
That’s something that has happened only extremely rarely in the past.
For a change, I actually made a really great effort and dashed through my notes for the day, took the stats, backed up the computer, sorted myself out in the bathroom and then climbed into bed, all by 22:30 or thereabouts.
Once more, I was asleep quite quickly too, but not for long. Round about 01:00, I sat bolt upright again, wide awake, drenched in sweat. It was unbelievable.
Nothing that I could do would make me go back to sleep. I was hot and uncomfortable and really couldn’t settle. After just over an hour of trying, I left the bed and had a wash.
The first thing that I did when I came back in here was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I didn’t expect to find anything on the dictaphone in view of the somewhat diminished time span involved, but I was surprised. There was something going on in some American magazine about people and hospitals and ill-health etc. For some reason, I’d been asked to download some kind of article and upload something else etc. They were talking about me on a radio show doing this. I had the book in front of me but I couldn’t find the article and I couldn’t see any of the addresses or anything but they were urging me on to do this and I was hunting through this book trying to find the correct page but I was getting nowhere. I know that one of the people involved in this whom I had to download or upload had zebra-striped white and black hair and I was wondering more about that. I was trying to find this book but every time I turned a page there was either nothing on it or it was one of these intercalcary sheets etc. I just wondered how on earth I was going to find this.
So we’re back thinking about hospitals again, are we? It seems to be a major preoccupation of mine right now. Having some kind of panic attack in a dream is also becoming something of a regular occurrence, and that’s quite possibly also something of some significance.
The second thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I had written just before going off to Paris. That took much longer than it should have done too, because my computer screen decided to go to sleep in mid-type and it took me a few minutes to restart it.
In the meantime, I had to stop and restart the ZOOM H8 because I didn’t know how long it would take to restart the screen and I didn’t want the recording running away with itself.
Once I’d finished that, the next task was quite surprising. I actually went rather further than Dave Crosby, because, although I didn’t have the ‘flu for Christmas, I’m definitely not feeling up to par and it was increasing my paranoia, like looking in the mirror and seeing a police car.
However, I wasn’t giving in an inch to fear and I promised myself this year that I’d do something about it, so I went on the attack.
A nice, trim and tidy me came back in here and I watched a football match, with the Skunks putting eight past Annan Athletic in Tuesday’s Scottish League Cup match.
When the alarm went off, I went to have a good wash and sort myself out, and then a leisurely stroll into the kitchen to take my medication.
After that, I didn’t have long to wait. The nurse was very early this morning and, like a fool, he asked how I was so I gave him both barrels and I bet that he regretted asking. He saw to my knee and to my legs and then cleared off rather sharpish-like so that I could make breakfast.
Not that I made it very far as my faithful cleaner came to interrupt me. I’d heard her moving around in her apartment upstairs so I knew that she was awake, so I sent her a message asking about some medication that I needed. She knew where it was and pointed me in the right direction.
Once sh’d left I could carry on making breakfast, not that I wanted much but I have to eat after all, and then read some more of MY BOOK while I ate what little there was.
Our author, John Stow, is still wandering around the pre-Great Fire churches of London, and between the two of us, we have made a rather interesting discovery.
At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the Duke of Bourbon was captured and held for ransom. Although the ransom was paid, and on a couple of occasions too, he was never released and never returned to his home.
Our author has been wandering around the old Greyfriars Church and in there is a tombstone, so he says, of "John, Duke of Bourbon and Anjou, Earl of Claremond, Montpensier and Baron Beaujeu, who was taken prisoner at Agincourt, kept prisoner eighteen years and deceased 1433."
That explains why he never returned home, but being held prisoner for eighteen years despite the payment of a couple of ransoms, that seems to be rather extreme.
Another interruption was the President of the Residents’ Committee who came to see how I was, which was very nice of her. She spent half an hour chatting, and I gave her the key to downstairs so she could go for a little inspection. She was well-impressed.
After breakfast, I sorted out some more things to go downstairs and then eventually came back in here to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated earlier.
Not that I kept going for long. I soon drifted off into sleep, sitting on my chair, and for once I wasn’t surprised or disappointed.
In fact, I fell asleep in the chair on a couple of occasions for about twenty minutes here and there. And I was having some gorgeous psychedelic dreams that faded in and out, just as I had one a long time ago when they were giving me some perfusion at one of the hospitals where I’ve been. There’s only one that I remember, and that was telling a friend of mine that I’d be down to see him at about 14:00 when I leave to go to see a girl with whom I’d been invited to stay for a while in the run-up to Christmas. He asked me her name and honestly, I couldn’t remember it, so I’ sure that he thought that I was bluffing. But after he left, I remembered that I couldn’t drive and that there was no contrôle technique on the van, so what was I going to do about this visit? And then another friend of mine came in to give me some presents that had arrived. We shook one and it rattled so we opened it, and it turned out to be a plastic box full of waffles. I can’t eat them of course so I offered them to her, and she snatched the plastic box out of my hands and made off with her booty.
But there were several like this, in such a short space of time, and they all slipped out through my fingers. It was simply impossible to try to record them.
My cleaner came round at about 14:00 to do her stuff and found me engaged in an on-line chat, with a robot from my telephone company. I need to sort out the line to the apartment downstairs for when I move. It took well over an hour to do what should have been a relatively simple task, but at least it’s going to go ahead with no complications.
And that reminds me. I have made an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is a decision that, if it turns out to be wrong, the person who made the decision is executed.
The decision is that I am slowly moving the moveable stuff downstairs and just before my next chemotherapy, which seems to be about the 19th of August, my bed and office will be going down there too, so that when I return, I won’t have to climb the stairs. The rest of the stuff can come down to join me at a later date when there are people to help.
That’s regardless of the state of the apartment, whether the work is finished or not. I’ve been speaking to the kitchen fitter and told him that as of now, the bedroom is the priority followed by the part of the bathroom that is not the shower. The shower is going to be extremely complicated.
Eventually, I finished the radio programme and now have to look for one more track to finish it off. I can do that on Saturday and Sunday, but that’s going to be complicated too.
Tea was a baked potato, small salad and falafel. All of it very small, in fact, because I’m not hungry.
Actually, I’m fed up, I’m in pain, I’m ill and I’m not looking forward to dialysis tomorrow where I expect once more to be detained for at least four hours. I really can’t take much more of this.
But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Jean, Duke of Bourbon and the Battle of Agincourt … "well, one of us has" – ed … as he was leaving his château, he gave the keys of his wife’s chastity belt to his oldest and most faithful servant.
"Here, take these keys" he said to the servant. "While I’m away at battle, you are the only person who I can trust with them". And he set off on his shining white charger.
He hadn’t gone half a mile before the oldest and most faithful servant caught up with him, panting and out of breath.
"My Lord, my Lord" he gasped. "You’ve given me the wrong key."
.
, we went our separate ways.
