Tag Archives: falafel

Wednesday 27th May 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… it has been today!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday 14th March 2026 – MY VEGAN CHEESECAKE …

… is magnificent!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I posted on here a few days ago about the dessert that I should make once my birthday cake is finished. And while most of the suggestions that I received were totally unprintable in a family-orientated blog, there wasn’t a one that made any suggestions about making a vegan dessert.

Consequently, I had to put on my thinking cap and try to invent something.

It’s a good job that I didn’t have my thinking cap on last night, because I probably would have ended up with even less sleep than I actually had. Despite pushing on as best as I could and trying all I could to avoid distractions, it was 23:30 exactly when I crawled into bed.

As usual, I managed to go off to sleep quite quickly, but once again, it wasn’t for long. At 04:20, I was wide awake again, awoken by a stabbing pain in the foot and a desperate fit of coughing.

An hour later, I was still wide awake, but I must have gone to sleep at some point because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from a really deep slumber.

When the alarm went off, I was round at my father’s. He had an old Ford Transit van and had completely emptied it. He was going through, scraping all the mud out of the body panels and recesses because he was going to weld a new floor into it. When I had a look, I thought to myself that it’s not before time that he’s doing this. He was finding all sorts of stuff. Then he was talking about a transport company called Fitzgerald’s – apparently, I’d met them once at some kind of party but I didn’t remember. He said that Fitzgerald had told him that the company was going under. My father said that he wasn’t surprised because they were very expensive and, of course, freight has become a cutthroat industry these days. He poured a cup of coffee for me, which I drank, but it tasted weird. Then he asked me if I would make another one, so I went to wash the pan in which he’d boiled the water, and there were all the remains of boiled tomatoes in it. I thought “no wonder the coffee had tasted awful” so I went to wash it in the swimming pool there. There was a girl there who might have been Roxanne so I just picked her up and threw her into the pool and then tried to wash the pan. However, the pan was caught around the tap, and the handle broke off. I thought that this was a catastrophe. I played “peek-a-boo” with this little girl for a minute, she diving her head under the water and me ducking my head down so that I could see her under the water through the glass. Then my father came along and said to the little girl, “Eric must have put a lot of effort into throwing you into that swimming pool. I could see him straining every muscle”.

In the past, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, our family has owned all kinds of disreputable motor vehicles, many of which wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a public highway today and probably shouldn’t have been back in those days either.

However, my father was a motor mechanic by profession and in my earnest desire to out-do him, I learnt quite quickly by experience, and I also took night school courses in welding, paint spraying and lathe operation. Between us, we could keep almost anything on the road and running, although the hydraulic tappets on that Vanden Plas 4.0 with the Rolls-Royce engine had us beat for a long, long time.

When Laurence, Roxanne and I used to go to Spain to visit Roxanne’s grandfather, I used to throw Roxanne into the swimming pool on regular occasions, especially when she wasn’t expecting it. She used to squeal but she loved every minute of it.

As for making coffee with water in a dirty pan, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to struggle to my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom for a good wash. There were also the undies to wash. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s important for me to keep on top of the washing of clothes like that.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and then took my medication. And then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was doing something with several sheets of glass last night, picking them up off different piles, each pile that represented a country in the EU. I was washing one of them so that I could build some kind of fortress somewhere on behalf of each of the countries, but that’s all that I remember of this.

A fort made of glass wouldn’t be of much use now, would it? It makes me wish that I could remember the rest of this dream so that I could find out what happened.

Later on, I was watching a football match involving Pionsat. Twice, from corner kicks down in the far left-hand corner, the Pionsat winger kicked the ball far too hard and sent it completely out of play on the full on the other side of the pitch. I thought that Pionsat couldn’t afford to waste all of these little moments that they have, because they aren’t a very good side and they need all the breaks they can get. A high ball into the penalty area can cause enough confusion to enable them to sneak a goal every now and again, particularly when they have all the players running in as the ball is kicked. But no, both of them went way out of play on the full without bouncing.

This is one thing that bugs me in a lot of football matches these days. The quality of freekicks and corners is pretty abysmal. As I said during the dream, a high ball right into the centre of the goalmouth can cause chaos and panic, and every now and again, something will come out of it.

But most clubs these days seem to want to mess about with the ball in all kinds of fancy tricks, most of which usually lead to them losing possession.

However, dear reader, read on ….

The nurse turned up as usual, just as I was in the middle of a really interesting chat with a couple of friends. I had to go off instead to have him see to my feet.

And today, he managed to avoid touching my really bad right foot. Instead, he dropped the heavy stool right onto it, and I was in agony for hours.

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

Today, we’re reading about how the Marquisate of Boudonitza held out desperately against the Ottomans for many years until 1414, when the Sultan Mohamed I finally captured it. Now, we’ve moved on to discuss Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus, if we are to believe the Ancient Greek authors.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I made a start on editing some radio notes that I’d dictated a while back.

After a while, I had to stop because there was football on the internet – Y Fflint v Y Bala.

This was a game that Y Bala had to win if they were to have any chance whatever of avoiding relegation, and so they went at it hammer and tongs. Y Fflint could also have done with a win to haul themselves further away from the relegation zone, but for some reason, Y Bala’s aggressive start to the game knocked Y Fflint out of its stride.

Y Bala had the ball in the back of the net but it was ruled out for an offside, something that was disputed by many people in Cae y Castell this afternoon. Y Fflint took the lead – from a high ball floated in from a corner – but Y Bala equalised, from a high ball in from the wing.

So we had two poor teams rampaging at each other from one end to the other throughout the whole ninety minutes and playing the game as it ought to be played, in my opinion.

But a 1-1 draw? Leaving aside the “offside” goal, in the immediate build-up to Y Bala’s goal, I saw a handball by Y Bala’s Australian striker Jacob Tarasenko, and I would have awarded a penalty to Y Fflint for a blatant shirt-tugging that prevented a Fflint player from reaching a ball in the penalty area.

However that wasn’t all. Another thing that really gets my goat is this modern fascination of “playing it out from the back”, which has led to more disasters and calamities than games that it has won.

But not Joel Torrance in the Bala goal. The former Salford City keeper just kicked the ball as far upfield as he could, and that caused continual panic and chaos to the Fflint defence throughout the game. Why more teams don’t do this, especially against TNS whose central defence is … errr … somewhat “pedestrian” I really don’t know.

Y Fflint’s manager, Lee Fowler, was very dismissive of the game, but I for one quite enjoyed it.

After the football, I went into the kitchen to make my cheesecake.

This was a recipe that I saw in a magazine, and when I looked at it, I reckoned that I could transform it into a vegan recipe with no problems at all, especially as I now have a regular supply of aquafaba, now that I know that it can be frozen.

And it worked too – and in spades. When I sampled some for pudding later, it was absolutely delicious and I’ll make some more like that too.

One thing that I needed was some soya yoghurt, but my faithful cleaner couldn’t find any yesterday. However, just as I’d put it into the oven, she came in waving a pack of six around.

While I was at it, I made some more croissants too. And these also worked in spades. They didn’t have any of the really cheap flaky pastry, so this is the next price up – and it seems to make all the difference.

There was still an hour or so for tea so I finished off editing the radio programme, preparing the two halves, choosing the joining track and preparing it, and then writing the notes.

Tea tonight was falafel with vegan salad and baked potato with cheese, followed by cheesecake. And I’m still not enjoying the first course as much as I used to just recently. I think that my appetite might be changing again.

But not now, because I’m off to bed, ready for my important Sunday lie-in, if the nurse doesn’t drop anything else on my foot while I’m in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cars … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of an American who was in a bar in Ireland doing his usual American stunt of “showing off”.
"Your farms are so small and pathetic" he said. "Why, back in Texas, I could get into my car and at the end of three days’ driving I still wouldn’t have reached the boundary of my land."
"I know exactly how you feel there." replied a local at the end of the bar.
"You do?" exclaimed the American, incredulously.
"Oh yes" replied the local. "I used to have a car like that myself."

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Friday 20th February 2026 – THAT WAS A …

… better day today and I actually managed to accomplish a fair amount of work, which makes a change from how things have been just recently.

Mind you, it didn’t look much like it last night. Once again, things dragged and dragged and it was quite late once more, probably not much before 23:30, when I finally crawled into bed

And wasn’t I glad to be in bed too? As I said yesterday, I had fallen asleep quite embarrassingly and at that point I was all ready to throw in the towel and go straight to bed. However, I did manage to persevere (only just) and finish what needed to be finished.

Once in bed, it took me a few minutes to go to sleep. However, I awoke at some point, totally disorientated, and it took me a while to settle down and even longer to go back to sleep. And there I was when the alarm went off.

Although I was totally dead to the World, I did manage somehow to put my feet on the floor and sit upright before the second alarm went off. Eventually, I could stagger off into the bathroom to sort myself out and have a good scrub up.

After my hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something going on in some kind of big house, and there were several families living there, including ours. In one of the families was a young girl and I was quite taken by her so I began to chat her up. Although she didn’t actually encourage me, she didn’t tell me to clear off or anything like that so I just tried to be nice and tried to talk to her. After a while, she ended up opening up and we had quite a nice little chat. And then my mother turned up, and as usual, she joined in the conversation to such an extent that I could see the tears beginning in this girl’s eyes and she walked out of the room. I waited for ten seconds or so and then went to follow her. And there, sitting by a wall, one of the interior walls, was a cat. Somehow, I knew that this cat was this girl so I crouched down and began to talk to it, to tell the cat that she mustn’t take any notice of that kind of thing. Then I picked it up and began to stroke it.

Now, this was rather a strange dream. But it seems to be par for the course when you consider how things were a couple of years ago, when I had these recurring dreams when I was just on the point of Getting The Girl after a lot of hard work, when someone from my family would come along and heave a spanner into the works. I hope that it isn’t going to become a recurring theme

But as for her turning into a cat, I must admit that I would love a cat here in this apartment but I’m not sure how feasible it’s going to be. For a start, I can’t travel anywhere to collect one.

There was also a dream about a woman who was separated from her husband. She had two children. Her husband wanted to come round to see her so my friend decided that he would hide in this woman’s apartment in case anything went wrong. For some reason or other, I was there too. We arranged one or two things that we arranged quite easily what was going on by putting things in various positions. One of the things was a hidden camera that was in a plastic bag on a shelf. When he came, he asked what was in it, but we’d had the forethought to put a couple of tins of pop in there, so she simply produced a tin of pop. The discussion went on, and then he began to attack her. I had a flask of really hot coffee for some reason, so I remember opening the top of this thermos flask and throwing the coffee all over him, which stopped him in his tracks. Then my friend came along from where he was hiding and dealt with the rest

This is a dream that seems to have come out of nothing, but why do I have the feeling that my friend was hiding in the thermos flask that I was holding? That’s a thought that I can’t push out of my mind

There was also some kind of vague memory about a dream concerning AFKAP – the Andrew Formerly Known As Prince – but I didn’t dictate anything and I can’t recall it now.

Obviously, this wasn’t a very arresting dream.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, earlier than she did yesterday. She told me that it was her birthday yesterday too so I wished her a happy birthday. It’s a shame that she hadn’t told me beforehand.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

We’ve now moved on to discuss bronze and iron working at the hillfort and this is a really interesting section.

He tells us that "Although sheet-bronze working appears to be at present a preserve of the hillfort, some aspects of metallurgy are shared with others, and, having considered the evidence of ironworking slag in the Iron Age deposits at the hillfort, "it is likely that at least 200 kg of iron artefacts were manufactured at Maiden Castle in the Late Iron Age".

This leads his team to the opinion that "it is clear that the ironworking site in the eastern gateway is one of the most important artefact production centres discovered in southern England."

Now, this makes me wonder if we are approaching some kind of idea of the purpose of hillforts in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

It has often been suggested that rather than being a defensive site against an enemy, a hillfort is the home of some kind of elite, with the peasants living outside it. Could it be that maybe the “elite” were the “elite” because they monopolised the important aspects of bronze and, later, iron fabrication, and the purpose of the defences was to protect the industrial site from being pillaged by envious locals who had no alternative but to obtain the sheet bronze and iron from the “elite” in the hillfort in order to fabricate their necessary articles?

Of course, the defences are somewhat extreme and the number of man-hours needed to build them must have been astonishing, and also the area covered by a hillfort is rather large. And as yet, it’s doubtful if the bronze and iron have been shown to have been fabricated in sufficient quantity in the hillfort to justify such a theory. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting idea that is worth exploring.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I pushed on with the radio programme on which I’d been working.

Taking rather a leisurely ramble, it was eventually finished, with plenty of time to go. And so afterwards, I edited the notes that I had dictated for the joining track for an earlier programme and ended up assembling that. So that’s now complete and ready to go.

There had been an interruption too. One of the net curtains here in the bedroom fell down. They are held up by hooks on these sticky pads, and the stickiness wears off after a while. However, we had bought some net curtain rails that came with some metal screw-in hooks, so my cleaner and I went round the apartment and replaced all the sticky pads with the screw-in hooks. I hope that they don’t fall out.

Tea tonight was chips, falafel and baked beans with cheese. French baked beans, which I don’t like at all. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I shall have to bite the bullet and order a tray of British baked beans online.

That was followed by tinned apricots and vegan sorbet, followed by a dismantling of the freezer when a pack of food fell down behind the bottom drawer.

So now, I’m off to bed, ready for a lazy weekend now that everything that I need to do has been done. However, I suppose that I’ll find plenty of things to do, as usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once had to take Tuppence, my old black cat, to the vets because she was not very well.
The vet picked her up and gave her a really good examination. After ten minutes, he said "I’m afraid that I’ll have to put your cat down."
"Good grief!" I exclaimed. "Is she that ill?"
"Oh no" he replied. "She’s just so flaming heavy."

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Wednesday 31st December 2025 – HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all of my readers. If you are reading these notes before midnight, I wish you an excellent reveillon. For those of you reading after midnight, I hope that you had a wonderful evening.

My best New Year’s Eve was, of course, that of 1999/2000 where I was interviewed on Flemish TV – in Flemish – as I flew out from Brussels and spent a week on Long Beach Island off the coast of New Jersey. But that’s another story.

Instead, let’s turn our attention to last night.

For once just recently, I managed to go for a whole day without crashing out and even managed to complete the notes too. I must be feeling better than I did at the weekend.

By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was about 23:15 when I crawled into my beautiful bed, and it wasn’t long until I was asleep either. It was so comfortable in there.

So comfortable that I really didn’t want to wake up, but I did nevertheless. I didn’t check the time, though. Instead, I thought “I’ll heave myself out of bed when the alarm sounds. It’ll go off in a couple of minutes, probably”.

After about half an hour of waiting, I had a look at the time. It was 03:20, meaning that I had been awake since about 02:50. Consequently, I tried my best to go back to sleep but instead, I watched the clock go round and round.

When it reached 04:55, I thought that I’d give it ten minutes and then go off an start work. The next thing that I remembered, though, was that it was 06:10. I must have gone back to sleep again.

When the alarm sounded, I hauled myself off into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. I took my time sorting myself out. It was nice to have a slow start to the day.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in Davenport Avenue and someone came to the house. They said that they wanted the catalogue for the records over the road at the social club. I must have lent them my records and I presumably wanted to play them and let people search through them for their favourites. I found the book with everything in it and set out to go across the road with the book. There were a couple of young boys loitering around the entrance to the place and they asked me what I was doing. I said that I was minding my own business. What were they doing? They cycled off and I walked down to the clubhouse. It was heaving with people and you couldn’t approach the door at first. I eventually worked out where the door was, walked through and began to ask around for whoever had asked for this. The first place that I tried was in the lounge bar but there was no-one there who seemed to be interested. In the sports room, there was no-one there either. In the end, I went through to the dance room. The barman was there with a crowd of people waiting to be served so I handed him the book and he took it.

We did have a social club across the road from our house in Davenport Avenue that was indeed laid out like that. It was quite popular too and there were times when it was very difficult to fight your way in. Today though, when I looked at an aerial photo of the site, it was yet another housing estate.

Later on, I was running my taxis again from Shavington. There were probably about a dozen people in the house. They were all doing different things, ironing clothes, cleaning shoes, etc., presumably for some big meeting or something. A couple of years earlier, there had been a taxi driver around Crewe whom my mother liked but he’d disappeared. The last we’d heard was that he was in Portugal. So my mother then disappeared and these people were all still trying to sort out their shoes and clothes. I was trying to find my shoes, which had disappeared somewhere amongst the chaos. My mother came back and said that she was off to see this guy. She was going to take him this, take him that and take him something else. I said “don’t take him everything like that. You don’t know anything about this guy”. She replied “that’s where you’re wrong. As a matter of fact, he has some kind of virus and he set up a business out there and it all went wrong. He’s really poverty-stricken”. I replied “so he made a bad business decision, so he’s ill but that happens to a lot of people. I’ve made bad business decisions, and I’ve been ill, but no-one came running halfway across the continent for me”. She was totally adamant that she was going and taking all this stuff so in the end, I just turned round, walked into the other room and carried on looking for my shoes, and everyone else carried on sorting out their clothes. Then someone else came in and was talking about the current situation and asking me how I was. I said that I’d just had a huge, blazing row with my mother. They asked me if I was bothered and I replied “not in the least. I’ve won the field and she’s cleared off so I’m not bothered in the least”.

So I was back on the taxis again after a couple of nights off – a very rare event indeed when I was actually driving.

As for my mother, I often had rows with her. It never bothered me, though, because I was quite used to her unpredictable and sometimes illogical nature. I’d heard it all before and so I was immune to it all.

However, I did find this dream to be extremely embarrassing. Now that I am ill, I have in fact had people who have come halfway across Europe and even further vide Canada to see me. I’m hardly likely to go criticising others.

The nurse turned up again but he didn’t stay long. We talked about his chiropodist and how nice she seemed to be – a vast improvement on whoever I’ve had before.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on with reading about Roman military engineering. Today, we’ve been talking about Hero engines and Heron fountains and both of those are interesting concepts. Had I been down on the farm, I would have built an example of each and had an experiment to see whether I could harness the energy and put it to use.

We were also discussing reverse overshot waterwheels. These are interesting because rather than water falling into buckets on a kind of treadmill to turn the treadmill and power machinery, there were men inside the treadmill turning it by walking, as in a mediaeval crane, and the buckets attached to the treadmill were used to lift the water up and out. That was how they drained mines and quarries in Roman days.

Back in here, I had some football to watch. Cardiff Metropolitan were at home to Hwlffordd in the JD Cymru League, and there were highlights to see. And hats off to the producers who managed to squeeze something out of the game because the fact that it was a 0-0 draw summed up just about everything there was to say about the game. I shan’t waste any more time watching a repeat. Someone ought to present Hwlffordd manager Tony Pennock with a stringed musical instrument and a ruminant animal for his team to use in the opponent’s penalty area next game.

There were computer issues later on. One of the discs in the array decided not to fire up and it was shorting out all of the others. After I’d taken it out, the others worked perfectly. I was trying for hours to fix the disc, but in the end, I had to call it a day. I “repaired” it about three weeks ago and it’s developed the same fault so I figure that it’s a hardware issue.

There should be a ruck of spare hard drives around here somewhere but God alone knows where. I found a 2 TB external drive, but the power pack for it is missing.

The rest of the day was spent on the radio programmes. All of the text is now written, and I started on another one. This one is going to be another Rock Festival and they are hard work to prepare

Tea was falafel and pasta, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. And now I’m off to bed, to celebrate the New Year by sleeping through it. I wish you all the best.

But seeing as we have been talking about that club in Crewe … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was in there, a ‘phone on the bar suddenly began to ring. A man right by it picked it up and answered the call
"Darling" said a female voice. "There’s a beautiful leather coat here in this shop on sale at £1000. I know we can’t afford it but it’s so lovely … "
"Just this once, ike it so much" said the man. "I’m sure that we can manage somehow."
"But you said that we couldn’t afford that £3000 holiday for our wedding anniversary " said the female voice
"If it means that much to you dear, go ahead and book it too. We’ll manage somehow."
The conversation finished at that point, and the guy with the ‘phone looked around at the people standing nearby and asked "Does anyone know whose ‘phone this is?"

0

Friday 3rd October 2025 — AFTER YESTERDAY’S LITTLE …

… health and morale wobble, I have spent the day in a much better and much more positive state of mind. And, to my, and probably your surprise too, not only have I not crashed out at all today, I have also managed to keep going without sinking into one of these catatonic fits.

It didn’t seem as if it was going to be like that last night, though. I really was feeling quite out of sorts and a late night … "yet again!" – ed … didn’t help matters all that much. I was certainly ready for bed, and glad that I could slide in underneath the covers without any further ado.

If only it had continued like that. At about 03:15, I awoke, and couldn’t go back to sleep. There was this nagging feeling in my mind about whether or not I’d switched on the water heater before going to bed and, if so, was it still working?

Realising that I’m never going to have any peace at all until I find out for definite, I went to look. And sure enough, it was switched on and still heating, so there will be hot water to wash the dishes in the morning.

On that note, I went back to bed and luckily enough, I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly.

Not for long, though. By 06:00 I was wide awake, having given up all hope of going back to sleep, and so I heaved myself out of my stinking pit and headed for the bathroom and the lovely hot water.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was during the American Civil War. I was in some kind of charge of a small area where I had eventually to transform everything into war defences to keep the Union army out. For a few months, it was a very vicious siege until at the end of the day we had beaten the Union Army and they began to retreat from the area. This was another one of those occasions where I really was ill and had a most upset stomach. I didn’t really feel like doing anything at all during the night and morning with all this going on.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … although I’m asleep when I’m dictating these dreams, there is usually some kind of vague recollection that comes back to me when I am typing them out. On a few rare occasions though, I remember nothing whatever about them and they are a total mystery to me, just like this one is.

There was some kind of meal being given in a restaurant where my boss, I suppose, had invited someone to lunch. Anyway, it wasn’t my boss at all but another guy and he was sitting at a table upstairs in this restaurant. I was hovering around on duty. I could hear the front door open and someone come in. As I looked down the stairs I could see this woman coming upstairs. She came in and stood by the door, but before I could go over to her, my boss went over to her and invited her back to a chair at his table. I felt embarrassed about that because I should be doing this. But this woman, she had Zero with her. They began to discuss the meal and the point of this meeting, but she said that she would like to start the meal straight away and eat while she is talking. For starters, she decided that she would have meatballs, and everyone else would have meatballs – the man would have meatballs and so would Zero so I beckoned the waiter over to take the order.

So welcome back, Zero! How lovely to see you again! I wish that she, and Castor, and TOTGA would come back more often into my dreams. As for this restaurant, though, I’ve been there before and I can still see it quite clearly in my imagination, but can I recall where it is? But it does remind me of a restaurant in Brussels to which I went once with a young lady of my acquaintance, but I shall say no more about it in case she is one of my anonymous readers.

By the way, if you are one of my anonymous readers, introduce yourself and say “hello”. I like to interact with my audience. There’s a contact button on the bottom right that you can use. I don’t bite … "well, not hard, anyway" – ed …

There was something else about someone coming into Granville. I’d arranged to meet them at the roundabout at the Sports Centre. However, I can’t remember anything else about this. It’s one of those that has evaporated completely.

Is this the first time that I’ve dreamed about Granville? I can’t recall Granville figuring in the dreams before and that’s a surprise because I’ve been living here for eight and a half years after I left Leuven.

Isabelle the Nurse came around, her happy, enthusiastic self as usual. She didn’t stay long, so I could push on and make breakfast, and then read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The British are at it again. Despite an overwhelmingly superior army (in numbers and supplies), they are refusing to take the battle to the Americans in the Northern States, and are abandoning coastal cities in the South for fear of being enveloped by the French fleet that has now joined in.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the British are not going to win this war unless and until they bring the American Army to the battlefield and defeat it. Running away from a fight won’t win any battles. I have the distinct feeling that the British are wasting their time here. If they aren’t going to fight to the bitter end, what was the point of starting?

Back in here, after dealing with some correspondence, I’ve spent the rest of the day dealing with this difficult radio programme that I’ve been trying to sort out for several weeks.

By the time that I’d knocked off for tea, I’d sorted out and remixed all of the music and I’ve written over half of the text. It all took an age to do and I’ve no idea where all of the motivation and energy came from, but here we are. I’m hoping to finish it tomorrow so that I can dictate it on Sunday morning and then move on to another one.

There was an interruption for me to go down to the Centre Normandy for my physiotherapy etc. My first appointment was for 13:30 but the taxi came for me at 12:45, which meant that I had a wait of over half an hour. Why can’t the taxi come early like this when it’s dialysis?

To my surprise, my physiotherapist proposed a foot massage, to try to force the circulation back into my feet and toes. They are actually quite cold and numb, as no blood is reaching them. It sounded such a strange idea to me, but who am I to complain? I’m just grateful that I’m having all this attention, all for free. There have to be some consolations with being terminally ill.

The second session was with the ergotherapist. He discussed my living arrangements and what I would need to be more autonomous. And one thing that I learned was that “a young Thai serving wench” is not the answer to my problems – at least, according to the ergotherapist.

He took a lot of notes and filled in several forms, but what the outcome of all of that will be, I have no idea.

When I went in, they gave me a programme of next week’s sessions, and the driver duly photographed it to send off to her dispatching office. And so, when I came out, they gave me another one to replace the one that I’d had just an hour or so earlier.

Back here, my faithful cleaner helped me inside and then she cleared off. I had a little relax, a disgusting drink, and then carried on work.

Tea was falafel and chips with vegan salad, and now I’m going to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow so I need to be on form. And then with a bit of luck, there will be a foot fest on Sunday if I’m lucky. It seems to be my only source of enjoyment these days.

But seeing as we have been talking about useful help around the house … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of a chat that I had once with a French woman.
"What do you call in English that machine thing that you have around the house to make the clothes smooth and flat after you’ve washed tham?"
"Ohh, that," I replied. "That’s called a ‘wife’."

0

Monday 15th September 2025 – I AM THOROUGHLY …

… completely and absolutely fed up with this blasted dialysis.

The taxi came early for me for a change, and I was one of the very first to arrive at the dialysis centre. And yet, just to confound everything, it was another one of the latest returns back home that I have ever had.

It seems that everything has conspired against me and confounded my expectations, and I really must stop being so paranoid about it all because it’s doing me no good.

Yesterday, as usual, it was another evening that dragged on and on as I struggled to bring myself into a position where I could actually finish things off. Not that things were of much use because even though I might have finished my notes before 23:00, there was so much else to do and I couldn’t find the energy and motivation to do it.

Eventually, I managed to crawl into bed, much later than I had intended, and there I stayed, fast asleep, until 06:03 this morning.

“Just give me two minutes and I’ll hop out of bed” I said to myself, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. I must have gone back to sleep again, which is a surprise because I’m not able to do that when I would like, but can somehow almost always manage it when I don’t want to.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash, a scrub up, a shave and a change of clothing in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, and then I went for my medication.

Back in here afterwards, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something happening concerning the West Point Military Academy in the USA -about how if people stuck to the correct geometric … "he means ‘geographical’" – ed … co-ordinates, they would find themselves slap-bang in the middle of the camp quite properly, but if they were to deviate by even half a degree, they would find themselves in open country that surrounded the establishment. I’m not sure what else there is to say about that.

This presumably relates to something that I read about Benedict Arnold, who entered into an agreement with the British to hand over West Point to them during the American Revolutionary War.

My friends had built a log cabin for me. It was on the roof of a big hotel, and they had used some of the natural features of the rock at the back of the hotel to form part of the shape of it, and then built the rest out of small logs positioned width-ways around it and all cemented in. They had made a beautiful job of it. They showed me around afterwards and it looked really nice. It was fairly primitive with a beaten earth floor etc but it was exactly what I wanted. I hadn’t believed that my friends could have made something so nice as this. When they showed me around, there was a nurse there who gave me a massage on my back to make sure that everything was working fine for a while, and then they all left me there. I was really comfortable, looking out at all the scenery in the mountains with all the snow. The way into this cabin was to go into the hotel and ask for permission to use the lift to go right to the very top floor, and I could come out onto the roof and I’d be there. The first time that I tried this, there were some oranges on the hotel reception desk, so I took an orange too. But the nurse who was there, she came up to me afterwards and said “when I come again, there will be a little present in my room for me, won’t there?”. I realised that, of course, she’s going to need paying for coming to give me a massage and that kind of thing. But the bad news was that I overheard a conversation between several people, one of whom was a medical type, who told me that the illness is now creeping into my back and my arms, so I thought that I’m not going to be able to enjoy my little cabin for all that much longer

This could relate to my wonderful friends who helped me move house a month ago, although I’ve no idea where the hotel and the nurse fit in. It is generally reminiscent of my plot of land in Canada where I had indeed intended to erect a log cabin so that I could go there every summer. However, my health had other plans.

The nurse came around today, his usual (these days) cheerful self, full of joie de vivre and bonhomie. He didn’t stay long, so I could crack on with breakfast and read the rest of BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

That book is now finished and I’ve started the next one, BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. This is the full-length version of over 800 pages and goes into everything in a much greater depth.

So far today, we’ve been having Carrington’s eulogy and it looks as if it might continue in this vein for a couple of days yet. He takes and age to reach the point … "think of a well-known phrase involving pots and kettles" – ed …

After breakfast, there was some housekeeping that needed attention, and then I had to send off the radio programme for the coming weekend. That was something else that took an age with this new file transfer program that we are obliged to use now that the old one has died a death.

There were also a few ‘phone calls to make, and then I could concentrate on my Welsh homework that I should have done ages ago. It’s going to take an age because I can’t remember anything at all about the unit on which the homework is based.

My cleaner was late arriving, so I’d already begun to prepare my bag for dialysis. We had quite a long chat too, which was interrupted by the arrival of the taxi driver, abut 20 minutes early.

We had to pick up another passenger in Granville to take to Avranches, but even so, we were still about 20 minutes early.

My bed was all ready for me, but it still took them one hour and fifteen minutes to plug me in, by which time I was a most unhappy bunny.

The delays continued throughout the session – I even had to be reconnected because one of the pins had missed its aim and they had to start again.

What with all of this, I was in no mood to work. I just wanted to leave there. The doctor came to see me but he had nothing to say for himself and left quite quickly.

When the alarm went off for the end of the session, I had to wait 15 minutes to be unconnected. And then they decided to work on my feet for a while.

The taxi was 15 minutes late too so by the time that I returned home, it was long after 19:30, and that’s quite late (although not unheard-of) for a dialysis session.

With it being so late, I wasn’t in the mood to do much so I had pasta and falafel for tea – the falafel well-overcooked in the microwave.

But now I’m off to bed for an early night (I hope) the alarm is set for 06:00 tomorrow to give me a good start for chemotherapy. But it really is awful, all of this.

But seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … she was there this afternoon but all that I had was a grudging “hello”.
It’s a far cry from last summer when she would sit at the foot of my bed and chat to me about nothing in particular.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall when she brought the first set of test results to me. "You have acute anaemia" she said.
"Thank you" I replied. "I’m so glad that you like it."

0

Friday 1st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… things are much better today and I’m feeling a little less … "only a little less" – ed … miserable, depressed and ill.

What probably helped was a much better night’s sleep than just recently. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday’s notes were somewhat … errr … compressed as I dashed through them before ill-health and fatigue overwhelmed me.

It was something of a mad rush to finish them but I managed to climb into bed just before 22:30 and once in there, that was that. I was out like a light and didn’t feel a thing until all of … errr … 05:40.

That might have sounded as if it was early, but it represented over seven hours of uninterrupted sleep, and when was the last time that I managed that?

It took a good few minutes to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have left these days, but by 06:10 I was in the bathroom having a good scrub up.

The medication was next as usual, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had been there with me. And lo! And behold! I had a telephone call while I was asleep. It was from TOTGA. She was telling me that she was thinking about moving and in fact was planning to move on in a couple of weeks’ time. I told her that I was really pleased for her, but I was really sad in another way because her bakery would be closed and there would be no more fresh bread from there. We had a lengthy chat over the telephone. Halfway through it, I had to go out so I walked off down the street taking the ‘phone with me, chatting on the way and I came to her bakery. Of course, with it being a Tuesday it was closed. I could hear her inside talking to me on the ‘phone. Anyway, one of the blinds moved. It was her husband who was peeking out through one of the blinds. After a little minute or two, he opened the door and let me in. She was saying that she was moving in a few days’ time or in a short while. Her husband said that he would be there for another couple of weeks and then he’d be moving. I said that I’ll be moving in a week or two’s time too so we had a big chat about moving. Then she began to pack her boxes. She wanted her boxes opened in a certain peculiar way that meant that the tops had to be folded right back. I couldn’t understand why she was having to do that this way.
So welcome back to TOTGA, who has been missing from these pages for far too long. So she’s on the move too, at least in the ethereal World. I wonder what might be the significance of that. I don’t keep in touch with people as I used to since I cast all of my Social Media adrift eighteen months ago.

However, I could easily picture her running a bakery. Apart from the fact that she’s a good cook, she has a natural talent for organising and managing. With someone like her in the background managing all of my ideas, we could have ruled the World, but she had far more sense than to come anywhere within range of my evil clutches.

The next task was to review the news article that I wrote the other day and see how it was. In the end, I practically rewrote it and I still wasn’t happy with it. However, on the principle of “over-egging the pudding”, I left it as it finished and sent it off. And for a news source that is crying out for articles, it’s not been published as yet.

Back in the olden days in Brussels and down on the farm, I wrote quite a few articles for various publications and made myself a little pocket money, but even though this publication pays three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing, I ought to go back into the habit of working for a living before my brain seizes up completely.

There’s an interesting article in the local news this morning. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the controversy three years ago about the Russian sailing ship Shtandart COMING TO VISIT GRANVILLE during the Festival of Sailing Ships, and how it seemed that I was the only person in the whole département who found it objectionable give the political situation and the number of Ukrainian refugees here.

Apparently, the organisers of the festival have invited her back this year, but this time, the regional and national authorities have intervened and refused her a landing permit. And quite right too, in my opinion. But all the same, this incident and that of three years ago shows quite clearly that, despite the number of Ukrainian refugees living in the area, on which side of the fence the local politicians are sitting. Remember that they even banned my pro-Ukrainian rock concert.

Usually, I try my best to keep politics off these pages because otherwise, I’d be talking about nothing else. However, sometimes, it’s unavoidable

Hurricane Isabelle the Nurse blew into the apartment to give me my injection and to sort out my feet, and then she blew out as quickly as she had come in. And once she’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author, John Stow, has now made it to Westminster which, in those days, was a suburb of the City of London. His account of the area is fascinating, telling us all about the origins of the names of some of the places that are so famous today.

St James was a house for "fourteen sisters, maidens that were leprous, living chastely and honestly in divine service" but when the religious establishments were surrendered to Henry VIII, the King "built there a goodly manor annexing thereunto a park, closed about with a wall of brick, now called St James’s Park."

He also speaks of "a large plot of ground inclosed with brick, and is called ‘Scotland’ where great buildings have been for the receipt of the Kings of Scotland.". So “evening all”. And I bet that the plot of land is more than three feet long and three feet wide.

There are pages and pages of explanations like this, and it’s fascinating to read it all. I shall be sorry when this book comes to an end.

Back in here, I made a start on assembling the next radio programme’s music. It’s to be a live concert but it was recorded by different people in different fragments and so I have two complications to face.

Firstly, to make the recording levels and sound balance etc the same
Secondly, what to do about the gaps of a few micro-seconds in between some of the tracks where nothing was recorded.

Where there are overlapping parts, that’s quite easy, just fade in and out as appropriate and merge the tracks, but filling holes is more complicated, especially when one recording is 0.5% faster than the other one.

So that’s a task that has taken all day and it’s far from finished

The very first job though was to complete my order for LeClerc. And it’s extremely sad as more and more produce is being removed from the home delivery service. And when it was delivered, we had a catastrophe. The box of grape juice burst and soaked half of the shopping, so some of it had to go back.

There was an endless stream of visitors too today. Firstly, the energy guy came to do an energy audit, then my cleaner came along to do her stuff, and finally the sewing lady from down the road came to talk curtains with me.

It’s rather unfortunate, that, because she’s on the verge of retiring and so her stock of cloth has run down. She had nothing that I liked. She’ll have a rummage in the back of her shop to see what she can find, but it looks as if it’s going to be another on-line order.

People talk all the time about “shop local”, but these days, you can’t even give work away to people. They just don’t seem to be bothered.

When the LeClerc order (or what was left of it) arrived, I washed, diced and blanched the carrots ready for freezing, washed the tins and jars to remove the grape juice, and then went to sit down for a while. My knees were killing me.

Tea tonight was falafel, salad and chips – not very much tonight as I’m not that hungry. And then I put away the carrots and the rest of the stuff that needs freezing.

So having written my notes, I’m going to bed, later than planned, but still hoping for a good sleep before dialysis, which I hate with a passion.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Westminster … "well, one of us has" – ed … John Stow tells us that "had ye one house, wherein sometime were distraught and lunatic people."
While I was chatting to a friend of mine, I mentioned it to her.
She replied "so he’s not a big fan of the House of Commons either."

0

Monday 23rd June 2025 – I HAD A …

… special visitor during the night last night – someone who hasn’t been to see me for quite some considerable time.

But more of that anon. This time tomorrow I shall be … well … not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in a hospital bed in Paris where they will be starting this Rituximab cancer treatment.

Or, rather, restarting it, because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that was the product (or Mabthera, a generic thereof) that they gave me right at the beginning back in February 2016 after the chemotherapy failed.

And it worked at that moment too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was unable to walk and so ill that I had to live with friends because I was unable to cope by myself, yet six months later I was in Canada. I’m not expecting the same miracles this time, but any little help and relief that it might give me will be most welcome.

And in other news, it looks as if this apartment move will be taking place during the week of 18th-25th of August. That seems to be when the usual suspects are collecting themselves together, and I’m recruiting further volunteers if anyone else would like to join in. All are welcome and I do not practise any kind of discrimination at all. I hate everyone equally, regardless of race, creed, colour or sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, had I exerted myself last night I could have been in bed well before 23:00 but as usual, dillying and dallying about, it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled in underneath the covers.

When I awoke at 05:20 I was somewhere about in the dialysis centre but whatever it was that I was doing evaporated from my mind immediately … "not that there’s much in there to hold it in" – ed … which is just as well because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t like to dwell on that place when I’m not there. It’s bad enough that I do when I am.

The first task that I undertook when I finally settled down at the desk (at … errr … 05:50) was to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. And, as I said earlier, I had a special visitor come to see me. There was a group of us in a house somewhere and who should come in but our old friend (or mine, anyway), Zero. And what a long time it’s been since she last put in an appearance. I wanted to say “hello” to her but she walked right through the front of the house all the way to the stairs. I pretended to chase after, and she saw me, let out a squeal and ran upstairs. Her mother said something about going to frighten her away and that I had to look after her at that end of the room. My brother was upstairs in his room at the time and I could hear him and Zero talking to each other. I thought “how am I going to look after Zero at this end of the room if she has already gone upstairs?”. I thought in any case that he was supposed to be busy doing some things that he needed to do rather than sit around talking, but apparently not.

So here we go again. Zero having far more sense than to hang around chatting to me, and a member of my family turning up in my nocturnal rambles to spoil all my fun. I thought that we’d put all of that behind us, but apparently not. Presumably, some psychiatrist somewhere would come out with a few interesting remarks about this kind of situation, but it would all be news to me. There’s no other logical explanation for it, although whatever logic would have to do with what went on in my head during the night would also be news to me.

Round about 07:00 everyone else began to surface so I went for a good wash and scrub up ready for dialysis and Emilie the Cute Consultant, although I forgot to shave. And then we sat around waiting for Isabelle the Nurse to come to see me.

Almost as soon as she left, the taxi came round to take me to the Medical Centre to see the doctor about my heart.

At first, I saw his assistant who coupled me up to an echograph machine with a rapidity that took me quite by surprise.
"That’s not the first time that you’ve done this, is it?"
"Oh no" she replied. "Only a few thousand times.".

When she’d finished, she took me into the doctor’s room where he gave me a thorough examination.
"It’s not your heart that’s causing your problems" he said. "That’s working fine."

And that’s just as well because it’s only my heart that is keeping me going. With my low blood count and low blood pressure, my heart is having to beat about twice as fast as anyone else’s. Anyone’s heart can do that for a while, but mine’s been doing it for almost ten years. When it gives out, I’ll be gone in an instant.

But at least he found my heart and I still have one. I’ve not turned into a Conservative yet.

"Where’s all your paperwork?" he asked.
"No-one told me to bring any" I replied. "The dialysis centre arranged this appointment. I imagined that they would have sent you whatever you needed"
"You should always bring all of your medical paperwork with you when you come" he said
"I’ll remember that" I replied. "Do you know where I can hire a fork-lift truck?"

But as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Back here (in the rain) I was halfway through eating breakfast when the ‘phone rang.
"What are you doing tomorrow?" a voice asked
"Not a lot" I replied.
"Good. Come to Paris and we’ll start the Rituximab"

So there we are. Now a frantic ringing-round to book taxis and obtain permission from the Securité Sociale.

My cleaner turned up as usual to fit my anaesthetic patches and then we waited around for a while. As the weather was now back to sunshine, we went downstairs to wait outside.

The taxi was bang on time with our other passenger already in, and we shot off to Avranches at the Speed of Light, me with my eyes closed. It’s not very often I feel nervous as a passenger these days.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s no point being ten minutes early anywhere if you have to spend that ten minutes washing your underwear.

When we arrived there were three ambulances ahead of us unloading the horizontal patients so I knew how this would pan out. And when one of those ahead in the queue had a crisis and everyone had to rush to help, I knew that that was that.

Having a trainee didn’t improve my morale much, and my 13:30 arrival turned into a 14:30 coupling up.

The doctor came round to see me to ask me how I was.
"OK at the moment but it won’t be for much longer if you keep on prescribing me these" and I showed him one of the boxes of tablets that I’d been prescribed on Saturday, a product that contained lactose.
"And your doctor moaned at me a few weeks ago when I had that attack of pancreatitis"

He didn’t stay very long after that.

The dietician came to see me too, to ask how I was getting on with the disgusting drink that she prescribed for me.

When I told her that I was taking it as instructed, she replied "Good" and renewed the prescription for another three months. I should have said nothing.

Julie the Cook was back from her holidays and she had ten minutes to come to sit on my bed for a chat, which was nice. She’s a really nice, bubbly, cheerful girl and always has a smile on her face. She can also perch on my bed any time she likes.

When I was uncoupled, I went out to the taxi but we had to wait (and wait, and wait) for another passenger who needs a lot of assistance. And who is dropped off first so it was at 19:37 when we finally arrived home.

My adjustable stool had arrived this afternoon and so things are looking much more positive downstairs. The stool will certainly ease my cooking issues, as I can now sit down while I’m at the worktop cooking, and take the weight off my knees.

Tea tonight was baked potato, salad in balsamic vinegar and a mix of falafel and veggie balls. It was delicious as usual.

Tomorrow I have bags to pack, sandwiches to make and food to rustle up, seeing as I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. They say that I’ll be back on Wednesday, but we shall see. I’m really grateful that my friend is here to deal with the kitchen that will (hopefully) arrive.

But first, I’m off to bed in the hope that Zero will come back.

Seeing as we have been talking about the doctor’s surgery just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … the patient before me was complaining about having a very sore throat
"Right" said the doctor. "Go over to the window, stick your thumbs in your ears and stick out your tongue as far as you can."
"Will that make me feel better?" asked the patient
"Oh no" replied the doctor. "My wife’s standing on the pavement outside."

0

Saturday 31st May 2025 – AS I SHOULD …

… have expected (because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s par for the course), this idea of changing my dialysis to the mornings was just a brief, ephemeral illusion.

When I arrived there this afternoon, I told them that my cleaner and I had had a lengthy discussion and decided that it was a much more practical arrangement for us, only to be told "it’s OK – we’ve found another solution now."

What with everything through which I have gone over the past few years, I’m convinced that the medical service (everywhere in the World, not just here) fails to understand that we are not pawns on a chessboard that can be moved here and there at will or at a whim. We are human beings, with lives of our own to fulfil and (in my case at least) my own life and activities have a much higher priority that anything that the hospital can conjure up.

So, as you can probably tell, I was in a bad mood today.

There isn’t any special reason for that either. Although it wasn’t early when I went to bed, it wasn’t all that late either. I was asleep quite quickly too, and there I stayed, totally flat out, until about 05:50.

It took something of an effort to raise myself from the Dead but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, washed the clothes that needed washing and was on my way to the kitchen for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us from school again hanging around together. One of them was a girl from Shavington who went to Nuthurst, the exclusive private primary school in Nantwich. We were talking about the maths classes, discussing in particular these pyramid graph things that we used to do, describing how we used to do them and talking about one or two examples. This girl was saying that during one or two of her maths classes she became carried away and began to make one of these pyramid graph things for the pills but by the time she reached about the third row she just put the downward shafts and wrote underneath “lots and lots”. There was also something about someone whose idea of a pyramid graph was that if he had something like a small party and a big party he would just draw simply one line between the two elements and that would be his pyramid graph.

There’s a story about that girl too, but that’s another one that the World is not yet ready to hear

One thing that I, and, presumably, regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that just recently there has been a whole spate of these stories that the World is not yet ready to hear, coming into my subconscious mind during the night. There’s definitely an undercurrent of something, and I wish that I knew what it was. Maybe is simply a story of regrets for my wasted, mis-spent youth. But on the other hand, it’s certainly not wasted or mis-spent because everything about it was what brought me here. As Paul Peña once famously wrote and Steve Miller famously sang, YOU KNOW YOU GOTTA GO THROUGH HELL BEFORE YOU GET TO HEAVEN

Later on, I was in Congleton with the guitarist and drummer with whom I used to play. We were going somewhere in my van and we reached a house. I left the van and said that I’d be back in a minute, and wandered off. Then I came back and we climbed into the van and went to the next place. I said again “I’ll be back in a minute”, left the van and went into the drive. There was a woman there smoking a cigarette. I asked her a question and she just gave me a strange look, so I asked it to her again. She just smiled and gave me a very non-committal answer so I’ve no idea what was the matter with her. I went round to the back of the house and knocked onto the door. I could hear someone say that there was someone at the door. At that moment a big tabby cat stuck its head through the window so I went to stroke it. Then some young guy came to the door. I told him that my guitarist wanted to see him. He grabbed his cigarettes, came outside and went down to the van. We ended up then in another house. His response was that he was really comfortable with the idea that people from the street could come and go into their house at any time they liked. When the guitarist came back from wherever he had been, they began to talk. The drummer joined in with the conversation. I felt that I was being isolated here and I’d no idea why. In the end I simply sat down and waited for everything to finish.

When that group came to an end back in the Winter of 1976, my intuition told me that I actually was being slowly isolated and edged out, which was a shame. And then I had a load of other preoccupations that stopped me from pressing on. For the next couple of summers I lived in my van with the winter spent in that squat. It was not a very happy time and it took me a while to sort myself out – a task that is still not finished 50 or so years further on.

The nurse was on time today for a change, and we had the usual banal chatter about nothing of any importance whatsoever.

After he left I could make my breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We didn’t stay long at Scarborough, and we’ve now arrived at Skenfrith Castle, which is in that fine old English county of … errr … Monmouthshire.

And here we go again. On page 469 he tells us that "there is a sort of recess, which may have been the kitchen fireplace, the cooking being usually, in these towers, carried on in an upper floor".

Meanwhile, on page 471, he tells us that "The history of Skenfrith is obscure, but it is evident that it was built simply to contain a small garrison, and not at all as a private residence. The area contains no trace of hall, chapel, or kitchen."

Don’t you wish that he’d make up his mind?

Back in here, I’ve been chatting to plumbers. I posted an advertisement on one of these traders’ websites for someone to take away the bath and tile around where the bath used to be. I’ve had a few enquiries and I spent most of the morning following them up. We’ll see where this takes me.

My cleaner turned up, bang on time, to fit my anaesthetic patches and it was such a lovely day that we went outside to stand in the sunshine until the taxi arrived. And we took full advantage of the nice weather, because the taxi didn’t arrive until 13:05.

It was a nice, sunny drive down to Avranches and, to my surprise, I was seen quite quickly too. And only three and a half hours today which is good news. The less-than-good news is that the ice-cold spray that they recommended didn’t seem to do me much good and one of the pins hurt like Hades all through the session.

Early on, for about fifteen minutes, I crashed out but I soon got to grips with myself and pressed on to revise my Welsh, seeing as I’ll be in Paris on Tuesday instead of at my lesson. But it’s hard going when I’m wracked with pain like that. I really can’t concentrate.

Eventually I was let out and the same driver who brought me took me home in the sun and warmth. My cleaner was waiting for me and it was just as well, because it was a very, very weary me who climbed up these stairs. I shall really be glad to be downstairs and can cut out all of this.

Back in here I collapsed into a chair for a while and then eventually went to make tea. Falafel, baked potato and salad followed by ginger cake and soya dessert.

So right now, I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed, in the (vain) hope of having a nice, long sleep. It’s been a while since the last one and in principle, it’s a lie-in tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about pyramids … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story that Frankie Howerd used to tell.
During World War II he used to say that he served in Egypt and on one occasion he was taken in an aeroplane to see the pyramids.
Halfway round the circuit, the plane was hit by a gust of wind. It turned upside-down and Frankie fell out.
The pilot recovered control and performed a circuit around to see if he could see anything, when suddenly there was a “thud” and Frankie was back in his seat.
"What the …" uttered the pilot
"Don’t you worry about it" said Frankie. "The point on that pyramid is sharper than it looks"

0

Friday 16th May 2025 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… have guessed already, it was rather more of the same again this morning. Yet another early start.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early because all it seems to mean these days is that it’s a correspondingly early start the following morning.

The benefit is probably something to do with the fact that I’m usually so tired in the evening that going to sleep at that point is a good idea, but would I be so tired in the evening were I not to awaken so early in the morning? It’s one of those conundrums that ca go on forever.

So last night after tea, I put my back into everything and had finished all of my notes as early as 22:30. There was then the statistics and the backing-up to do and after the bathroom to prepare myself for bed, I was under the bedclothes by 22:50.

And that reminds me – seeing as we are talking about the statistics … "well, one of us is" – ed … the ones that I take here are a far cry from what I used to take down on the farm. I counted once and there were at that point no fewer than 22 readings to take, and quite a few of those involved a lengthy trip down the field to take readings of rainfall and of the temperature in the greenhouse, etc.

Those were the days, of course. I had a huge pile of notes that I was slowly entering into a spreadsheet ready to publish a report, but alas! I was overtaken by events, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

So once under the covers I wasn’t awake long. Not at all. And I can’t remember anything until I awoke.

It was vaguely becoming sort-of light outside so I looked at the ‘phone to find out the time. It was just about 05:29, far too early to leave the bed. I tried to go back to sleep again but I gave that up as a bad job and at 06:10 I was up and about.

After a good wash, I went into the kitchen for the medication and then came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was a friend’s birthday and he was going to have a big party round at his house. Unfortunately, for some reason, I couldn’t go so I was spending the weekend doing something else. I lent him my vehicle, a Triumph Herald estate, for a short while while he organised himself. While I was in my little apartment in Manchester on the edge of the city somewhere, I happened to look up and there on the flyover going past in the distance was my Triumph Herald Estate with this guy driving it and someone whom he’d picked up from the railway station. I thought “how surprising. That’s really a coincidence”. As it happened, seeing as this birthday party didn’t work out too well and I spoke to my friend later on, I asked him how it went. He said that the guy whom he’d picked up from Manchester was OK for a while but once we came round to the subject of birthdays and wrapping presents he had a meltdown. It didn’t go down very well at all. I told him that that was a shame. I asked him if he had been in Manchester on the Friday evening. He replied that he had. I told him what I had seen of this Triumph Herald estate and two people who looked like him and his colleague etc. He agreed that it could well have been his … fell asleep here … so that was the situation. He told me that it was in fact him – that it may well have been him who was coming back from Manchester on that Friday with that guy in that vehicle

This actually does remind me of a real event, except that it was a different friend whose party it was, I was the one who went to pick up the other friend, it wasn’t the railway station in Manchester either and it wasn’t my Triumph Herald. I did have a Triumph Herald estate once, in the days when I was going through about one car every week, recycling cars that were on their last legs before they eventually made their final trip to the scrapyard

He also explained that things didn’t go very well in general, that he had ended up with all of his possessions out all over the floor while he was trying to sort things out. His friend tried to help him a little with some architecture and some property renovation but to no success. He was perfectly glad that today was on the point of drawing to an end.

This is presumably related to the first dream, but the people are actually the wrong way round in it

That dream went on and I could also use my own plate and the car as something from under my netball work tournament that in the 258 cars and the 278 cars that could be pieced together and never go very much but he got away with this but was extending by whose place he was going to use for camouflage but he wanted to hand the car back to the previous owner to mark him right again

As for whatever this is about, I have absolutely no idea.

In the end I had my light blue Opel Ascona as a taxi. The area where I operated was round the South of Wales. The plate had gone back to its owner and I was making do with a fitted kitchen and the escort who looked very much like Marie Rhiwabon was looking at her charms saying that she wasn’t ready to come home for at least another hour which disappointed me because I was in a hurry to be home

This story has a great deal of actual significance, even down to the car, but it didn’t take place in South Wales.

The third and fourth dream are quite interesting. For the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, although I’m asleep when I’m dictating these notes (and “falling asleep” means that I go silent and after a minute or so you can hear the heavy breathing as if I’m talking to some strange woman on the telephone) when I come to transcribe them, I usually have a slight recollection of the events coming back from the depths of my subconscious. However, for these latter two, there was absolutely nothing whatsoever.

The nurse turned up as usual and I told him about the quote that I received from his friend. "But you don’t understand how prices have rocketed since Covid and the war in Ukraine" he said. He really does talk the most extraordinary bulls … errr … nonsense.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve now left Montgomery Castle and having passed by Morlais Castle (which is in that part of England known as “Glamorgan”) we’re now at Norham Castle in Northumberland.

Norham is an important castle situated on the English side of the River Tweed. It played an important rôle during the conflicts between the English and the Scots. The town itself is the site of a well-known Saxon Church in which are said to be the remains of the Saxon Bishop Saint Ceolwolf, translated there at some date in the first half of the Ninth Century,

A curious fact about the town of Norham. It was a personal possession of the Bishops of Durham so even though it is right at the far north of Northumberland, it was considered to be an enclave of the County of Durham until the passage of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844.

So when will we begin to talk about the military architecture of the castle?

Back in here I sorted out a few things that needed my attention, and then for the rest of the day I’ve been Woodstocking. I’ve now finished all of Saturday and I’m well on the way to dealing with Sunday – the final day.

Saturday’s programme should be interesting though. For a one-hour programme, I’ve one hour, twenty-five minutes and six seconds so far and by the time that I will have finished reading it though again, it’s likely to expand even more. The big question is not “what to include” but “what to leave out?”. That was the story of my life when at University – word-counts were the bane of my life.

There were the usual interruptions too. My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment, there was lunch, there was a disgusting drink break or two too. But for a change, no-one bothered me on the ‘phone.

Tea tonight was falafel with chips and a vegan salad followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. The chocolate cake is running low and I reckon that next weekend I shall have to make another cake. If I remember, next week I’ll ask my faithful cleaner to find some fresh ginger and I’ll make a fiery ginger cake.

But right now, I’m off to bed, to see if I can actually manage a nice, long sleep. It’s dialysis tomorrow so I’m likely to be pretty wasted afterwards.

But seeing as we have been talking about word counts … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of something that I heard a long time ago while I was at school.
"There was a young man from Japan
Who couldn’t make limericks scan
He said “my old bean
I know just what you mean
But I always do my best to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

0

Friday 28th February 2025 – I HAVE FINISHED …

… my magnum opus at long last. And magnum is hardly the word. Having slashed the music as much as possible (out of the thirty-two acts that appeared at Woodstock I have included a mere ten) and written as little as possible to accompany it,, I am now looking for suggestions as to how to fit one hour and forty-four minutes of programme into a one-hour slot.

Had I done the “essential Woodstock” as I was planning to do, I would have ended up with probably about four hours.

Anyway, that will be Saturday night’s dictation and I can wrack my brains on Sunday as to how I am going to do it

It was a very weary process though today, not helped by the fact that I was up until late again. Another good concert came around on the playlist and that kept me up while I listened to it. I had to switch off the computer rather hastily once it had finished just in case something else interesting came around.

And last night I tried a novel experiment. I turned the heating in the bedroom right down, to see if that might improve the situation about all this perspiring.

Once in bed, it took, as usual, an age to go off to sleep and then as is the case these days … "??" – ed … we had another turbulent night… "!!" – ed … when I was tossing and turning from one side of the bed to the other. Not perspiring as much though. Maybe the room is too hot.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep, walking through Chester and having an urgent need to go to the bathroom. I dived into a café where I knew the toilets were. The waitress moaned at me so I said that we’d sort out the coffee later. “When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go”. I dashed downstairs but took one look at the bathroom and decided that I wasn’t going to waste any time in that place. What was interesting was that the WC had a view through an open window right across the river where anyone going past on a boat could see what was going on.
.
Between 1972 and 1974 I had a couple of happy years living and working in Chester, finding my feet after leaving school and running away from home. I should have made much more of my stay there than I did but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Surprisingly, there are things going on in my head right now where Chester actually does figure quite considerably, but the World isn’t ready to hear that story right now either.

After a good wash and scrub up I went for the medication and then came back into Ice Station Zebra where I turned up the heating and listened to the dictaphone. There was an athletics tournament taking place in Scotland. The winner of the tournament was the town of Edinburgh and so Edinburgh announced that it was actually going to re-partake in some kind of national competition again because this was the forty-fourth time in succession that the town had actually finished top in events like this, measured on the performances of the athletes compared to the athletes of other towns that were in this particular competition.

Forty-fourth time in succession? Sounds like TNS winning the Welsh Premier League, doesn’t it? Penybont have blown up spectacularly after leading the table for a while and if they carry on at this rate Hwlffordd could well overtake them into second place, something that seemed most unlikely six weeks ago.

Did I dictate the dream where I was with someone and my apartment needed tidying up … "no you didn’t" – ed …. Some guy and his young daughter came round and decided that they would spend a whole day helping me. She used the Welsh term ysbridoli – “a spirit” or “to inspire” – to describe how they were feeling when her father said that they had set out really early in order to have a really good day at it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would come round and tidy up my apartment for me right now? Tidying up is not my strong point, as anyone who has been anywhere where I have been will tell you. Ezra Pound once said of Ford Madox Ford "Put Ford naked in an empty room and within an hour behold total chaos" and “Fordy” is not alone in this skill.

Finally there were two friends who lived next door to each other. One of them was married but the other friend was having an affair with his wife. This had been going on for some time. Suddenly the other guy found out about it, didn’t say anything but waited until the man said something to him that he and the wife wanted to run away. The married man pulled out a revolver or was it an automatic, and waved it around in front of the guy’s nose. The guy said “you can’t be serious about this?” so the guy just pulled the trigger and shot him. He had then to dash into work because he was late and had to think of a way of making sure that people thought that he was at work. He waited until a delivery lorry came in and then spent all the morning helping them unload the delivery lorry. The police though were quite suspicious of him because someone had put some rubbish into the waste bin earlier that morning when at the time he was supposed to have been at work but wasn’t. They didn’t know who it was who had done that and suspected that it was him

The things about which I dream are sometimes really weird and have no explanation at all that I can see.

Isabelle the Nurse was late again today. She didn’t stay long, but was in quite a good mood. She’ll be here tomorrow but on Sunday she’s off for a week Carnavalling. I reminded her to show me the photos afterwards.

Once she’d left, it was breakfast and BOOK time. Today, our author has spend about fifteen pages waxing lyrical about the South Downs, how the butterflies are fluttering in the gorse and baby lambs are baa-ing from the hedgerows and stuff like that, nothing whatever to do with any earthworks at all.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m not sure exactly who his audience is intended to be. It’s certainly a very restricted circulation and he seems to be casting more and more people adrift as he goes along.

And then back in here I began to finish off the radio programme.

There were the usual Friday interruptions, such as half a slice of flapjack, my cleaner coming around to do her stuff and then the disgusting drink break. However, by about 18:00 it was all finished – at least, as far as I can for the moment until I start the editing once it’s been dictated.

But what do you leave out?

That was always my problem at University – “write 5,000 words on …”. How do you do that? I just used to write out what I had to say, which was probably three times as long, and then ruthlessly edit it down to something approaching the total because it was the only way that I knew how.

However, my editing was never ruthless enough, and when it was, you’d end up with these strange remarks from your tutor, like "you should have fitted … in"

"Yes" I replied. "Where should I have fitted it? And what should I have left out so that I had room to include it?"

Strangely enough, the tutor would never give you an answer to that.

But that’s the trouble with being an older (I won’t use the term “mature”, so as to avoid all kinds of ribald comment) student. I was studying for pleasure and interest, not because I wanted a job, and what I was doing only ended up having the vaguest relevance to what they wanted me to study. So I wasn’t all that concerned about following the rules slavishly.

What’s the point of a word count anyway? The only way that it makes any sense at all is to spare the tutors some sleepless nights as 30 equivalents of WAR AND PEACE drop onto their desks.

Meanwhile, I digress … "again" – ed …

Tea tonight was air-fried chips with falafel and a salad – a small helping. And no pudding either. I’m really not very hungry these days.

So I’m off to bed to make ready to go to dialysis in the afternoon where I’ll hatch the football and read through my notes ready for dictation. But it’s Dydd Gwyl Dewi so I have leek soup to make. That will be tea on Saturday night, with some freshly baked bread.

But seeing as we are talking about Dydd Gwyl Dewi … "well, one of us is" – ed … I once met a Welsh woman who was complaining about the fact that she had seventeen children
"Didn’t your husband ever take precautions?" I asked her. "Does he know about ‘French letters’?"
"Ohh yes, he knows about those" she said "but he uses a ‘Welsh letter’"
"What’s that?" I asked
"It’s a French letter with a leek in it."

0

Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

… like pretty hard work.

The piece of music, all 65 minutes of it, is not the original. It’s been hacked around quite a lot and the joins in between the pieces are awful. Consequently today, I’ve been tracking down the original sound recording.

And now that I have it, I can see exactly why it’s been hacked about as it has. It’s for a very good reason. Consequently I’ve decided to run with the hacked-about version and see if I can improve the joints, but it’s not easy. Not at all.

Actually, it was easier that that to go to bed before 23:00 last night. And how long is it since that has happened? I’d finished quite early everything that I needed to do and once I’d backed up the computer I went and sorted myself out ready for an early night.

Once in bed, it was totally painless. I was out like a light and remember nothing whatever until just about a couple of minutes before the alarm went off, and I’m not sure why.

Nevertheless I didn’t move until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good piece of scrubbing.

After that it was into the kitchen to take my medicine, including the powder that I’m supposed to take when it’s not Dialysis Day. Honestly, I’m so confused with all of this medication, when I’m supposed to take it and why.

After that I came back to listen to the dictaphone to find out what was on it. And to my dismay, there was nothing at all thereupon. However there was a lot of this medieval, early medieval, Roman kind of stuff going on last night all through my head. There was so much of it that it wasn’t possible to collate any of it. I just kept on going from one thing to another without a pause.

There was also something about another civilisation, a rabbit and a cat flap. And whatever all of that meant I really have no idea.

The nurse was early today. He clearly had no blood tests or injections to carry out. We had something of a chat this morning and then he cleared off, leaving me to it. I could then go to rescue my bread that I had kept away from his evil cutches and then prepare breakfast.

There was MY BOOK. to read too. And our hero is stuck, trying to read the enigma of the extinct Iberian People. They had a language all of their own that is yet to be deciphered. He’s trying to link it to the Basque language and while there are similarities, there aren’t enough to draw the conclusion that one is linked to the other.

He’s busy trying to probe the theory that the Basque people came from the Middle East via North Africa and the Straits of Gibraltar rather than the established route via Turkey. There’s some mileage in this but he has then to explain why the Celtic people were pushed West into Galicia rather than North, back into France from whence they came.

Nothing that he has found – the barrow culture, the burial customs, the size of the skulls and so on add up, but it’s not stopped him carrying on his aggressive criticism down into a level of personal attack and ad hominem.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then attacked the radio editing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not an easy programme to edit. Huge lumps have been cut out – and for good reason too, as I discovered when I finally found the master tape

Consequently it’s been a very, very slow process of trying to reassemble it into some kind of spontaneous, simultaneous concert without the missing bits (that are missing for a reason). Some of it went together really well, but other parts are not so good.

There is one thing though, and that is that I’ve managed to write the notes for it. However, I have a feeling that I’m going to have to make them longer so as to fit some of the large gaps that I’m sure that I’ll be having to make in the music before long

There were the usual interruptions today. Lunch of course, with my slice of nice flapjack, and then my cleaner came by to do her stuff, so for a few hours I had a nice, clean apartment.

There was Christmas cake break too with some of that disgusting protein drink, but the final interruption was the LeClerc delivery. I’d reviewed my order this morning, added a few things, taken away a couple, and then sent it off. So there I was, at 17:00, with a room full of food.

Some of it needed to go into the freezer straight away, some needed preparing before I could freeze it, some needed going in the fridge and then there was a head of broccoli and 2kg of carrots to wash, prepare, blanch and freeze.

There’s now a broccoli stalk and about a litre and a half of carrot and broccoli water ready to make some soup, but I’d forgotten about the leeks that I have left over. So it’s leek soup this coming Sunday followed by broccoli stalk soup the following weekend.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with chips and falafel followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. And we’ll keep on eating that until it’s all gone and then we’ll make some more, seeing as LeClerc delivered some more cocoa powder.

But I really need to be more adventurous in my baking. That apple cake that I made a few months ago, for example, that worked quite well. But what else can I make that’s simple but different?

On Sunday I’m going to make some Vegan pies wit that flaky pastry that’s left. I’ll make a base of lentils, tofu and oats, maybe some potato and I’ll have to think of what else I can put in there

However, I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed because I’m exhausted. It seems that the more sleep that I have, the more I want.

In the meantime, seeing as we’ve been talking about ancient, dead languages … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Earl of Carnarvon discovered some writing that he didn’t understand on the wall of the inside of the Great Pyramid.
So after he died, he fund the ghost of Jean-François Champollion, the French hieroglyphics expert, who told him to tell him precisely what he saw.
"Certainly" said Carnarvon. "It’s ‘sacred maiden’ ‘hippopotamus’ ‘triangle’ ‘crocodile’ ‘rising sun’ ‘sacred maiden’"
So Champollion goes away to work out his translation, by reference to the Rosetta Stone.
Twenty years later Champollion contacted the Earl of Carnarvon to say that he had succeeded in translating it.
"What does it say?" asked Carnarvon eagerly
"It’s Tutankhamun leaving a note to his architect" he explains. "The first part asks if the architect can explain to him the difference between the door to the lavatory and the flap on the letter box"
"What did he say?" asked Carnarvon
"He said that he couldn’t right at this moment"
"So what did Tutankhamun reply?" asked Carnarvon
"He told him that he’d better find someone else to post his Pools coupon"

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Friday 3rd January 2025 – MY CHOCOLATE CAKE …

… is exquisite. What makes it, in my opinion, is the coconut oil. It’s based on a simple oilcake recipe but I substituted some of the oil for some coconut oil and that gives it a certain something that you can’t describe, but it’s there all the same. It’s one of the best cakes that I have ever made.

And while we’re on the subject of things being there … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was still there at 01:00 this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned something about going to bed, and that was true at the time, but just as I was planning on switching off the computer, a concert from a folk festival in 2017 came onto the playlist and, strange as it may seem, I had never heard it before.

It was one from that batch that I’d had sent to me a year ago and it had never previously come up on the playlist but now that it was finally there, I stayed up and had a good listen to it.

It was about 01:20 when I finally made it into bed, and once there, I fell asleep quite quickly. And that was all that I remember of the night. The next thing that entered my mind was the alarm call this morning.

When that went off, it took a minute or two to gather my wits – they seem to travel about much more than I do – and then I wandered off into the bathroom for a good wash.

Isabelle the Nurse was late this morning so I had a listen to the dictaphone but to mu surprise and disappointment, there was nothing at all on there. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … wandering around in the subconscious late at night is the only fun that I seem to have these days.

When Isabelle the Nurse arrived, she told me that she couldn’t hang around. Her oppo had arranged several blood tests for her back at the ran … errr … office for 08:45 and it was now already 08:42.

She did have time to tell me that it was minus 3°C outside this morning and although snow had been forecast, none had (as yet) arrived.

After she left, I made breakfast and had a read of MY BOOK.

Our author is now discussing Caesar’s second invasion and at the moment we are still in mid-Channel awaiting the turn of the wind and tide so he can bring himself and his army to the shore.

As yet, there is nothing controversial about what he has been saying. He’s been discussing the beam and draught of Caesar’s ships, how they have been built by the sailors with a beach landing in mind rather than their sailing characteristics.

That’s a fact that it’s impossible to prove or disprove, and in any case, as he’s said on several occasions that Cicero’s younger brother was sailing with the invasion, it’s very likely that he’s quoting from the letters that the younger Cicero sent to his elder brother as well as the usual source, Book IV of THE GALLIC WARS by Caesar himself

And that reminds me – I must brush up my Latin. I’m really dismayed about how much I have forgotten since my school days. Puer amat mensam and all that

Back in here afterwards, I began to turn the place upside down to find this missing letter with the notice that I had to pay. I looked absolutely everywhere and, after about three hours, I finally found it.

It was exactly where it should be and ought to have been, and where I’d looked at least three times yesterday and three times this morning. I have no idea at all as to why I couldn’t see it before.

That’s another one of these mysteries – why I can’t see something that must be there, no matter how many times I look. Sometimes I really do wonder what on earth is going on inside my head.

By now my cleaner had arrived to do her stuff so I had missed my lunch, which serves me right. She brought the cold weather with her into the apartment and froze me to death. It really is wicked outside today, apparently.

Later on in the afternoon Rosemary rang me. It was just a short chat, one hour and forty minutes, and it would have lasted longer had someone not rung the doorbell. It was one of those calls where no-one responded to the interphone, and that was a shame because Rosemary and I could have gone on much longer than that.

And I must admit, that I had something of a laugh to myself. When I was round there three or four years ago she was “don’t leave the door open – that stray white cat might come in and I don’t want that”.

Eighteen months ago it was “that stray white cat is actually quite friendly and sweet”

On the ‘phone six months ago it was “this cute white cat is lovely, curled up in front of my fire”

Today it was “I was thinking of going away for a couple of weeks but I changed my mind because Myrtille would be cold and lonely”.

That’s right – I never met anyone who won a fight with a cat.

Tea tonight was falafel and chips with a vegan salad, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. My cleaner had bought some mushrooms and tomatoes for me, but I ought to have asked her to buy a lettuce too. I would usually send off an order to LeClerc today for delivery but I have enough frozen food to last another week and I can survive on what else I have.

The chips were cooked to perfection in the air fryer which is certainly doing its stuff. Rosemary told me that in her air fryer last weekend she cooked a chicken quite successfully and she’s quite pleased with hers too.

In other news, Seàn sent me a report yesterday about new DNA techniques that can probe deeper into ancient bones to establish a much greater DNA profile.

That’s of great interest to me because of what happened in Greenland. The last written record from the Norse colony in Greenland was of a marriage that took place in 1408 at the old church at Hvalsey which regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we VISITED IN 2019 on our way across the Atlantic on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when we sailed the North-West Passage.

After that, there is silence and when the Bishop of Norway’s envoy went there in the 16th Century he found no trace of any survivors.

What happened to the people is a complete mystery and there have been several theories. James Enterline wrote A BOOK in which he suggested that the Norse went west onto the mainland of North America, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we went to THE UNIVERSITY OF LAVAL in Québec to check on some of his sources.

For what it’s worth, I’m waiting to see if any bones of any Inuit in Greenland will turn up some Nordic DNA. I find it hard to believe that there was no “interaction” between the Inuit and the Norse as the ice drove the Inuit south into the path of the Nordic colonists. If the Inuit, who were much better-adapted to the climate than the Norse, overwhelmed the latter, they must have taken a few female prisoners. We saw what Samuel Hearne had to say about the Northern people’s handling of female captives. The editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would also have had something to say on the matter.

So now it’s bedtime. Tomorrow it’s Dialysis Day and I’m not looking forward to that at all. But we’ll see what happens on Monday. That’s going to be complicated.

However, with all of this stuff written in Latin that I seem to be finding, I wish that I had paid more attention to my Latin lessons at school .I mentioned to a friend that I was going to look for a Latin teacher.
She asked "Will you be looking for a native speaker?"
And so, smiling, I replied "if I do, you can learn with me. Then we can both go together on holiday somewhere in Latin America"

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Friday 27th December 2024 – WHAT A LAZY …

… day I’ve had today.

It’s been one of those days where I really have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three-fifths of five-eighths of … errr … nothing. Nothing at all.

And even though I didn’t put my sooty foot out of bed until the alarm went off at 08:00 this morning, I didn’t go to bed until after 02:00 so it didn’t make much difference.

It wasn’t as if there was plenty to do last night either. After I finished what I needed to do I simply had a mooch around in the depths of darkest internet, read a few web-pages, searched around for a few things and generally passed a relaxing time.

Once in bed though, I remember nothing whatever – nothing at all – until the alarm went off. And that’s important in the context of what will happen in a very short while.

But when the alarm did sound, I dragged myself out of bed and headed into the bathroom for a good scrub up. Just as well that I did because the nurse was early today and caught me as I was coming out of the bathroom.

He did the necessary and was out in less than five minutes, so I could get on with the task of making breakfast.

And reading MY BOOK too.

This morning, our author, T Rice Holmes, is tying himself up in knots of his own making. On page 174 of his book he tells us that "it has been noticed that the monuments of the dead are most thickly strewn in the extreme west, as if the builders had desired that the spirits of those who had gone before them might look upon the setting sun"

On page 188 however he tells us that "interments were made on the southern or eastern side of the mound, doubtless in order that the dead might face the sun".

The editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would be at home with our hero however. He goes on to say that "yet while the reader who has been accustomed to suppose that the Britons even of Caesar’s time were mere savages may be astonished to learn that already in the Bronze Age in Britain, there was commercial intercourse between Britain and the Continent,"

He tells us that there was "evidences of intercourse between Scotland and Ireland", which is presumably how the Isle of Man … "PERSON!" – ed … was formed, and also that the different types of pottery and earthen vessels "throw light upon the origin of the round-headed invaders and upon the intercourse which subsisted in the Bronze Age between Britain and other lands"

This book is starting to warm up and there’s only another 500 pages to go.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I dreamed last night that I was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed ready to stand up. When I actually did awaken, I was really disappointed to find that I was still in my own bed, hadn’t moved a muscle at all and it was 06:15. There had been another dream too that was somehow involved in this, a dream about some kind of new breakfast cereal that was being marketed in French amongst the Inuit but I can’t think of how that actually went now or where it fitted in. But certainly, when I was asleep, sitting on the edge of the bed, I had a feeling that there was another dream too and it concerned people and animals of the Arctic regions.

A little earlier I mentioned that I remembered nothing whatever of the night. But this dream is what I dictated, even if I do have no memory of it. I was fast asleep when I was dictating it, so was I having a dream within a dream again?

But the recent reams about the Arctic must mean that I’m yearning again. An American judge of the early 20th Century, called “Judge Malone” wrote about “The Lure of the Labrador Wild” and until you’ve been to Labrador, you won’t understand it. There’s also a similar call to the Arctic, experienced by people like Nansen and my namesake Charles F Hall and which I also experienced, and I want to go back, back at any price.

So apart from that I’ve done nothing at all. I’ve listened to some good music, carried out a long-overdue sorting out of a couple of directories on my computer in preparation for a mega-back-up next week and that’s everything. I hardly moved from my desk, not even when my cleaner came in to do his stuff.

While we’re on the subject of my cleaner … "well, one of us is" – ed … apparently my disability is now registered as permanent and at the 80% threshold, and that’s without even going for that assessment at the Re-education Centre. I’ve had a communication from that organisation that deals with autonomy in the home to tell me that I’m now exempt from paying the Social Security contributions of my cleaner’s wages.

Whether that is good or bad news depends on your point of view, I suppose.

Tea tonight was falafel and chips with a vegan salad, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Simple but delicious

So tomorrow I’m back at the Dialysis Clinic for another painful session with no football to distract me. But the Welsh Premier League relegation scrap is now becoming intense, with four clubs now being sucked in and a seven-point gap to the club above. The transfer window opens next week and it will be interesting to see how clubs make use of it. We’re already seeing Aberystwyth and Y Drenewydd cutting loose several players ready to make the wages and squad numbers available for new signings.

So I’ll loiter around for a while and then go to bed. But I hope that I don’t have the same dream that a friend of mine had the other day . He told me "I dreamed last night that a genie appeared and offered me a wish"
"Just one?" I asked
"Yes. Just one" he replied. "And that’s not the best of it. he told me that whatever I wished for, he would give my wife double."
"So what did you say to that?" I asked.
"I told him to go away" he replied.
"Go away?" I asked, astonished.
"Yes" he said. "And then come back later when I wasn’t expecting him, and scare me half to death."

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Friday 6th December 2024 – HERE I WAS …

… working on the next radio programme and running aground, sitting here talking to myself as I often do "for I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to" as Gandalf said in “Lord Of The Rings”, and asking myself "what am I doing next?"

And having a sudden flash of inspiration "I should be doing Miss Bush". I meant actually editing and remixing a track of hers, but yes, chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?

So guess who has been a busy boy today?

Much better than last night when I was very late going to bed yet again.

The problem was that after all of my exertions during the day, I was too tired to pick myself up out of my comfortable chair and stagger the couple of feet into my nice fresh bed. Nevertheless, when I did finally manage it, it might have taken a while to go to sleep but once I’d gone, not even Jenny Agutter could have lured me back out again.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was still flat out and dead to the World, and it was quite a struggle to rise to my feet before the second alarm.

Surprisingly, this morning I had a thirst that you could have photographed so after I’d had a good wash and scrub up I went into the kitchen and had my morning drink of half a pint of fruit juice with all of my medication. Three different lots of it are powders that are poured into the drink.

And if you think that that is bad, every second Saturday it’s four powders that go into it. As well as all of the regular pills and potions that I have to take every day. I’m surprised that I don’t rattle when I walk.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at the hospital during the night. It was in Avranches but in North America. I recall some of the Native American tribes loitering around, which made it dangerous for people to go off wandering around on their own during the evening but I can’t remember any more about this except that it was definitely the Avranches that we know and the hospital that we know and the hills that we know,

It’s not easy to confuse the rock on which Avranches sits, and the hills around it, with anywhere else in the World. So I must have been right about the location

Later on I was driving with someone to the East Midlands Airport. He was driving. We were having a rather large animated discussion, so much so that where the road veered off slightly to the left he carried straight on down this old farm track. In the middle of this big, animated discussion he said “I don’t think much of this road going to the airport. Do you?”. We paid no attention, bouncing along more and more, until we suddenly burst through the airfield fence, right across the hardstanding and came to a desperate stop right at one of the terminals. There was a quick announcement that ‘plane number so-and-so from somewhere else was in and so people began to queue up at the front door and the back door to come in. I opened the door and these people climbed in so I opened the front door and more people climbed in. I thought “for a four-seater car, we’re having a lot of people come aboard”. They were all having a moan about our style of arrival and hoped that the style of the departure wouldn’t be worse. I told them to wait and see what they were going to have …fell asleep here … so I said “thank you” because I was attached up this tree by a harness and lowered myself to the ground. I climbed into the car as well and we made ready to leave.

Whatever went on while I had fallen asleep in the middle of that dream must have been really exciting and I’m sorry that I missed it. East Midlands Airport is just about the only airport in the UK that I’ve never visited, strange as it may seem. However, what I saw in my dream was more like the old set-up at Charleroi years ago.

When Isabelle the Nurse came round she asked me how things went so I told her about the patches. She told me that it was my fault, which I readily agreed. But in all honesty, what do I know about the affair?

After she left I had breakfast and then carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK. And I do feel sorry for him and his friends.

They had scrambled down the steep slope to the bank of the river to go to approach the falls, and to fortify them for the return journey, had hidden a flask of brandy and a couple of glasses amongst the rocks.

They sent a servant to fetch it because "wet from head to foot and greatly fatigued, there certainly was not one amongst us that appeared, at the moment, desirous of getting the brandy, in order to pour out a libation to the tutelary deities of the cataract;". However, their hopes were dashed "for the messenger returned in a few minutes with the woeful intelligence that the brandy and goblets had been stolen"

And "Perched on the rocks, at a little distance from us, sat a pair of the river nymphs, not ” nymphs with sedged crowns and ever harmless looks not temperate nymphs,” but a pair of squat sturdy old wenches, that with close bonnets and tucked up petticoats had crawled down the cliff, and were busied with long rods in angling for fish. Their noisy clack plainly indicated- that they had been well pleased with the brandy, and that we ought not to entertain any hopes of recovering the spoil; we e’en slaked our thirst, therefore, with a draught from the wholesome flood,"

Right now, I’ve left him hunting for bear along the shore of Lake Erie, and I’ve just had a lecture on dressing the hides of bear and deer. That might have come in handy that day when I encountered Rupert on his way to a picnic up in the Mealy Mountains of Labrador.

After I’d finished, I came in here and began to finish selecting the rest of the music for the next radio programme. And having done that, I sat down, paired it off and segued it, and then in a mad fit of enthusiasm wrote out all of the notes for it too, ready to dictate on Saturday night.

Whatever had come over me?

There were several interruptions too. Lunch was one of them, and my cleaner coming was another. So not only is the place nice and clean, the medicine shelves are stacked up and full too. That will keep me going for the next few weeks.

Hot chocolate was another break too. That’s a nice mid-afternoon pause to give my braincells time to cool down.

Tea tonight was vegan salad, chips and falafel, followed by vegan ginger cake with butterscotch flavoured soya dessert.

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready to prepare myself for another painful session in the Dialysis Clinic tomorrow afternoon for my sins.

But the mystery of the Native American tribes in Avranches is easily explained. One member thereof wanted to be circumcised, so he was on his way with his friends and supporters to the private hospital there.
"One hundred Euros" said the cashier
"Ugh! Too much!" he replied
So he and his friends went down the hill to the public hospital
"One hundred Euros" said the cashier
"Ugh! Too much!" he replied
So having been frustrated, he took his tomahawk and did the job himself
Back in his wigwam later that night he showed his wife his handiwork
"What do you think?" he asked
"Ugh! Too much!" she replied.

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