… one of the worst days ever today. And, believe me, I’ve had a few bad days in recent times.
Yesterday’s efforts took far too much out of me, regrettably, and so I’ve spent most of the day asleep on my chair. And despite all of the sleep that I’ve had, I’m still feeling absolutely wasted and I won’t be staying up for long.
Surprisingly, I was able to leave the bed quite quickly this morning and for a while I actually felt like doing something useful.
After the medication I had a listen to the radio programmes that I’ll be sending off. Two of them, in fact, because I’m not going to be here next week. I shall be in Leuven (if I make it) so I want to make sure that there’s a radio programme there in case I forget to send it later.
And that reminds me – I’d better make sure that I have on the portable computer plenty of programmes that are already prepared. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I went to hospital this time last year they took one look at me and kept me in for over two months.
The idea was that having listened to two hours of music I’d be sending them off straight away to be added into the playlist for the relevant weeks, but by that time I was well on my way out.
The way things were, I’ve not had my fruit bread and coffee, and I was hours late having my lunchtime fruit. It was more like mid-afternoon hot chocolate time.
Once I’d finally felt something-like, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My mother was looking after a couple more children as well as us. One day I came home quite late and one of my sisters tried to wrestle my mobile phone from me. I wasn’t having that so I put up a fight. She said “you have to give me your mobile phone” so i told her to clear off. She pointed and there was a puppy sitting on her knee of one of the children. She said “we’ve been given a puppy today and we’ve been told not to do anything or make any noise etc that might frighten it”. I replied “I don’t want a puppy. I haven’t asked for one and I’ve no intention of having a puppy. I’ll carry on living as I am, doing what I want to do. I don’t care about anyone else”. This developed into an extremely acrimonious argument.
As well as that, instead of a film of the type that we’ve been having recently, last night we had a radio programme. It concerned a young weedy little man who lived with his mother. He’d suddenly acquired a girlfriend called Susan. Something had happened that had sent him off the rails. He and Susan had effectively gone on the run. They hadn’t gone far because at the moment no-one suspected any crimes. They were silly crimes, like they had a coffee machine that they’d take to events, set up a little stand, sell the coffee then disappear. No-one had worked out what crime was being committed yet. Nevertheless they could feel the Police closing in. He sent Susan off after they had abandoned the coffee machine by setting it up for a demonstration in an Italian restaurant. He’d made a mistake there – when the proprietor had given him £100 he’d given him back £10:00 change in notes. Of course, his fingerprints would be on it. He disappeared anyway. I was listening to this programme by being in a queue of traffic on the way to a racecourse. When we reached the racecourse I was following these people who were listening to the radio on a portable radio. When we came to the entrance booth they paid to get it. I didn’t have any money so I lost the radio programme. In the end I went into a café where they had a radio and I tuned it in to listen to the end. One of my friends came in. He’d been the victim of some kind of confidence trick about a game of golf. He was a bank manager so he was naturally extremely careful about what he said or did. He’d been away from work waiting for the storm to blow over. he came into this café and people recognised him. I did too. They were commiserating with him and it was disrupting my listening to the programme. Eventually I caught up with the programme again. He’d gone back home and had disappeared again. The Police had turned up to his house because there had been an incident involving his mother and who she thought was a burglar who had tied balloons to her shower. It was a strange shower – it had a kind-of toilet where she could sit while she was washing, and had been burning papers. The mother happened to mention the name of this girl, Susan, which of course the people of this who had been traced by this confidence trickster would know because of the two of them working together. That was drawing the noose even tighter. Then the guy was in his hide-out. He had a letter that had come in a long time ago but he hadn’t actually opened it. He opened it this time. It turned out to tell him something about his spin drier. He said with amazement “so that’s what happened to my spin drier. It wasn’t the Police at all. all this need never have started had I seen this letter right at the very beginning”.
Having organised that, I actually managed to do some work on one of the radio programmes in the pipeline. I had a pile of notes so I edited them down and if I feel up to it later I’ll assemble the programme. I did manage to send off the two to which I’d listened earlier.
Tea was taco rolls with some of the leftover stuffing, and that’s about everything for today, I reckon.
However I really do feel awful right now so an early night is definitely on the cards. Not that it’ll do me much good of course but we can always hope. I’m going to have to feel better by Friday as I have a long voyage to Leuven, and I’ll be walking for a lot of the way with a rucksack. I’m not looking forward to that.
