Tag Archives: football

LIVE: Friday 6th November 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been today. We seem to be back in the bad old days of six months or so ago, where I was falling asleep at the drop of a hat. And as for being stuck and unable to dismount from the porcelain horse, it all defies description.

Last night defies description too. Once more, being late to bed despite my best efforts to be finished early. It goes to show just how important it is for me to be home early from dialysis.

Anyway, once in bed, I stayed in bed and didn’t move, as far as I am aware. It helped having the heater on in here during the night and it made it feel so much better. I’d also turned on the heater that’s in the dining area so I”m hoping that it will be warm in there in the morning.

When the alarm went off, I’d joined the army and risen to the rank of adjutant. There was a group from our regiment going out on patrol, and they suggested that I went with them. So my commander let me go with them. There were some people who didn’t want to go at all, so they were sent back to base, presumably to spend some time in prison, and the rest of us carried on.

Then the alarm rang, and I awoke.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the chances of me being in the army are about zero. If there would ever have been a war when I would have been young enough to fight, I’d have been up and down Leadenhall Street until I found a merchant shipping company that had a berth going for a trainee seaman in the Merchant Navy.

Having said that, though, I would have loved to have been on one of these nighttime patrols in World War I.

It took hours to rise up off my bed this morning in order to move about. However, once I decided to stand up, it was easier than yesterday to rise to my feet. Whatever was wrong with me yesterday that had sapped my energy and prevented me from rising to my feet, I seem to have recovered.

After I’d unlocked the front door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she comes, I went into the bathroom to make myself ready.

Back in here, I started on the notes from yesterday. There was much more than I anticipated, and it took an age. They still weren’t online when Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

She had a good look at my right foot and its wound and how they had dressed it at the hospital. I told her about the scan that I need to have, and the antibiotics that I need to take. She seemed relatively pleased with all of that.

After she left, I could make my breakfast, including my porridge and toast. I can’t live without those in the morning.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

We’ve still been discussing trees in Herefordshire, but now we’ve moved on to discussing the famous Ryelands sheep that have been reared here in Herefordshire and brought so much prosperity to the area back in the Middle Ages when “Lemster” … "today Leominster" – ed …. was one of the richest towns in England.

Unfortunately, these days the Ryelands sheep are so interbred with other varieties that their mutton is no longer as tasty as it was, and their wool is no longer as fine and as soft as it used to be.

Back in here, I managed to finish off the notes and put them on line. But it took much longer than it ought to have done because I kept on falling asleep while I was working. A little minute here, thirty seconds there, and so on. And what made it worse was that it went on like that all day and it totally put me out of my stride while I was working.

You should have seen the stuff that I was typing while I was asleep too. I’m beginning to wish that I could have kept it and shown it to you.

By the time that I’d finished everything else that needed doing this morning, it was time for the disgusting drink break and midday medication. My faithful cleaner had stuck her head in the door earlier to bring me my antibiotics – two tablets three times per day – so I took two of those as well.

Back in here, I had a chat with one of my friends. As well as everything else, he’s an author, and his latest books have been added TO HIS AMAZON STORE. It’s well worth a visit, especially to see PABLO THE WONDER DOG

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a sales associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors, and now in response to a request that I received, AMAZON GERMANY. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses the links to make a purchase.

A couple of other people engaged me in chat too throughout the day, which was nice of them. Liz sent me some nice photos of some reminiscences, and my cleaner sent me a photo of some bottled chillies. They have been withdrawn from Leclerc’s delivery site … "the bottled chillies, not the reminiscences" – ed … but she found these in another supermarket where she shops for one of her clients. Seeing as I have recently run out, I said “yes” immediately.

She was early today, coming round to do her Friday cleaning session because she had to go with another one of her clients for an appointment somewhere. And while she was doing her stuff, we were chatting about this and that, and that held me up too. But I wasn’t bothered about that because I need to interact with more people and have more of a social life, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …

So with all of these interruptions, which were all very welcome, I have to say, except for the “falling asleep” bit, which went on throughout the day, I’d only really managed to finish the editing of the notes and assembling only half of the programme, instead of doing all of it. But it can’t be helped, I suppose. I shall have to just work harder this weekend.

Another thing that didn’t help was going for a ride on the porcelain horse and falling asleep. Not just for five minutes either, but for forty minutes. And when I awoke, I couldn’t stand up because, of course, my cleaner had washed the floor. And I don’t know what product she uses, but it makes the floor slippery and my slippers can’t grip the floor. In the end, I had to take off my slippers and stand up in my socks. They gave a much better grip.

It was late for tea, so I had to rush or I’d miss the football. It was the usual tea tonight – baked beans with cheese and black pepper, vegan sausage and air-fried chips. And tonight, it was the best that I have ever tasted. I don’t know why because I haven’t done anything different, except maybe made the chips with a mixture of mint and parsley.

By the time that I’d finished my meal, washed up, grabbed a couple of biscuits and fruit and dashed back in here, I was just in time for the football.

Today was another day when I hesitated about which match to watch. In the end, I chose Rhydaman, a newly promoted team near the bottom, v Llansawel, an established team but not having the best of seasons right now. And what a good choice this game was.

For a long time, I’ve been advocating that teams under pressure should always keep one man in the centre circle. It means that the opponents have to keep two men back to guard him, and also that instead of wild panic-station clearances out of defence to nowhere, there’s someone to aim at, and it might lead to a breakaway goal. Rhydaman went one better than that today – they had two men always in the centre circle ready to receive the panic-station clearances, and it worked in spades.

As well as that, they had a change of tactic from previous weeks and were harassing the Llansawel players. Every time a Llansawel player had the ball, there was a Rhydaman player breathing down his neck trying to take the ball off him.

Add to that some stupendous saves, some at point-blank range, by Rhydaman keeper 18-year-old Thomas Wright, and a surprising and unexpected 3-1 win for Rhydaman was well-deserved. It now puts some considerable light between them and the bottom two clubs, Trefelin and Trefynnon.

When the game had finished, at 22:45, I began to write up the notes of the day, but I was overwhelmed with fatigue at some point later, and I couldn’t keep on going. I gave up and went to bed, and I’ll finish these notes tomorrow, if I’m lucky.

There’s another late match tomorrow evening, so it might be the same tomorrow, with the notes only half-finished and me in bed. And I hope that I’ll remember the antibiotics tomorrow night. I seem to have forgotten them tonight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about forgetting things … "well, one of us has" – ed … somebody once telephoned his doctor in a panic.
"Doctor, do you remember those pills you gave me to improve my memory?"
"Ohh yes" replied the doctor. "What about them?"
"Can you prescribe for me another bottle, please?"
"Have you finished the first one already?" asked the doctor.
"No, doctor" replied the patient "but I can’t remember where I put it."

LIVE: Thursday 5th November – GUNPOWDER, TREASON AND …

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… plot! And one place that would be first in line to be on the end of the Guy Fawkes treatment, if I were well enough to do so, would be the dialysis centre, because we have had yet another run-in there today and having to fight with the personnel almost every session is not doing me any good at all. In fact, it’s getting completely on my wick.

It might have been better had I had an early night, but once again, things dragged on so long here that I heard the immersion heater switch on at 01:00 as I was leaving the bathroom, ready for bed. That was when I checked the time, and as it was far too early to raise myself from my stinking pit, I went back to sleep again.

When the alarm went off this time, it was the real one, so I sat up straight on the edge of the bed. After the second alarm rang, I tried to summon up the enthusiasm and motivation to leave the side of my bed and stand up, but once I was ready, I found to my dismay that I didn’t have the force. I had to adopt all kinds of silly manoeuvres to enable me to leave the bed.

After I’d unlocked the front door, I went into the bathroom to organise myself for the day, and I remembered this time to have a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon. When I’d finished in the bathroom, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something last night about the roadworks in La Havaudière. And the road through the village had been closed for the last three or four nights while they did some work on it. There was an experienced kind of foreman there who had been researched by Chinese and Middle Eastern companies. Since he’s been here, which is four days, there has been a woman killed. She was found strangled in her apartment, and it was believed that this guy, Kane – his surname was Kane – had actually done it, and we’d both decided at the same time that we would research his guarantee and see what’s happened, because it could be that he was an Iranian guy who is living in a cottage. After the cottage, it was first one house, then another house and then another house, and he had three girlfriends, and one of them dies … fell asleep here … It was believed by us at least that he was seeing these women, becoming friendly with them, and having a key to their house or apartment. They would die of either natural causes, or he’d kill them, and with the key that he had, he would empty the house of anything that was worth anything. He made quite a lot of money by these people dying.

As you can tell by the content of this dream, it’s no surprise at all that I fell asleep in the middle of it. It’s another one of these really confusing dreams where a literal transcription of the content means nothing at all. And as if I don’t have enough of those already.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m quite at home driving around Eastern Europe, even when the Communist Party was on power, but I don’t know why it’s suddenly been transferred to this neck of the woods right now.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, nicely on time. And before I let her loose on my legs and feet, I asked her if she would look at my right foot. It’s all gone a shiny shade of red, it’s hot, it’s swollen, and at the base of one of my toes, it’s weeping, and it’s agonising. She had a good look, cleaned it up with some disinfectant and wrapped it up.

She recommended that I let one of the doctors at Avranches have a good look at it. Naturally, I’ll do that, especially if it’s Emilie the Cute Consultant who is en garde – “on the alert” – this afternoon.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Today, we were discussing the trees of the area, and I, as well as the members of the club’s committee, were led off astray by an article about the chapel of the Knights Templars of Hereford. They were knights charged with the protection of the road from the Palestine coast to Jerusalem, and as a result, they became rich, even richer than the kings themselves. So as a result, the King of France and some of his fellow monarchs set out to eliminate the order at the start of the fourteenth century. Several Templars were burnt at the stake, but the treasure fleet of the French chapter of the Templars disappeared, giving rise to ONE OF THE MOST FANTASTIC STORIES that you will have heard for ages.

So instead of reading the report of the Woolhope naturalists, I was reading all about the Templars in Herefordshire and the surrounding counties, which was much more interesting.

Back in here, I had things to do, one of which was to chop thirty-four seconds out of the commentary for one of my rock concerts. Five seconds is easy, and ten is quite comfortable too, but thirty-four presented something of a challenge. However, by the time that I had to go to prepare for dialysis, I’d actually managed it. And you won’t be able to hear where the cuts have been made either.

When the alarm sounded for me to go off to prepare, I scooted into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication and then began to put my travelling laptop away in my bag. My faithful cleaner arrived to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and we had a little discussion about wood.

She wants to upgrade the wardrobe doors in her apartment upstairs and fit something more modern that she can paint in different colours. I have to say that had I been fit and healthy, I’d be doing the same because they are “very 1980s” with the plastic white finish that is difficult to paint. I’d love my doors to be dark blue, like the curtains and my favourite bedding. It would go nicely with the light blue walls. And I’d swap the doors in the apartment for the glazed doors that I bought from B&Q in England years ago to use on the farm.

After my cleaner left, I adopted my favourite position of being slumped over the table. And it seemed like just a minute, but it was in fact twenty minutes and more that I was crashed out, and the driver of the taxi gave me a rude awakening.

It was one of my favourite taxi drivers who came today, so I knew that we would be in for a very quick journey. There was someone else to pick up too, and she was quite garrulous, so we had a very animated drive down to Avranches.

We arrived at the dialysis centre a good twenty minutes early, but, would you believe, I had to wait almost an hour to be plugged in?

It was at the dialysis centre that my problems began.

The first person who came to see me was the dietician. She tells me that everyone in the dialysis centre is worried about the amount of fluid they are expected to extract. After a lengthy discussion, during which she totally failed to understand that if you have a water jug with a filter which is full at the start of the day, and you draw from the water jug all of your needs and then fill it up at the end of the day, and it takes one litre of water before it’s full, then you’ve used one litre of water, she wanted me to cut down my daily water intake by two hundred and fifty millilitres to seven hundred and fifty.

She also wanted me to increase my uptake of disgusting drinks from one or two per day to four per day, and I had to remind her that four disgusting drinks is eight hundred millilitres.

What kind of state is the dietary department in?

While she was here, I took the opportunity to complain about the missing snacks. They’ve changed the items available on the snack trolley recently, and my orange juice has been withdrawn. They’ve replaced it with an apple purée, which is the only thing on the trolley that fits my diet. However, even though the new snacks have only been in operation for less than a month, on four occasions they haven’t had them on the trolley.

Eventually, the nurse came to plug me in. It was one of the two je m’en foutistes – the nurses who do the barest minimum of work, so I knew that we were in for fireworks.

And so it proved. The excess liquid was more than it has ever been, and even a stay of four hours wouldn’t clear it. The difference wasn’t much, so I told the nurse to wind up the machine from nine hundred and fifty to a thousand, and that would do. After all, they ran it at over eleven hundred the other week, with no side effects reported, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

"Oh no!" she replied. "There’s a doctor’s instruction not to run the machine past nine hundred and fifty."
"There’s also a doctor’s instruction saying that I have to stay until I’m at my dry weight, so set it at four hours twenty then."
"Oh no" she replied. "I’m not staying here all night. I want to go home! Anyway, a couple of hundred grammes isn’t much."
"In that case, neither is fifty grammes."

Come the revolution, boys, I know someone who is in line for a good kicking.

And so, in a very bad mood, I watched the end of the game in the second division between Y Drenewydd and Bwcle. Y Drenewydd were winning 1-0 when I left the match on Saturday, and they were good value for their lead. In the final ten minutes, Bwcle threw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Drenewydd defence with no success, and as you might expect, with just seconds to go, a Drenewydd player won the ball in his own penalty area and roared off upfield, which led to another goal for Y Drenewydd with almost the last kick of the game.

The next match was Airbus UK Broughton v Caernarfon, and as I haven’t finished that as yet, despite being there for four hours, I’ll report on it later.

What had interrupted me was the arrival of the doctor. Not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately, but the new female doctor who is still finding her feet in the service.

She might be still finding her feet, but she certainly found mine quickly enough. She whipped off my compression sock and examined my toe. She asked me a variety of questions, such as “have you ever dropped anything onto your foot?”.

The response to every question was a “no”, so she reckons that it’s an infection of some kind, so she booked me in for a scan on Monday at the hospital over the road. As well as that, she prescribed a series of antibiotics for me, and I hope that they will work better than the last lot that she prescribed for me.

After that, I wasn’t in the mood to watch the football. Instead, I worked on my shopping list for next Friday. However, I did go back to the game at some point, but the end of the session came round before it had finished, so I’ll tell you more about it when I’ve finished watching it.

My nurse came over at the end of the session and cleaned the machine again before she started to unplug me. Once she’d finished with me, I could scuttle off to the driver, weighing myself on the scales as I went past. And it was as I suspected – I’m five hundred grammes over my dry weight.

GRRRRR!

Tonight, I was on my own with the driver, so we had a fairly quick drive home. However, it was 19:45 when I returned home, and I don’t think that I’ve ever been this late before. My faithful cleaner was there waiting to help me into the apartment when I arrived, and she slipped a disgusting drink into my hand once I’d settled down in a chair in the dining area.

There was no question whatsoever of me making tea at that time, so I contented myself with some of those little toasted squares with spreading cheese, followed by a plum and an orange.

When I’d finished, I began to write the notes for today, but I was in real danger of falling asleep, so after one particular outburst, I decided to go to bed. The rest of the notes can wait until tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about starting a new job … "well, one of us has" – ed … two men were sitting in a bar discussing their prospects for the future.
One of them asks the other "I hear you have a new job"
"Yes," replies the first one, "I’m working backstage in a strip club, helping the girls dress and undress"
"Blimey!" said his friend. "that’s a good job. What’s the money like?"
"It’s fifty quid a week."
"That’s not a lot."
"No, but it’s all that I could afford."

LIVE: Monday 2nd November 2026 – THESE NOTES AREN’T …

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… going to be finished today. And if that is the case, they aren’t likely to be completed until tomorrow afternoon.

The reason for that is that it’s my Welsh class tomorrow, and with there being a week off since the last class, due to half-term, On the way to Avranches this afternoon, Bane of Britain suddenly realised that he hadn’t done his Welsh homework. Consequently, after tea tonight, I’ve had to crack on and do it before I forget again, so now it’s extremely late, and I was exhausted before I started.

Not only that, but last night, it was after 00:30 when I finally went to bed, and I won’t be able to do yet another night like that.

Once I finally made it into bed, I was asleep fairly quickly, and although I vaguely remember waking up once or twice, it can’t have been for very long at all.

Later on, though, I heard my alarm sound. But it sounded miles away, and so I wondered if it was another phantom alarm. But I was wide awake, and it was still sounding, somewhere away in the distance, and because of my rather unique alarm sound, it can’t have been anyone else.

The ‘phone is always placed on the bedside table behind the head of the bed, so I reached for it to see exactly what was going on – but it wasn’t there! I suddenly realised that I’d left it in the pocket of my trousers last night and they were in the bathroom, so I had to leap out of bed and go as quickly as I could to turn off the alarm before it awoke everyone in the building. And that was the quickest that I’ve been out of bed for a long, long time.

When the alarm was finally switched off, I went to unlock the door ready for the nurse when he arrives, and then I went to sort myself out in the bathroom in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, I switched on the computer and began work. I’d actually been in a dream when the alarm went off, and although I hadn’t dictated it, I could remember quite a lot of it.

Last night, I dreamed that I was a member of the Welsh parliament, and it was my job to think of a way to cool down the housing market, and what I came up with was certainly novel. I proposed that when someone came to sell a house, the sale price should be compared with the purchase price and the date of purchase. The purchase price should be adjusted to represent the increase in the cost of living since the date of purchase, and whatever the difference between the sale price and the adjusted cost of the purchase price would be, it should be treated as investment income and taxed accordingly. Of course, there would be the cost of repairs and improvements to be taken into account too in calculating the adjusted cost of the property.

However, it was all starting to become too complicated for me to work out in a dream, so I was glad in some respects that the alarm went off to wake me up. Nevertheless, it would be a novel way of controlling house price inflation, and people spending money on new kitchens, windows or replacing a roof to keep the profits down could only benefit the economy.

There was time too to listen to the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend, to make sure that the programme was OK. And afterwards, when I was satisfied, I sent it off to the radio station for them to add into the list of programmes to be broadcast.

The nurse turned up as usual, but a little later today, and while he was sorting out my legs and feet, we were having a good chat, but right now, I can’t remember what it was about. It can’t have been that good.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and then while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Everyone is in a self-congratulatory mood today because their annual report from last year has been accepted into the library of the Natural History Museum and a few other similar places too. It’s quite true that these reports really are exceptional, but I think that they are overdoing it a little.

When breakfast was over, I went back into my little office and began to sort out things for the next radio programme on which I’d be working. However, I’d noticed earlier that the radio programmes that I’ve been sending off just recently are beginning to catch up rather quickly with the programmes that are prepared and ready to go, and if I’m not careful, I shall run out of prepared programmes before long.

Consequently, I’m going to make a start on dictating some more radio notes. I stopped dictating the notes when the cough that I had reached epidemic proportions and there was more coughing on the tape than there were notes. But now, since I’ve started this immunotherapy, the cough seems to have subsided for the moment, so I really ought to be cracking on and getting myself up to date.

A little later, there was a knock on the door. The president of the residents’ committee has sold her apartment and is moving away. She’s holding a little party for everyone, but because I would be unable to go because of all the stairs, she came to see me to say goodbye.

We had a good chat about her future plans, and she brought me a little memento – an oven glove and an oven pad with interesting cartoon drawings of Normandy. That was really nice of her.

When the alarm sounded to tell me that it was time to prepare for dialysis, that gave her quite a fright, and in the best traditions of a “News of the Screws” reported, she “made her excuses and left”, and I could crack on with organising myself, which included a disgusting drink and my midday medication.

My faithful cleaner put in an appearance to apply the anaesthetic to my arm too. We had a little chat, and then after she cleared off, I slumped down over the table in my usual “resting” position.

When the doorbell rang, I thought that it was only thirty seconds since I’d collapsed over the table, but it was in fact something over half an hour. I found it hard to believe, but there it was. I must have been really comfortable.

There were two passengers in the taxi, going to the private hospital in Avranches, and one of them very kindly ceded the front seat to me, and then we set off, only for me to remember that the Welsh class starts back tomorrow and I haven’t done the Welsh homework yet. I shall have to rearrange my plans for this evening.

This driver was another one who knew where the accelerator was, so the drive down to Avranches was completed in quite a fast time and I was quite early arriving. However, it was to no avail because I wasn’t plugged in and running until 14:25.

Once everything had settled down, I began to watch the football from the weekend.

The first match was the rest of Y Flint v Trefynnon. Trefynnon are hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table, and so were Y Fflint. However, since Y Fflint have had a change of manager, they have churned out some impressive results and have caught up with the pack ahead of them. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint are much too good a side to be languishing at the foot of the table, and so it is proving to be.

Although Trefynnon never threw in the towel and were still battling away at the end, the match finished 5-0 to Y Fflint. Trefynnon may only have been admitted into the league to provide cannon fodder and to produce an obvious relegation candidate to spare the more established clubs from relegation, but nevertheless, it was an excellent performance by Y Fflint.

The next game was the rest of TNS v Connah’s Quay Nomads, first versus second, played in front of a miserably small crowd as usual. For all of their performances and results and successes, neither club has managed to ignite the fervour of the local inhabitants in the same way that Caernarfon and Colwyn Bay have.

Before I’d fallen asleep, I’d watched up until the seventy-eighth minute, so I picked up from there and carried on.

The game was, as you might expect, more like a game of chess with neither side displaying any will or intention to grab the game by the throat. It was basically an exercise in protecting your own goal, and in this, Connah’s Quay, and in particular Dan Cowan, were excellent. The score finished 0 – 0, and anyone who succeeds in taking points off TNS will receive my fullest support.

The final game was the second division clash between Y Drenewydd and Bwcle that I’d begun to see on Saturday night before I fell asleep on my chair. I’d planned the timing to perfection, with this game finishing just a minute or two before my dialysis session finished. However, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men”, etc., etc.

As there wasn’t quite as much liquid to be drained today, I’d persuaded the nurse to set the machine to three hundred grammes over the limit, to give me a little more room to manoeuvre until Thursday. But when Emilie the Cute Consultant came by (and I had forgotten to shave this morning), she wasn’t very happy. However, the nurse said “Mr Hall insisted …” and, surprisingly, Emilie the Cute Consultant backed down immediately. I found that extremely interesting.

We had a long chat about why it was wrong to go over your limit, although she wasn’t going to change the setting (something else that I found interesting), and then we had a general chat about my health, but unfortunately it didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t know already.

She finished by asking me if there was anything else, so I told her of the situation of the rapid gain of weight, even though my trips to ride the porcelain horse are “productive”. I asked about the rise in blood pressure the other day, and the bleeding that restarted when I was at home. Unfortunately, she just gave me the generic answers, without going into my individual case, which I found disappointing.

After she left, it was time to unplug me, so I never managed to see the end of the game that I’d been watching. You’ll have to wait until Thursday now for a match report.

After I’d been unplugged, I had to wait a few minutes for my taxi home, and when it arrived, I was quite impressed. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the summer, my taxi company bought a taxi company in La Haye-Pesnel. This company didn’t have the cheap Skodas that my company does – they have B-series Mercedes, and one of them came to pick me up.

Even though it had 276,000 kilometres on the clock, it was wonderful and comfortable, much better than a Skoda, and I enjoyed the ride home very much.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me as usual, and she helped me back into my apartment. Once I was sitting down, she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty mitt and cleared off.

After I had recovered, I went into the kitchen for the other half of the broccoli stalk soup from last week. That went into a saucepan on one of the hobs and I put several handfuls of coquillettes, these small elbow-like pasta, to give it a little more body. While it was cooking, I put the two leftover homemade bread buns from last week into the microwave to defrost.

When the soup was cooked, I took it off the hob and added a pot of plain soya yoghurt and ate the soup with my bread. What a nice meal it made too, especially as pudding was mixed fruit and homemade chocolate and coconut ice cream.

After I’d finished eating, I washed up the dishes and tidied the kitchen and prepared myself to attack the Welsh homework. For some reason or other, the Welsh homework took much longer to do, and it wasn’t finished until 22:00. That didn’t leave much time for the notes of the day, and I was already tired out after dialysis before I’d even started.

As I suspected, I was nowhere near the end of my notes when I began to crash out, so I posted on line as far as I’d gone, and then I went to bed. I can finish off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about moving house … "well, one of us has" – ed … my friend Rosemary was a volunteer with the Essex Social Services, and she was chosen to supervise the upbringing of a young Vietnamese girl who had lost her parents when they were fleeing Vietnam on their way to Europe.
"Why was it necessary?" I asked.
"well," replied Rosemary, "after leaving Vietnam for the west, the girl became disorientated."

LIVE: Sunday 1st November 2026 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTROUS …

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… finish to the day, things seem to have settled down to something vaguely resembling normality today.

It’s probably only a short-term solution, because, of course, there’s another dialysis session lined up tomorrow night, and then we’ll be back where we started, I suppose. This is a never-ending cycle of dialysis – bad night – troubled sleep – day of recovery – troubled sleep – feeling much better but dialysis – bad night, etc., etc. It’s really getting on my wick, this is.

Last night, I quite literally fell in bed after waking up on my chair, and the sad thing about it was that I couldn’t go to sleep once I was in bed. There were all kinds of things going through my mind that were disrupting my thought patterns, even down to the behaviour of the doctor-in-charge yesterday at dialysis

However, I must have gone to sleep at some point because I have never ever been so far out of it when I heard someone in the mists of ‘I don’t know what’ call my name – insistently – for three or four times.

When I opened my eyes, the nurse was standing at the foot of the bed, duly armed with the cream to massage my legs and feet. And no-one was more surprised than me. I hadn’t heard a thing about his entry into the apartment or ringing the bell beforehand. It must have been a really deep sleep that I was having.

After he left, I had to pluck up the courage and the motivation to leave the bed, and after I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, it was 09:27 when I finally made it into the kitchen.

The first job was to put the white beans in the slow cooker on “high”. They need to boil up quickly because later on this afternoon, I’ll be using them.

And next, I had to make the croissants. That involved brushing a roll of flaky pastry with butter, using the pastry cutter to cut it into six “pie slices”, put a teaspoon full of apricot jam in the middle of each slice, and then fold the slice up, with the pointed bit on top. Brush them with milk and then eighteen minutes at 180°C.

While they were baking, I made the rest of my breakfast – porridge and black coffee, with juice to wash down my morning medication. And not only was all of that delicious, the croissants were magnificent too. I had two of them, warm, straight out of the oven, and the other four are in the fridge for the next couple of weeks.

While I was eating breakfast, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Today, they are at one of the meetings that follows up one of their field trips, and the subject at the moment is the trees of Herefordshire. Last year, they examined some of the more famous yew trees of the county, and today, they are discussing the question of the oak trees, commissioning photographers, etc., to photographically record the larger ones.

After breakfast, I checked the white beans. They had absorbed the water and were busy bubbling away, so I took them out, rinsed them with cold water, put them back with fresh water and reset the slow cooker on “slow”. I’ll check them when I come back in for my midday medication.

Back in here, I made a start on yesterday’s notes. And they seemed to take ages to write this morning, I don’t know why. And I didn’t post them on line until about 15:20, and that was my day effectively gone, just like that!

What kind of time was this, then, to go for my midday medication and disgusting drink? And the white beans were only warm when I checked them, so I turned them up to “medium” to cook them quicker.

There was football to watch from Saturday. Firstly, Stranraer were at home to Clyde – top (by goal difference) v second. It was quite an entertaining match, even though it finished scoreless. Still there’s absolutely no change at the top of the table, although Elgin City, in third place, won their match yesterday to close the gap a little.

Then we had Greenock Morton, second from the bottom of the table, away at Partick, the league leaders. And after Morton’s dismal start to the season, the bookies had put Morton at 11 to 1 to win the match. And I know that a couple of my friends had put a fiver on it, just to show solidarity with their team.

And I bet that they went home happy last night. No-one, a couple of weeks ago, would ever have expected Morton to have won this match 3-2. What on earth was Ian Murray doing with this team earlier in the season that they played so dreadfully? Under their new temporary management since Murray was sacked a few weeks ago, Morton have now won three games on the run.

It was now time to go into the kitchen, and I began by chopping up 250 grammes of mushrooms and an onion. The onion went into the wok, followed by some frozen garlic, and then the mushrooms went in. When they were done, I added a tablespoon of cornflour and then 250 ml of vegetable stock and stirred it round and round to thicken.

While it was simmering away, I began to make the dough for the bread. It turned out really well, so I put it on one side to prove, and then I went back to my mushrooms and onions. I added the white beans from the slow cooker and then everything else from the recipe that my chatbot had found for me.

While that lot was simmering away in the wok, I found a small pie dish, and I cut another one of the flaky pastry rolls and lined the pie dish that I had greased. I cut another piece of the pastry roll for the lid and put it on one side.

When the stuff in the wok had had a good simmer and mix, I put it in a glass Pyrex bowl and put it into the freezer to cool down quickly while I gave the dough a second kneading, adding some chai seeds, some of the mix that my cleaner had found for me, and some of my sunflower seeds.

Once the dough was all kneaded, I put it onto the bread mould for a second proving, rescued the pie mix from the freezer and assembled my pie, brusing it with milk and putting some steam holes in the top.

The temperature of the oven should be 200°C, so I had to wait for the oven to heat up. When it was ready, I bunged the pie in for twenty-five minutes, and in the meantime, I’d been doing the washing up and making the place look respectable.

At the end of its time in the oven, the pie came out a lovely golden brown, and when the oven was empty, I wound it up to 220°C. When it reached the correct temperature, I put the bread in for eight minutes and then turned the oven down to 180°C for another thirty-two minutes.

The bread, when it had finished, looked wonderful, complete with a lovely thick crust and I can’t wait to try it. However, there’s plenty of bread left from last week, so it might be a few days before I can get my teeth into it.

Back in here again, I began to write up my notes, and they are now finished, even if it is horribly late again. I can’t keep on going to bed at this time of night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about baking … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man walked into a bakery with a 50 lb pike under his arm.
"Excuse me, but do you make fish cakes? he asked.
"No we don’t" said the baker.
"What a pity" said the man. "It’s his birthday tomorrow."

LIVE: Saturday 31st October 2026 – AT LEAST, THINGS …

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… improved somewhat today at dialysis, although you might not have thought so. After all, any day at dialysis is a bad day from my point of view, and I would give all that I had … "and more besides" – ed … in order not to have to go there at all.

But that is, of course, another story. Today’s story really begins last night when, after the football had finished, I sat down to begin to write up my notes. And in a mad fit of enthusiasm … "God knows where that came from" – ed … I managed to completely finish them.

Once they were done, I had the backup and the stats, etc., to do, and by the time that I’d finished everything, on coming out of the bathroom, I heard the electric water heater switch on, so it must have been 01:00 at that moment.

Once in bed, I was asleep fairly quickly, but once again, it wasn’t for long, and although I drifted in and out of sleep, I was awake when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As usual, it took me a good while to raise myself from sitting on the edge of the bed and wander off to unlock the door for the nurse when he comes. And then I wandered off into the bathroom to clean and tidy myself up and even have a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, but I was interrupted by the nurse, who arrived early this morning. We had a very interesting chat about blood pressure while he was sorting out my feet and legs. He still has no idea why I have had such a low blood pressure for all these years, and why it has suddenly soared at dialysis.

After he left, I made breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

The club is actually based in Hereford, but they called themselves the “Woolhope” Naturalists Club after an area close by the city where the limestone, dating from the Silurian period, then quarried for making lime, was revealing a whole host of fossils, many seen for the first ever time in the UK and even in the World. Today, they have gone back there for further investigations.

While they were at it, "availing themselves of the kind permission given by Lady Emily Foley, all the members and their friends, numbering nearly forty, passed through the park and gardens of Stoke Edith" where they chatted to the gardener who "did solve one difficulty for us. He accounted for the presence of the Anchusa sempervirens, the alkanet, which was found growing on the roadside near the station. He had cultivated this plant in the garden for the bees, and after the fire which occurred there last spring, he removed the broken bricks and debris of the fire to the roadside, and with them doubtless the seeds of this plant had been taken".

Back in here, I finished off sorting out the music in the temporary folder and transferring the relevant data of their appearances and possible future appearances into the relevant database for their particular folder.

To tell you how my system works, my music is divided into seven folders, numbered from AA to GG, plus “Live” and “Concert” folders. Then when new music comes my way, it stays in the temporary folder until I have 4 GB worth, then I transfer it firstly onto a memory stick and then into whatever folder on the hard drive that contains any previous music by the group or artist. If it’s a new group or artist, I put it into whichever folder has the fewest groups or artists.

On the spreadsheet that I keep, it contains details of which artists have played, what songs were played, which week they played and what notes were written. One week will be AA, the following week will be BB and so on down to GG, and then we start again from AA. And so if there aren’t enough anniversaries to fill a particular week, I’ll fill it out with music from whichever folder that relates to that particular week.

This took me up to the alarm to prepare myself for dialysis, so I cleared off into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication and then began to pack away the computer ready for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then we had a good chat about our various financial situations. It turns out that, for various reasons, neither of us is actually in desperate straits, and we both own our apartments outright.

There was a reason for mentioning this, and it’s in relation to what might happen here in this building in the near future. But more of this anon.

After she left, I settled down as usual to have a little doze, but I was almost immediately awoken by the doorbell ringing. It was the taxi driver, twenty or so minutes early.

He was a new driver who had never been here before, so I explained a few things to him, and then we set off. We had to go by Champeaux to pick up the usual Saturday passenger, and he had been told in the depot not to follow the satnav directions because he would end up being stuck in an alleyway too narrow for the car. That’s certainly true, so I guided him via the alternative way.

We were early arriving at dialysis, and I was plugged in and running by 14:15, which was nice. I could sit down and watch the live football without having to worry, thanks to the “start from the beginning” button.

Today’s midday match was Cardiff Metropolitan v Penybont, a mid-table v 3rd placed match.

And what a surprise this game was. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the Met play some lovely, technical football, and their games are usually very interesting to watch, but today, I’ve never seen them put up such a shambolic performance in all the time that I’ve been watching them.

Today, their defence was all over the place, certainly not where it ought to have been, and their attack down the wings was nowhere, with Zambian under-20 international Lifumpa Mwandwe being totally starved of any service up front. The final score, 5-0 to Penybont, just served to underline how badly the Cardiff Met defence played.

When that game was over, there was time after that to watch Y Fflint v Trefynnon from Friday night, but not enough time to finish it, so I’ll tell you about the game some other time when I’ve finished watching it.

In the middle of that game, I was interrupted by the chef de service. He asked me how I was doing, to which my response was “fine”. He ummed and ahhed for a while and looked at the machine.

After studying the read-out for a while, he asked me if I would like the machine turned down a little … "it wasn’t even anywhere near maximum" – ed … so I told him that never mind the eight hundred and thirty-four ml per hour, the other week I was being cleansed at over eleven hundred per hour regardless of his maximum of nine hundred and fifty, and there were no adverse effects at all, so he’s taking a far too pessimistic view of my ability to cope with the dialysis machine (which I’m certain that he is).

At that point, he cleared off. He didn’t even ask me if there was anything else, which meant that I was unable to tell him about the blood pressure, water tension and the bleeding issue, which, in my opinion, are urgent. But he really doesn’t like me at all, and he has no bedside manner either.

When I was unplugged, my driver, the guy who thinks that he’s the boss of the drivers, was waiting for me, and he took me home – and it was a gorgeous red sky where the sun was setting tonight. I was actually at home by 18:20, which was really nice. My faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment, and she stuck a disgusting drink into my hand as soon as I was sitting down on a dining chair.

While she was here, I didn’t drink it but put it on my trolley with a packet of crackers, some spreading cheese, some biscuits and an orange, and pushed it into the office here where I prepared for a footfest.

The first match was TNS v Connah’s Quay Nomads, which had kicked off half an hour ago, but thanks to the “start from beginning” option, I could watch it from the kick-off, the first time this season that I had seen TNS. The following match was a second division match between Y Drenewydd and Bwcle.

However, we had a calamity. With about fifteen minutes to go, I crashed out in my chair. I managed to see the start of the Drenewydd v Bwcle game, but with about ten minutes gone, I crashed out again.

When I awoke, it was fifty-six minutes into the game and I had never felt so ill in my life. I was in one of those situations where I couldn’t even move, I was so tired. Eventally, though, I managed to slide from the chair and go to bed. The blog can wait until morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about anaesthetic … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man from Crewe went into the local dentists and asked "how much is a tooth extraction here?"
"It’s £65:00" replied the dentist.
"Is there any way to do it cheaper?" asked the man. "That sounds expensive."
"Well, if you’re brave enough, doing it without anaesthetic will cost £50:00."
"That’s still dear. Would it be cheaper if a student dentist were to do it?"
"That would work out at about £40:00"
"And if we made it a training session with a load of students watching and maybe even trying?"
"In that case, it would cost just £10:00. But it won’t be a very pleasant experience."
"No" replied the man "but the price is right. So can I book the wife in for next week some time?"

LIVE: Friday 30th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

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… seen one of the most exciting and interesting games of football that I have seen for ages. What’s more, it was a last-minute decision to watch it too instead of the game that I had planned to see, so I was even more pleased.

Much more pleased, in fact, than how my day started off today – or should I maybe say “last night” instead?

You’ve no idea how ill I was during the night. And when I awoke, it took me hours to recover. Today was definitely another typical example of a day of two halves.

Last night, for example, I crashed out yet again while riding the porcelain horse. I was away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, for well over an hour, and it took a while for me to recover afterwards. But I recovered so well that I sat down and dashed off the notes last night without even thinking about them.

After I’d finished, I was glad to crawl into bed, even if it was already midnight, and I was asleep quite quickly. And I only awoke once or twice, one time of which you’ll find out more as you read on further down, but I was soon asleep again until the alarm woke me.

Both those times, though, I was feeling really ill, with a dry throat and a really uncomfortable sensation in my stomach, and when the alarm went off at 06:29 and awoke me, I was still feeling quite unwell.

It took even longer than usual for me to return to the Land of the Living and stagger across the living room to the front door to unlock it ready for when the nurse comes later, and then I staggered back across the living room to the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning.

Back in here afterwards, my first job was to check the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I had another strange phantom awakening during the night. I dreamed that my cleaner had shaken me awake, so in fact I awoke. I felt so ill that I couldn’t move for a moment, and I thought that I would be still in bed when the second alarm goes off. However, the second alarm never went off, and when I looked at the time, it was 01:05. Before I was shaken awake, I was dreaming that something was going on during half-term at Eton Boys’ School, where the football coaches from Eton had taken in children from unprivileged backgrounds and were busy coaching them in football. There was a young girl who was there, and she was woken up and told to get out of bed, so she did a perfect cartwheel out of the bed. When she was upside-down, she stopped and stood there in an upside-down cartwheel for a couple of minutes before carrying on to finish it.

It would certainly be a fate worse than death if my cleaner were to shake me awake at some time during the night. But it was certainly one of the strangest “phantom alarms” that I have ever had.

Anyone who has read the book or seen the film GOOBYE MR CHIPS will immediately recognise the reference to the football setting, but the girl doing the cartwheel is part of yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors, and now in response to a request that I received, AMAZON GERMANY. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses the links to make a purchase.

The nurse turned up this morning rather later than usual, and while he was sorting out my legs and feet, I talked to him about yesterday at dialysis and how ill I was feeling this morning. He was a former dialysis nurse, so I expected him to have a few answers, but he just gave me some “generic” replies that didn’t help the matter advance very much.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

They’ve finished being out and about, and in the short time that they have left before they need to take up their carriages to go to Craven Arms station for their train, they have gone sightseeing at the castle and church at Clun, just down the road.

As for me, I’ve been researching some of the very interesting names of people, places and fossilised animals that have cropped up in this short section, and that’s even more interesting.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, one of which was to check the statistics. And once more, I’ve had ChatGPT researching a web page of one of my sites, presumably to use as a reference to someone’s query. I’ve lost count of how many that is now.

When everything was done, I started work. and how much I rued my missing two afternoons earlier in the week, because it took less than ninety minutes to finish off writing the notes for the radio programme. I could have done that easily on Tuesday afternoon.

Once I’d finished, I went for a late lunch – to wit, a disgusting drink and the midday medication – and then I spent maybe twenty minutes tidying up the freezer in the bathroom. There’s plenty more to do in there too, and if I spend a short time in there each day, I should be able to make a lot of room in the freezer, I reckon.

This afternoon, I made a start on tidying up the music that I have stored on here. My temporary folder is flooded out with music and there’s much more than what will fit on a 4 GB memory stick, as I found out. I use 4 GB memory sticks because the hi-fi in the living room can’t handle more than 4 GB.

That took me up to about 19:00, and there was still more that could have been done, especially if I had had a few more 4 GB memory sticks … "he’s exhausted his stock now" – ed … I’ll have to find some more time and more memory sticks from somewhere to finish this off.

There had been the usual Friday afternoon interruption when my cleaner came to do her stuff. We had a good chat about things, and then she produced the 200 grammes of mushrooms that she’d bought me today. And when I went to put them in the fridge, I found that last week’s were still there almost untouched.

As there are three rolls of flaky pastry for croissant-making, I’ve decided that I’m going to make a mushroom pie on Sunday, to use up a roll of flaky pastry and last week’s mushrooms. I asked my chatbot if he knew of any decent recipes, and sure enough, he presented me with a mushroom and white bean pie filling that looked particularly nice. My white beans will need soaking over night so I’ll have to start this mixture off tomorrow evening.

Tea tonight was my usual air-fried chips, beans with cheese and black pepper, and a vegan sausage. And that was a lovely tea. I enjoyed every mouthful.

Pudding tonight was a pot of soya yoghurt, coffee flavoured, a handful of biscuits and a prune, and they were eaten back in the office after I’d done the washing-up, because there was football on the internet and I didn’t want to miss it.

My plan had been to watch Y Fflint v Trefynnon, but at the last moment, I changed my mind and watched Rhydaman v Hwlffordd.

As I said just now, this was a really exciting match that surged from one end to the other non-stop, and it was a find of exceptional interest, a really good showcase of the quality on show of the Novira Premier League. I was exhausted just watching it, never mind playing in it.

As for the score, I’ll let you find out if you like, because I’m hoping that other Welsh fans would sign in to watch the game – especially for the sting right at the end of the tail in this game.

And also, congratulations to Babucar Sauane of Rhydaman, the best player on the pitch, and by a country mile too.

So right now I’m going off to bed, ready to fight the good fight again tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about visiting churches … "well, one of us has" – ed … one Sunday, the Devil decided to visit a church in the UK. And as he walked in through the door, all of the congregation fled, except for one man.
"Aren’t you going to flee too?" asked old Nick.
"No, I’m not" replied the man.
"Even thoough I could kill you with just a couple of words?"
"No" replies the man.
"Why not?" asked the devil.
"You go and live twenty-five years with my wife" replied the man.

LIVE: Thursday 29th October 2026 – I HAVE NO …

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… idea of what’s happening to me at dialysis. All I do know is that something isn’t correct.

On Monday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was the lightest that I had been for a while when I weighed myself before we started. And it must have been correct because when I weighed myself afterwards, the weight corresponded with what it should have been given the amount of fluid removed.

As well as that, we had the blood pressure slowly creeping up and then, after a few hours back at home, we had that bleeding issue… "or that bleeding bleeding issue" – ed …

Today, I had the highest weight that I have ever had since I’ve been keeping records, and so I spent four hours there today. And heaven alone knows what it would have been had I not persuaded the nurse to take an additional three hundred grammes on Monday.

And then the blood pressure went through the roof – 13.0, which may be normal for you, but it certainly isn’t for me. Finally, after the ten minutes of compression at the end, the nurse relaxed her grip, and we had blood everywhere.

None of this is normal, not by any means, especially as I have no problems riding the porcelain horse, and the next time that I see Emilie the Cute Consultant, I shall tell her.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night I was terribly late going to bed again. But luckily, I was able to go to sleep quite quickly. I’ve no idea what time it was that I awoke, but I lay there vegetating for quite a while. Eventually, I decided that I may as well show some signs of life, but the alarm beat me to it.

And then, miserable failure that I am, I was still in bed when the second alarm went off, and it’s been ages since that has happened. I ended up being hours late unlocking the door ready for the nurse when he arrives.

In the bathroom, I sorted myself out and even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later on.

Back in here, with nothing to download off the dictaphone, I found a few other things to do until the nurse put in an appearance, earlier than usual. And today, we discussed the weather while he was dealing with my legs and feet. It’s supposed to be nice this weekend, but I’ll wait and see.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

And here we go again. Today, our heroes have gone to visit the Bury Ditches Hillfort near Clunton in Shropshire. Our party leader explained to his group that he "had examined these earthworks since, and from their bold and perfect condition, he was of opinion that they could not be older than the Roman period. They might even be Roman, for it is now well known that the Romans made elliptical camps as well as square ones. There were, however, no authentic Roman monuments similar to this one, and this, therefore, was very doubtful. If not a Roman work, what is it? He considered it to be Saxon, of the very early period of the Saxons. He believed it to be—not a camp—but the house of a Saxon chieftan of great importance, dating probably from about the sixth century."

According to everyone else these days, it’s an Iron Age hillfort, as are almost all of these hillforts.

Back in here again afterwards, I had a few things to do, and then, oh! what might have been. I attacked the radio notes and in just about seventy-five minutes, I’d completed about sixty percent. If only I had worked this hard on Tuesday and Wednesday.

When the alarm went off, I headed into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication, and then I began to sort my things for dialysis. My cleaner came along as usual and applied the anaesthetic to my arm.
We had a good chat, and then after she left, I had a couple of things to do and then collapsed over the table.

And, as usual, I was just about to drift off into another comfortable dream when the doorbell rang. It was the young, chatty taxi driver who had come to take me to dialysis. He was ten minutes late, but as I was the only passenger, we made up a lot of the time. And at dialysis, we had the pantomime that I had mentioned.

After I was plugged in, I watched the last football match from the weekend – Caernarfon v Llansawel.

It took a while for Caernarfon to settle into their stride, but once they were up and running, they had much more in the tank than Llansawel and scored three really good goals.

But all through the match, Llansawel’s tactic of putting low crosses into the box was meat and drink to the Caernarfon defence, and I was screaming at them to put the ball in the air. With about three minutes to go, they finally got the message and began to pump high crosses into the goal area, and sure enough, in stoppage time, they managed to pull a goal back. But it was too little, too late.

For the rest of the session, I had some things to do, tidying up on the computer.

As usual, when I’d finished, I had to wait until the nurse (the other one of the two whom I mentioned a couple of days ago) finished cleaning the machine before she attended to me, and then there was the history about the blood. But eventually, I was ready to leave, the last patient in the building.

My driver, another chatty one, was waiting for me, and we had an interesting chat about religion on the way home. My cleaner was ready, waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment.

It was almost 19:45 when I arrived, and there was no danger of me cooking at that time, so I had crackers and spreading cheese, followed by some biscuits and an orange.

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed in the hope of having a good night, but once again, I shouldn’t be so optimistic as it only leads to disappointment.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about blood pressure … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember arriving at the hospital in Paris, and when they checked my blood pressure, it was through the roof.
"Your blood pressure is high today, Mr Hall" said the nurse.
"Well, I’ll tell you what," I replied. "You go for a drive around Paris with the chauffeur who has just brought me here and see what yours is afterwards!"

LIVE: 26th October 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …

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… at dialysis, I had a session where nothing seemed to go wrong, and it passed this afternoon without the slightest of worries.

On top of that, the médécin de garde this afternoon was Emilie the Cute Consultant, and what could any man want more than that?

In fact, I had an idea that it was going to be a good day today. Although it wasn’t early when I went to bed last night, it wasn’t as late as many have been just recently. And once I was in bed, I went pretty much straight to sleep.

Although I have a couple of vague memories of waking up during the night, I must have gone more or less straight back to sleep because I don’t really remember very much at all until the alarm going off at 06:29.

As usual, it took me a while to rise to my feet, and the first task was, like it always is these days, to go to unlock the front door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives.

The second task was different today. It was to go to stir the chilli mix. It had been in the slow cooker all night, and it still hadn’t boiled at that point, I noticed. Consequently, I put it on “high” to give it a kick start and went into the bathroom to organise myself for the day, including having a shave ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant in case she examines me.

When I’d finished in there, I went back into the kitchen to check the chilli. By now, it was bubbling away, so I gave it a really good stir and turned the temperature down to “medium” and left it for a while.

Back in here, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

We were at some kind of meeting, and there were hordes and hordes of people there. We were sitting in seats and we were all crammed in. It was a really tight fit to have everyone in there and seated. There was virtually no leg room at all. I was sitting right near the back with a group of people around me and we were getting on really well. The final day of this meeting, they were taking everyone off into the city nearby for a sightseeing tour, but it had started to rain, and quite a lot of people had decided that they weren’t going to go, including a couple of our little group, so we were debating what we were going to do. I was interested in one of these girls, so I was wondering if she was going to stay here too or if she was going to go back to her room or whatever, but anyway, I got up and went for a walk around to stretch my legs, and despite the huge meal that we had had earlier, there was some kind of small running buffet where people could make sandwiches and so on. I noticed my Welsh teacher from last year sitting on the front row talking. So I had a quick glance at this food, and they had bourbon biscuits, so despite the meal, I helped myself to a couple of those and walked back to my seat to see what the other people in our group had decided.

Here I am once more with another little group of friends. But apart from that, there’s nothing in this dream that I can readily identify. However, it does have a very familiar ring to it and I’m sure that there’s been something like this happening before, but I just can’t place it.

The presence of my previous Welsh teacher is interesting too, although I’ve no idea why she’s there.

As for the bourbon biscuits, the cheap Tesco ones are in fact vegan, and on several occasions when I was over in the UK, I’d bring back several packets to keep me going. And that gives me an idea – why don’t I ask my chatbot if he can work out a good recipe for me? I may as well try.

… "And as a matter of fact, he did ask, and his chatbot came up with an excellent recipe" – ed …

There was also something else. My friend from the USA rang me and was talking about going to some kind of wholesale shop for things. But first, the story was about his vehicle that had been stolen. I said that it was probably in Canada or somewhere like that, being used by someone else, although I knew where it was, I knew who had stolen it, and I knew the reason why, so I wasn’t going to say anything. This person who had had it had inadvertently put the vehicle’s registration number on line in a blog entry. My friend said that he had looked for the vehicle on line and he hadn’t been able to see it, except for something in Canada, so that gave me a little relief. In the meantime, he said – he asked me if I could look up in a USA directory the way to get from his place to somewhere else in the area. I had to hunt down three or four maps and they were all the wrong ones. In the end, I found the correct one just as he was returning to the ‘phone. He told me that he was going to go to this wholesale shop using the card of someone else. She turned out to be a girl at this meeting with whom I was talking. I asked him how he had met her, and he said that he was at the meeting last year and that was where they hooked up for a while.

It looks as if I stepped back into that first dream later on, but this is another dream that means nothing at all to me. I’m not sure why the car would be involved, why I’d be expected over here in France to look at a map and why a girl in the UK would have a trade card for the USA that she would let someone else use.

I was in the USA last night with my van. I was driving down these roads towards Texas and there was a heavy fog approaching, so I didn’t want to be on the road when there was this heavy fog, so I pulled off by the side of the road, right by a cemetery. I went to have a look in the cemetery, and one of the things that I noticed was a huge monument on a grave, and I read it. It was by some guy who had died in Texas, and on his tombstone was written a quote that he had made, which was “don’t ever go to Texas because all you ever see are headstones and monuments in graveyards”. I walked back and climbed back on board the coach, and there were only two or three people there, so I asked them where everyone had gone. They replied that everyone else had gone to walk up and down a hill. I waited for them all to come back, and I asked the guy in charge where they’d been, and he said that they’d been for a walk along a canal. So I set off and carried on driving, and we were passing through all these small villages that looked very much like English villages. We ended up in a square in one of these places, which was magnificent, with a couple of archways in and a couple of archways out, and a pseudo black and white shop. I suggested to the guy in charge that we stop here and let people photograph for five minutes, so he gave everyone a fifteen minute break for a coffee, and I went to park up my motorbike outside a shop. The guy inside the shop came along and helped me padlock it too with another padlock on another hook. I asked him for a key, and he gave me twenty cents. I wandered off and took a few photos, and when it was time to go back, I went back to the shop. I unpadlocked one end and the guy unpadlocked the other. A third guy came over and asked me about Audis. I told him that they were expensive cars. He wanted to go over and have a look at my van, so he went over and had a look at it, then he went inside and told the passengers that I hadn’t given him a tip for holding the motorbike and that I was probably going to beg them for a tip at the end of the holiday. I threw him off and we set off again in the coach. We ended up by the sea. Someone had said that they could see the sea from where we’d stopped. But here, we came to a very narrow entry and pulled out onto a main road. The guy in charge asked me which way, but I said that I didn’t know because no-one had told me which hotel or even which town I was supposed to be going to. I drove the coach along a bit of the way and the road disintegrated into a kind of woodland. We climbed out of the coach and walked through the woods, and the coach followed us. We ended up at this big hotel that looked more like a hospital. This, apparently, was where we were supposed to be.

This one is the most weird of them all.

If I were to point out every inconsistency in this dream, we’d be here forever trying to explain them. But the most important is how my mode of transport changed from being a van, a coach and a motorbike and then back again, and then there was the image of a self-driving coach taking itself through the woods.

It’s probably best if I were to say nothing and let you try to work the rest of them out for yourselves. Perhaps someone can identify if this relates to anything else that has happened in the past.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, but a little late today. With her oppo taking over tomorrow, I imagine that there has been a rush for last-minute injections and blood samples. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … she has “the touch”, whereas her oppo doesn’t.

While she was working on my legs and feet, she told me of her plans for her week off. At St Malo over the weekend there’s the start of a single-handed yacht race – the Route du Rhum – between Brittany and the Antilles, finishing at Guadeloupe. She’s off to witness the start and to wish everyone bonne route. It’s a race that takes place every four years, and the record time is well under seven days.

After she left, I made my breakfast and while I was eating, I read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

And those of you who were perturbed by all of this mass slaughter of disappearing wildlife that I mentioned yesterday will be pleased to know that the fish had their revenge. Our author tells us that, on the train along the Wye valley near to Llangoed Castle, "you see from the railway the very pool where poor Mr. Holmes was drowned while fishing, in sight of his newly married wife."

When I’d finished breakfast, I went round into the kitchen and tipped a couple of handfuls of peas and a tin of sweetcorn into the chilli mix, gave it a really good stir, and then began to tidy away the breakfast things. While I was in the fridge, I pulled out two small tubs of soya yoghurt, and when the tidying was done, I switched off the slow cooker and tipped the yoghurt in, giving it a really good stir. Now I’ll let it cool down.

Back in the bedroom, I reviewed the radio programme for this week and sent it off to be added into the stream for the coming weekend, and then I set about reconverting into a format that I can use, the music that my chatbot found for me yesterday. And I hadn’t finished it all when my alarm clock sounded to remind me that it’s time to stop work.

So I sorted out my midday medication and a disgusting drink and then began to pack away the travelling laptop, ready to take with me to dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and I’m glad that she was here because one moment, I was sitting on a chair at the dining table and the next moment, I was lying on the floor with a pain in my head where it had apparently collided with the electronic drum kit.

Between the two of us, I managed to sit back into the chair so that I could finish off putting on my shoes.

After my cleaner had left, I did my usual “collapse in a semi-recumbent position over the table” until the taxi arrived. And it was my favourite Belgian taxi driver too, so we had a good chat. We had to go off into the sticks to find another passenger and then into Sartilly for our usual Monday passenger.

And going off into the sticks is no problem for me. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m going to parts of Normandy that I never knew existed until I started travelling with this taxi company.

As a result of everything, we were late arriving at dialysis, but it didn’t matter too much because I was seen more or less straight away and I was up and running by 14:25. It’s been later than that a few times even when I’ve been on time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

To my surprise, especially after the last couple of weeks, there wasn’t much to be extracted, so I persuaded the nurse to wind it up by three hundred millilitres so as to give me a head start for Thursday.

I spent the afternoon watching football. The first game was the rest of Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. From 2-0 down, Airbus won 3-2. This was a Cambian United-sponsored stream, so they had one of their fans commenting, and even he was forced to admit that once Airbus began to play with the wind in the second half, they were by far the better team. Cambrian’s “kick and rush” style of play into a headwind was taking them nowhere.

When that match was over, I watched the whole of Colwyn Bay v Cardiff Metropolitan. Very much against the run of play, the Met took the lead, and when the Seagulls had a player sent off in the thirty-first minute, we thought that it was “game over”.

However, then we had two of the most extraordinary goals that I’ve seen for a while. Defending a corner kick in a swirling wind, a Met player went to head the ball out of danger. The wind, however, swirled the ball round to the back of his head and another gust of wind took it into his own net.

Even worse, a few minutes later, the Seagulls had another corner. Kicking an inswinging ball into the penalty area in the same swirling wind, the ball beat everyone and went straight into the net. So from being 1-0 down, Colwyn Bay had gone to 2-1 even with being a man down.

However, in the second half, the Met had the wind in their favour and they managed to find an equalising goal, although it wasn’t as bizarre as those of Colwyn Bay.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She wanted to know how I was getting on with the immunotherapy, so I explained that I seemed to be doing OK. She said too that she would see what she could arrange about this COVID vaccination, which was nice of her.

While she was there, I took advantage of asking her about the nighttime sessions of dialysis. She explained that it probably wasn’t for me, which is a shame. Firstly, you need to be autonomous, which I’m not. You need to be in good health and not require medical supervision, which rules me out too, and then you need to be able to compress your own wounds, and that definitely rules me out.

When it was time to be unplugged, I didn’t have to wait long, and the nurse came over to me with a nursing student just starting her second year. She’d come on a work placement to dialysis for a few weeks and it was her first day.

However, there was all kinds of chaos going on around me, with ill patients, rebellious patients, and machines sounding alarms all over the place, so I let my experienced nurse clear off once she’d unplugged me and I taught the nursing student how to do a compression … "is there no end to this man’s talents?" – ed …

My driver was waiting for me when I was ready, and I was home by 18:40. My cleaner helped me inside and then stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I made some rice and veg and then heated up a couple of serving spoons full of my chilli in the microwave. That was tea tonight and it was delicious, but I’ll know all about it tomorrow, that’s for sure.

Pudding was more apricot halves with home made chocolate and coconut ice cream, and that was as delicious as usual too.

After the washing up, I portioned out the rest of the chilli into individual servings, and then I had to tidy the freezer to be able to fit them in there. But now, they are quite happily freezing away, ready for use another time.

So now that my notes are written, there are just a couple of other things to do and then I’m off to bed. No Welsh course tomorrow, so I can relax a little.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about nursing students … "well, one of us has" – ed … a student nurse from Crewe went to do her first work placement.
Amongst the things that she had to check that she had brought with her was a red crayon.
"Why have you brought that?" asked her placement supervisor.
"Well" replied the student. "I’m not sure how else I’m expected to draw blood while I’m on this ward."

LIVE: Sunday 25th October 2026 – THIS WAS HOW …

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… a proper Sunday should be organised, and I enjoyed every minute of it, for a change.

Despite not finishing my notes and going to bed instead, it was by no means early when I hit the hay. It might not have been after midnight, but I bet that it wasn’t far off.

But never mind. Sunday is my Day of Rest and my aim was to sleep for as long as I could and be awoken by Isabelle the Nurse when she arrived, especially as today we were all treated to an extra hour in bed.

Although I awoke a couple of times during the night, I was soon asleep again, and it was indeed Isabelle the Nurse who awoke me when she came into my bedroom. I didn’t hear her ring the doorbell or open the front door to come in. Considering that I’m supposed to be a light sleeper, what use would I be if someone broke into my apartment overnight?

She gave me my anti-flu injection and then dealt with my legs and feet. Once they had been oiled and massaged, she had to hang around because there was a wait time of fifteen minutes to see that there were no unpleasant side-effects with this injection, so we had a cosy little chat about dialysis.

After she left, I raised myself from the Dead and went into the bathroom to sort myself out. Then, into the kitchen for breakfast – porridge, black coffee, juice for the morning medication and the last of my delicious home made apricot jam croissants. I’ll make some more like that next Sunday too.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Today’s topic concerns a visit of the group to Llandrindod Wells, and the first item is that of salmon fishing. Apparently a bunch of salmon poachers had been arrested in the river there, and the leader of the group was lamenting the fact that these days, salmon in the upper reaches of the Wye and its tributaries were few and far between.

However, he tells us that "as we have lately seen new and wise fishery laws passed, giving a much better chance to the upper proprietors than they ever had before, by the removal of fixed engines, a weekly close time for nets, and the prohibition of all fishing by nets after the first of September—all which regulations are very much in their favour—we may hope now for a better spirit to prevail. We have heard from more than one member of the Board of Conservators that there is every disposition on their part to act in the fairest and most liberal manner to the upper proprietors, and on the other hand it is fair to expect that they, the upper proprietors, will assist all they can in protecting the breeding fish"

On the following page, he records with pleasure of "Sir J. Bailey’s fishing cottage, then by the Nydd and its far-famed salmon catch of Cavan Shwn Lewis, where it is said Mr Charles Stretton killed twelve fish in one day".

With equal pride, he adds that "A salmon was taken as high up as Newbridge by angling, 39.5 lbs., and several over 20 lbs., and at Holm Lacey, four miles below the city of Hereford, the monster fish of 56 lbs. was caught by the nets …. Two other salmon were caught at the same draught, one 11 lbs. and the other 12 lbs. Numbers of others, varying from 35 lbs to 15 lbs, have been taken, and this season the capture of a 25 lb fish has been an ordinary occurrence."

It seems very much to me that his supposed admiration of the “new and wise fishery laws” and his crocodile tears over the salmon being “few and far between” were really nothing more than window-dressing.

Back in here later, I attacked the outstanding notes, and they are now on line. They took quite a while to do because there was so much of them. I don’t know how, out of a boring day like yesterday, I could have written so much.

One thing that I noticed, though, was that it was warm in here. In fact, the thermometer was showing 23°C. Consequently, I turned all the heating off to let things cool down a little.

After the outstanding notes were on line, it was time for the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then I was back in here transcribing the dictaphone notes.

I was mixed up with a group of people who were in all kinds of different things, like actors and so on. One or two of my friends had arranged for a weekend in Dublin. I thought that that would make a pleasant surprise for Nerina because it’s her birthday very soon. We all got down to making plans about it, and during the week, we ended up with about eighty-odd people. I mentioned to Nerina that we were going away for the weekend. When she asked where, and I replied “Dublin”, she went berserk and, for some totally unknown reason, completely lost her head about this idea. We had a huge row, which was complicated by the fact that I just couldn’t understand her reaction. Anyway, I went back to sort things out with my friends to see what they were doing and how they were going on, hoping that Nerina would cool down. However, she ended up taking a room in a really posh hotel in the immediate vicinity of where we were. Once we’d finalised all these details about Dublin, I went over to the hotel to see if she’d woken up yet, and the receptionist pointed outside, and Nerina was waiting by a set of traffic lights in Earle Street. I thought that from the position that she was in, she was not going to Dublin. I said “I suppose that you have finally decided not to go”. That triggered another huge argument. She said something like “I hope you have fun there”. I said “if you’re not going, then I’m not going, and we’ll go home”. “Right,” she said. “In that case, I’m not going home”, and stormed off. I was busy trying to scratch my head about all of this because I didn’t understand her totally unreasonable attitude about this.

.
This is not an unreasonable dream because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we did have a travel club, a little group of us … "certainly nothing like eighty though" – ed … but it’s not been as active as it used to be since I lost the use of my legs and began dialysis.

Actually, in real life, the “traffic lights” were the zebra crossing in Earle Street between Tiko’s café and the Cheese Hall pub. However, there’s certainly no luxury hotel across the road from there. There’s a very cheap building with what used to be the old Victor Value supermarket and with government offices on top.

As for Nerina, it really was her in the dream. Her mother was Italian, and Nerina had inherited not only her mother’s cooking but also her mother’s Italian character. It took me a while to come to terms with her somewhat flamboyant emotional side, but once I’d understood the psychology behind it, I found that married life was refreshing and exciting, and, to be frank, since I’ve met other women afterwards, I really wish that things between Nerina and me had worked out better. Anyway, this dream went way, way beyond anything that I had ever experienced with her.

It’s hard to explain what was going on in this dream, but this was one of those rare dreams that seemed to be completely real when I was asleep. And although there is nothing in the dictated notes about this, I can still remember going with Nerina up a set of stairs over a shop to a small, candlelit restaurant with red furnishings and heavy dark oak furniture in the Victorian style, and also getting on board a train made up of individual carriages, although I was with just one other person on that train, who wasn’t Nerina.

And the bit about “busy trying to scratch my head about all of this” – this afternoon, I noticed a scab of some sort on the back of my head as if I had been scratching it so much that it had bled. That wasn’t there yesterday.

Later on, we had more football – this time it was the Scottish Cup between Stranraer and non-league Tayport, played in a monsoon at the bottom of a waterfall in a tornado.

Tayport played with the wind in the first half and made the most of it, going in 1-0 up at half-time.

But class will out in the long run, and in the second half, Stranraer scored three, with this site’s favourite forward, Robbie Foster, scoring one of them.

Greenock Morton’s game against Ayr United was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.

While all of this was going on, my chatbot was busy researching music for me, and he came up with piles of interesting stuff. He’s done about two days worth of my research for me while I’ve been doing other things, and that’s one of the benefits of artificial intelligence. And based on what he’s found, this programme is going to be a really interesting one, I reckon.

Later on, it was time to go a-baking, and a sunflower-seed loaf was first on the agenda.

While the was proofing, I began to prepare the ingredients for the recipe for the aubergine and chilli whatsit that my chatbot found for me the other day. And after I’d added the sunflower seeds into the bread and left it to prove for a second time, I fried the onions, aubergine and garlic lightly and then tipped them and everything else into the slow cooker on “low”, where they will be festering all night.

The loaf was magnificent. It had risen the highest that I have ever had a loaf of bread rise, and it’s cooked to perfection. As for the stuff in the slow cooker, it tastes wonderful, although before I have a helping of it, I shall have to remember to put the toilet paper in the fridge first. It seems that the measurements for the chilli powder are somewhat exaggerated.

While the bread was cooking, I had a bite to eat – the first food on a Sunday night for ages. It was a small helping of this vegan chilli meal that was on special offer at Leclerc, with a generous helping of steamed vegetables tossed in butter. It was nice, but if it had been sold at full price, it would have been expensive for what it was.

So with the notes now written, there are just one or two more things to do, and then I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … with the heating still switched off and the thermometer showing 18°C.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about playing football in heavy rain … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember discussing a football match at (thinks) Llanberis several years ago which was postponed because there was three feet of water covering the pitch.
Whoever the opponents were, I can’t remember now, but they were keen to play the game.
When I asked their manager why, he replied "Llanberis can switch on the floodlights, and we’ve brought a full complement of subs."

LIVE: Saturday 24th October 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

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… sitting in here watching the football for the last two hours, freezing my nether regions off.

And at the final whistle, I checked the temperature in here. It was 16°C. No wonder I was sitting here in a pullover and a fleece and still freezing. Consequently, and with regret, I’ve put the heating on tonight, a whole week earlier than I would usually like to.

Still, it can’t be helped. I shall console myself with the fact that last year, it was the 13th October. The previous year was the 27th October. And so it’s not unusual to have it switched on before the end of October.

The reason why it’s suddenly gone cold after the wonderful early October that we had was that the weather has been so darned miserable these last couple of days. Last night, I could feel a chill in the air inside the apartment and I was glad to be in bed, notwithstanding the fact that it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and I lay there without moving for a good couple of hours. However, I soon awoke, thanks to the wind again, and after that I couldn’t go back to sleep again. I couldn’t persuade my lazy self to leave the bed for an early start, and it was only when the second alarm was due to start that I managed to sit up and put my feet on the floor.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … having my feet on the floor is one thing. Being up and about is something else completely. It took me a good few minutes before I found the courage and motivation to stand up and go into the living room to unlock the door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives later.

From there, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day, and I even had a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone, I had a few things to do while I was waiting, and I noticed that during the night, once more, a ChatGPT chatbot had visited my site to look up some information to use as a source for a reply to a question. How many is this now, I wonder?

When Isabelle the Nurse arrived, we talked about the storm that was still blowing, the miserable weather, the damage all through the town and the fact that there are still several thousand houses in the suburbs still without electricity. You would think that someone would have done something about that by now.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Our expert his finished his waxing lyrical discussion about primroses, and now one of the experts from the Naturalists Club is debating the matter with him, stating that he can’t agree. Although I can’t quite follow the argument, not knowing sufficiently about the subject, it’s good fun to watch the experts falling out amongst themselves.

When breakfast was over, I came back in here, but I wasn’t in here for long as Leclerc’s delivery driver came by with my shopping. She dumped it all on the kitchen table and left me to sort it out, which is normal practice.

The frozen food went away first, and then the fresh food that needs freezing. The juice, milk, veg and fruit, etc., went into the fridge or the vegetable drawer under the worktop, then the dry stuff, and finally the tins. There was quite a lot of stuff today – but then again, it’s been just over four weeks since my last order, so it’s no surprise. At least, I have everything that I need to make my aubergine and kidney bean whatsit on Sunday afternoon.

There was time to do a little more work before the alarm went off, and then I began to prepare myself for dialysis.

There was the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and my faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic.

Once she had left, there was no time for me to adopt my usual semi-recumbent position over the table while I waited for the taxi because a couple of people wanted to chat to me over the internet, and that was how I was occupied when the taxi arrived, bang on time at 13:00.

When I opened the front door to leave, the hurricane blowing off the sea was far too much for me, so I persuaded the driver to drive around the back of the building to the fire escape, where I only had a couple of paces to walk.

There was just me today in the taxi with the driver, and taking the shortcut to avoid the gilets jaunes, we were at dialysis at 13:35. However, expecting me to be coupled up quickly is a rather optimistic expectation, and it was 14:35 when I was finally connected up.

Today, there was no question of excess weight or excess time, so things proceeded as normal. However, I had one of the two nurses who do just about the minimum work required, cutting corners here and there, and there were continual interruptions and alarms as the machine complained all through the session about the quality of the connection until one of the other nurses came and did what was necessary to satisfy it.

Once everyone had settled down, I watched the live football match, Connah’s Quay Nomads v Llandudno. Llandudno’s early-season form has melted away and their dismal run of form continues. The Nomads, on the other hand, are on an excellent run, and it continued today as they beat Llandudno 2-0.

Like most clubs in the Novira Cymru Premier League, Llandudno’s problem is the lack of a front-line goalscorer. Earlier in the season, their forwards were making hay against the weaker clubs, but now, their fixture list has become serious, and they are playing against serious, established clubs who can exploit the weaknesses of the other teams.

When that had finished, I watched some of Friday night’s game between two newly promoted clubs, Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. I hadn’t finished watching the match when it was time to go home, so I’ll tell you more about it on Monday evening when I’ve finished watching it.

In between everything, the doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me. She told me that she had been looking at the details of my sessions for the last few weeks and had noticed that the black line (which represents the amount of fluid being extracted at that moment) had fallen below the yellow block (which represents the excess weight over my dry weight) on almost every occasion.

She had come to the conclusion that my dry weight was wrong and that she should increase my dry weight by 500 grammes. That’s a shame because I had come to like the new, trim me. And in any case, the new dry weight may well make a difference to the first extraction, but once I’m at the new weight, it won’t make a bit of difference to any subsequent extraction. Still, she’s in charge and may well know what she’s talking about, even if she does have to use a calculator to divide 3800 by 4.

When the time was up, my nurse concentrated on cleaning the machine rather than disconnecting me. And when she finally came round to disconnecting me, she compressed the wounds for just five minutes instead of the ten that are usually required, and then returned to cleaning the machine again. That’s not really satisfactory, but it’s what you come to expect when she’s working.

This early evening, I was really lucky. I saw my favourite taxi driver, whom I haven’t seen since the beginning of May in the garden centre in Granville. We had a chat for a couple of minutes, and then the driver who was to take me home emerged from the ladies’ … errr … rest room. She was another one of my favourite drivers, and we had a really good chat on the way home.

Back here at the apartment, the gale had started up again, and in spades too, so my driver dropped me off at the rear of the building again. Only a couple of paces then into the building and out of the wind.

My cleaner helped me back into the apartment, and once I was sitting down, she pressed a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt and then cleared off. I didn’t drink my disgusting drink then, but I put it on my little trolley along with a packet of crackers, some vegan cheese spread and an orange. There was no time to make a meal because there was more live football on the internet and it had already kicked off (thank heavens for the “start from the beginning” option on the live stream).

This was Y Barri playing against Hwlffordd in the driving rain and hurricane winds that made this match a total lottery. Y Barri, whose usual tactics are to play with the ball in the air, were bound to be second best to a Hwlffordd side who like to play with the ball on the ground.

And having watched the game, I was convinced that the referee and the two linesmen were refereeing a totally different game to the one that I, the Y Barri staff and most of the crowd were watching. There were several incidents in the Hwlffordd penalty area which, if I had been refereeing, I would have given a stonewall penalty, and the refusal of the referee to consult the VAR cameras made a mockery of having VAR in the first place.

The result was Y Barri lost 1-3, and their early-season form, when they were leading the league for a while, seems to have deserted them, just like it has at Llandudno.

After the end of the game, I began to write up the notes of the day but I almost fell asleep on several occasions, so in the end, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t doing justice to today, so I called it a day, published on line what I had done so far, added a “to be continued” stamp, and made myself ready for bed. I can always finish off the notes tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about gaining weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me that it’s only natural for married men to gain weight.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Simple" replied my friend. "When they are single, they come home, look at what’s in the fridge and then go to bed. When they are married, they come home, look at what’s in the bed and then go to the fridge."

LIVE: Friday 23rd October 2026 – THIS BLASTED HURRICANE …

… or whatever you would like to call it, is still going on and showing no sign of abating. That’s about twenty-six hours that we’ve been battered, and the damage in the town and especially up here in the old town is “significant”. At least it was when my faithful cleaner went into town this morning. It must be much worse now.

At about 05:00 a gust of wind of 143 km/h was reported, and there have been others at 120 km/h, so I see from the site of the weather station down at the end of the rock. And in Finisterre, they’ve had gusts of over 150 km/h.

The prevailing wind all day has been from the north-west, and there’s nothing between us and the eastern coast of North America in that direction except the Atlantic Ocean, so there’s nothing to slow down the wind.

As I mentioned yesterday, the wind was getting up as I was coming home last night, but it really began to blow at about 20:30, and by the time that I went to bed, at about 23:30, it was really giving it a good go. I’m surprised that I managed to go to sleep. I was down the bed under the quilt, and I could still hear it howling.

But go to sleep. I did, although it wasn’t for long. At about 02:40 I had another phantom alarm call, and although it awoke me, it didn’t entice me out of bed. However, I couldn’t go back to sleep as the wind continued to roar with an intensity that I haven’t heard for a good few months.

When I looked at the time later on, I saw that it was 06:10, and I was tempted to make an early start but I thought better of it. However, at 06:25 I swung my feet out of bed and onto the floor, thus claiming an early start.

After both the alarms had gone off, I went into the living room and unlocked the door to let Isabelle the Nurse in when she arrived, and then I went to sort myself out in the bathroom.

Back in here, I attacked the rest of the notes left over from last night and they went on line when they were finished. At that moment, Isabelle the Nurse put in her appearance. She was supposed to give me my anti-flu injection this morning, but when she saw the state that I was in, with a streaming head cold that won’t go away, she wanted me to check with the doctor at dialysis that it’s OK to give it to me right now or whether we should wait a while.

She was soon on her way out to continue to fight the good fight with the hurricane outside, and I could go and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

We’ve finished the story of the Herefordshire Beacon, and now we have another expert waxing lyrical about the primrose and its various developments. “Well, in a cowslip’s bell I lie!” I thought to myself.

Once breakfast was over, I went back into the bedroom to send off my Leclerc order, but to my dismay, all deliveries are cancelled today because of the storm. I shall have to wait until tomorrow for my delivery to arrive. I hope that it’s before I go to dialysis.

My faithful cleaner sent me a video of the storm in the port this morning, the waves crashing over the harbour wall and causing nothing but mayhem in the outer harbour. It really was impressive, so I sent it on to a few friends for their perusal.

There were a few more things to do, as well as being engaged in several animated chats as a result of the video that I sent, and then it was time to start work on the notes for the radio programme.

It wasn’t long, though, before I had to stop for my midday medication and disgusting drink, and I was caught in flagrante delicto by my cleaner, who had come in to do her thing. We chatted for quite a while as she was working, and after she left, I carried on with work.

By about 18;00 I had finished the notes and they are ready to dictate, but I could have finished a lot earlier had I not crashed out at some point. And it seems that it’s not just Rosemary who has installed a camera in here, because as soon as I awoke, a friend sent me a message on the computer, and I ended up chatting to him for a while.

It’s a shame, though, because while I was asleep, I was away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

While I was asleep this afternoon, I was doing something with a group – something like Grand Funk Railroad. Then the group split up and I immediately joined another group but my former colleagues had not and this was confusing the authorities who did not understand that I was not out of work. There was plenty of other stuff too, such as being in a house and being in a department store, something like Woolworths, but as soon as I awoke, someone sent me a message on the computer and that completely destroyed my thought pattern and the dream disappeared.

That’s always a problem when dreaming during the day. At night, I’m usually uninterrupted … "chance would be a fine thing" – ed … but in the day, there are all sorts of things going on.

When I’d finished work, I summoned up my friendly neighbourhood chatbot, and between the two of us, we worked out some music for the next radio programme after the one that I finished today. This will be yet another one that will overflow my hour with more than enough artists and albums. My chatbot is becoming more and more efficient at tracking down what I would like.

Teatime was next – my regular Friday night tea of vegan sausage, baked beans with cheese and pepper and air-fried chips. For some reason, the chips were even better today – as perfect as they could ever be. This method that my friend showed me, of par-boiling the chips before putting them in the air fryer, is making some delicious chips and I’d wished that I’d known about this before.

No pudding tonight – just a handful of biscuits because we had football. The match that I’d chosen was newly promoted Trefelin, near the bottom of the table, and an established Y Fflint, struggling likewise near the foot of the table.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint play some really nice football and it beats me why they are so low in the table, but tonight, for the first half-hour, it was a kick-and-rush game. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m a big fan of this “long ball over the top”, and Y Fflint certainly have the goalkeeper in Jack Flint who can do it, but firstly, you need to be accurate with the ball, and secondly, you need a couple of quick forwards. Most of Jack Flint’s balls out of defence were going nowhere and to nobody.

Trefelin had by far the upper hand at first, but by the half-hour mark, Y Fflint had found their composure, settled down and began to play proper football.

Early in the second half, Y Fflint won a penalty and Trefelin’s keeper was sent off after he brought down an opposition attacker. The penalty was no trouble for Y Fflint’s centre-forward against the young substitute keeper, and the centre forward scored a second goal shortly afterwards when, unmarked at the far post, he turned in a cross from across the goal.

After that, it was all one-way traffic towards the Trefelin goal, but Y Fflint couldn’t increase the score.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that the idea of increasing the size of the league has just been to add some cannon fodder and to provide some easy relegation candidates to save the established clubs. And sure enough, the result in one of the matches tonight, an established club against a struggling new promotee, would have made a useful rugby score.

Now that my notes are finished, I’m off to bed before I turn into a pumpkin, and go to sleep, if the high winds let me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the high winds … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends from the USA asked me if anyone had ended up today like Lottie Michelle Belk of Chester, Virginia.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"She was walking along the promenade at Virginia City in a wind of 40 km/h when she died, stabbed to death by the pointed end of a beach umbrella that had broken free from its mounting."

LIVE: Sunday 18th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

… seen a most extraordinary incident in a football match – the kind that will be played back on these “blooper” videos on social networking channels for years and years to come. And it won’t be any surprise because I had to look at it twice and still find it hard to believe, and so did the commentator and everyone in the crowd too.

But more of that anon. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing and was about to crawl into bed, it was long after midnight, and I’d been letting it all hang out until 00:30, I suppose. And that kind of time for going to bed is doing me no favours at all.

However, with no alarm clock and being awoken in bed by the nurse, at whatever time he comes on a Sunday, that’s much more positive.

Always assuming that I sleep right the way through, which in these days is highly unlikely, of course. And so it proved last night. It was about 04:30 or so when I awoke, and after that, it was one of those early mornings when I’m drifting in and out of sleep without anything being definitive. I was awake at 06:20, which I know because I looked at the time, and the next thing I remember was the nurse coming into the apartment round about 08:30.

He sorted out my legs and feet while I was still in bed, and then he cleared off until tomorrow. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, so a short time later, I threw off the covers, and when I eventually summoned up the courage and energy to stand up, I headed into the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning.

When I’d finished dressing, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast. It was only 09:15 too, so it wasn’t actually all that late compared to a weekday.

Breakfast was quite good today. There was the usual porridge, juice and cafe, and two more of my home-made croissants filled with apricot jam. Yes, they were really delicious. There was no book today, though. The travelling laptop is still in my bag, as it will be going with me tomorrow to the day hospital before dialysis. The time has come round for the second instalment of this product that stimulates my white blood cells. And if it gives me the same kind of boost as the first one did four weeks ago, it will be pretty good.

And when it’s all over, across the road I go, off to the dialysis centre without a break and, more importantly, without breakfast. And that will hurt the most. That is, unless, once more, the nurse who looks after me goes for lunch, forgetting that she has to put the anaesthetic on my arm. That will hurt much more when I go to dialysis and they come to plug me in.

After breakfast, I came back in here to carry on with yesterday’s notes, and you may well have noticed that they are now on line, almost two thousand four hundred words of them. That meant that I could now transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was round at my niece’s house last night, and it was the usual chaotic place with all of their families and friends there. I was having to leave that evening as I was somewhere near Stranraer. My niece’s husband was talking to me about an oak that he’d been growing since it was an acorn, and now it was ready to be cut down, and he told me that I could have it. He explained that he’d been curing it with mushrooms and everything like that. I kept on asking for him to tell me where it was, but for some reason, he was very reticent. Then they all decided to go to someone’s party up in town, but I was planning to leave that night and I had a lot of things to do. One of the things that I’d promised to do was to take all the scaffolding and piping that was by the front door and put it somewhere, so I’d already put it in my van. My elder sister, she should have been helping me as she promised, but she went to this party too. Now that the van was all ready, apart from the piping that I’d put in it – this tubing that I’d put into it – and I didn’t have the address of this tree and had stuck all these tubes in my van, so in the end, I went down to where this party was and took hold of my sister. I said “are you still going to help me move these things?” She replied “oh yes, I’ll help you tomorrow”. I answered “you know I’m leaving tonight” so she reluctantly came out of the party. I asked my niece’s husband if he had the keys to these two garages that he had across the yard at the bottom under the trees, and he gave them to me. They were two half-keys that you had to fit together in order to open the door. So I picked those up and then went outside. I saw my sister walking around the street, so I drove over to pick her up. She came over extremely reluctantly as if she had no interest whatsoever in giving me a hand to move these tubes and piping in the van, even though they were for her daughter’s husband.

There have been quite a few dreams in the comparatively recent past about being at my niece’s house, all of which have put the house in an unreal situation, somewhere a long way from its actual position in real life, and all of them recounting stories that have absolutely no basis in fact.

But the significance of Stranraer is easy to explain, seeing as I watch Stranraer FC’s matches almost every weekend and sometimes when they are playing in midweek too. We’ve also been going to parties on a regular basis through the night just recently too.

The oak tree is significant too, seeing as I’m reading a chapter on special trees in Herefordshire in my morning book right now, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, I bet that the oak in this dream wasn’t ready to be cut down quite yet either. They need a few hundred years to mature first. And the mushrooms relate to that chapter on parasitic mushrooms that we read too.

The scaffolding and tubing is interesting as well. Regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall, I own quite a bit of scaffolding that I bought from that huge painting project in Liverpool City Centre when I was in the UK once, and I also bought some heavy duty tubing from Stoke on Trent to use as wind turbine masts and so on. My van was full of the stuff when I came back from the UK that time.

And, of course, there’s the usual visit of someone from the rest of my family. They always seem to pop up when they aren’t required

This took me up to today’s football – Afan Lido, tenth in the second tier v Penybont, third in the first tier.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Afan Lido’s ground. They haven’t been in the first tier and televised matches since they were relegated at the end of season 2013/2014, and although it’s a fairly new ground, it was looking rather tired and neglected back in those days. However, it looks as if it’s had a refurbishment and a few good coats of paint and looks much nicer.

As for the match, I don’t think that there was ever a doubt about who was going to win it. Penybont was by far the better team and had, I reckon, about two thirds of the play. At times, Afan Lido were struggling to get out of their own penalty area. However, they held on for a good forty-odd minutes before Penybont scored their first goal, a header by a Penybont defender from a corner.

And then we had a calamity!

The very same defender who had scored the goal, about thirty seconds later intercepted a loose ball down by his own goal line. His keeper was up near the penalty spot, so we all expected a pass to the keeper. Instead, the defender, calmly and nonchalantly, kicked the ball into his own net to give Afan Lido an equaliser, and no-one watching the game could believe what they had just seen.

Whatever Penybont’s manager, Rhys Griffiths, had put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I’d like a drink of that myself because within three minutes into the second half, Penybont had scored two more goals to go 3-1 up. However, Afan Lido woke up quite quickly and managed to keep the Penybont attackers out for the rest of the game, albeit with some desperate defending at times.

Afan Lido had some good moments of their own too, and with a few minutes to go, they won a corner. The ball pinged around inside Penybont’s six yard area for a few seconds, then hit a Lido player and went into the net. I don’t think that he knew anything about it – he was just in the way – but it was a goal for his team and they were now just one goal behind.

As the game came up to the final whistle, the Lido won yet another corner. This led to a game of head tennis, and the same player as just now put the ball in the net. But while he and his team were dancing around to celebrate, the linesman had his flag up for offside.

So Penybont won the game 3-2, meaning that Afan Lido were just so close, but on the balance of play, the result did rather flatter Afan Lido.

There was yet more football after that. The first match was Stranraer away at Spartans. And the Stranraer juggernaut rolls on with yet another win, this time 2-0. Still top of the table, on goal difference from Clyde, and those two have opened up a five-point gap to third place. The next few months will be interesting.

There was another 2-0 scoreline too, this time in the game between Greenock Morton and Queen’s Park. And since having sacked their manager a couple of weeks ago, Morton have become a different team. The players have finally gained some confidence and are looking as if they are enjoying themselves, and they had more shots on target in this match than they had in all of the matches under Ian Murray. They fully deserved their victory this afternoon. Here’s hoping that they can keep it up.

Two other important tasks remained to be done. The first one was to freeze the remains of my shepherd’s pie. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several days ago I had invited comments from my readers. Most of the suggestions that I received had nothing to do with the shepherd’s pie, and they were physically impossible anyway, but Seàn sent me a couple of ideas, for which I was grateful.

However, in the end, I found some small ice cream containers that Marianne had had. They were 900 mg instead of 1 litre, and the portions of shepherd’s pie were just about the right size to fit in. They are now in the freezer, freezing away.

The final job was my Welsh homework, seeing as I’m not here tomorrow morning. That’s all done now, and I’ll review it on Tuesday morning before I send it off to be marked.

So now my notes are also finished, so I’ll just finish off everything else before I go to bed. Hospital tomorrow morning, and I don’t really want to go. Here’s hoping that the effects of the perfusion make it worthwhile.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pies … "well, one of us has" – ed … a well-known cook from one of these celebrity TV programmes went to Australia, and while he was there, in front of an invited audience, he made a lemon meringue pie, and all of the audience cheered.
He stood there, scratching his head in bewilderment.
"What’s the matter?" asked the producer.
"Everyone cheered" he replied. "I don’t understand it."
"Why’s that?"
"Because back in the UK, I was told that Australians like to boo meringue."

LIVE: Saturday 17th October 2026 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… we had yet more problems at dialysis. And just to prove how polyvalent everyone is at dialysis, they were a completely different set of problems than the usual ones. It seems that my whole life is going to be spent encountering these dialysis issues, and when one is solved, we can simply pass on to the next one.

But I don’t understand at all why I seem to have so many problems at places like that. It’s almost as if someone thinks that I don’t have enough of my own at home, like sleeping, for example. It seems that I can sleep perfectly well when I don’t want to, like in the middle of the day, but when I want to, like at night, I don’t seem to be able to manage it.

Last night was a perfect example of that. I was writing my notes up after the football, admittedly at some kind of very late hour, and suddenly, I could feel myself starting to drop off. That was the cue to abandon the notes, post online what I’d done, and go to bed. And then, not be able to go to sleep for ages.

Eventually, I managed to drop off and go to sleep, but it wasn’t for long. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke, but it was definitely in the small hours. I know that I was still awake at 04:59 because I checked the time and debated with myself whether I should get up at that point, but the next thing that I remember was the ‘phone going off at 06:29.

Once more, it took a real effort to haul myself out of bed and off into the living room to unlock the front door ready for when the nurse comes, and then go into the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning. I even had a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

Back in here, I attacked the notes from last night, and I’d almost finished when the early arrival of the nurse confounded me.

While he was sorting out my legs and feet, we chatted about the weather. Apparently the temperature is going to drop dramatically over the next few days, and a proper autumn will be upon us quite rapidly.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Our author is still waxing lyrical about some of these trees, and I don’t suppose that he’ll ever stop. But interestingly, he talks about some fine young chestnut trees in the grounds of one of these stately homes in Herefordshire, and when I went to look it up on the internet to see how things are today, the hall is now in possession of the National Trust, who make some very favourable comments about the chestnut trees that are now one hundred and seventy years old.

Back in here after breakfast, I finished off the notes from yesterday and they are now on line, as you have probably noticed. And then I went to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

I was at a football match last night when the two teams playing, each one having a substitute who played in a reserve league who had never come into the first team. So the first team had their new player in defence and the other team had their player in attack, and the attack players and the defence players of the different teams had to be involved in finding space and waiting to be passed the ball and so on, and then be taught how to control it once they had already received it, because far too many balls were bouncing off them and going out of play and that sort of thing.

This dream about players finding space relates to a certain training session for a certain hockey team somewhere, but that’s yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

In fact, the part about the reserve players coming into the team also relates to the same story. But as that story is something reasonably current, it’s no surprise that it’s coming up now in a dream.

There was some Eastern European guy whom I knew – he might have been Polish or something like that – and he worked as a bacon slicer in a meat factory somewhere or other in the area. He was telling me about his aim to become a motor mechanic. He had this yellow Mk IV Cortina which looked fairly nice but there were a few things that needed doing to it, and he told me that he’d done them. He took the car for its MOT. There was also someone who was going to fetch my injections for me. I was supposed to have two injections, one on a Monday and one on a Friday. I’d had the first two, but for some reason I’d forgotten to collect the next two, so some woman or other, an elderly woman, she had a bottle of the stuff that the first injection used, and she filled the syringe with it and injected me with that. Then I had to take the prescription down to the doctor to explain what had happened and get him to write a new one for the product on the Friday and for subsequent ones. I put them in a brown envelope and gave them to this Polish guy. I went down to the MoT station afterwards, and his yellow Cortina was there, and it had failed on four or five things, nothing very complicated, but I heard that this guy had handed in his notice at work and was going to start being a motor mechanic, working underneath cars in the street, that kind of thing. But seeing the work that he’d done on this Mk IV Cortina and it hadn’t worked, I could see his next adventure ending in tears at some point.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to have a fleet of yellow MkIII and MkIV Cortinas in the past, although I didn’t know anyone Polish like that at the time. And the garage certainly didn’t resemble the garage at the salt mine where my father used to work, so where it was, I don’t know.

The story about the injections is interesting too because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that quite a few years ago, I had to have a series of injections a couple of times each week and had to fetch them from the chemists regularly. That’s how I first encountered these nurses who come to visit me every morning.

I forgot to mention the confusion when I went down to that garage. I’d given all the paperwork for these injections to this Polish guy and put them in a brown envelope. I walked into the garage where his car was being MoTd – at the back of Bedford Street near the old police station. I pulled out and told someone “here’s the envelope”. They picked it up, and it was the wrong one. The second one was the wrong one. The third one was hanging up by a magnetic attachment thing on the workplace by where this Polish guy was working. He brought it over to me and this other guy. We had a look at the paperwork together.

If this is confusing you, don’t worry. It’s confusing me too.

That was all that I had time to do this morning, although I might have had more time had I not crashed out between 10:20 and 11:00.

When the alarm went off, I headed into the kitchen to have my midday medication and my disgusting drink, and then to start to pack the travelling laptop ready for dialysis. My faithful cleaner came down to apply the anaesthetic on my arm too.

After she left, I adopted the usual position of slumping across the table with my head resting on my arms so that I could have a little doze, but that wasn’t for long either as the taxi turned up at, would you believe, 12:40. Not that I’m complaining, of course, because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I arrive at dialysis, the earlier I’ll be home, and that suits me just fine.

However, the best-laid plans of mice and men and all that, we first had to go to Champeaux to pick up someone there to take to dialysis, and then at the autoroute interchange at Marcey-les-Grèves, we ran into a barrage of gilets jaunes. And what annoyed me about that was that there was a warning sign in the centre of the village, just by where there’s a turning that goes through a village called Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize, and from there via a couple of narrow lanes, you end up just four hundred yards from the hospital.

Now if I know that, why didn’t our driver, who has been working for the taxi company for thirty years?

So after using all our powers of persuasion, we eventually arrived at dialysis ten minutes early. And this is where the fun began.

If you want to know whether I had a new nurse or an experienced one today, you only need to look at the plasters that she put on my arm when she took out the needles at the end of the session, and that will tell you all that you need to know. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a dog’s dinner in all my life.

But the fun began when she was trying to plug me in. The first needle, in the lower part of my forearm, went in fine. The second needle, in the upper part of my arm, well, not so fine. She ended up having two tries at it and they both failed. In the end, she had to call for the senior nurse and it was a case of “third time lucky” when she did it. But I now know exactly how a dartboard feels.

Further bad news is that my internet subscription at the dialysis centre has expired. It’s only good for a year and then I have to renew it. And of course, with it being Saturday, there’s no-one on duty at the tech department of the hospital. So, without the internet, I read a paper on Lack of Moral Fibre in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

Apart from that, there were no other interruptions. Not even from Emilie the Cute Consultant, who came into the ward and went to chat to almost every other patient in here, except me, of course. She clearly doesn’t love me any more.

But seeing as we have been talking about the other patients … "well, one of us has" – ed … my favourite patient who is usually in the bed beside mine was brought in this afternoon on a stretcher. Apparently she had developed a breathing problem and, even with a cylinder of oxygen, was having difficulty breathing. I do hope that she’s going to be OK.

Today, the nurse let the session run to the full time, which makes a change, but when the session finally finished, she spent ten minutes cleaning the machine first before she dealt with me, and that was disappointing too. I wanted to be away.

When I was finally free and the wounds compressed and sealed (with the plasters stuck on any old how), I went to weigh myself. And I was actually bang on my dry weight, which is where I should have been those three times before. And the driver was waiting for me – the same one who had brought me – and I was the only person in the taxi too, so I was home at about 18:30.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment where she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt. And after she left, I made some food – a baked potato, peas and carrots and a burger on a bap. It’s been quite a while since I’d had that for a Saturday tea, and it shows that, bit by bit, my appetite is returning.

Football was next, another match in the Welsh Cup, this time between Y Fflint and Caernarfon, a repeat of the cup final a couple of months ago.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint play some nice, tidy football and don’t deserve to be as low down the table as they are, so it was no surprise to anyone when they scored the opening goal after just five minutes.

However, Caernarfon scored an equaliser almost straight from the restart and gradually went on to impose themselves on the game. By the final whistle, it was all on-way traffic towards the Y Fflint goal, with Caernarfon winning 3-1.

So tomorrow early afternoon, we have the final match of our Welsh Cup trilogy when Penybont, third in the Cymru Premier League, leave Bridgend to travel down to the beach at Port Talbot to take on Afan Lido, tenth in the second tier.

When the football was over, I attacked the dictaphone notes, but I really didn’t realise just how late it was. When the waves of fatigue began to sweep over me, it was almost midnight and I didn’t want to be letting it all hang out much later, so I posted on line what I’d written so far, added a “to be continued” sticker and went to bed. I’ll finish off the rest of my magnum opus tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about bacon slicers … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me about the woman from Crewe who went into her local butcher’s and sat on the bacon slicer.
"What happened?" I asked.
"The butcher was most annoyed" she said. "he ended up getting behind in his orders."

LIVE: Friday 16th October 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning, which is something of a disappointment. Not that it’s any surprise, of course, because if you don’t go to sleep, you can’t dream, can you? Well, I can, as events in the recent past have proved, but not many other people can manage it.

And it’s also looking very much like I’ll have nothing on tonight either, because Bane of Britain … "fool that he is" – ed … dropped both sets of his night attire into the washing machine this morning without thinking.

It’s also gone very cold in here now. I’ve put on a sweater today for the first time this end of the year. The temperature is definitely dropping, even as we speak. It looks like I’ll be wearing goose pimples through the night tonight rather than anything else.

So let’s go back to last night, when all of this seemed to start.

Last night, I fell asleep in my chair again while I was writing out my notes. I was out for a good hour, if not more, and when I awoke, I had to edit out all of the nonsense that I’d typed while I was asleep. However, I missed a line, and I bet it gave you all quite a laugh when you read it.

But when I did wake up, I was doing no good at all, so I posted on line what I had written, added a “To be Continued” sticker and went to bed.

Incidentally, you may find a “To be Continued” on this posting too, but that’s for another reason entirely. I’ve been watching a Welsh Cup match on the internet until quite late this evening.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a waste of time going to bed early, because all that it means is that you wake up correspondingly early the following morning. And that was definitely the case this morning.

Whatever time it was that I awoke, I have no idea. It was still dark, that’s for sure, and it stayed dark for ages. And when I was totally and utterly fed up with just lying there trying to go to sleep and failing, I checked the clock. It was 06:00, so I thought that I may as well claim an early start for once.

So, by the time that the alarm should have gone off, I’d organised myself … "as best as he could" – ed … in the bathroom, unlocked the front door for the nurse when he arrives, and was back in here having started work.

The first task was, of course, to finish off the notes from yesterday. There were piles to do, as you probably noticed, and I hadn’t quite finished when the nurse arrived, quite early again.

While he was sorting out my legs and feet, we had a chat about the weather and how it was going to cool down now over the next few days as we move closer to winter. And I have a feeling that it’s going to be a bad one this year.

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

Our author is still talking about the famous trees of Herefordshire and, as far as I can tell, steering well clear of controversy for the moment. But not to worry, I’ll catch him out again one of these days.

When breakfast had finished, I went one better than David Crosby, probably because I’d had the ‘flu for Christmas and wasn’t feeling up to par. Consequently, I didn’t give in an inch to fear and went on the attack.

And “attack” it was, too. You have to go back to 6th July since the last time I was similarly engaged.

With that being out of the way, I turned my attention to the washing. Would you believe that I’m on my last pair of trousers – well, decent trousers anyway? So I collected up all of the dirty washing and put it in the machine to wash. These days, I can’t hang up the washing myself to dry, so if I do it on a Friday morning, my faithful cleaner hangs it up for me when she comes in the afternoon, and that helps me a lot.

Back in here afterwards, I had yesterday’s notes to finish, and now they are on line, all two thousand-odd words of them.

It’s a good job in a way that there was nothing on the dictaphone, otherwise I’d probably still be there now transcribing them. However, there were a few other things to do too, and by the time that they were all out of the way, it was time for my midday medication and disgusting drink.

There were the radio notes to start when I came back in here. I’d made a start the other day but I’d barely scratched the surface. And with several new groups and artists featuring in the programme. It would usually take much longer to research them than it does for artists who have featured before. That’s why I was rather apprehensive about whether I’d ever finish it or not.

So, if I don’t ever start, I won’t ever finish, so I made myself comfortable and then I began. And with some kind of superhuman effort, I’d actually finished a good while before the end of the afternoon, despite the interruption from the cleaner when she came in. Yes, I keep on forgetting about the power of artificial intelligence and my friendly neighbourhood chatbot who these days does most of my research for me.

There was even time for the two of us to come up with a list of albums released, musicians who were born and musicians who have died on the day that the following programme will be first broadcast. My “births, deaths and releases” file is pretty comprehensive, but my chatbot can dig deeper than I can.

However, that programme is going to be complicated because I usually play eleven records, but I have thirteen candidates for inclusion on that day.

Tea tonight was my usual Friday night tea – sausage, beans with cheese and black pepper, and air-fried chips. That’s a meal that I could eat even when I was right off my food. I seem to remember that I was living for a couple of months on porridge, toast and the aforementioned.

One thing that I still can’t manage, and I don’t know why, is my Sunday pizza. But who knows? That might make its reintroduction to the menu one of these weekends.

After the washing-up, I managed to make it back in here just in time for the kick-off off tonight’s football.

It’s the Welsh Cup Round Two this weekend, and tonight, the televised match is Llansawel v Afan United, a very lopsided first-tier v fourth tier game.

It beats me why this game was chosen to be televised when most people could already predict the result and when there are several much more competitive games being played elsewhere throughout the country. The least that can be said for it, I suppose, was that Afan United didn’t lie down and die.

In fact, they had a game plan and they stuck pretty much to it, even if the Llansawel goalkeeper didn’t have much to do. And I was also impressed by the speed of Afan United’s two forwards, even if they were far too lightweight for this level of competition.

And a word must be said for Afan United’s goalkeeper, Liam Sheehy. He might have been a bit shaky at the start, and his team did concede five goals, but as the game went on and his nerves settled, he had an outstanding game, made several crucial saves and even saved a penalty.

So he and the rest of his teammates can walk off the field with their heads held high, especially as this is probably the first time they’ve ever played in front of a large four-figure crowd.

Tonight’s match should be much more competitive, and played on a better pitch too. It’s a repeat of last season’s cup final between Y Fflint and Caernarfon. Caernarfon’s form has been somewhat erratic of late, and Y Fflint, who always play nice football, have a new manager who has already ushered them to two victories.

Although the match didn’t finish until 22:45, I attacked today’s notes. However, I only made it so far before fatigue caught up with me. I didn’t crash out, despite the very short night’s sleep last night, but it was on its way, so I posted up as far as I had gone and went to bed. I could finish off the rest of it tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about having nothing on … "well, one of us has" – ed … the local nudists in South Cheshire used to (I don’t know if they still do) hire one of the local night clubs in Nantwich one evening to walk around, dance, socialise and generally display their wares.
One night, I was driving my taxi around Nantwich when a girl, as naked as the day she was born, stepped out of the shadows and flagged me down. "Take me to Crewe" she said.
So there I was, sitting there, and not being able to take my eyes off her, even for a moment.
"What’s the matter with you?" she asked. "Surely you’ve seen a naked woman before!"
"It’s not that" I replied. "I’m just wondering where you’re keeping the money to pay me."

LIVE: Thursday 15th October 2026 – TODAY WAS THE …

… first time at this end of the year that I arrived home in the dark after dialysis.

To tell the truth, it wasn’t really dark, but you could see the headlights of our car shining on the road, all of the streetlights were on, and the moon, a very nice, slender crescent, was shining beautifully.

And not only that, but I was running much later than usual, but that’s because, once again, we had yet more excitement at the dialysis centre this afternoon. However, more of that anon.

First, though, we have last night to discuss – or, rather, this morning – because, once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was more like 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s not so bad in itself, I suppose, especially when you are asleep quite quickly, as I was, but when you awaken at 04:25 and can’t go back to sleep, then it isn’t. I was tossing and turning around all night, and still tossing and turning when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As you might expect, it took me a while to be able to gather up my wits, not that I have many to gather up these days, and stand up ready to move, but once I was up, I went to unlock the door ready for the nurse when he arrives a little later, and then I went to the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis, even to the extent of having a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is on duty this afternoon.

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

I was back working in an office yet again. I was going to be transferred to a different office, so I put in a great, enormous pile of effort to clear all of the outstanding files lying around my desk, and I left it quite tidy. In the new office, I had a room to myself and I was determined that I was going to start from Day One to keep up to date and do everything on the day that it arrived, but there were plenty of distractions in this office – people had these little catapults, and they were sending messages to each other by catapult and so on. I thought that this was going to be a challenging working environment. Someone asked me for a piece of post, so I went back into my room to fetch it. In the meantime, the post had been delivered. There was an enormous amount of files and post and everything all over my desk. I had to sit and think about how I was going to deal with it all. But one thing out of this was that this was in Rotherham, and I can’t remember what I was going to say now.

Apart from the fact that I have no idea what I would be doing in Rotherham, here I am at work yet again. And I’m on the point of leaving – not retiring, but being transferred to a new office. That certainly puts a new twist on things.

However, the “distractions” in the office are nothing new. And as you can see, my best plans about dealing with work on the day that it’s been received and so on appear to count for nothing at all. Things just happen like that so thay they can spite me. I shall have to employ someone to keep my place tidy.

The nurse was early today, which was good news. I wanted to be in advance. The bad news that he brought was that the big data centre place in Africa somewhere where they are experimenting with robots had crashed, so has the internet in a couple of cycle races. I hope that it will be back on for this afternoon.

And I’ve no idea what that sentence above was all about. When I reviewed it in the morning, the only thing that I could suggest was that it was another load of rubbish that I had written when I fell asleep, and later on, I forgot to edit it out, as I usually do with stuff like this.

Anyway, after he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

However, it made for rather disappointing reading, rather like Stanley Holloway’s recital of Marriott Edgar’s famous –

"NO SHIPWRECKS AND NOBODY DROWNDED.
IN FACT, NOTHING TO LAUGH AT AT ALL."

The kitchen was something of a mess after all of the washing up that I’d done over the last couple of days, so I had an exciting ten or fifteen minutes finding a home for everything that was lying about, and then I came in here to start work.

There was the radio programme to deal with. It’s going to be late this week after the chaos of the first couple of days, si I can’t afford to be idle. Some more music needed to be chosen, and that’s all done now. It’s now all been reformatted, re-edited, remixed, paired and segued. I even began to write the notes for it, but the alarm intervened before I’d gone too far.

The alarm is the signal for me to go into the kitchen and begin to prepare for going to dialysis. You might think that it’s rather sad or silly to have an alarm to remind me, but seeing how often I’ve drifted away into sleep sitting in my chair, with no warning at all, it’s something of a necessity.

So I had my midday medication and my disgusting drink and then began to pack away the travelling laptop to take with me. My faithful cleaner came along and sorted out the anaesthetic for my arm as well.

After she left, there were still one or two things to do in the kitchen, and then I assumed my usual position of being slumped over the dining table, head resting on my arms.

And there I was, miles away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, when the doorbell rang, and I awoke with a terrific start.

As I suspected, it was the chauffeur to take me to dialysis. She was a few minutes late today, but as well as that, we had to go to Kairon-Plage to pick up someone else and then to the aqua-gym at St Pair sur Mer to pick up my usual Thursday passenger.

However, my chauffeur today was another candidate to replace my favourite chauffeur when she retires next year. This one drove like the wind and I actually arrived just one minute late. And she was the second driver to take me on the diversion via St Pierre Langers and not the usual way by Lezeaux le Carrière.

Here, we had a disaster. Today, according to the scales, my body contained the most liquid that I have ever had, and that depressed me enormously. I really don’t know what’s going on with my body right now or where all of this liquid is coming from.

The nurse calculated that I had to stay for four hours – four hours at maximum force – so my response was “well, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish”.

It was 14:35 when I was finally up and running and I could settle down and watch the football.

The first game was the rest of Penybont v Y Barri. It was 1-1 when I left it, but as the game progressed, Penybont took control and it finished 3-1. Y Barri had none of their recognised strikers playing in this game, and the players whom they had on the field were unable to break down Penybont’s resolute defence.

In any case, Penybont’s play was technically much better. I really don’t know what has happened to Y Barri since they were top of the league for several weeks at the start of the season.

The following game was Llansawel against Connah’s Quay Nomads. And let’s be honest, no-one can play technical or skilled football on the Old Road pitch.

The game was pretty much a lottery. Llansawel missed a penalty early in the game but managed to score later in the first half. The Nomads came back into the game and scored two goals, but the match finished with Llansawel laying siege to the Nomads’ goal, throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at it, but with no success.

The doctor interrupted me in mid-game – the new doctor who has only just started there. And we had an interesting conversation –
Our Hero – "I’m surprised that you never came back to ask me how the antibiotics that you prescribed for me a couple of months ago – the ones that I told you that they had tried before and didn’t work – worked to cure my cough."
Doctor – "was it me who prescribed them to you?" – that’s the kind of remark that inspires confidence in a new doctor.
Our Hero – "yes, it was."
Doctor – "so how did they go?"
Our Hero – "just as I told you that they would before you prescribed them. They didn’t work."

And then we had the usual disaster. My nurse today, the same one whom I had last Saturday, the one who does just enough work to get by – came along and said “I’m going to cut short the session today …”
“No you aren’t” I replied. “There’s an order from Doctor X saying that I have to stay until I’m down to my dry weight, even if I have to stay all night”.

This led to an argument that even involved the above doctor, but in the end, my persistence and stubbornness won the day. However, I’m convinced that between them, the doctor and the nurse hatched a cunning plan because when I weighed myself later, I was two hundred grammes above my dry weight, so somewhere along the line, the intensity of the machine had been turned down.

You might wonder why I’m so insistent about this, but the simple answer is that if I leave here “overweight”, the amount of overweight will accumulate, session by session, until the amount is unmanageable and then they’ll have to resort to drastic measures. And I’ve had enough drastic measures at a hospital to last me a lifetime, and plenty more besides, thank you.

So we were hours late when it was all over, but luckily, my taxi was waiting so I could go straight home, and it was 19:40, the latest that I have ever been, when I arrived back here, hence the streetlights and the moon.

My cleaner helped me back into the apartment as she usually does, and when I was sitting comfortably, stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

There was no posibility of me making tea at this time of evening, so I grabbed some crackers, some of that nice vegan cheese spread and an orange and took them into my room while I checked the computer for messages, etc.

When I was finished, I began to attack the notes for today, but as I said earlier, I fell asleep before I finished them. And for a while too. When I awoke, I was fit for nothing … "nothing new there" – ed … and so I went to bed. I’ll finish my notes off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about doctors and prescriptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was this new doctor, fresh out of medical school, who had this confrontation with one of the hospital’s patients.
He came in and said "doctor, when I came in here two days ago and you examined me, you wrote out a prescription to say that I had to take one of those pills every day for the rest of my life."
"That’s right" said the doctor. "Is there a problem?"
"I’ll say!" he said. "The chemist has only given me six!"

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: football

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