… I didn’t have my door painted today.

Just as I was going out to the doctor’s, the painter rang me again. “Apartment 13 isn’t it, yours?”

“Yes it is but you’re not coming round now are you? I told you yesterday that I’m out this morning” and he confirmed that he would be back at 14:00 as we agreed yesterday.

At 13:30, just as my Welsh lesson was coming to an end, the bell rang. “It’s the painter”.

When he eventually found me, after having wandered around the building for 10 minutes, he said “there’s been a mistake. It’s not your door I’m supposed to be painting at all. It’s another one somewhere else”.

“That’s what I thought” I replied. “My landlord never told me anything at all about having my door painted” and that was that. he wandered off again elsewhere.

So retournons à nos moutons as they say around here – just for a change last night I actually had a really good sleep without too much tossing and turning around at all. The only disappointment from my point of view is that having gone to bed much later than I was intending, I didn’t have enough of it and that was rather depressing.

It was another real struggle to leave the bed this morning but I didn’t hang about too long. I managed to beat the second alarm, but not by much.

And after the medication and checking the mails and messages I went and had a shower so that I could look my best. And climbing into the bath to take a shower is no longer any kind of effort – at least, at the moment. Who knows what the future might bring?

Having dealt with the painter as I said earlier, I went to see the nerve specialist. And regrettably, I fell asleep in the waiting room. I must have been tired.

So the news is that there is a trace of cancer in the nerve cells and also a trace of infection. But what’s causing most of the problem seems to be some kind of inflammation. And that’s what the hospital is going to be treating when I go there for a week. He told me not to be too optimistic but I should certainly expect some improvement.

And if there really is some improvement on top of what I’ve already noticed, I shall be quite happy for once.

On the way home I went via LIDL but there wasn’t all that much that was interesting. I still spent €15:00 though, without an awful lot to show for it.

Back here I made myself a vegan cheese butty with tomato (I’d not had any breakfast of course) and then attended the second part of my Welsh lesson, that passed off OK.

This afternoon, there was football on the internet – Cymru under-17s against Montenegro under-17s, many of whom looked rather older than I was expecting.

Cymru needed a point to qualify for the European finals in the summer and were cruising along nicely, but two goals in a minute in first-half stoppage time seemed to have sunk them. The first goal, fair enough, but in a mad fit of rush of blood to the head, the whole team swarmed upfield from the kick-off to try to score an equaliser, and were hit with a sucker punch – a long ball out of defence over the top of the advancing Cymru defenders with an attacker running on from deep.

Pretty much text-book stuff.

Cymru pulled one back 10 minutes into the second half and then in the dying seconds the centre-back showed them how to do it, running in from defence and backheeling one home from three yards out to equalise and for Cymru to qualify.

But Cymru are going to have to find some strikers from somewhere. The midfield tore the Montenegrins to shreds and the guy on the right wing, Freddy Issaka, had them in all kinds of spins but the front two couldn’t hit the nether regions of a ruminant animal with a stringed musical instrument with all of the chances that they were given.

Shooting wide from just three feet out, right in the centre of the goal, was just one of the several simple chances that Cymru missed.

During half time I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d taken over the job as a football secretary of a local football club. The very first day I’d received some forms to fill in but I thought that I’d deal with them after the weekend. When I was talking to one of the guys from the club on the Saturday night he told me that one in particular I should have dealt with immediately and sent back because it concerns their match on Sunday. If it’s not dealt with immediately then the match won’t go ahead. There’ll be all kinds of consequences. I was totally unaware of that so I thought that I’d go to the bank to see if the form was still there. I arrived at the bank. The woman there was most unhelpful and I didn’t feel like pushing the matter. I thought that I’d leave it. I’d been invited to a party on the Saturday night. Lots of people were going. I walked along to the venue. Instead it was by the side of a river. Even though it was late at night it was all lit up. Photography would have been excellent had I had a decent camera and a decent place to stand to take the photos. I tried with what equipment I had but nothing actually worked that I wanted. There were far too many people in the way. On the way I’d stopped off at a chip shop to buy sausage and chips. I put my £2 down on the counter. Eventually I was served – about half a dozen cold chips and a small sausage which I thought was ridiculous for the £2 so I took a photo of it. While I was at this waterfront site I heard a couple of people saying that even though a couple of the girls were going to somewhere in the Spring, they were going to build a castellated wall around. This woman was describing in detail what this castellated wall was. Her friend was listening intently and so was I. at the same time for some reason I was mixing cement in the back of Caliburn on a plastic sheet. I couldn’t think why I was mixing the cement. There wasn’t much of it and trying to mix it in the back of Caliburn where I can’t stand up was extremely complicated.

The physiotherapist came round and ran me through my paces. He asked me if I would be interested in upping my programme to include a few more exercises. He was telling me that most people only like to take their therapy up to a certain point and leave it as it is but what about me?

My reply was that there’s a whole world out there still waiting for me and I want to get out and see it and take part in it. So he’s going to work out another programme for me

In between everything else I’ve been selecting more music for the radio programmes. What I’ll have to do now is to start to write out the notes. I’ve a few now that need text and then I can dictate one or two of them over the weekend to start to make some more programmes. I’ve plenty in the pipeline already prepared but you never know when I’m going to be “indisposed”.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg. And my stuffing is now down to a fine art and tastes really exquisite. I can’t wait to get my hands on a real kitchen though, although I’ve no idea when that might be.

Tomorrow the cleaner is coming so I’ll have some tidying up to do. It’s the last time this month that she’ll be here so I’ll have to do the accounts at some point. That might be a good thing to do if I need a break from writing radio notes.

However I am hoping for plenty of dictaphone notes. I need to bring some more excitement into my life and nothing much is happening during the daylight hours. Wandering off into the next dimension when I’m fast asleep is about the best that I can manage right now.