Tag Archives: freezer issues

Sunday 24th November 2024 – RIGHT NOW I’M IN …

… absolute agony yet again, having been standing on my feet for several hours.

It’s the lack of muscles in my knees that is causing the pain. If I want to stand up without my crutches, such as if I want to use my hands, I have to wedge my legs so that the knee-bones lock in a certain way and after a while it hurts like hell

Still the most important job of the week is done, even if several less-important ones have not so been.

Take the radio notes for example. Last night after I finished writing my notes I had the dictating of the radio notes to do – two lots of them. I was also having a chat on-line with my niece from Canada.

Her middle daughter, my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) was married a year ago and now lives in Michigan in the USA and her youngest daughter, another my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) is at “St. F-X” – St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the best University in Canada.

We’re planning a group meeting soon, a video chat on one of the on-line platforms seeing as we haven’t all seen each other for an age.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was invited to the wedding in Michigan last November so I tried a “dummy run” to Belgium last September to see how I would cope with the journey on my crutches with just a backpack, but failed miserably so I didn’t manage to go to the USA.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I finished off the dictation, finished off the chat and crawled into bed much later than I would have liked.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off for a quick wash and brush up. It’s Sunday, I’ve had an hour’s lie in and the nurse will be here soon so I need to hurry.

But back in the bedroom I have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. The wind awoke me at 03:00 (not that I knew anything about it) but at that point I’d been off on an expedition with the native Americans. We’d paddled down the coast as far as we could to Florida and then walked back, describing a few of the tribes that we’d met and a few of their characteristics. Several of them were noted as lazy and several others had different epithets. In the end we said that it’s a far better representation of ourselves amongst the native Americans, we want to build a stronger fort to protect our settlement. He goes on to say that although there’s not a lot of land in each settlement they’ve crammed in many men, sometimes more men than the land is worth and they really need more soldiers going to serve as colonists so that they can have some kind of native element to protect the settlements against the French or the French can protect their own settlements against anyone, even the British who were currently their allies at the moment.

This reminds me of the book that I’m reading right now. Our author travels by water all the way down the St Lawrence River and then comes back on land.

But the conflict between the English and the French, with various native American tribes on different sides (or not as the case may be) went on all along the Hudson River valley and out into Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee for the best part of a hundred years, on and off. It was a fierce, vicious war at times and was well-documented in stories such as Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED MANY OF THE BATTLEFIELD SITES in the Hudson valley in 2013 when we had that slow drive back to Montreal that took several weeks

We made it to Ticonderoga, Fort William Henry and all of the other places that Fenimore Cooper made famous in his “Leatherstocking Tales” of the Seven Years War in North America.

I’m not sure where I was but there was a choice of two cars. We had to choose one of three cars, An Austin Maxi, an Austin Princess HL and a Marina. I remember thinking that that’s the whole total of the British car output of the United Kingdom represented in that lot. We had a really good look round at them but couldn’t see anything or any reason to break any kind of monopoly position with Ford because there were quite a few issues with the British cars, even coming just straight off the production line and we couldn’t really at the time negotiating and repairing all of the bits that they needed to give us a car that we wanted

In the past I’ve had various cars and vans and I have to say that I’ve always returned to having Fords. I’m not sure what I’ll be having next. It’ll have to be whatever is available at the moment that has hand controls fitted.

The nurse turned up and was in chat mode today. She asked for my Carte Vitale – my health card – because she’ll be off on Tuesday and won’t be back until after the start of the next month so she has to make up her accounts.

After she left, I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. And I learned something new today.

Over the years, I have always wondered why the “District of Columbia” where the city of “Washington DC” is situated, is not included in the territory of any of the States. And thanks to Isaac Weld who was there at the time of its creation, now I know.

Congress used to meet in Philadelphia but at the end of the Revolutionary War it was besieged by discontented soldiers whose pay was in arrears. And the Pennsylvania State Government, in sympathy with the soldiers, refused to summon up the State’s forces of law and order quell the riot.

Consequently it was decided that there should be a territory created to house the Congress, where Congress itself could act as the local Government, issue by-laws, control the law enforcement officers and so on, and not be dependent upon any State authority.

In HIS BOOK he talks at great length about why that particular site was chosen. He is certainly very informative, if not garrulous.

Back in here, much later than usual thanks to the late arrival of the nurse, I had football to watch.

For some reason I couldn’t find a video of Stranraer’s game against Spartans. I later found out that the match had been postponed.

As for te Welsh football, there was one game missing – Hwlffordd v Y Bala, and it took an age to find that one.

The radio notes that I’d dictated were quite complicated. So far, I’ve only managed to finish editing one and I’m halfway through the other. I’m a long way from being where I wanted to be, with two radio programmes fully completed.

That’s because after the hot chocolate I set about dealing with the freezer.

It took much longer than you might imagine to unpack the two new drawers. Whoever packed them certainly deserves a medal because they would never be likely to break in that box, with all the padding that was around them.

Then I had to switch off the freezer, unplug it and take out all the drawers. Luckily, I’d put ice packs in there and they, being frozen solid, would help keep the contents cold.

Then I could attack the freezer with the hair dryer that I’d liberated the other week.

That took much longer too. I was surprised at just how much ice there was in there. And what didn’t help was that having put a towel at the front to catch the water that melts, the water actually drains out of the back.

For the time that it took, I was on my feet for several hours and hence the issue with my knees. But it was worth it because the freezer is now totally defrosted, the new drawers are in and filled, and you’d be surprised at how much room there is in there now.

At lunchtime I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and that had been defrosting. When I finished with the freezer I rolled out the dough and later, assembled the pizza.

With no small tomatoes I had to use large ones sliced thinly. Nevertheless it took much longer to bake. However it was delicious all the same. Now I’m going to have a quick tidy-up of the packaging and then go to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow.

But talking about the Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of Hawkeye and Chingachgook on their way to Fort Ticonderoga
After separating for a few days Hawkeye comes across Chingackgook with his ear to the ground.
"What is it, Chingachgook?" asks Hawkeye
"Stagecoach. French stagecoach" says Chingachgook. "Eight horses, two drivers, twelve passengers, five women, seven men. One driver, he have wart on side of face. Other driver, he have patch over left eye. "
"That’s astonishing" said Hawkeye. "You can tell all that by just lying there with your ear to the ground?"
"Oh no" replied Chingachgook. "Me standing here having little pause, and damn stagecoach ran me down"

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Saturday 23rd November 2024 – THIS IS GOING …

… beyond a joke now.

Is it four times now (counting today) that I have really been in agony for the entire session of dialysis?

If it carries on being like this I’m going to have to abandon the sessions because I can’t put up with it any more. You’ve no idea the amount of pain that I’m suffering when they stick these hollow pins into my skin in an attempt to find the tube that they installed in my arm.

Call me “chicken” if you like, but I just can’t keep on doing it.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … err … apartment last night I had another loiter around before going to bed, hence it was another night that was much later than it ought to have been. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … just recently it no longer matters.

Once in bed though I was asleep quite quickly and there were no thunderstorms or phantom people coming into my room to awaken me, However, read on.

When the alarm finally did go off for real I was in discussion with a friend in Gatineau, Canada. He’d sent a long list of questions to me so I sent him a long lengthy reply. He wrote back to say “thank you, Eric. Thank you for appreciating the fact that I’m not dead yet”.

He’s the kind-of guy, the gung-ho full-on adventurer type whom I met in the High Arctic, that will take a lot more than anything that this World could ever throw at him to finish off.

In the bathroom I gave myself a good wash and then washed the clothes – undies, socks, t-shirt and shorts. It’s quite a collection that needs washing by hand on a Saturday.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, apart from to Gatineau of course. We were going down to meet the sisters of a couple of friends of mine – people whom I knew from work. On the way there one of the guys with me here noticed and said that “here, there’s a hundred years spread out between the work of our colleague and the work of her family. If it’s going to be shortened in any way it will be by virtue of her family and not by virtue of her friend”. Rather astonished, I asked “are you thinking that I’m trying to get rid of her friend, murder her or something like that?”. After a minute’s thought he said “well, maybe that, but supposing you had to investigate her – how would you go about it? Would you do it, for a start?”. I replied “I’ll remind you that we aren’t allowed to investigate our own colleagues. You have to tell Head Office and they’ll appoint someone else to do it from somewhere else. So the answer would be that I’d tell you to clear off”. We carried on walking towards this dance and arrived there just as it finished. There were two kids there giving demonstrations of some kind of art with their hands. There was some other kid doing something too. I thought “when everyone comes back from lunch we’ll see how good they are and see about joining them up with the festival from New Brunswick and see how they get along with that …fell asleep here …

That’s the kind of dream that completely bewilders me because there’s something of everything in it and nothing actually means anything at all. Being in work, going to New Brunswick, all of that together is confusing. It’s not surprise that I fell asleep in the middle of it.

I dreamed that I was awake and I’d been through the whole process of getting ready and everything for morning. It wasn’t until the usual time that the nurse came. She thanked me for being ready for her but told me that I need to concentrate more on doing up my shoes and a few other things like that so that I could get the most out of it. She noticed that there was a piece of something in my shopping bag and she told me that leaving it like that was a danger …fell asleep here …

This was a strange dream too. Falling asleep yet again, but being up and about in my dreams is exciting too. I wish that it would be that easy in the morning to be up and about like that.

That’s twice that I’ve dreamed that the alarm has gone off and I’ve left the bed ready for the day. The second time I was actually up, washed and dressed in me dream, not in real life though but that was how I was feeling. It certainly felt real enough for me, but once back in the bed I didn’t take much going to sleep at all which was a weird situation in which to be

So here I am, up and about again in a dream, and it’s impressive that I could remember in a dream what was going on in my subconscious previously when I talked about being up and about. I reckon that my nocturnal memory is better than my memory when I’m awake and I need to work on that.

Isabelle the Nurse had a better drive today, with all of the snow and ice having disappeared. She updated me on the disappearance of the town’s War Memorial and we also both had a good moan about the new mayor and his delusions of grandeur

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of my book, TRAVELS THROUGH THE STATES OF NORTH AMERICA.

Our author, Isaac Weld, having waxed lyrical about the prison in Philadelphia, is not so enamoured of the people whom he meets on the street. He tells us that "there is a want of good manners which excites the furprize of almoft every foreigner … In the United States, however, the lower clafTes of people will return rude and impertinent anfwers to queftions couched in the molt civil terms, and will infult a perfon that bears the appearance of a gentleman, on purpofe to fhew how much they confider themfelves upon an equality with him. Civility cannot be purchafed from them on any terms"

As for the accommodation, he is even less complimentary. "The accommodations at the ,taverns, by which name they call all inns, &c. are very indifferent in Philadelphia, as indeed they are, with a very few exceptions, throughout the country. It is feldom that a private parlour or drawing room can be procured at any of the taverns,". Having enquired of the landlord at one tavern about accommodation, he says that the landlord "feemed much furprized that any enquiries fhould be made on fuch a fubjec1, and with much confequence told me, I need not give myfelf any trouble about the extent of his accommodations, as he had no lefs than eleven beds in one of his rooms"

So I see that the USA hasn’t changed all that much in modern times.

Back in here I had a few things to do, including the writing of a couple of long e-mails but I was interrupted by a text message. The new drawers for the freezer have arrived in Granville and will be delivered “shortly”. Just you watch them turn up after I’ve gone.

At midday I went into the dining room and began my preparations for this afternoon. I don’t want to be caught out like the other day. However, no worries there. My cleaner came round and fitted my patches.

However the postie did turn up with this enormous box with my new drawers in it. That will be a nice job for tomorrow afternoon, dealing with all of that, de-icing the freezer and so on.

The taxi driver ‘phoned to give me five minutes notice of her arrival which was nice of her, so I made my way downstairs with the aid of my cleaner and as we arrived at the bottom, the taxi pulled up.

We stopped to pick up one more passenger and then headed off to Avranches. There’s still plenty of snow in the outlying areas. It’s not all melted yet although the roads are clear.

At Avranches I was the last to be seen and once more, the fitting of one of the pins was painful in the extreme. In the end they fitted the adapter to the pin that seemed to work so that the “in” and “out” would go through the one, but it was still agonising and neither I nor the nurses understand why.

While I was waiting I dozed off for just a minute, and had the sensation, or dream, that someone was plugging something into a plank of wood and the wood was smoking where the plug was going in.

There was a doctor on duty in the Clinic this afternoon. She saw all of the other patients and had a cheery word for every one, but she kept her distance from me. I don’t know what I’ve done to the people down there but I am definitely not Flavour of the Month with them for some reason.

Unplugging me was only marginally less painful and I was glad to leave and climb into the taxi. We had to wait for the second patient and once he was on board we could head off for Granville

There was a howling gale blowing back here and my brave cleaner was waiting for me, which I appreciated very much.

She took me on a guided tour of the new electricity cupboard, made sure that I knew where my master fuse switch was for both this apartment and my new one, and then watched as I climbed all twenty-five steps up to my front door.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with baked potato and vegan salad followed by chocolate cake and strawberry dessert

So now I’ll dictate my radio notes to edit tomorrow and then go off to bed. It won’t be early in bed but at least there’s a lie-in until 08:00.

But talking about Isaac Weld and his accommodation issues … "well, one of us is" – ed …, on returning from his trip, he told his editor that "I stayed in this tavern in Philadelphia. It was horrible, and was appropriately called ‘The Fiddle’"
"Why was that?" asked the editor
"Because it certainly and unquestionably was a vile inn"

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Wednesday 20th November 2024 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from the night just now.

But that’s not surprising because I didn’t go to sleep at all. It was what the French call a nuit blanche.

And if you think that going to bed at midnight or thereabouts is bad, then how about at 02:00 and I was still awake and not in bed?

This kind of thing happens occasionally, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s a pretty miserable affair when I’m awake like this and can’t sleep but it’s just another one of those little things sent to try me, I suppose, and I have to make the best of it, such as it is.

So after finishing off my notes I was somewhat tired, but more physically tired than a sleep kind of tired. I couldn’t find the strength or the will to haul myself out of my chair and move the few inches or so into the bed. I just sat here and vegetated for all that time.

Eventually I managed to pull myself together and headed off to the bathroom to prepare myself for bed, thinking to myself that it wouldn’t have been so bad had I been able somehow to do some work in the time that I was still awake.

Once in bed I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep at all, and that was probably the most depressing part of the night. I began to reminisce about things that I should have done, or ought to have done, and that’s bound to bring me out in a depression.

And that’s how it went on for most of the night. I was too far wrapped up in the past to think about the present, and that’s definitely the wrong way to be doing things.

When the alarm went off I crawled reluctantly out of bed (and you’ve no idea just how reluctantly) and headed for the bathroom and a good wash and scrub up.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone and, as I expected, found nothing. So instead I had a look at my shopping list ready to order things from LeClerc on Friday.

However it’s difficult to make up an order this week. I have a lot of things in stock so I don’t need much. In fact, I can live without everything for the next week or two (except the soft vegetables of course) so I made an executive decision and decided that I won’t sent off an order this week. What I do need, like the mushrooms, tomato and cucumber, I’ll ask my cleaner to fetch them.

And for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed.

Isabelle the Nurse had news for me today. Firstly, they are moving the War Memorial while they renovate the town centre and secondly, snow is forecast for tomorrow. And I’m going to Avranches and the clinic in a taxi too.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on with my book.

Hearne is now writing his summary. He writes about the people whom he meets, their lifestyles out in the peri-Arctic tundra and their habits, and it’s all extremely interesting. About his guide he says "I have met with few Christians who possessed more good moral qualities, or fewer bad ones" and "his scrupulous adherence to truth and honesty would have done honour to the most enlightened and devout Christian, while his benevolence and universal humanity to all the human race, according to his abilities and manner of life, could not exceeded by the most illustrious personage now on record"

If that’s the case, then having read about some of the antics of his guide and party on the way back from massacring the Inuit, it tells me so much about the behaviour and morals of England and the English at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

We’re also being treated to an account of the wildlife and vegetation that he encounters on his trip. And his discussion of the food that they ate on their journey has revolted my stomach. It makes my meals sound positively appetising. Hearne however claims that he quite enjoyed some of them and in that case he’s welcome to them.

And when he describes the contemporary meals that are on offer back in England in the 1770s, that’s enough to get me going too. They make my mother’s meals sound delicious.

After breakfast I came in here and assembled the radio programme. Despite the speech being longer this time for some reason or other, it all went together quite nicely and I ended up being thirteen seconds over the one hour allowed for the programme.

But that’s not a problem. I can just cut out some of the applause and move some of the sound-bytes up a little and then it will all fit. And in fact, it all fits quite nicely

After lunch I had things to do. A friend of mine was on-line so we had a chat. We have a project going on together that is becoming quite involved and so it was good to have a chat about it.

There were a few on-line orders to make too. I need to overhaul the freezer here because it’s iced up and the drawers have collapsed. I’ve found a supplier of the drawers in Rouen so I had to organise an on-line order. They’ll be here by the weekend, I hope, and with the hair dryer that I liberated with the help of my cleaner, it will be “all systems go” with the freezer.

While we’re on the subject of the cleaner … "well, one of us is" – ed … she turned up to do her stuff this afternoon, part of which was helping me into the shower.

Well, watching, actually, because I managed to climb into the bathtub and sort myself out totally unaided, and isn’t that a change? It’s not all that long ago that I couldn’t even lift my leg up, never mind climb into the bathtub.

The shower was delicious too. I stayed in there for much longer than I should, giving myself a good hosing-down in nice hot water. And I enjoyed every minute of it too

So a nice clean me climbed out of the shower and tidied the bathroom to match the rest of the apartment, and then came back in here to choose the music for the next radio programme.

After the cleaner left I took some naan dough from the freezer and left it to defrost and then made some dough for the next supply of bread.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread followed by chocolate cake and the last of the strawberry-flavoured soya dessert which is a shame because it was so nice

While I was having tea the bread was baking in the oven. And at 160°C for 15 minutes and then turn over for another 15 minutes at 160°G, we have the most perfect loaf that I have ever made.

So now I’m off to bed, to catch up on my beauty sleep. I need it too after last night. Dialysis tomorrow but I don’t know how I’m going to go there. All public transport tomorrow is cancelled due to the wave of bad weather that is expected to hit us tonight so I imagine that the taxis won’t be going either, but we shall see.

But before I go let me say something else about Hearne’s trip to the Coppermine River.
One night he and his guide, Matonabbee, were lying there looking at the stars in the sky
"Look at that shooting star, Matonabbee" said Hearne. "What does it signify?"
"It represents the spirit of one of our tribe on his way to join his ancestors in the sky"
"And the stars?" asked Hearne. "Do they represent our ancestors?"
"They do indeed" said Matonabbee. "They are happy with us so they have come out to dance with joy"
"And look at the Aurora Borealis" said Hearne. "And the moon. It’s all so wonderful. And here we are, staring up at it through the night. What does it all mean?"
"It means" said Matonabbee "that earlier this evening some thieving b@$t@rd stole our wigwam."

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Friday 1st November 2024 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days where nothing whatever of any note at all has taken place

Not even during the night either. So I was seriously thinking of not writing anything at all today. But then again I’d have you lot all champing at the bit wondering where I’d gone and what I was doing, so in the end I – well, I was going to say that I picked up my pen, but instead I’ll say that I sat down at the keyboard instead.

Last night after I finished my notes it was long after bedtime so I didn’t hang around at all. I went to the bathroom to sort myself out and then came in here, dressed for the night and went to bed

When the alarm went off I’d just finished eating a big bowl of ice cream and had gone back to work. I’d had to see some clients and talk to them, and then there was some talk that I might take over my old job again. I thought “I’ve not been doing that for six years. I wonder how it’s evolved over that particular period”. I did some more mental arithmetic about what had been going on and what had been accomplished but then the alarm went off.

It was as usual a struggle to leave the bed but I staggered into the kitchen to prepare the dough for some bread.

Hans has given me a few hints about making bread in the air fryer so I decided that I’d make a 250gramme mix and cook it in the air fryer in accordance with his instructions, to see what happened.

While It was festering I went into the bathroom and had a good scrub up ready for the day, and then came back in here to dress.

At the computer, I had a listen to the dictaphone but to my surprise, all that was on it was that which I’d mentioned just now.

That I found strange because I had a distinct impression that I’d gone off arranging a date with a girl during the night and we decided (or rather, she did) that we’d play squash.

Playing squash brings back a few memories. When I was living in my van I joined the local squash club and played there twice a week, simply so that I could have a shower. That all worked fine until one day I was drawn against a girl who turned out to be one of the “posh” elite girls from my grammar school. That didn’t go down very well.

As well as that, I have a very clear memory of waking up, wide awake, and deciding that if I were to leave the bed now I could make a head start on the day’s work. But when I looked at the time on the watch,, it was 02:05 so I went back to bed. But there’s nothing about any of that on the dictaphone.

When the nurse came, he refrained from making any inane remarks about the dough, asked me a few other silly questions and then once he’d sorted me out he left. He can’t have been here more than ten minutes.

After he left I looked at the dough. It had hardly risen, which was disappointing. Nevertheless I gave it a second kneading and left it on one side while I made breakfast.

Alfred Watkins’s book has now gone The Way of the West. Interestingly, while he talks about “lines” connecting all these points, he’s talking about imaginary lines drawn on a map connecting up all of these places, not actual tracks on the ground.

While he does make reference to these lines falling, in many places, along the lines of roads, paths, field boundaries and the like and hints at ancient highways connecting up many of them, he refrains from drawing the conclusion that there really were tracks connecting up all of these places in every case. The theory of the country being criss-crossed with Neolithic pathways came later, long after he was dead.

There is no doubt however that he was certainly on to something. I don’t think that he knew what it was, and I wish that I did.

Right now I’m reading a report about the excavations that took place at Beeston Castle. We’ll be into an interesting argument here because the author of the report is one of those people who promote the theory that the castle was less a symbol of defence and more an ostentatious symbol of power

While it’s perfectly true that a wealthy noble lord with a good, competent staff would want to have something rather opulent to represent his social position, you only have to look at the period 1067 – 1487 with the pacification of England, the war between Stephen and Matilda, the incursions of the Welsh and the Scots, the Wars of the Roses and all of the various uprisings and civil unrest to realise that anyone who could afford it and was at risk of being killed or captured for ransom wouldn’t live anywhere except behind some fortification guarded by his loyal retainers.

Back in here I had a very slow start to the day. It’s always the case when I’ve had dialysis. It takes a lot out of me and not even a full pot of string coffee could bring me round.

Eventually though I made a start and by the time that I’d finished I had not only sorted out the music, I’d converted and remixed it ready to broadcast, with one hour and twenty-eight minutes which, with the notes that I have already started to write, will have to be shoe-horned into a programme of one hour.

That will call for some serious editing.

While I was at it, I tried some editing of a different nature. One of the tracks was a mono recording so I copied it so that I had two tracks, cut out the bass from one and the treble from the other and then joined them to make a stereo track

It’s rather rough and ready but it works after a fashion.

There was a break for lunch and a break while my cleaner was here.

And I’m glad that she was here because she pointed out that the freezer door was open. By now it was all iced up so it was the devil’s own job to close it.

As for the ice, when this happens to her freezer she attacks it with a hair dryer. I don’t happen to have a hair dryer, mainly because I don’t have any hair to dry, but she has two hair dryers, one an old one that she liberated from somewhere. She offered it to several of her clients but no-one wants it, so it will be coming down here tomorrow, and staying for good too.

That’s quite a plan, because the freezer has needed defrosting for quite some time.

The plug for the freezer was hidden behind the washing machine so I’ve been moving furniture around, and I now have an extension lead plugged into the socket with the freezer plugged in there within easy reach.

The most important break though was a lot earlier than this. After breakfast, I’d put the bread in the air fryer, switched it on and left ot for 20 minutes.

And by God! What a loaf! Nice and soft and gone up like a lift. The best loaf that I have ever, ever made. It had risen so much that the loaf had come into contact with the heater element.

So there’s nothing wrong with my bread-making techniques. It’s my table-top oven that is the major issue, as I suspected. So when I make my next loaf I must flatten it out more than I did so that it won’t reach the top.

Either than or buy a bigger air fryer.

Tea tonight was vegan salad, air-fried chips and vegan nuggets followed by rice pudding. The bread in the air fryer might have been a success, but the rice pudding definitely wasn’t

It’s bed-time now, ready for fighting the Good Fight at the Dialysis Clinic in the afternoon. A good sleep will do me some good I hope.

But I do have to say that despite it being Halloween last night and the night when all evil walks abroad, I remained relatively undisturbed.
Not so one family in the town who, according to my cleaner, had a visitation from all of the ghoosties and ghoulies of the region
"All of the women were strung up by the ghoosties" said my cleaner
"What about the men?" I asked
"The men?" She said. "They were all strung up by the … errr … other phantoms"

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Friday 17th May 2025 – I’VE JUST HAD …

… to defrost the freezer.

The build-up of ice in there was so much that the doors wouldn’t close correctly, which was making the freezer freeze up even more.

So, armed with the electric kettle and a saucepan with a heavy, thick base I went to work. It’s not perfectly defrosted, because the time that it would take, the frozen food wood melt, but at least the drawers fit better and the doors close, which was the aim of the whole exercise.

Mind you, it’s just about the only productive work that I’ve done all day. The other day, I mentioned that the partner of my friend in Munich had gone into palliative care. Unfortunately she didn’t pull through and just after midnight she left us to join the angels.
"Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee"
as John Donne wrote 400 years ago. I remember the delight that she felt when she came out of hospital a few years ago after just having her catheter port removed. For her it signified the end of the cancer treatment that she was having, that she was now fit and rehabilitated.

The removal of the catheter port was a symbol of victory back then. But how rapidly and wickedly fate can turn upon you. Rest in Peace, Ulli. It was a pleasure and a privilege to have known you.

As for myself, I’m not doing much better. My body is swelling up with all of these water retention issues that I’m having. And when I say “all” my body, I do mean “every bit of it”. I shall be looking like Bibendum, the Michelin Man, before too long

But last night anyway I managed to make it to bed and although it was a late night again, it was a decent sleep for a change and I can’t remember being interrupted at all, not even by a phantom alarm call. It was the Sleep of the Dead.

When the real alarm went off I fell out of bed to switch it off and then made my way to the bathroom for a clean-up, not that it did much good, I reckon.

Once I’d had my medication I set out the dining area for the nurse. My right leg is much better now, with the pain having diminished even more. But as I mentioned earlier, I have other issues with which to deal now that are causing me greater problems

While I was waiting I made a start on the bread dough for the weekend, mixing it, giving it a knead and then leaving it to proof for a while.

The nurs didn’t have much to say for himself today and was in and out quite rapidly After he’d gone I gave the bread its second working-over and divided into three lumps, one for each day.

Just for a change it went up like a lift, the best that I have ever made I reckon, and it baked really nicely too. My breakfast cheese-on-toast, which was almost lunchtime cheese-on-toast by the time that I’d finished, was delicious.

Back in here I crashed straight out despite the strong black coffee, and it was 13:00 when I finally rejoined the Land of the … well, perhaps not.

First thing was to check the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it from the night. And to my complete surprise, there was. This was before the Fall of France and we had a bomber aeroplane in Normandy. We’d given it a name. First of all we’d called it “Billy Jones” after the boy who was a dancer … "That was Billy Elliott. Billy Jones was guitarist with the Outlaws who committed suicide" – ed … but then we gave it some other name later but I can’t remember what it was. However the ‘plane was shot down on a flight over to the Channel Islands before the Channel Islands were invaded and unfortunately we lost it and the crew

Just a little reminder for the British people who criticised the French for not resisting the Occupier in World War II, the Channel Islands were occupied in June 1940 and no effort at all was made to free them until after the end of the War, never mind at D-Day or when the battle for Normandy had passed them by.

Of the eight ‘planes two were shot down taking off and the other six were shot down along the route but this dream continued lots of things – there was a young lad who was a store person who was enamoured of this girl who volunteered to sing a requiem but was not very good at at, dozens of things like that all through this dream that seemed to go on for ages

And if you are thinking that the one dream leads straight on to the other there was a three-hour gap between the two, according to the timestamps.

Having had my lunchtime fruit I checked over my order from LeClerc and then sent it off. It’s an expensive one this weekend but there’s stuff like coffee, olive oil and champagne on it.

Champagne, yes. It’s a neighbour’s 80th birthday on Sunday and I’m invited, not that I’ll be drinking any of it of course. Last time I had any alcohol was in Bulgaria in 1994, and that was due to force majeure.

Back in here again I was reading something on the internet when the next thing that I remember were the dulcet tones of my cleaner awakening me. I’d had another one of these crashings-out where the light simply goes off and I can’t remember a thing.

She came round this afternoon to do her stuff again and it was a good job that she was here because the delivery came early.

The frozen food went into the freezer (which was when I noticed the door issues) and the rest I put away after she had left. Well, most of it anyway. There’s still some to do

But after I’d had my hot chocolate I blanched the florets of the broccoli that I’d bought ready for freezing and saved the stalk and the water for a broccoli stalk soup tomorrow

Back in here and the light went off again just as dramatically as earlier, and how I am sick of all of this. It was 18:38 when I awoke, but at least that gave me some more time to work on the next radio programme.

Tea this evening was a vegan salad with chips and some of those vegan nuggets done in the air fryer, and it was delicious as usual. My salads are works of art, and I really do seem to have the knack about these air-fryer chips now

So tonight there’s one more extra star in the sky looking down on us from above. It just goes to show that there’s no escape for any of us. The Grim Reaper will get us all sooner or later. I just hope that those who have gone on ahead have paved the way for the rest of us.

And as I said the other night, this is not the time for levity

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Thursday 16th November 2023 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

… exhausted.

You have no idea just how tiring even putting away the shopping can be. And what didn’t help was having to clean, dice and blanch 2 kilos of carrots for the freezer.

Actually, today was just one long continuation of how the night had been because at one point I’d been lying awake for several hours in the middle of the night trying to go back to sleep after a really bad attack of cramp.

Last night I tried a new approach.

When my legs were functioning properly, I had some tough rubber bands that I used to build up my leg muscles when I was going running. Last night I dragged one out, put it around my two ankles and went to bed like that.

My nights are really quite mobile, as you can imagine, so while my legs are moving around in my sleep they are actually acting on each other and that might do something about the leg muscles. It can’t do any harm

And it actually seemed to work – ay least, judging by the way my legs were moving during the night.

At some point I must have gone off to sleep because I was flat-out when the alarm went off, and I staggered to my feet before the second alarm.

After the medication and checking the mails I ended up having a chat on the internet with one of my neighbours. There are several things around here that need attention and there will be one or two workmen coming into the building. As I’m here for most of the time these days, would I be a point of contact to let people in and out of the building?

In theory, it’s no problem to me but as usual, it’s the kind of thing that will happen just at the moment when I’m likely to be busy.

Next thing was to order a few things off the internet. Usually I would go to the shops for things like this but even if I could travel there on the bus, I wouldn’t have the strength to bring the stuff home.

Then there was the shopping from Leclerc. And such was my surprise when I found out that this week there were only the pears that weren’t available. I ended up having to take some stuff out of my on-line basket.

There’s a minimum order of €50 for delivery so I have my priority list and my “extras” list and I move things around depending on availability. So when almost everything in my priority list is available, I put some of the “extras” back ready for the next time in case the next order falls short

The problem was that there was no delivery window until the afternoon.

And so what I did was to go through some of the drawers in the kitchen, sort things out and … gulp … throw some things away that I no longer need. I’m clearly not feeling very well.

What prompted this was having ordered some ground ginger 2 weeks ago as I had run out, while I was filling up the cumin seeds last night I found three packets of ground ginger at the bottom of the box in which I keep the spare spices. High time that I sorted that out and made a list of what I have – and what I don’t have.

Luckily I have plenty of Indian spices so I’m not going to be short of spices for a while but with not going to Leuven and “Exotic World” – the Asian wholesalers – any more, things might become complicated in the future.

But anyway, I ended up with one kitchen drawer completely empty, and I have much more of an idea about what’s in stock here. Quite a few people have “made remarks” about the amount of food in stock around here, but there have been several times in the recent past when I have been totally unable do do anything about buying in food and the stock has come in useful.

While I was having a drink I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. There were all kinds of things like food crumbs all over the bed because I’d strapped my legs together and had gone to bed like that so that in the exercise that I’m forced to do during the night, one foot would affect the other and give it a kind of workout. It wasn’t quite as easy as that during the dream because I could hardly move and wasn’t able to tidy up or clean up and the place was deteriorating quite rapidly. I was extremely dismayed but there was nothing much that I could actually do about it.

When I saw my mother gliding across the room I asked her if she was on her way to dictate her first thought of the day, which was a silly thing to do because she replied that it was her second or third. The act of actually asking her made me completely forget what it was that I was going to dictate. But this thing about keeping my legs tied together is working to a certain degree but not to a certain other. I had a terrible attack of cramp in my left leg at that moment but it will ease off after I’ve had a few agonising moments. We’ll see how it goes on.

And later we were building some kind of framework to go in a gap in the bricks, like a window frame. Because I was unable to do anything someone else was helping me. It was so frustrating because he was doing this kind of thing in a very slapdash way trying to cut out lengths of wood with a cheap tooth-saw etc. When it came to trimming 20mm off something or other he did it by eye and it looked as if he was cutting off a whole centimetre. That would have defeated the whole purpose of this framework. In the end I had to stop him. I asked “wouldn’t you be better with a jigsaw doing that?”. He replied “if you have one” so I immediately produced one. Then I produced a battery-powered circular saw and asked “wouldn’t this be any better?”. I sat down and began to measure everything up and put a batten down to follow with the circular saw so that it would cut accurately. I was just so astonished by this guy trying to do this job without measuring properly or without any kind of proper tools – something that was so important.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my DiY skills are nothing to write home about, particularly right at the beginning when I made a start on rebuilding the farm, but at least I knew how to measure up and cut with guides.

And some of the stuff that I was doing just before I fell ill was really impressive. My bedroom down there was magnificent.

It was really quite funny, actually. When I finished rebuilding the walls and putting the roof on and I began to fit out the attic and I thought that it was really good. But the further on I pressed, the more I wanted to go back to where I started, rip it all out and start again.

That’s one thing that I can say about the farm – I may not have been much good but I certainly learnt a lot.

When the shopping came I was … errr … resting, so it was a rather rapid struggle to my feet to open the door to let him into the building.

After I’d put away the frozen food I attacked the carrots. I hadn’t expected them to be available – the 2kg “econopacks” aren’t there all that often – so I was rather caught unawares. But the big soup tureen thing comes in handy for that.

They also had the econopacks of peppers so one went into the fridge for next Monday and the other was cleaned and trimmed and put in the freezer for another time.

To my surprise, the econopacks of aubergines were availabile too so now that there is some space in the freezer I did something that I haven’t done for ages and made one of my mega aubergine and kidney bean whatsits

There was enough for 5 meals so I had one for tea with pasta and veg, and the other four were packed ready for the freezer.

The freezer is in something of a disreputable state so I took out the vegetable drawer, cleaned it, repaired it and packed everything back in it, including the carrots that I’d blanched. It’s amazing how much room there is in the freezer when you tidy it out.

Here and there, I’ve been editing those radio notes that I dictated before going to bed last night. I was hoping to finish the programme today but I was overwhelmed by events as you can tell.

That should be a task to finish for tomorrow and then I’ll have to start the next one, hopefully to record on Saturday night.

Even though there’s some time before bed though, I’m not going to do it tonight. I’m thoroughly exhausted and after my blackcurrant, honey and lemon I’m off to bed.

While I’m asleep I’ll be trying that trick of the elastic strap around the ankle. Exercising in my sleep seems to be the way to go right now.

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Friday 4th August 2023 – AFTER ALL OF YESTERDAY’S …

… exertions, today followed pretty much the same pattern.

Although there wasn’t the same number of sound files on the dictaphone, it wasn’t far off. And I reckon that had I gone to bed last night at 23:00 as normal instead of … errr … 01:30 this morning, who knows how many there might have been?

When the alarm went off this morning I was actually in a record shop somewhere discussing a Wishbone Ash album with someone. Consequently it took me a few seconds to find my feet.

When the second alarm went off at 07:05 I was actually on my feet – but only just. And the shower that I had after my medication did little to revive me.

Just as last week, I was on the bus early, on the grounds that the sooner I go, the quicker I come back – rather like Tommy Handley’s Ali Oup and “I go – I come back”.

At Carrefour I did a little shopping and then for some reason had to wait quite a while for the bus. I’ve no idea why he took so long to come back this morning.

Back here I had a little accident. Having cleaned out a pepper ready for freezing, I dropped one of the freezer drawers on the floor. I ended up having to clean it, repair it and repack it And then I could sit down and have my cheese on toast and coffee.

There had been plenty of post in my letterbox. The most important letter was that the Physical Re-education Centre that contacted me by phone a couple of weeks ago has offered me 20 – yes, TWENTY sessions, starting in mid-October.

It seems that they are taking this nerve problem seriously. What with that and the hospital visit at the end of the month, who knows?

Also in the post was the acknowledgement of my application for a disabled person’s permit. They told me that I had sent in everything that they needed and I can expect a reply “within four months”. We shall see.

For a change, I managed to avoid falling asleep this afternoon, not that I actually felt like doing all that much. But eventually I had a listen to the dictaphone – piles and piles of it. I had a dream last night. I can’t remember very much about it but I remember that it was full of a lot of people watching it who were coming out of profanities. I had to post some kind of notice requesting everyone to mind their language as there were young children in the vicinity listening to all of it.

There was also the story of a whaler out of Dundee that ran onto rocks and sank as it was coming into the harbour. The crew took to the boats and came ashore but they must have been on an island because there was still no way to reach Dundee. They had to wait to be rescued. There were all kinds of accusations flying around. I was captain of the whaler so I had one of my crew discreetly count the number of people who were with us. He said “between 18 and 26”. That was not what I wanted to know. I was hoping that he’d give me an exact number so I’d know first of all how many we’d had starting out, how many had made it ashore and how many had subsequently been able to go ashore somewhere else. There was an old mariner on this island who was extremely critical of what we’d done. He was very domineering and told us to sit down even though we could see a ship coming in the distance. He told us to sit and watch television while we awaited rescue. I said that I wasn’t interested in watching anything on television. he made some kind of dismissive remark about that. My story was that the chart was deficient but he seemed to think that it was my fault completely, the sinking of the ship. I was looking forward to the subsequent examination where I could put forward my points of view.

Here we were on this island awaiting rescue and we came across a pile of railway carriages for the London Underground. That invited a lot of comment as to what they might be doing there in this rural outpost somewhere along the shore near Dundee. One thing though was that I was sure that looking at the men who had been saved I didn’t really recognise anyone who’d started out on the trip. They could have been different people for all I know

And then someone wanted to work out some kind of survey where any kind of activity took place on the island compared to life on there as normal. I told him to clear off and said that as far as I was concerned no-one was having anything to do with him and this particular survey. What with all of that, it must have been a quite interesting night on that island near Dundee.

And on another island in the middle of the Atlantic there were about 20 children. What they were doing was to play some kind of game with them to see how many could identify the places that were involved with many of the early explorers’ voyages around the world, like the Canary Islands and the Azores, Lanzarote, islands like that situated off the coast of Europe and North West Africa.

I was in a music shop last night. I’d bought a Wishbone Ash album years ago but I’d never got round to actually playing it. When I did, the tracks didn’t correspond with what was on the running order list. I did some research and found that it’s the wrong album that’s been pressed on the CD. The label was for the CD box but the album on the disc was a different one. I went back to the record shop to tell them about it and see what they could do, not that with all this immense lapse of time I expected them to do anything. I was in the middle of talking to them when the alarm went off.

There was some other stuff too but you don’t really want to know about that right now.

As I mentioned yesterday I spent some time on the radio programme that I started yesterday. Another pile of notes have been written and I can finish it off tomorrow. Then I can dictate the notes tomorrow night and if I’m lucky I can prepare two radio programmes on Sunday.

It’ll be a busy day on Sunday because I have some fruit buns to bake. I’ve almost run out of those.

Finally I spent some time tracking down some more stuff about Muskrat Falls. I managed to find not only the agreement that was signed between the Newfoundland and Labrador Government and the Innu community in 2011, I managed to find out how, why and when it all went pear-shaped.

Peter Penashue, the leader of the Innu community at Sheshatshiu, the Innu settlement whose tribal hunting grounds were most affected made an impassioned speech setting out the community’s grievances and the reasons for the blockade of the site.

Basically, there was some kind of profit-sharing agreement proposed in which the Innu community would be paid a percentage of the resale of the electricity generated.

However with massive cost and timescale overruns and structural failures, and much of the electricity being siphoned off by the residents of the Provincial capital in Newfoundland, something that has added millions and millions of dollars to the costs, even the most optimistic estimates reckon that there will be no profit generated for at least 30 years.

That’s assuming that nothing else goes wrong (and what are the odds on that?) of course. And by that time all of the people who were expected to profit from the development will have received nothing.

In the meantime, their hunting grounds and traditional way of life will have been destroyed.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on our first trip to Labrador before there was any sign of development, we saw moose a-plenty, and even bear. Since the development began, we’ve seen just one moose and that’s your lot. In 2017 we didn’t see anything at all.

Tea tonight was salad and chips with some of the falafel that I bought the other day. It was quite nice too, but then again that falafel is a proprietary brand rather than a generic one.

Back here I actually fell asleep for 15 minutes which was disappointing – I was hoping that I could keep going all day having gone “over the hump” this afternoon. But now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed.

Shopping tomorrow, but I don’t want all that much. But supplies of coffee are beginning to run low so I’ll be on the lookout for a coffee sale. They haven’t had one for a while so they must be due for one. It’ll probably be the week after I’ve bought some at full price.

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Thursday 6th April 2023 – MY CURRIED FRIED RICE …

… was delicious tonight.

The other day I mentioned that due to the success of my Chinese fried rice with soy sauce, I’d try some curried fried rice one of these nights. And as I was rummaging around in the fridge I came across some outdated millet burgers that were rather bland but obviously needed eating.

And so having cooked my rice and veg, I fried it in some vegan margarine and olive oil with cumin and coriander. And that reminds me – when I go back to Leuven on the 11th of May I need to stock up on spices like that because I can’t buy them around here

Well, I can, but have you seen the price? Amazon has fennel at €8:50 for 250 grammes and I can buy it at the Asian warehouse in Leuven at €1:29 for 150 grammes. Fenugreek seeds are at €5:00 per 100 grammes and exactly the same packet will cost me €1:49.

Better news than the prices of spices on Amazon was the fact that when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about. Last night was still something quite depressing but when I awoke quite dramatically at 07:15 this morning I thought that I’d push myself onwards and upwards.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I carried on with writing the notes for the radio programme that I’d started yesterday and now they are finished.

Next stop was to go outside to Caliburn to look for the strong black tape, but no luck there. I don’t know where that has gone.

But the good news from that point of view is that I can come back up the stairs without holding on to the hand rail. There’s not sufficient force in my right leg to push myself up the steps with it but the left leg seems to be working. I had the crutches with me of course but I didn’t really need them and it was the quickest that I’ve been up and down the stairs for quite a while.

Despite the lack of strong sticky tape I took out the two freezer drawers that needed repair and just superglued them, hoping that the glue will hold them together. I had a good sort through and found a couple of interesting things that will need eating quite soon. I might even make a start on Saturday seeing as there are a couple of those small breaded quornburgers that I bought a while ago.

But I managed to make some room in there, not the least reason being that I took out three of the stock of hot cross buns ready to defrost and eat over the Easter period. What would Easter be without hot cross buns?

Armed with a coffee and some cheese on toast (I found half a baguette in the freezer) I transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were plenty. There was a rock concert on somewhere or other. I’d invited one of my little friends to go with me. It was a Thursday night. At first she wasn’t very keen but we went anyway. We really enjoyed the concert, a Southern Rock band so of course I really enjoyed it. What was interesting was that for their lead guitar solos, they flashed the music up on the projector so that everyone could see it. It didn’t occur to me until much later in the concert that “why don’t you take a photo of it and go home and learn to play it?”. Then they announced that there would be a pause. Everyone was quite exhausted. I looked at my watch – it was 02:15. I asked her “have you seen the time?”. She was doing some kind of work for a coach or bus company for school holidays. She wasn’t really all that interested. Everyone was feeling tired so everyone including us lay down on the floor and went to sleep. I had a disturbed sleep tossing around there because what was going through my mind was first of all what would her parents say when they go into her room to awaken her in a couple of hours and she’s not there but with me, and what’s she going to say her work etc. I could see a whole mass of trouble ahead with this. She wasn’t bothered about it by the looks of things so I wasn’t either any more than that. Anyway she awoke after about half an hour and I gently probed her to see how she was feeling, whether she should go home now or whatever like that but she didn’t seem to want to bring the matter into discussion. She was just quite happy being there. I thought “well, it’s not for me to say anything is it really if that’s what she wants”.

She was a lovely girl. While she was at school she worked in the library at Nantwich on a Saturday and she’d go through the new records that the library would purchase, and smuggle out the ones that she knew would interest me so that I could tape them, and then she’d smuggle them back in the next Saturday and repeat the cycle.

Her parents hated me though and I think that they were glad when we split up.

What went wrong was Christmas 1976. I was flat broke, living in a squat and in an effort to liven up our Christmas we spent the last of our money buying card and glitter and the like to make some nice Christmas cards.

Audlem was a funny village. It really was a village of two halves, one half being the farm labourers and the other half being the rich, dazzling suburbanites. We went around the latter with our cards. “Ohh how nice and thoughtful. Do come in. have a mince pie. Have a glass of sherry”. We were wasted by the end of the evening and her parents took a very dim view of it all.

A few years later I was driving a coach for Salopia and stopped in Whitchurch to go to the bank. Guess who was serving behind the counter?

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long enough for a chat but the at the next opportunity I went back. However she wasn’t there.

Instead I buttonholed another cashier and asked about her. At first no-one remembered her but then someone said that she was in fact a new recruit who was there in that branch simply to gain some experience, and no-one knew where she had gone from there.

And that was that then.

Later on I stepped back into that dream. I was with her again driving around somewhere. We went past the house of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I had 2 headlights for the car there. as the headlights on this one were fading and pretty bad I thought that I’d go and pick up these. I parked at the side of the road. She said that she’d stay in the car which was probably a good thing as I didn’t want any confrontation and secondly I wanted someone to look after the car. The pavement wasn’t wide enough to be completely clear of the road. There was a garage across the road where we’d just been. I thought that we’d park at the back of the garage and fix these headlights but there was very little space. Next to it was a public car park. I thought that we’d go on the public car park, aprk there, fetch the headlights and change them over on there. It’s a pay one but at this time of night no-one will bother too much. When we pulled on there every single space was a disabled persons space. There were quite a few people lounging around on the lawns there. The saw me drive slowly around and asked me what was happening. I said “apparently I’m not disabled enough to park here”. They replied jokingly “step out of your car and we can arrange that”. I drove around. There were even holes being dug for graves here on the lawn and I still couldn’t find a place to park the car

Anyway, it really was nice to be among charming company again for an evening. It’s a shame that I can’t do it more often, and in my waking hours too.

The rest of the day has been spent working on a cunning plan. The 14th of July is a Bank Holiday to celebrate the Fall of the Bastille, and it’s also a Friday.

Consequently, I’ve been working on a special radio programme. The Beatles have called for a Revolution to overthrow Curved Air’s Marie Antoinette. So as Alvin Lee and Ten Years After Want To Change The World, Hawkwind’s Urban Guerillas are going to the Bastille with Simple Minds to Kick It In.

With a little effort I can run this thing on for an hour, if you get the picture.

Ironically, the following Friday is the anniversary of the Moon Landings and that’s when Elton John’s Rocket Man is going on board the Hooter’s Satellite with Guns and Roses’s Rocket Queen for Bebop Deluxe’s Honeymoon on Mars from where, with REM’s Man In The Moon, they can Look Into The Sun with Jethro Tull to see Hawkwind’s Children of The Sun. I’m sure Steve Hillside-Village and Khan can write a Space Shanty about that.

Now what other interesting dates are there that fall on a Friday? We had an Armistice Day special last year.

Yes, I’m hoping to be much more imaginative and inventive for my radio programmes in the future instead of playing music haphazardly. I didn’t put too much thought into them at first because to be honest I never expected to be still here. But I seem to be fighting back right now.

Tea was, as I mentioned, quite delicious and now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed. No lie-in for me despite it being a Bank Holiday because the physiotherapist is coming round. What with the nurse to inject me on Monday morning, it’s going to be a pretty miserable Easter break for me.

Thank Heaven I have my hot cross buns.

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Friday 25th October 2019 – I’M ALL …

… alone here tonight. And I will be for the next couple of weeks too.

Strawberry Moose has gone off on his travels again to see some more of his fans.

No-one is quite sure when he’ll be back again but I bet that he will have a few stories to tell me when he returns. It’s all right for some, isn’t it though? Some of us have to stay behind and work for a living.

Not that you would notice, though, around here. Despite the three alarms going off this morning, it was still 07:40 when I finally hauled myself out of bed.

But then I’d had another late night (albeit not as late as the other night) scratching my head over this blasted Javascript menu. I told you last night when I wrote my blog that I was a just a couple of inches away from a breakthrough. And so by the time that I went to bed I must have advanced about half a millimetre.

It wasn’t all work though. TOTGA was on-line so we had a good chat for an hour or so too. It’s been ages since we had a really good chin-wag and it was nice to hear her dulcet tones again.

The purpose of my chat was to try to persuade her to come and join in the fun in Leuven. But without success. “A Prior engagement” she said. Not like Kenneth Williams who once turned down an invitation on the grounds of “a subsequent engagement”, so I suppose that I ought to be thankful for that at least.

So this morning after the medication and breakfast, I had a stinking hot shower and then dashed round to tidy everywhere up. I was expecting visitors and the place was something of a tip with my having unpacked a l’improviste.

By the time that Liz and Terry turned up, the place was looking something like, and they could at least sit down.

We had a coffee and a good chat about this and that – not about the other because that is of course sub judice right now – and I told them of my (mis)adventures on my voyage just now.

I’d mentioned it to TOTGA last night and she told me that she had never heard me talk like I did at that moment (which is not really true because she remembers me when I was someone else, although she was only a kid at the time) so I made an effort to restrain myself (something that doesn’t come easily to me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) when talking to Liz.

Nevertheless Liz was rather aghast. Not that this means that she was surprised. She used to be a primary school teacher in a deprived area of the UK so she’s seen human nature at its worst, but I suppose that with the voyage being as expensive as it was, we both expected a better class of person with a better standard of behaviour.

So they wandered off and I sat down to crack on with my Javascript menu. I forgot about my additional walk.

By 16:00 I had made a breakthrough – of sorts. I can now make Javascript tags pick up web pages on my own site but not on an external site. Still, it’s progress of a sort and it means that I can go onwards.

To celebrate, I made lunch. Yes – at 16:00 because I had forgotten earlier, being engrossed. And it was something of a disappointment because the bread that I had left in the ice compartment of the fridge and which I had taken out to defrost – well, it wasn’t very good at all and it all ended up in the bin.

But it’s Saturday tomorrow and I’m going for a walk to LIDL where I can buy some more.

Not wishing to forget another walk, I nipped out straight afterwards for a lap around the headland and then back to carry on with my menu.

And, as is quite often the case, the simplest solutions are usually the correct one. I was struggling away for quite a while trying to work out how to display a vertical line. ASCII codes, ALT codes and all of that didn’t work, so in a moment of despair, I tried
document.write( ‘|’);
and much to my surprise, it actually worked. And I’d wasted an hour or so on it too.

Another thing that I tried to do was to figure out how to make a space in Javascript. Once again, after much binding in the marsh, I tried the simple
document.write( ‘ ‘);
and that worked too.

After that, passing onto a new line was easy. Yes. I tried
document.write(‘br /’);
and that just printed out the br /. So I tried
putting the br / bit in the “greater than” and “less that” brackets, and that worked just fine.

There’s probably a far easier method to do it all, but at least I know that what I’ve programmed seems to work well enough for now. And having it all saved in an external file, I only need to update it once for it to update on every page on my site.

Just two tasks to work out now.

The simplest one is how to access an external page via a Javascript link. I’m hoping that that won’t be too difficult, but knowing me, it probably will.

More difficult will be the task of nesting Javascript files. I want to make a sidebar file with the menu, the hit counter, the stats analyser and the Amazon blocks in it. Then I can just import the main Javascript file into every page on my site with all of the subsidiary blocks in it, and an amendment to the main Javascript file will make the amendment on every page.

Iframes or *.php would ordinarily be the answer, but Secured sites won’t display iframes and I know nothing about *.php, and at my age I’m too old to learn this kind of thing.

Talking of being too old, I went for my evening walk around the city walls and at one stage broke into a run. I kept it up for a couple of hundred metres too.

That surprised me immensely, because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that after my operation in January 2016 when they ripped out half of my insides, I couldn’t even walk and had to have re-education.

It really impressed me, that little bit of running did. Maybe it’s something to do with losing all of this weight. I dunno.

This evening I carried on with the Javascript menu, listening to a couple of really belting albums. Elegy by the Nice was the first one. No relation to Grey’s “Allergy to a Country Churchyard”, it’s one of the all-time classic albums that will always be on my playlist.

The second is much more exciting. One of the ones that I picked up in Ottawa.

After Arthur Brown disappeared from “The Crazy World of …”, Vincent Crane and Carl Palmer recruited a couple of new musicians and carried on as “Atomic Rooster”. Palmer left to join ELP, but Crane struggled on for quite a while, with a revolving door of new members and mental health breakdowns until he committed suicide in 1989.

In 1980, during one of their more active periods, they played at the Marquee Club in London. No bassist – and no vocalist either, so the guitarist John Du Cann sang on the vocal tracks. And while he will be the first to admit that he’s no vocalist, he gave it a really good go and the energy and enthusiasm that roared off the stage on Live at The Marquee 1980 is absolutely phenomenal.

But now it’s bed-time. And I have a lot to do tomorrow. All on foot too!

And I almost forgot to say “hello” to Pollux who put in an appearance during the night. First time for a while too.

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Monday 21st October 2019 – YOU CAN SAY …

… that again!!!!

Certainly glad to be back in my own bed last night. So much so that I was in it for a grand total of FOURTEEN HOURS!

12:10 when my eyes first saw the light of day, but it was more like 13:10 when i crawled out of ye olde stinkinge pitte and looked around the room.

Nothing much seems to have changed except that the language settings on the laptop in the dining room have been changed and some of the clothes in the drawer seem to have been rearranged. I wish that people would leave things as they find them when they look around. I have a hard-enough time trying to find things that I’ve moved, never mind things that others have moved.

And if you don’t know how to disable the logging-on timer on a computer, you shouldn’t be logging on. I tell you – I learnt an awful lot when I studied for my Diploma in Computing.

Mind you, none of the foregoing is to give the impression that I was stark out for all of that time. One glance at the dictaphone is enough to convince anyone. 5 entries there are, and a total of 13 minutes of recording.

That must have been some eventful night and I can’t wait to find out where I was and where I went.

So, the medication and a very late lunch – never mind breakfast. And then to work.

With being away for as long as I had, there was a huge pile of stuff on the back-up drive and all of it needed copying over to the desktop machine. And then with it having been installed on at least three other machines over a short space of time, it all needed verifying to make sure that I had everything in one place – and in the right place too.

There was a short break while I went for a walk. And having missed the morning walk that I promised myself, I went on an extended circuit – the one that goes over the new bit of path that they rebuilt.

And I can safely say that after my four months away from home, I’m leaner and fitter. As well as meaner, but that’s a completely different story.

Flak at the bat, I carried on with the updating of everything, and then started on another little project.

granville manche normandy franceRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that I now have a new web-stats analyser on my blog.

And who could fail to fall in love with it when not only does it give me accurate information for a change, it gives me facilities like this aside?

Yes, it’s all out there and freely available. You won’t get any better (or worse, depending on your point of view) information from anywhere. And so I’m going to add this analyser to all of my other sites. I’ve long-suspected that the stats that I’ve been receiving from them are pretty much rubbish too

And I’ve found out why the stats on another of my sites has plummeted so much just recently. It seems that when there was a server upgrade a while ago, I was given a free secure site upgrade, and that’s running as a mirror site. And while I’ve had 2353 hits so far this month on the “standard” unsecured site, the secured (https) site has received 1669 in October to date.

When I add those two together, it gives a figure much more in line with what I would ordinarily expect to see.

As a result, I’ve started a project that will see a different hit counter added to both these sites. Mind you, just like all of the projects that I have on the go right now, heaven alone knows when this one will be completed.

And that reminds me – for the dozens of users still using Windows version 7 – you do know that Microsoft is discontinuing support for it in the New Year? You need to upgrade your version of Windows or else make sure that you have a good anti-virus.

Another thing that I did today was to install a new internet chat facility on the desktop machine. The old-established ones are dying like flies so I need something more modern. Rhys and I were having a play around with it today to find its strengths and weaknesses.

For tea I had to chisel the drawers out of the freezer to find a curry and vegetables. The door being closed for four months without any air circulation has led to a build-up of ice inside and I had some kind of difficulty opening it all.

But a lovely potato and vegetable curry went down really well and for dessert, I found some chocolate. That will do me just fine until I can get round to organising myself again.

And I need to too. You’ve no idea how long it took me to figure out how to use the microwave oven again.

There’s an acoustic guitar in here so as well as the bass I’ve been plucking away at Kris Kristofferson’s “Bobby McGee”. I’m determined to master that, and master it pretty soon.

And talking of music, for most of the day I’ve had the music going on on the computer – Traffic’s “On The Road” on a continuous loop. One of those albums that I never tire of hearing. And I’ll be listening to it for most of the night because I’m not in the least tired. 14 hours of sleep means a lot of awakening.

Perhaps I should watch a film?

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Sunday 23rd August 2015 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST

And that applies even in Canada. No alarm calls over here on a Sunday so I could have a decent lie in. And even when I awoke, there was no rush as nothing starts here much before 11:00

The Taylor Breakfast Brunches are legendary and this was another one of those. No-one leaves the table hungry after that.

This afternoon, I finished off emptying out the big freezer that had developed a problem. Most of the remaining stuff was stowed into the other freezer and what was left didn’t really matter too much. I then switched the thing off, shovelled out the loose ice and spent a while every half an hour doing that. Finally I filled it with newspaper to soak up the water as it defrosted, and changed that several times.

Eventually the freezer was empty and dried off, and now we have to leave it to evaporate. Once it’s totally dry, I can check the wiring and see where the fault in the circuit might be. I suspect the wall socket, but we shall see.

We went out for another meal. Rachel has done some good cooking just recently and she deserves a night off. Nowhere exciting, but going out is going out after all.

Back here, Amber had a copy of the Grumpy Cat film so we watched that. And then I went off to bed.

I can’t remember when it was that I have last had a Sunday en famille. I’ll have to watch out – I might be starting to become used to this.

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