Tag Archives: frozen carrots

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

… last night’s theatrics, I managed to survive into today.

Not without problems, though. I am still having these severe coughing fits, my nose is running and I’m freezing, freezing cold. In fact, although for the past few days I’ve just been running the heating at night, it went back on on Thursday for twenty-four hours per day. And yet I’m still perishing.

So after I’d finished the notes for yesterday, I managed to find the time to dictate a few radio notes, making a horrible mess of them, and I reckoned that that was nature’s way of telling me to go to bed.

But not before I’d switched off the alarms and set one for 07:30. A lie-in will do me a little good, I hope.

However, there was just one problem. The alarm that I’d set didn’t have a sound. Consequently, it was the vibration and the buzzing that awoke me, rather later than it might have been. I was dead to the World at that moment.

As usual, it took a while to haul myself out of bed, and as I was already dressed (yes, I’d gone to bed again fully dressed) I sat at the desk and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And again, it was somewhat disappointing.

I was in dialysis last night. There was some discussion amongst the staff about cases of food poisoning going around. I listened quite carefully because when someone began to mention a couple of the symptoms, I realised that that was actually how I was feeling and how I was suffering. However, the only thing that I have to eat or drink there is the orange juice and coffee so I don’t know where this thing about food poisoning might have come from at dialysis.

That was rather prescient, I suppose, because the idea of food poisoning had gone through my mind at some point during the afternoon on Thursday.

When the alarm went off, there was something going on about weddings. We’d been planning some kind of wedding for something or other and a couple of people had said that this is going to be the kind of wedding that we’ll never forget. But I didn’t manage to go very far down into this dream at all because the alarm went off and awoke me.

What a shame that the alarm awoke me just as this dream was starting up. I would have loved to have known how it would have developed.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my legs and feet. He didn’t have much to say today, especially after I’d told him that I’d gone to bed at 20:00. I suppose that he was pondering on how to deal with the situation in his capacity as a nurse, but he simply dealt with my legs and feet and left.

Once he’d gone, I could deal with breakfast — the first meal that I’d had in twenty-four hours — and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve finally finished the sorry tale of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, like just everywhere else in the Balkans, the citizens handed their country over to the Ottomans on a plate. We’re now turning our attention to Rome, which seems to be where all of the exiled Kings and Princes ended up, living at the mercy of the Pope.

The list of royal personages who found refuge there is impressively long, that’s for sure, and it includes the names of some of the most powerful in the medieval Balkans.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do now that my week’s work is finished. The most important was to pay my property taxes for my place in Canada, and now that’s done. There was also the food order for Leclerc to review and send off. And as you might expect, there were several items unavailable.

However, they did have a butternut squash, so my roasted butternut squash soup for Easter Saturday looks like it might be on.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to back up the files. Now that I have an 8 TB disc drive in the new office computer, I’ve been merging all of the files that were on different hard drives, and they are all now on this large one. I’ve merged in the working files too, and the next plan is to format the two external drives, split the contents of the large back-up drive into two and copy them onto the two external drives, half each, as an extra insurance back-up.

My cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff. I explained that I wasn’t well, so she sensibly left me to it and left at the end of her session.

Not that I had much rest because fifteen minutes after she had gone, Leclerc turned up with the shopping. So I had all of that to put away (and it’s still not all away) and one kg of carrots to dice, blanch and freeze. And to save the water for the base of the butternut squash soup.

Back in here, I drifted off on my travels for a short while and then had a look at some of the notes that I’d dictated just now. Two of them were the notes for joining tracks so I edited them both and assembled the programmes. That’s me now well ahead for self-sufficiency.

Tea tonight was the curry that I was going to eat last night, a korma from out of the freezer, with rice and veg followed by vegan trifle. And I noticed that the agar-agar jelly seems to be breaking up. It’s probably not meant to be kept as long as this, so I shall have to make a smaller one next time. I hope that this one survives a little longer and doesn’t end up completely in the waste bin. That would be a tragedy.

It will also be a tragedy if I don’t get a move on and go to bed while I still can. I need a good night’s sleep and this looks like the best chance of having one.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about weddings … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked "why does the bride always wear white at her wedding?"
"It’s to symbolise purity and chastity" I replied
"Of course it isn’t" retorted someone else. "If you look around, you’ll find that all kitchen appliances come in white these days."

Friday 6th February 2026 – I HAVE THROWN …

… away another huge pile of food today. And that included the leftover Christmas cake and mince pies.

And what a tragedy that was – all of my Christmas stuff consigned to the bin. It just shows you how ill I’ve been over the last couple of months that I couldn’t bring myself to eat all that much of it.

But last night, as I said, I was beginning to feel better. For the first time for a long, long while, I’d managed to eat a proper-sized meal, and that is definitely progress.

So back in here afterwards, I wrote up my notes, although I’m still not as well as all that because I managed to fall asleep a couple of times while doing them. In the end, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing, it was about 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

But here’s a thing.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying that I was convinced that it was the after-effects of the dialysis, particularly the following morning, that were causing me so many problems with my sleep, leading me to wake up at some silly time of the morning. However, last night I slept all the way through to the alarm at 06:29 without moving a muscle.

So much for that idea.

Anyway, another desperate struggle to leave the bed, followed by a stagger into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

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

I was with a woman and her daughter – it might have been Laurence and Roxanne. We’d been for a drive somewhere, just aimlessly driving around the suburbs of this city. I remember that we came to some traffic lights and I was waiting for them to change, but I was busy talking. Suddenly, the car behind me beeped and overtook me. I could see that the lights had changed and I hadn’t noticed. We turned into the main road, and there was a side street on the left that I had never ever been down. We went down there and came to this really magnificent parking area. It had kind of wooden pavilions, lock-up garages and trees, these monkey-puzzle tree things, and there was a lake. The lake was enormous and there were quite a few people sitting around there enjoying it. Whoever I was with, she knew the owners of this lake. They were extremely rich people and this was part of their property, although people were allowed to go on it. We had some flasks, so we went to sit down by the water’s edge. One thing that we noticed was that there were several families. One of them was a small child, younger than the girl who was with us. That child was standing there, arms folded, in a real sulk. We wondered what could possibly have been wrong with this child, given the absolutely beautiful view that we were having.

The road, the traffic lights and the parking place with the lake are so familiar to me but I just can’t put a name to them. I’m wondering if it might have been when I was at FORT NIAGARA IN OCTOBER 2010.

As for the child sulking, I’m not going to embarrass someone who might (or might not) be reading these pages by reminding them of an incident at Pegwell Bay in Kent in 1966 or 1967.

Isabelle the Nurse was rather later than usual this morning, and she didn’t hang around very long. But she was in an exceptionally good mood today which was quite surprising.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

Now that he’s left his rambling preamble behind, his notes of his excavations are much more orderly, although not on a par with those of James Curle. It’s still rather difficult to follow his timeline for the occupation of the site.

But, going off on a tangent as I usually do, I ended up reading a critique of Wheeler’s work. He hasn’t yet reached the cemetery, as far as I have read, but someone, in his critique, has posted to the effect that Wheeler has posted “some kind of fanciful description” of a battle that took place at the site between the natives and the Romans but says that there is “no evidence to support it”.

Leaving aside completely the fact that “absence of evidence” is a totally different concept than “evidence of absence”, our critic notes that Wheeler uncovered some kind of ad hoc cemetery with twenty-odd skeletons in it, many with wounds that can only have come from battle, one of whom has a Roman ballista arrow embedded in his spinal column, but notes that “there is no evidence that they actually died there”.

Now, I’ve commented before on Wheeler’s flights of fancy, but even so, nothing in this World is going to convince me that these people with battle wounds died elsewhere and that some people hauled them all the way up to the camp from wherever it was that they died, simply to cast them any old how into a series of hastily-dug, poorly prepared graves.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office, I had a few things to do this morning and then I had to prepare my shopping order for LeClerc as I’m running low on a few things. After that, I finished off the radio notes for the programme that I’d started earlier in the week.

Having done that, I then began to research the next programme. That took some doing too, but having found out what I needed to do, I had to track down some music, and that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

When my cleaner turned up, I had to knock off because we needed to make an inventory of the apartment and work out what we need the joiner to do when he comes back here for a day’s work. There’s quite a lot to do, and I’m sure that anyone who has visited this apartment can think of a few other things.

As my cleaner was leaving, she bumped into the delivery man bringing the food, twenty minutes early. And so the next hour or so was spent putting away all of the food and cleaning, dicing and blanching a pile of carrots ready for freezing. Only a kilo today rather than two because there are some left, although not enough to last until the next order.

While I was blanching, the ‘phone rang, so while the carrots were draining, I checked to see who had called.

It was Rosemary, who wanted a “little chat”, so there I was for one hour and nine minutes having this “little chat” with her. And once more, we talked about nothing much at all. But she was shocked to learn that my bill from the supermarket for three weeks’ worth of food was just €69:00. But it’s true, give or take the odd few mushrooms for the Sunday pizza that my faithful cleaner brings me.

There was time afterwards to finish selecting the music, reformatting, remixing and re-editing it and then pairing and segueing it. I even managed to write some of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with a pile of cheese melted into it, followed by some of the fruitcake from before Christmas with a soya dessert. It was a fair-sized meal, not the largest that I’ve had, but I still managed to eat it all, which, I suppose, is progress.

While I was messing around in the fridge, I threw out a pile of stuff that was long past its sell-by date and, as I said earlier, all of the uneaten Christmas stuff followed it into the bin. It really is a disaster, but it can’t be helped. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not like me to throw away food. I really must have been ill over that period.

After finishing the washing-up, I put the water in which the carrots had been blanched into a glass bottle and put it in the fridge to use to make my leek and potato soup next week (I bought some fresh leeks today) and then put the carrots into the freezer to freeze for future use.

And now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. I wonder if I’ll sleep as deeply as I did last night, or was that just a one-off? We shall see.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about those skeletons in that cemetery at Maiden Castle… "well, one of us has" – ed … Tessa Wheeler asked her husband Mortimer "fancy letting themselves be killed like that. Why didn’t they fight back at all?"
"Well, darling" said Mortimer "people like that just don’t have the guts to do it."

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 – I HAVEN’T HAD …

… any tea tonight.

Not that it should be a surprise to anyone. After all, if I didn’t have my breakfast until 13:30 today, it’s hardly likely that I’m going to be hungry at teatime, given the way that things have been just recently.

That’s right. We had another really early start today – the taxi due to come for me at 06:45 or thereabouts this morning to take me to chemotherapy.

Consequently, I’d rushed through the usual evening procedure after tea last night and was in bed by about 22:35, which makes quite a nice change.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a waste of time going to bed early because what seems to happen is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. Like 03:55, for example.

Despite any amount of trying, I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. I lay there tossing and turning for about ninety minutes, but in the end, gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Not that there was much on there. There was something about being in the army last night. One of the officers was complaining about one of the Generals going on leave all the time for long periods. He called the General’s aide-de-camp in to discuss it with him. The aide-de-camp reminded him that Generals don’t have leave. They are sent on leave at the discretion of the leader of the army. There’s no official entitlement to it.

This is another one of those dreams that is completely meaningless, as far as I am concerned.

After a good wash, I waited for the nurse to turn up. He arrived bang on 06:30 as promised, and sorted out my legs and feet. He was still in a very good mood, which is very pleasant. Once he’d gone, I awaited the taxi, which arrived at 06:50.

This morning’s driver was the young chatty guy, so we had a very long and interesting chat all the way to Rennes, a chat that included commentary on several other drivers, especially the one who pulled out right in front of us on the autoroute at 130 kph and the other one who drove for about 50 km with only one rear light illuminated.

We were early arriving at Rennes, but even so, I had to wait until 09:00 or thereabouts to be plugged in.

Once more, I was devilishly tired but I didn’t manage to doze off today. I read a book until it was 10:10 and time to be unplugged.

The driver was waiting for me when I came out. It was another one of the more sociable drivers. He took me on a little sightseeing tour of Rennes on our way to another hospital to pick up a young girl for Avranches. It was another chatty drive on the way back.

It was about 12:30 when I arrived here, and my faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment. I was slightly more sprightly today than yesterday.

After she left, the first thing that I did was to send off my shopping order. I have to eat, even if I don’t feel much like it.

Second thing was to make breakfast. Since tea last night, all that I’d had up to now was one very small mouthful of water and I had a thirst that you could photograph. And having eaten, I crashed out, hunched over the kitchen table, for over half an hour.

My cleaner came in to do her stuff, and I carried on with the radio programme that I’d started last week, choosing the music that I hope to be playing

When the shopping order came in, I put everything away and then washed, diced and blanched the carrots and the broccoli ready for freezing.

But now, even though it’s really early, I’m going to go to bed. Chemotherapy is exhausting and I’m really feeling it tonight. I’m glad that I’ve not had any food, otherwise that would keep me awake for hours trying to digest it. I’ll probably be awake early tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter all that much.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the car with one tail light … "well, one of us has" – ed … at one point, we flagged it down to tell the driver, and he left his car to go to have a look.
"Blast it!" he shouted. "This is all that I need. It’s going to cost me a fortune, this is!"
"There’s no need to panic" said my driver. "It’s only a rear light."
"Never mind the bleeding light!" he stormed. "Where the hell has my flaming trailer gone?"

Tuesday 9th September 2025 – I AM IN …

… Isabelle the Nurse’s bad books at the moment. Apparently, I said something at the dialysis centre yesterday that I shouldn’t have said, and she went through the roof.

It’s a shame really. She’s usually a very nice, chatty, friendly person, but I have noticed on more than one occasion that if you push the wrong button, she goes up like a four-bob rocket. I think that in future, I shall have to refrain from saying anything to anyone.

Last night, I didn’t have much to say for myself … "a mere 1600 words, that’s all" – ed … because it was another night where I was totally and utterly flaked out after dialysis and the effort of coming home. I was in a rush to finish my notes and crawl into bed.

Not that it actually worked out like that though because for some reason, I just can’t seem to press on. From what should have been an early finish, posting my notes online at 22:16 precisely, it was yet again after 23:00 when I finally made it into bed.

Once in bed, I slept right through until all of 03:40 when I had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have.

The first thing that I noticed was the absolute silence in the apartment. There was none of that steady, deep humming from the fuse box just outside the door to tell me that the water heater was drawing current. In the end, I left the bed to look and sure enough, it hadn’t switched on yet again.

For a change, I managed to switch it on manually so there was some heat going in there. And I went back to bed.

With an interruption like that, I didn’t think that I’d go back to sleep but when the alarm went off at 06:29 I was well-and-truly away with the fairies (although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine).

As usual, it took a good while for me to summon up the motivation and energy to leave the bed but eventually I staggered off into the bathroom, having a quick glance at the fuse box, noticing that the water heater had at least switched itself off at some point.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was travelling through Austria and ended up on the border with Liechtenstein. The moment that I drove into Liechtenstein I was stuck behind a traffic queue with a huge articulated lorry with three huge tractors on the trailer, with a load of other vehicles in front. Gradually, we inched our way through the country until we came to the Swiss border. A Swiss border patrol man walked out in front of the van, and I wasn’t sure whether to swerve around him or stop, so I tried a bit of both. In the end, he came over to me so I told him that I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. He asked me to lift up the bonnet of the van, so I did, and to my amazement it was covered in silt as if it had been swamped in a river or something. He poked and prodded around inside, and in the end, slammed down the bonnet. He came over to me and asked for my passport, so I showed him my identity card from France. He had something of a moan about that. In the meantime, someone else came over to talk to me, someone else in the queue, and asked what the engines in these vans are like. I said that they were great. The one in my van had done a quarter of a million kilometres and it’s still working fine. In the end, the Swiss border patrol guy waved me on, so I drove off.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have DRIVEN THROUGH LIECHTENSTEIN IN THE PAST and I also drove through here with Nerina when we were on our way to see her family in Italy during our honeymoon.

The incident at the Swiss border though is very much like the incident that I had CROSSING THE BORDER BETWEEN HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA in 2020.

The silt under the bonnet is something that defeats me though. Unless it’s a reference to that Rolls-Royce that I found in a scrapyard in Stoke-upon-Trent that had about a foot of silt inside, looking as if it had been caught in a flood somewhere.

As I mentioned earlier, Isabelle the Nurse blew in to deal with my legs, and blew out again in something of a storm. One very unhappy bunny here this morning. However, she’s gone off for a week’s rest and she’ll probably feel better when she comes back.

Then I could push on and make breakfast, and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

The other day, I mentioned that our author seemed to be very good at fortune-telling and predicting the future. Well, he’s at it again today. He’s discussing the spread of American settlers across the Native American lands of the West and concludes "Their anti-republican love of aggrandisement, by the continual extension of their territorial possessions, must sooner or later destroy the unity of their confederation"

His book, written in 1831, was 30 years ahead of its time.

Something else that he mentions that seems to have been missed by many historians is the question of tinned food. It’s generally assumed that the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the High Arctic, 129 men of which there were no survivors, in 1845 was the first major use of tinned food, produced by Steven Goldner in London.

However, our author notes that in 1814, a supply ship brought a "quantity of prime English beef, which they had dressed and preserved in a peculiar manner in tin cases impervious to air ; so that we could say we ate fresh beef which had been killed and dressed in England thirteen months before"

That’s the earliest ever mention that I have seen of tinned food.

He also makes mention of a primitive Native American Sauna and an ice-plunge, both used by the natives as an excellent cure for rheumatism. I shall have to try that, to see if it works.

The tinned food is preserved by sealing it in a vacuum. That’s done by rapidly heating the liquid in which it’s stored. Hot liquid is much less dense than cold liquid so when it’s hot, you quickly ram down a lid onto it and seal it (or solder it with lead solder as Goldner did to the tinned food that he sent to Franklin’s men, thus killing them all by lead poisoning), when the liquid cools down, it shrinks in volume and the resultant empty space becomes a vacuum.

Back in here, I went through my LeClerc order and sent it off, asking for delivery between 15:00 and 17:00. And then I had things to do.

Now that I’m fully down here and the cleaning of the apartment is more-or-less finished, we no longer need the electricity up there. Consequently, I telephoned the electricity company to talk about them cutting the power to it and finalising my bill. The new tenant, whoever that might be, can arrange for the power supply.

And seeing as we have been talking about the new tenant … "well, one of us has" – ed … the letting agent rang me to ask if someone could come along and view the apartment tomorrow at 16:00. That’s not a problem.

After a disgusting drink break, I had another ‘phone call to make – this time to Canada. It seems that there’s an issue with my Canadian bank account, something to do with a change of account number that I need to note.

Having ordered my shopping for between 15:00 and 17:00, it turned up at 14:55 when I wasn’t ready for it. It was a large order too, seeing that I’d been letting supplies run down for a while, and contained lots of new stuff now that I have a place to store it.

There were also 2 kilos of carrots that needed cleaning, dicing and blanching, so that was this afternoon’s work sorted out for me

With what little time that was left, I had a listen to the radio programme that needs sending off for broadcast this weekend, only to find a glaring fault right in the middle. Consequently, I had to rewrite, re-dictate, edit and re-assemble the programme. I really need to take more care when I am doing these programmes.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and now I’m off to bed, ready for a good sleep … "I don’t think" – ed … I’m having far too many wake-up calls awakening me these days – a sharp contrast to how things were a few months ago when I’d be up and about after a mere three or four hours’ sleep. What’s happening to change all of that?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about vacuums … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe was on one of these quiz shows on TV, and the presenter asked her "if you were in a vacuum and someone shouted, would you hear it?"
She thought for a while, and then asked "would the vacuum be switched on?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 13th June 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

… a quiet day today.

It was quiet last night too. I didn’t stay up for all that long after finishing my notes. However, it was rather later than I anticipated when I went to bed. Everyone in the apartment had been asleep for quite a while by the time that I finally crawled in underneath the covers.

Once more, it took me a while to go off to sleep but once I was asleep, there I stayed until about 05:30. Not that I was up and about straight away though. It must have taken me another twenty minutes before I finally plucked up the courage to leave the bed.

With everyone still fast asleep, I began the morning by listening to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been to hospital last night and I’d had some brain surgery carried out on my head. It had involved penetrating the skull. As a result I was lying there in bed with the extension cable wrapped around me and the plug on the end of that was resting on my stomach. At first I thought that it might have been the Hound of the Barnevilles … "he means ‘Baskervilles’" – ed … but that was still asleep on the floor by the fire so it can’t have been him so I wondered what animal of that nature was trying to crawl all over me while I was asleep.

The Hound of the Baskervilles was actually sleeping on the floor when I stuck my head in earlier. But dreaming about hospital again is pretty depressing. I want to forget all about that and relax during the night instead of ending up worrying just as much as I do during the day about my hospital visits.

Later on, I was with two people. We’d been on a very long trek from across some kind of territory. There was also a boy involved in this somehow. The woman was the mother of this child. I was with these two men, hiking away, walking through this rough land. We were having to climb up and down all kinds of obstacles and it seemed as if we were twenty years walking through this way. Eventually we came to a spot where we had to climb down a really, really long descent like off a clifftop. It was all muddy. We finally made it down to the bottom where we could say goodbye. Meanwhile, this woman and her son were somewhere about and I ended up doing something with this child, having a collection of possessions or something. This woman, I had this big silver or chrome ball, really heavy. I went up to her and said “I know what it is tomorrow” because I’d been told that it was her birthday. I was about to present her with this ball when she said “yes, it’s Grand Prix day tomorrow” which surprised me. But there was something in this dream about a tube of ointment but I can’t remember where it fitted in.

This dream reminded me very much of East Africa, not that I have ever been there of course, but how I would imagine it to be. However, it seems to have its basis in our Welsh lesson on Tuesday, when we were reading a book about a woman and her son who were the sole survivors of a cataclysm and they had to learn self-sufficiency and autonomy quite rapidly if they were going to survive.

Everyone seemed to come alive round about 07:00 so I went back into the living room to see how they were doing. My friend rustled up some coffee, I rustled up the orange juice and we had a very slow start to the day while I sorted out my medication.

The nurse burst into the apartment at about 08:30 and the reaction of the Hound of the Baskervilles will make sure that he won’t ever enter like that anywhere else ever again.

It had evidently put the wind up him because he was in and out of here in what must be a new World Record time, and we could set about making breakfast.

Later on, we came in here and spent quite a while talking about recording issues, fixing a few faults on a few recording machines and working out how to use an old digital mixing desk that has been lying around here for several years.

That was something that I’m glad we did, because we managed to make it work reasonably well, although the audio output is very low, even when the gain is set to maximum. One thing that we did find out though is that one of my microphones doesn’t work. No wonder that I’ve been having recording issues with it on one of the other machines that I have. All that it must have been picking up must have come from the external microphone.

While the Hound of the Baskervilles went for a walk, I sorted out my LeClerc order and sent it off ready for delivery later this afternoon.

We’re low on bread again so this afternoon I prepared some dough for a loaf and also for four bread rolls. We’re planning to have two tonight with burgers that I have ordered, and the other two will be for the broccoli stalk soup that I’m going to make on Sunday afternoon, seeing as I’ve ordered a broccoli head this afternoon.

When the order showed up I had one kilo of carrots and a broccoli head to wash, dice and blanch ready for freezing and that took longer than I would have liked. And while it was all preparing itself, I put away some of the things.

Not all of them, because I was feeling the strain this afternoon. I could only work in ten-minute spells and then I had to go to sit down for half an hour to recover. I was really feeling the strain and frustration this afternoon.

Tea was one of these nice burgers in a bread roll with baked potato and a vegan salad, followed by strawberries and cream (yes, we had a Leclerc order this afternoon). And it really was delicious too.

Tomorrow for tea we have aubergines so I might make an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit with pasta, followed by yet more strawberries.

However, that’s tomorrow. Tonight, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about brain surgery and the like … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of the time after one of my car accidents when I was sent to the hospital for a brain scan.
At first, I was rather worried but half an hour later the doctor did his best to reassure me.
"Don’t worry" he replied. "We’ve examined the x-rays and we’ve found nothing."

Friday 28th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke.

And that’s not surprising either seeing as I didn’t go back to bed until 04:15 and I was awake again at 06:50 (you will note that I said “awoke” – I didn’t say that I left the bed).

Last night’s fiasco was enough to put the shakes on just about everything. After my rather dramatic exit from the dialysis centre, coming home and going straight to bed where I was probably asleep before I hit the horizontal position, there I stayed in a state of what I can only imagine was unconsciousness until after midnight.

When I awoke, I was fully-clothed still, with a thirst that you could photograph. Luckily I still have some of that banana-flavoured soya drink that I like that I bought in Belgium (is it really eighteen months ago since my last trip to Belgium?), so I helped myself to a litre of it, wrote my notes and backed up all the files.

After I’d finished what I had to do I still wasn’t tired so I found a few things to do to keep me occupied and then eventually crawled into bed, fully clothed again.

It was difficult to go back to sleep, so I don’t suppose that I slept all that much, and when I looked at the time and saw that it was 06:50 I gave up all hope.

The alarm clock made up my mind for me so I crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom to sort myself out. Then into the kitchen to take my medication and to do yesterday’s washing-up which I had forgotten. I hate going into the kitchen in the morning and finding the washing-up still there.

With nothing on the dictaphone I found some things to do and then Isabelle the Nurse arrived. I told her about yesterday and she thinks that the machine was too powerful for my heart to cope and that caused the dramatic loss of blood pressure that triggered everything off.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still discussing these stone circles and avenues in the West Country. At Stanton Drew he makes the point that while there are circles and avenues that suggest that Arcturus was the target when they were constructed, at 1690BC and 1410BC, he finds that "With regard to this N.E. circle … " – the third one in this series of circles – its strange alignment "… would suggest that the N.E. circle was really erected to provide the alignment, from the centre of the great circle, or from the Cove, to the summer solstitial sun, about the year 870 B.C.,".

Furthermore, "There is other evidence, to which I attach importance, as it deals with a method and policy found in many temple fields in Egypt, that of blocking the alignment of an older star- or sun-cult, which the astronomer priests replaced by their own. The stones of the avenue, of the solstitial N.E. circle I expect once blocked the May sunrise line from the great circle ; judging from the Ordnance map, and remembering the number of stones that have disappeared,"

According to my “wave of invasions” cheat-sheet, a huge wave of Celtic invaders began to arrive in England round about 800BC. They brought with them the Iron-Age “Halstatt” culture and their superior tools and weapons would have overwhelmed the previous settlers. If those previous settlers were pushed west, they would push before them the people who had previously occupied those lands, so maybe they replaced the previous culture of the worship of Arcturus with their own culture of worship of the sun.

What is also interesting is the reference he made to the situation in Egypt where the worshippers of one star arrived and overwhelmed a previous culture. Archaeological evidence lends a great deal of support to this idea, so I’m now interested in plotting, as I said yesterday, a timeline of the worship of Arcturus and seeing if I can follow it through Europe and maybe arrive in England at the same time that the worship of Arcturus seemed to have begun there.

But this is all sounding like my University studies. I’d start by researching something and be so engrossed in what I’ve found that bore no relation to what I’d be studying that I’d go miles off course on a tangent into some other realm that had nothing whatever to do with the subject. I enjoyed what I was doing, enjoyed it very much, but the lecturers didn’t.

His next chapter is actually on “folklore”, but not the folklore what we know. He’s more interested in finding relics of customs that relate to the old forms of worship and how they became tied into Christianity, rather than using them as I would and as LAURENCE GOMME was doing – plotting the migration of groups of people by the relics of the customs that remain in modern society.

After the book, I came back in here and prepared my LeClerc order. And I was really struggling to complete it too. Despite the fact that I haven’t sent in an order for three weeks, I’m not eating as much (or as often) as I did and I was really struggling today to reach the €50:00 minimum order

Times are really bizarre around here. I look at my “usual products” and my “reminder list” and think “I have some of that” or “I don’t need that” or “I don’t feel like eating any of that”. I don’t think that I can ever recall a period such as this that has lasted for so long. I look in the kitchen and the shelf unit is full of stuff.

Once I’d sorted that out, I spent the rest of the day (or much of it) on my Woodstock programme. I now have every song that I need, and they are all re-edited and remixed. Some of the tracks took some hunting down, others had to be extracted from the soundtracks of concerts that I have.

Every song (except one) was actually played at Woodstock by the band or musician concerned, although I can’t use any sound that came from the loudspeakers at Woodstock. I’ve had to use versions from other places.

My cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff as usual, and while she was here the LeClerc delivery turned up. I usually order it for “after 16:00” but he often rings me up to ask if he can come earlier if I’m the only client in the afternoon. I’d rather have it after my cleaner has left but I’m not going to stop him having an early finish on a Friday if he can.

After my cleaner left I had 2kg of carrots to wash, dice and blanch ready to freeze and then back in here Rosemary, back from her break in Italy, rang me up for a chat. I’m convinced that she has a camera hidden in here somewhere to find out when I’m free.

Tea tonight was a rushed salad and chips with some of these vegan nuggets and it was delicious. The chips were cooked to perfection in my air fryer.

Tea was rushed because we had football, Drenewydd v Y Barri. Y Barri needed the win to keep alive their push for the European playoffs and Y Drenewydd needed a win to keep alive their hopes of avoiding relegation.

Y Barri came out of the traps so much quicker and played some nice football and were looking comfortable at 2-0 up. But Y Drenewydd came alive in the last ten minutes and when they scored with three minutes to go, they threw everything that they had into the attack.

Y Barri won the ball and roared upfield with a one-on-one on the Y Drenewydd goalkeeper – only for the Y Barri forward to miss the easiest goal that he could have scored in his life. That spurred Y Drenewydd on and we witness some desperate defending in the final minute and Y Drenewydd couldn’t find the goal that they needed.

Why they hadn’t played like that with the same desperation throughout the game I really don’t know, but now, while they are not mathematically sure of being relegated, they are going to have to find something special from somewhere.

At half-time I did the washing up and then I grabbed a slice of my new orange, ginger and coconut cake to eat for the second half. And it really is as delicious as I thought that it might be. I’m proud of that.

So now that I’ve finished my notes and backed up the computer, I’m off to bed ready for an exciting (I don’t think) day at the dialysis centre.

But seeing as we have been talking about shopping … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m glad that I don’t go shopping any more. It saves unpleasant surprises.

Once I was in a supermarket in Belgium and a woman came up to me and asked me "aren’t you the father of one of my kids?"
That stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to rack my brains and think hard. There was the girl in Morlaix and the other one at that strange house when I was hitch-hiking around Brittany but that was in France in the mid-seventies.
For a whole minute I had to rack my brains about trips that I’d made into Europe subsequently. In the end I gave up.
"I can’t really recall anything" I said, shaking your head.
"Oh, I’m sorry" she replied. "I’m sure that I’ve seen you bringing Roxanne to school. She’s in my class this year"

Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

… like pretty hard work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 20th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was already sitting at my desk working.

Round about 05:20 I awoke all of a sudden, bolt-upright for no reason that I could fathom.

Despite trying my best to go back to sleep, by the time that 06:00 came round, I’d given it up as a bad job and rose up from the Dead. No sense wasting the early morning when I have plenty to do

It’s amazing really. It doesn’t matter how much I think that I have done on the previous day, it all starts again the following morning. It’s absolutely relentless.

Last night I was late going to bed too. It was almost midnight when I slithered into my stinking pit and I was soon asleep. And there I stayed until 05:20, as I said just now.

By 06:00 I was in the bathroom having a good wash and scrub up and then into the kitchen for the medication, remembering to take the medication today that I’m not allowed to take on Dialysis Day.

And then, for a change, I made myself a mug of instant coffee to help bring me round into the Land of the Living.

First thing that I did was to check the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night. I was with the Hobbits last night. We were baking a cake. Some time later I actually saw the cake appear. It was in my outstretched arm hovering above the bed. I went to reach it, but I couldn’t reach it at all. Every time that I closed my eyes it was still there but when I opened them it had gone again. It was like this for several minutes with me trying to touch it with the cake disappearing at that moment.

Now that was what I call a nightmare, being unable to grab hold of a cake hovering just out of my reach. And I can’t say if I saw it as a nightmare at the time because I have no recollection at all of any of this dream.

And then I was working on the radio last night but the radio was dying out. There was only really me sending stuff in. I was working on the programmes for August. I realised that I had changed my style considerably, that I was really only discussing the music rather than giving some kind of entry and exit to the radio. I’d lost a lot of the spontaneity that it had right at the very beginning. I was wondering what I was going to do about it.

One of the things about which I think quite frequently is how to change the format of my radio but I don’t have the time to think of another way of doing them

There was something else along here in the same dream where I ended up in Middle Earth with a party of dwarves being chased by a group of orcs, something rather like THE HOBBIT which is what I’m currently watching as I eat my evening meal, but that part of the dream is all very confused and didn’t really relate to anything.

It looks as if I have a fixation with Hobbits right now. They say that watching Peter Jackson’s films is hobbit-forming and who am I to disagree?

Later on, I was in bed when I was dreaming but I can’t remember where it figured in or sat in with anything

Now that’s more like one of my dreams. I can’t remember anything at all about it.

But I think that I now know what awoke me this morning. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that every few weeks I complain about a stabbing pain in my right heel, one of the worst pains that I have ever experienced. Every few minutes for about 12 hours there’s the sensation that someone is stabbing a needle into my heel

A couple of weeks ago it had moved into the sole of my foot but today, it’s started up again this morning, this time right behind the little toe and it really does hurt. Every ten minutes as regular as clockwork and I wonder if it was that which had awoken me.

And then I had a foot-fest. ¨Porthmadog FC who play the 3rd Division had put on line the videos of their recent matches in their League Cup so I sat and watched them.

First up was Porthmadog cruising home comfortably 3-0 away from home against Pwllheli. They they took on Llanidloes FC and won even more comfortably, 5-2 at home

Next up was their match against Y Rhyl and there they came unstuck. They managed a 1-1 draw but were knocked out in a penalty shoot-out 6-5.

Casting around, I managed to watch the next round too as Y Phyl took on Mynydd Y Fflint. That was a bad-tempered match, as it usually is when Y Rhyl are playing but for a third-division match there were bags of quality on view.

Y Rhyl won 2-0 but the big talking point is how come both clubs ended up still with eleven players each on the field after all of what went on

Isabelle looked at my foot when she was here, late as usual. She could see nothing but when she touched a certain spot I went through the roof. That hurt, and no mistake, so there’s definitely something going on.

Breakfast was next, and then I carried on with my book, which I finished this morning.

The conclusion is that the site was heavily occupied by a cattle-rearing concern also practising subsistence farming, wheat farming and operating a bakery too. But then the buildings abandoned when the farm was either absorbed into a larger unit of else ceased production completely..

A couple of generations later, it was occupied again for about 50-75 years, but on a much smaller scale and with lesser input from the occupiers.

The presence of some Germanic pottery shards suggests itself to the author of the report that there might have been some itinerant Germans passing through the site, but to me, I was wondering if it might have been settled by some German soldier in service to the Roman Army who had settled here after his military service had ended.

Back in here, next job was to deal with my LeClerc order and send it off. It’s the most expensive order that I’ve ever sent, but it includes quite a few Christmassy things, both for me and for others. As well as that, coffee was on special offer so even though I have a pile, I ordered some more.

For a change, LeClerc had everything that I’d noted down, so it’s my own fault that I forgot the clementines, not theirs

For much of the day I’ve been writing notes for my radio programme. I’m well into September next year so this talk in my dreams of radio programmes for August is already too late. Anyway, by the time that I’d knocked off for the day, everything had been written ready for dictation tomorrow night.

That was impressive because there were plenty of interruptions. For a start, my cleaner came in and now I have light-strings hung in the two windows, in the living room and dining area.

There was also lunch and my hot chocolate break, but finally LeClerc arrived.

In all the time that I’ve been having stuff delivered, I’ve never ever seen as much as this. There’s no room to put away some of it either so it’s going to have to loiter around for a while. But now I have my chicory, my leeks, my shallots and everything that I need. I might not be ready for Christmas, but I’ll have some phenomenal meals.

Mince pies too, which I’ll make on Sunday, because he brought the puff pastry sheets. And two kilos of carrots and a broccoli, so I’ve been dicing, blanching and freezing this afternoon too. And so on Sunday, there will be broccoli stalk soup for lunch, made with carrot-blanching water.

Tea tonight was a lovely vegan salad with air-fried chips and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Totally delicious, but I’m looking forward now to my Christmas meal

But the final word tonight goes to my faithful cleaner who went down to the chemist’s for the next month’s medication.
As she was going in, a man was coming out in tears so she asked him what was the matter.
"It’s the doctor" he said. "He told me that I have to take one pill per day for the rest of my life"
"No need to be upset" said my cleaner. "You should come back in with me and see all of the medication that Mr Hall has to take for the rest of his life too, and he’s not complaining or crying."
"Well, he would if he had my doctor" said the man
"Why’s that" asked me cleaner
"Well, " said the man, "the chemist has looked at the prescription and only given me four!"

29th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy this afternoon, and you’ve no idea how.

There has been a delivery from LeClerc and so I’ve been hard at work being quite domestic.

There was a good preparation for it too, because I was actually in bed before 23:00 last night. Not by much, I have to admit, but even a minute is worth noting as it so rarely happens these days.

Once more, once I had fallen asleep I had the Sleep of the Dead and didn’t stir until 07:00.

When the alarm went off it took me a few minutes to gather my senses, which is a big surprise seeing how few there seem to be these days. But once the World had stopped spinning and I’d alighted, I staggered off into the bathroom.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night; if anywhere, because I didn’t remember a thing. However There was a story at some point during the night that a farmer’s daughter – not The Farmer’s Daughter whom we all know and love – had an encounter with a group of extra-terrestrial beings, an unpleasant encounter at that.

Later on there was a story about some man in Crewe who had to go to school as quite a schoolgirl. He had to enquire of his family where the school was. It turned out that it was right down at the far end of Earle Street. he spent a lot of time making himself ready but when it was time to go he looked nothing like a schoolgirl at all. He was like a man. He could see immediately that this was not going to work and so wondered how he could leave off going. He checked with the woman who was going to be his mother in this thing. She replied that she would continue to be here until 12:00 before going to work, so he couldn’t actually extricate himself from it in the morning. In the end he set off with his sister for the purposes of this story but he was really I suppose the daughter of the people with whom he was staying. As they set off they saw one or two other men with beards dressed in school uniform. The girl made some kind of comment that the guy couldn’t appreciate anything of this because he was realising more and more that this wasn’t going to work and how he wished that he could abandon it. Later on there was something about several men having their beards shaved off for reasons that I can’t remember because that part of the dream has unfortunately evaporated but there are definitely men in this who were having their beards shaved off.

It’s a shame that that dream evaporated because it would have been interesting to see where it would have led. It did actually have a connection in real life, if it could be called that, with a group of people who go around dressed up as all kinds of things, furry animals, cartoon characters and the like and go swarming at a certain place at a certain time. Hannah and I ran into them once in Brussels early one morning while they were off to swarm somewhere round by the Heysel Stadium.

The nurse came early today which was nice. He didn’t stay long either which was even nicer. Neither did he have much to say, although he encouraged me to continue with dialysis at any price.

Once he’d left I made breakfast and then carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s still going on … "and on, and on etc." – ed … about taverns, not just about the accommodation but now he’s added the quality of food available (or not, as the case may be) to his list of complaints. "Salted pork, boiled with turnip tops by way of greens, or fried bacon, or fried falted fifh, with warm fallad, drefTed with vinegar and the melted fat which remains in the fryingpan after dreffing the bacon, is the only food to be got at moft of the taverns in this country"

However, as he’s now on his way to Canada, and having encountered all of the difficulties, both natural and man-made, that it would be possible to encounter, he’s fetched up in Albany, the State capital of New York State, where he’s trying to hire a carriage. However, the two carriage hire companies are in collusion and holding him to ransom.

But it’s Independence Day in the USA and while this day "would, it might be expected have called forth more brilliant and more general rejoicings; but the downright phlegmatic people in this neighbourhood, intent upon making money, and enjoying the folid advantages of the revolution, are but little difpofed to wafte their time in what they confider idle demonftrations of joy"

However he saves his most poisonous vitriol for when he’s “entertained” by a prosperous farmer in the Lake Champlain valley and is shown around what he took to be a lush local farmhouse.

How he was disappointed by what he saw. Disappointed and more besides. "That people can live in fuch a manner, who have the necefTaries and conveniencies cf life within their reach, as much as any others in the world, is really moft aftonifhing ! It is, however, to be accounted for, by that defire of making money, which is the predominant feature in the character of the Americans in general, and leads the petty farmer in particular to fuiTer numberlefs inconveniencies, when he can gain by fo doing ……. Money is his idol, and to procure it he gladly foregoes every felf-gratification."

He’s now only a couple of days away from the border with Québec and I’ll be interested to see what comparison he makes between the USA and Québec. I’ve driven around here a few times and the border seemed to be fairly seamless to me.

Back in here I had my order for LeClerc to finish off and set in motion to be delivered this afternoon, and then there was paperwork to tidy up and bills to pay. But at least I could pay them via the internet so I suppose it isn’t as difficult as it otherwise might be.

While I was at it, I tried to contact the hospital in Paris but each time that I tried, I had the answerphone in response and in the end I forgot to carry on.

There was however an incoming ‘phone call. It was the chiropodist. He’s had an unexpected vacancy this afternoon so could he come by here? Well, the sooner it’s done, the sooner it’s over, isn’t it?.

After (a late) lunch I tidied up the kitchen, which was just as well because the LeClerc delivery came early. So now I have tons of food, including a butternut squash that will make a nice change roasted and mashed as a vegetable with some potatoes.

There were carrots of course, but also broccoli and a cauliflower so there was quite a load of washing, dicing, blanching and freezing. It’s a good job that I’ve made plenty of space in my freezer with this defrosting exercise

In fact, there was quite a lot of stuff, either frozen or to be frozen, on my list that needed putting in the freezer so that kept me busy too.

The chiropodist came round and saw to my feet. He thinks that my feet need much more attention than they have had in the past, which was no attention at all. He’ll be back again in a few months time to check on them.

There was bread to make too, seeing as I’ve now run out. I managed to do all of that in between everything else that I had to do.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with some of those vegan nuggets and air-fried chips, followed by chocolate cake and lemon soya dessert. I’m running low on chocolate cake so on Sunday I’ll make a ginger cake now that I have some fresh ginger. Now that I also have plenty of coconut oil, it should be exciting if I use some of that too.

Isaac Weld, our author, passed through New York on his way north up the Hudson Valley, and looking at some of the buildings, it reminded him of a conversation that he’d had in Dublin with an American who had come “home” for a visit.
Weld was showing him around the city and he pointed out on particular building as being the pride of the city because of its architecture.
"But it’s so tiny!" exclaimed the American. "Back home every city has many buildings ten times bigger than that§"
"I’m not surprised" said Weld. "After all, it is the lunatic asylum."

Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good day today, and accomplished everything that I set out to do, with time to spare.

Tomorrow I am going to have a morning doing some correspondence. Several people are awaiting e-mails from me so I am going to do my best to try to answer them. Post is building back up again.

What probably contributed to at least some of the good day today was that last night I made it to bed before 23:00. It was really nice to be able to do that for once. I don’t do it often enough in my opinion, but then again that could be said about a lot of things.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly – but not for long. It was freezing last night and I seem to have gone in one swell foop from sweating profusely during the night to shivering like a jelly as a lorry is going past

In the end I gave up the struggle and put on my dressing gown. Not an ideal thing in which to be sleeping but it was the nearest thing to hand. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a cold winter.

It was quite a restless night too, which seems to be normal after a session at the Dialysis Clinic. I was wide-awake at 02:30, 04:00 and 06:00 and although I made an attempt each time to go back to sleep, at the latter time I failed miserably.

Consequently, when the alarm went off I was already in the kitchen making the bread. Another early start.

While the dough was festering away I went to have a wash, and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I’d been for a dialysis and that included having a bath (and wouldn’t that be nice?). When I left the Centre I’d left my earphones behind – a beautiful little pair that I’d received free when I’d telecharged or ordered something off the internet and downloaded it a while back. I thought that I’d never ever see those again because they were so nice and I’d never ever have another pair quite like them. I was completely devastated by the loss of my earphones

–telecharged? Downloaded, you mean. We’re dreaming in French again are we? And I did once leave my headphones behind at the Dialysis Centre not so long ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And it will be the end if I do leave those behind and lose them because they are quite lightweight and fold up making them quite portable. I have another pair here and there’s a third pair somewhere and I wish that I could find them.

Next was a party of Arctic explorers stranded out on the ice trying to return home, having all kinds of difficulties. One of the young officers was in charge of manoeuvring the huge sledge that they had, loaded with all of their possessions. It happened to catch on something, tilt over and go in through the ice, and was lost. The dream went on to say that he did the only thing that he could. He saluted, clicked his heels, turned and walked out into the night. He was never seen again, leaving the other three members to make their way home as best as they could with what they had left, which was almost nothing.

The British had a frightfully stiff upper lip when it came to Polar exploration. While other countries sent their teams out with sleds hauled by dogs, the British insisted on man-hauling them. And consequently while casualties amongst the foreign explorers were generally caused by events such as ship-sinkings and to being iced in, the British pulled their sled by hand all the way to their doom. They were driven by the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, whose guiding principle was "the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well". Consequently it was the foreigners who conquered and the British who fought well, but died by the dozen. As the Canadian historian Pierre Berton put it, the British "failed to conquer because instead of adapting to the environment, they tried to bring their environment with them". The later explorers who discovered the camps of the party of Sir John Franklin, 134 strong that was wiped out to the last man, found dinner plates, silver service, dress suits, bottles of claret and all the luxuries that a British officer and gentleman would require at the dining table of his stately home while my American namesake, searching for traces of Franklin, was living in an igloo amongst the Inuit eating blubber off his sleeping bag with his bare hands.

Later on we were back living in Shavington. I was running my taxi business from there. I had a girl who worked the radio for me part-time at weekends. She was a young, rather unkempt girl. I took one of the cars off for a little spin round and came back. All the cats were loitering around the house so I stopped the car right by the front gate and climbed out. This girl came out of the house to see me. She told me that I ought to give her congratulations. I asked why and she replied that she’d won nearly £50,000 on the football pools. Of course I was really pleased for her. She replied that at last she could maybe have a flat. I asked where she was living at the moment. Was it in a hostel? She replied “no”. She was living in someone’s garage, which I thought was horrible. To make it worse, she’d lost her job during the day so she was loitering around and the owner of the garage didn’t like that. She was talking about buying a little snack bar too. I was really so pleased for her and so impressed. I asked her how many proposals of marriage she’d received already. She replied “none as yet but not many people know”. We had a little chat about the future, maybe she might start to run a snack bar or something. I told her that if she needed any help she could always ask me. But I was really genuinely impressed and genuinely pleased for her.

This was another one of these nice comfortable dreams that I have occasionally. But running my taxis from Shavington – not that that would be likely to work. I was glad really to leave Shavington. If Crewe is extremely parochial and small-minded, Shavington is ten times worse. But then, most small villages are.

Finally, Nerina and I had flown to Montreal and rented a car. We’d gone for a big drive round. We found ourselves down in the south-west corner of the USA in California. We were quite happy driving around through all these desert tracks and I happened to notice from the GPS that according to the GPS we were now in Mexico. I thought that we’d better make it back to the USA before we find ourselves in trouble here. We headed back to the border and this time we picked up the motorway that brought us back to an immigration centre. By now it was very late at night. Eventually it was our turn to be investigated. He gave my passport a cursory once-over and handed it back. But Nerina’s he examined much more closely and began to speak to her in Italian. She was rather put out by this, being caught unawares, but I replied in Italian, so the border guard and I had a little chat. We talked about beautiful women. Eventually he have Nerina back her passport and waved us through. But he was studying our entry stamps quite carefully. Of course we had Canada, and Canada to the USA but there was nothing about us going into Mexico because we’d driven through the desert. When we were back in the car I said “when we’re back home I’m going to work out that route that we took and sell it on eBay. I bet that I’d make a fortune”. Nerina replied “ohh no. I’m going to tell the American authorities so that they can block it”. We came into a small town and Nerina climbed out of the car and went to look at an American car. She hung her lantern on the bonnet and walked away. She pointed to another American car that was bashed and battered. She then tried a house door, and it was open so she went in. She settled down on the sofa and said “I’m not moving from here until I’ve had a sleep”. I replied “Nerina, you can’t sleep there! This is the USA! They’ll shoot you if they see you!”. “Well, I’m not moving”. I pleaded with her to move. I told her that I’d find a hotel somewhere. She said that she’d looked on the internet and there wasn’t a hotel with a room in the neighbourhood. I pleaded with her for anything that she’d move because she really would be shot if some American were to find her asleep in his living room but it was all to no avail

It recalled MY TRIP THROUGH THE DESERT IN 2002. What a trip that was! Driving past all of the sites that I’d seen in so many Westerns in the past. But there would be no question of leaving Nerina behind to face her doom at the hands of a paranoid American armed to the teeth. Believe it or not, I happen to like Nerina. Anyone who will put up with me for nine years has to be worth liking. What went wrong in our relationship was that I was in a bad place at a bad time fighting too many demons, and I fought quite a few more than I ought to have done. And of course, both of us were too tired and too stressed to learn to talk to each other. There were plenty of thoughts that we should have exchanged.

Isabelle came – and went. She was in quite a rush and didn’t stop around to talk. She’s promised though to film the events tomorrow morning in the town centre when they try to set up the market amongst the major roadworks in the centre.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. We’re still at the annual dinner, the talk on trees has ended and we’re now talking about sheep, geology and fossils. And, apparently "Mr. Houghton had been kind enough to bring with him some photographs of a very curious and interesting character"

Photographs of a very curious and interesting character? Wouldn’t I have liked to have been at that meeting?

Back in here I had to sort out a few things, deal with my order to LeClerc and then I attacked the radio notes. It didn’t take me long to finish off the notes for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went to lunch – a salad sandwich on nice, soft fresh bread.

But the bread was another failure. I made a careful study of it today. I put the loaf in the oven at exactly the same spot that I put it last week, and once again, one side of it didn’t rise.

That’s the side nearest the front, and so I think that the door is fitting badly and there’s a draught of air coming in around it. If the temperature sender is at the back, that will explain why the temperatures are so messed up, because with the current of air, the temperature at the front will be much lower.

It’s a shame because I have a perfectly good oven in the van downstairs but it’s beyond me to bring it up here.

This afternoon I reviewed the notes that I’d written a while back for a couple of radio programmes. They are rather complicated and involved so I’d left them to one side until I had a lot of time to go over them. So that was this afternoon’s task.

Some of the stuff I rewrote, some other stuff I corrected and I reckon that barring accidents I have them ready to dictate. I might actually do these tomorrow night and then they’ll be out of the way. But I imagine that they’ll take some editing.

My cleaner had stuck her head in the door this morning to pick up a few things to take into town, and while I was reviewing my notes she came in and did her stuff. Now the place looks as if someone lives here.

Just after I finished my hot chocolate and chocolate cake the food delivery came, so I spent a very pleasant late afternoon dealing with 2kg of carrots making them ready to be frozen, and putting away the rest of the stuff.

It was actually a struggle to make up the €50:00 minimum order today. It seems that I have a good supply of everything that I need.

LeClerc had no peppers thought. So stuffed peppers are off the menu for the next couple of weeks. But they had aubergines on special offer and I took advantage, so it looks like we’ll be in for plenty of aubergine and kidney bean whatsits for a while.

Tea tonight was a nice salad with chips and falafel followed by apple cake in caramel sauce. So what shall I do when the apple cake is all gone. I have a fancy to see how a rice pudding would do in the air fryer

So having spent a pleasant twenty minutes looking for and finding the missing headphones, I’m off to bed

But before I go, seeing as we’re on the subject of the desert … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ll tell you about the encounter I had with three men in the desert whose car had broken down and they were walking to try to find help.
One was carrying the radiator, the other a hub cap and the third one a door and so I asked them why
"I’m carrying the radiator" said the first "because if I become too hot, I can drink the water"
"I’m carrying a hub cap" said the second "because if I become too hot I can shelter in its shade"
"I’m carrying a door" said the third "because if I become too hot, I can wind the window down"

Friday 27th September 2024 – AND I ALMOST WROTE …

… Vendredi too. Obviously the stress is getting to me.

Today, my old microwave has gone the Way of the West.

When I moved here, I bought everything new, but (apart from the bed which was expensive) really cheaply so that I could have everything all at once, and then gradually replace it with something much better item by item as the cheap stuff gave out.

A few things, like the kettle, my office chair and so on have gone before it, but today it’s the turn of the microwave.

It’s not actually stopped working. For €49:95 seven years ago its mechanism is still boldly going forward, but the enamel has flaked off in places inside to leave bare metal and it’s become corroded.

Anything that might be living in there has long-since been radiated into nothing but it’s still not looking good. However I was rather hoping that it would soldier on until I am downstairs, I can erect the two cabinets from IKEA Munich that are still in the van and buy a fitted microwave.

Meanwhile back at the ran … errr … apartment, my neighbour who has left to go to live in a Home had her family in liquidating her apartment. None of them wanted her microwave because it’s another cheap €49.95 affair but it’s only a few months old.

So, as they say, the rest is history. I hope that it’ll keep me going until I can sort myself out downstairs, whenever that might be.

It would have been useful here last night if I could have fitted my bed into it, because once again I had another late night. The stress of the dialysis is getting to me too and I couldn’t haul myself out of my chair and cross the Great Divide of several inches over to my bed.

All of the tasks had been finished early and I could have gone to bed early too had I forced myself, but never mind. “Ahh well …” as they say.

But something happened last night that made me realise that maybe there is an improvement with this dialysis. And that’s going to cause me more than a few problems at the moment.

Once I was in bed, long after midnight, I slept all the way through until … errr … 05:00 when something awoke me in another mess of perspiration. But I didn’t stay awake for long and was soon back asleep.

It was a real struggle to haul myself out of bed when the alarm went off. Nevertheless I staggered into the kitchen to make some dough for the bread. It’s not the best mix that I’ve made but it would do.

After I’d scrubbed myself up I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was summoned for an interview at a Government office. When I arrived there and was in the waiting room some guy eventually came to a little cubby hole and called my name so I went forward and stood there. He began to look through the papers and I heard him say under his breath “oh God it’s one of these cases”. When he looked at me I said “I’m really sorry for being ‘one of these cases’ and wasting your time”. He made a smirk but didn’t really say anything and then began to ask me questions. But it was strange because he was actually reading through the notes, stopping and asking me a question about what he’d just read instead of having read the thing through thoroughly first and prepared a list of questions. It’s true that quite often you never ever reach the end of your list of questions because you’ve gone off down a side trail somewhere but even so you have to have some plan about where you’re supposed to be going and I could see that I was becoming just as exasperated as he was by all of this

It’s important during a contentious interview to establish a moral ascendency over your adversary. And it’s also a good idea to be thoroughly prepared, have your list of questions ready, have your responses ready to whatever questions they might ask and be ready to go off at a tangent and side-track the issue whenever there’s a possibility. Also, and most importantly, answer the question and nothing but the question, and do not volunteer any information that isn’t directly asked for. You’d be surprised at the number of people who actually talk themselves into trouble. And “yes”, I HAVE learned some bitter lessons in the past.

The nurse came along and talked away about nothing while she sorted me out, and then after she left I gave the bread its second kneading and them made breakfast. While I was eating it, I was reading MY BOOK.

Thomas Wright was still at Ozengell Grange for a while this morning. And I learned something that hasn’t made it into modern research.

Modern research has uncovered more graves that his excavations “missed” and his team has been roundly criticised for its shoddy work. But in fact, Thomas Wright made it clear that they only excavated where the railway wanted to dig its cutting, and they had to do it quickly as the railway company wanted to press on, so they did it when they could with who and what they had. They would come back and carry on “another time” as time permits but they clearly did not.

After that they moved on to Rutupiae to inspect the Roman fort. Regular reader of this rubbish in an earlier version will recall that we visited here in 2006 when we were on the trail of our forebears down in Kent. But when we saw it, it was quite different from how it was when Wright saw it in 1847.

He talks about the little foreshore and the remains of the Roman landing stage where the first Roman visitors to Britannica would have landed once the Romans had secured the area and built the defences. Today though, it’s all been obliterated by the railway that passes through the site

Some of the walls have been gone too, carted away by the local landowner of the time to use as hardcore or rubble.

It’s really sad when you think of what has been lost to history in only a handful of generations. When you think of it, two generations ahead of me and two generations behind me, and those five generations spans 130 years.

Back in here again I’ve been working on transparent *.gif files, overlays and trying really hard to remember *.srt encoding. It’s years since I’ve written an *.srt file and while I managed to finally work it out, I could only make it run in the trial version and couldn’t make it embed into the final video file.

It’s really sad just how much I’ve forgotten. I’m going to have to go back to Education and look for a free video-editing course offered by the Continuing Education Programme.

After lunch (cheese and tomato butties on nice fresh bread) my cleaner turned up with the microwave and we had a wave of laughs confronting all of the various problems and then solving them

One thing that I have done is to reorganise the shelving in the kitchen. The oven with its drop-down door was above the microwave whose door opened to the side and that was the wrong way round, so we emptied those shelves, cleaned them and rearranged it with the electrical appliances in the correct place.

So now I’m not going to drop boiling hot stuff on my head, but instead I’ll have a spice jar falling on me. I need to sort that out.

In the middle of all of the fun, LeClerc arrived. I sent off an order earlier in the day and it turned up in mid-rearrange. So having put the frozen food away and after my cleaner had gone and I’d had my hot chocolate and coconut cake, I had 2 kg of carrots to wash, peel, dice and blanch.

Once that lot was done, I could think about tea. Chips and vegan nuggets with a vegan salad, followed by the last slice of roly-poly that I found in the fridge

Now, its bed-time at long last and I need to psyche myself up for the next trip to the Dialysis Centre to which I am not looking forward at all

But thinking of Thomas Wright uncovering Saxon skeletons at Ozengell reminds me of another team that uncovered some skeletons from that kind of era and the professor in charge was talking to his pupils about some of them
"These two here buried in the same grave are obviously a couple judging by how their arms are entwined around each other" he sad "and if you look closely you’ll see that the one on the right is obviously a woman."
"How can you tell that?" asked a student.
"Examine the jawbones" he said. "The one on the right is quite worn down yet the one on the left is hardly worn at all."

Saturday 31st August 2024 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… typical Saturday when I seem to have rather regrettably spent most of the day asleep.

It beats me why it seems to be that Saturday I grind down to a complete halt without actually making any progress whatsoever with the mountain of work that I need to do.

Mind you, admittedly I was rather late last night going to bed. Never mind midnight – it was long after that when I finally hit the sack and crawled into bed.

Once more, I was asleep quite rapidly and there I stayed until the alarm sounded at 07:00. There might have been the odd bit of tossing and turning during the night but nothing to worry about.

So at 07:00 I staggered off into the bathroom and did what I had to do, including washing my shorts. That’s a regular Saturday task and even though they had been through the machine earlier in the week they still went in through the washbasin.

Next task was to deal with the washing-up from last night which I hadn’t touched. What with the football running so late last night I’d just finished off here and gone straight to bed and left it. I know that it’s my pet peeve but if there’s a choice between washing-up and bed, it’s no contest.

Third task was to put away the frozen carrots. They’d been all prepared and had been draining on the worktop overnight. If they go into the freezer too wet they all cling together in one big clump.

The freezer is jam-packed full and it was something of a struggle to have everything fitted in – even more of a struggle than it normally is. I really need to empty some of the stuff but I’m not sure how to do it as I’m sure that the stuff in there is breeding and multiplying behind my back

Finally I could make it back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a game at Hwlffordd. The team was playing against someone else. It was under enquiry by the Secret Service who believed that the players of one team were communicating with the enemy, presumably by the fashion in which they were playing. They had observers there watching the game very closely. Because the secret escaped that there was at least one observer there that changed a few people’s thoughts about the situation but we pressed on al the same. Although we didn’t find anything when we had criticisms to answer about it we could point to the fact that we waited until all of our enquiries were completed before making a report and if we hadn’t sent the observers to watch the game the report would have been frivolous, unclear and possibly incorrect.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we were at Hwlffordd for a match last night. But whether the Secret Service was represented there was another thing. There were probably a couple of managers of local teams though, surreptitiously sizing up the opposition for the future.

By the way, I mentioned that I’d try to find a video of Hwlffordd’s sublime third goal last night. To my surprise it’s not been edited by the broadcasting company from the video of the game so I’ve done it myself and you can WATCH IT IN ALL ITS GLORY.

Believe me, it’s well-worth it. You won’t see a finer goal like this anywhere else.

Later on I was at work and the Occupational Guidance came to see me. He was only a young guy. We had a chat about my health. He then asked me if I’d take a little walk, a few steps so that he could see how I managed. I told him that I was totally unable to walk under any circumstances without my crutches so he replied “well, I’ve just seen you walk around the office on your crutches so why don’t you walk a few paces for me so that I can observe you properly?”. I stood up, picked up my crutches and set off on a little walk around the office.

Strangely enough, when I was awake I couldn’t think of the name of the job of the person who comes to check how you are coping with everyday life after an illness or injury. Yet there I am in a dream and I can come out with words like “Occupational Guidance”. I ought to go to sleep more often. But it’s all very well these people coming round to check on me, but they ought to be proposing things to help me out. I’ve had the thing to help me ride the porcelain horse but that’s all.

The nurse came round as usual and went through the process of changing the plasters on my legs and sorting out the puttees. He was quite gossipy but didn’t really say very much and was soon off on his way. I would have thought that after all this time there would have been an improvement by now but that’s not happening and it fills me full of dismay.

After he left I made breakfast and had a very leisurely start to the weekend reading some more of my book on THE ICKNIELD WAY.

What’s interesting with these old books is to see what they have to say and surmise from the evidence that was available 100 or so years ago, and while you’re reading, read a more modern version, say, from Wikipedia, that tells us about these places but with the benefit of another 100 years of research and evolution of archaeological skills.

For example, an earthwork that was described in an ancient book as “probably a Danish camp and certainly not much older” was noted in Wikipedia (which is not always correct I hasten to add) as “archaeological investigations in 1992 revealed it to be an Ancient British camp dating from Before the Romans”

In the book I’m reading there’s talk of a “derelict but magnificent packhorse bridge” whereas the village entry in Wikipedia tells us of “an old bridge which was demolished some time in the 1970s”.

After breakfast I came in here and vegetated for a while. I seem to be taking ages to liven up and start work. Once I was up and running I prepared the video extract that I mentioned earlier so that seems to be working well enough

Then I went to wash the puttees that had been soaking in a bowl for several days. They should be nice and clean now and drying quite nicely in the bathroom.

This afternoon I went to make a start on the next radio programme but regrettably I crashed out and that, I’m afraid, was that for quite a while.

Once I awoke there was more football on the Internet.

Apart from leaving the washing-up overnight, another one of my pet peeves is this modern, totally suicidal habit of playing the ball out from the goal-kicks.

In my day we had big towering centre-forwards matched by big towering defenders. Wingers pumping high crosses into the penalty area led to some famous aerial duels with forwards like Jeff Astle, Joe Jordan and Brendan O’Callaghan battling it out with centre-halves like Ron Yeats, John Wile and Gordon McQueen.

Goalkeepers added to the mix with potent long kicks pumped upfield and it all added to the chaos, panic and confusion in the opposition’s penalty area.

But these days, it’s all of this possession football where the object is to hang on to the ball as long as possible. It’s all very well if you have the skill but if you don’t, it’s a disaster.

Y FFlint, second-bottom of the table, were rather fortuitously 2-0 up against another team down there in the basement, Y Barri, and then they concede two soft goals. So with the game drawing to a conclusion they win a goal kick so they decide to hang on to the ball so that the match would end in a draw.

Anyone care to guess what happened? You can find out HERE. What a shambles. If I were Y Fflint’s manager Lee Fowler I’d be furious.

seriously though, it’s going to be a long hard struggle for Y Fflint. Their only hope is that maybe either Aberystwyth or Y Barri are worse than they are. They can’t go throwing away points like this, especially against the other teams stuck in the basement with them.

Tea tonight was another one of my delicious breaded quorn fillets with a vegan salad and baked potato. A different brand of quorn fillet and not as good unfortunately but we have to try these new vegan products that LeClerc offer if we want to encourage them to keep expanding their range.

So that’s everything for tonight. I’ll go to bed and start again tomorrow I reckon

But that story about the Occupational Therapist reminds me of the story about the guy who hobbled into the Chemist’s and asked to be shown some talcum powder
"Walk this way" said the chemist.
"If I could walk that way" said the man "I wouldn’t be needing the talcum powder."

Friday 30th August 2024 – I’VE GIVEN UP …

… all thoughts f being in bed at a reasonable time. In fact it’s another late night tonight and by the time that I’ll have finished these notes it will be long after midnight by the time I hit the hay

In fact it’s been a pretty rotten day all round today but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have days like this every now and again and I just have to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.

As you might expect, seeing as I’m complaining about late nights, it was a late night again last night. Everyone was out celebrating after TNS’s triumph in qualifying for a Group Stage and while I wasn’t out and I wasn’t celebrating I was certainly revelling in the enthusiasm.

To be honest, in the six games to come, all against quality opposition TNS are going to be “turned over something shocking” by some teams and we might be back to the 1990s and on the wrong end of some embarrassing score-lines, but at least, as May Boyce would have said, TNS can say "I was there".

And so I was there too in solidarity until far too late when I finally crept off to bed.

And once more, it was totally painless. Asleep in seconds and there I remained, with just the odd fit of awakening here and there which I can’t really remember.

When the alarm went off I hauled myself up out of bed and staggered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and then, by way of change, into the kitchen to do the washing up.

Something that I really hate is waking up to a bowl of dirty dishes. That really is my pet peeve but it couldn’t be helped after last night.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had another phantom awakening last night by a woman who was waving some kind of death star about. She was saying “those with an arm corps follow the star”. When I asked her what was happening she said that the passengers’ alarms had been forbidden in the airport so she was doing her best to wake everyone up who was due to travel. I asked “what if you had to travel some distance like to Luxembourg?”. Her reply was that they’d still be awoken so I dunno but it was like a proper Welsh border – scream, I suppose, for no intent or purpose whatsoever.

And that’s another pile of confused, garbled, meaningless nonsense as far as I can tell

I had my old blue Cortina estate. There was some really, really thick fog, so much so that it was practically impossible to see so I parked it up in Crewe Town Centre and began to walk home. I realised that I’d left one or two things in the car so I had to run back up the hill towards it. When I arrived back at it I had the idea that maybe I’d take out one or two of the spark plugs to make it very difficult for anyone to try to want to steal it. I took out a couple of the plugs but the screws that held the plugs in, I lost them and had to hunt around. Eventually I found them so that was that. I put the tools back in the tool box but I’d screwed the toolbox to the door outside and padlocked it but it wouldn’t stay closed – it kept on falling over so in the end I thought that I might as well take it home with me and bring it back next morning. For some reason or other I threw it into the back of the blue Cortina estate and then got in the car and went to turn the key to start it but suddenly realised that I’d taken out half of the spark plugs so I couldn’t go home in this vehicle anyway until I’d put them back.

During this dream I had a vague impression in the back of my mind of a Zephyr 6 mark III coming towards me out of the gloom and I don’t know why. Good cars they were, but they rotted away like hell. But there’s only one thing worse than being stuck in the fog, and that’s being stuck in the fog in Crewe. I did once know a woman who was stuck in the fog in Liverpool and wanted to drive home to Manchester, found a lorry from a yard near where she lived driving through the city so she followed it. After a couple of hours the lorry stopped and the driver alighted. “Are we in Manchester now then?” he asked. “Manchester?” asked the driver incredulously. “I’m bringing a load to Preston”.

The nurse came along a little later and sorted out my legs and then gave me today’s injection. He was in quite a chatty mood but didn’t have anything important to say. He was soon gone and I could press on and make breakfast and read some more of my book on THE ICKNIELD WAY

After breakfast I had a look at my order for LeClerc. It’s been three weeks since I’ve done any shopping so supplies are running low. It’s necessary to stock up.

And to my surprise, not only do they have olive oil, it’s on special offer too and so I stocked up. At a certain moment the cheap olive oil was not available on home delivery and I ended up having to buy the expensive stuff. And so with what I ordered today I have a year’s supply.

Soya milk too. At a push I can but that from in town but they have vanilla in theirs and it tastes disgusting. The “Natural” soya milk from LeClerc is much nicer so I have a stock of that now too.

So drastically over-ordering, I sent off my order and arranged for it to be delivered this afternoon.

There was plenty to do this afternoon but instead I was side-tracked. The cleaner came to do her thing and we had quite a chat

And then the hospital in Paris telephoned to see how I was and if I needed anything. There’s talk that they’ll be calling me in for a stay there at some time soon, but I’ve heard all that before

Regrettably, after that, I fell asleep, to be awoken by some frantic ringing at the doorbell. My supplies had arrived.

So having put everything away, I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning, peeling, dicing and blanching 2 kilos of carrots ready for the freezer

Tea was a rushed salad and chips with vegan nuggets because we had yet more football – Hwlffordd v y Drenewydd.

With the collapse of Connah’s Quay Nomads, second place this year is up for grabs and while Y Bala must fancy their chances, Y Drenewydd would be optimistic too and Hwlffordd would be a good outside bet as dark horses.

But this game was all one-way traffic and the score of 3-0 to Hwlffordd was in no way flattering. The central midfield pairing of Greg Walters and Corey Shepherd controlled this game from start to finish and the back three of Lee Jenkins, Kyle McCarthy and Maltese international Luke Tabone looked as solid as a rock. New Zealand international keeper Zak Jones had nothing whatever to do.

But if you want to see a visual definition of the word “sublime”, I’ll try over the next few days to find a video of Hwlffordd’s third goal. It was the most beautiful goal I have ever seen.

So that’s it. The washing-up can wait again. I’m going to bed.

But on the subject of washing up there was the old advert which I’m sure many of my readers will remember, of the kid asking "mummy mummy, why are your hands so nice and soft?"
In the old days it was "because I use Fairy Liquid" but today it would be "because we have an automatic dishwasher, you berk."
However, I always knew it as "because daddy does all the washing up, dear."

Friday 26th July 2024 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

… 2 kilos of carrots washed, cleaned, peeled diced blanched and draining ready to go in the freezer.

It’s a good job that I made some room in there. But when 2ks of carrots are cheaper than 1kg it makes sense to buy the bulk offering.

The freezer will be full of carrots and I’ll have them coming out of my ears but I’m not going to turn down an offer like this.

It’s possible to buy frozen carrots of course but I find that they are pumped too full of water, go soggy and taste like damp cardboard when they are cooked. It’s much nicer to freeze my own.

They aren’t the only vegetables that I freeze. Brussels sprouts and broccoli are regular candidates. And I’d freeze a lot more if I had the capacity.

It’s not just the vegetables that are freezing. I’m freezing too. In fact, I’ve put on a jacket as I’m typing because it’s perishing. What the hell happened to summer?

It was cold last night, but not as cold as thins. Cold enough though for me to be in a hurry to go to bed and although it was after 23:00, it wasn’t after 23:00 by much

And once again I was soon asleep, and slept right the way through to all of … errr … 04:15. After that it was a night, or rather, a morning of tossing and turning until the alarm went off.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep because when the alarm went off I was doing something around Leicester – I’m not exactly sure what. I was in a bedroom with a load of bunk beds in it like in the military or something like that but I can’t remember now exactly what I was doing. Of course when the alarm went off I forgot absolutely everything except these little pictures and images that I’d managed to keep.

That was what I dictated anyway and it probably means something to someone, but not to me. The only time I ever made it to Leicester was with Shearings on a feeder.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and brush up, but cut myself shaving (or, rather, reopened the cut from the previous time). Consequently I was bleeding everywhere for most of the morning, making more of a mess.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out where else I’d been during the night. There was something to do with a football match. A player had to be brought onto the field after about 67 minutes. He needed taking to the stadium and the only person there was someone’s father who could do it. However he was a pretty bad driver so the footballer wasn’t interested in going with him at all. They had to use all kinds of persuasive powers to have him step into that car at the appropriate time as well as using all kinds of threats and violence against the other player in the defence to make sure that he did the job correctly without any obstructions or hindrance. But it was a nerve-wracking time to have these substitutes organised when they weren’t even in the stadium and the match was well under way.

That’s all pretty meaningless nonsense too. But it all underlines the fact that Zero never ever came back after that night a week or so ago and that TOTGA and Castor seem to have gone for ever. They haven’t been around for ages.

And that’s sad – my three favourite young ladies deserting me like this. It seems that everyone these days is voting with his feet.

So bleeding profusely from the upper lip and the nurse gave me the injection of Binocrit to thin my blood. That makes a lot of sense. And he had a good moan again this morning about the state of my puttees. They were washed only two or three days ago but he thinks that they should be washed every day.

But he’s had that. As if I have the time to be doing stuff like that. I have more than enough other things to do.

Like eat breakfast of course, which I did immediately after he left, with fresh toast cut from the loaf that I made yesterday. And my medication, including the Kardegic to thin my blood out even more, so as to keep up the bleeding from my upper lip.

After breakfast I had a play around with my shopping order, completing that and sending it off. They had the olive oil in again so I ordered another bottle. That’s three bottles that I have in stock now, but sometimes it’s hard to find and I have to buy the full-price stuff. There’s a ton of difference in price between a proprietary brand and LeClerc’s own..

All they were short of was mushrooms. No 250 gramme punnets but they had 500 grammes ones so I bought one of those and I’ll have a mushroom soup with the extra mushrooms tomorrow for lunch

While we’re on the subject of lunch … "well, one of us is" – ed … after I’d sent off my order I went for lunch, and had one of these chocolate bread things that I made yesterday.

The taste and texture is certainly different, but it’s not disagreeable.

So –
Boil up 400 ml of water
Keep it bubbling on a low heat and add 35 grammes of cocoa powder and mix well in.
When it’s mixed well in, take off the heat
add
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
25ml oil
150 grammes flour
mix it all up very well, put in a large bowl to cool.

While it’s cooling –
in an smaller bowl start with 80ml warm water
5 grammes yeast
20 grammes sugar
Dissolve it all together

when it’s dissolved properly, add it all to the larger bowl
add 200 grammes flour

Mix it all up together as if you were making bread.
Cover and leave for 40 minutes

then divide into 10 and make into balls
leave another 15 minutes
Then bake 180°C for 30 minutes
dust with icing sugar.

They you’ll have the strangest bread rolls you’re ever likely to have, but you won’t be disappointed.

This afternoon I’ve been radioing. Having put my Hawkfest out of the way and preparing for a live album concert, there’s a special programme that I want to do in between all of this.

At the start of the year next year it will be the birthday of someone who is not at first glance associated with rock music but has inspired a whole generation of kids, and many musicians took their inspiration from him.

There are a great many rock and folk tracks that contain either outright or otherwise more subtle tributes to him and his creations so this afternoon I’ve been tracking them down.

Not just the songs either but the details and the quotes from the musicians.

So I’m going to be working on this special radio programme next, fitting it around the preparation of the normal run of programmes. I have to keep cracking on regardless with those.

My cleaner was here this afternoon cleaning up and we had a really good chat. And then the LeClerc delivery guy came with my order so I had to knuckle down and do some work for a change. I’ve still not put everything away yet.

Tea was a vegan salad with chips from the air fryer with some of these vegan nugget things, now that I’ve bought some more.

And having written my notes, I’m now off to bed.

But talking of the radio, earlier in the year we had a snowstorm here so we made a public service announcement "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car on the even-numbered side of the street to clear the road for the snowplough" so everyone went and moved their car.
The next day we announced "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car on the odd-numbered side of the street to clear the road for the snowplough" so everyone went and moved their car.
On the third day we announced "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car ….. " and there was a power cut
"Drat" said one guy. "I don’t know where to leave the car today."
After thinking for a while his wife replied "I suppose we’d better leave it in the garage then"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: frozen carrots

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

Friday 6th February 2026 – I HAVE THROWN …

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 – I HAVEN’T HAD …

Tuesday 9th September 2025 – I AM IN …

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

Friday 13th June 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

Friday 28th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

Friday 20th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

29th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

Friday 27th September 2024 – AND I ALMOST WROTE …

Saturday 31st August 2024 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

Friday 30th August 2024 – I’VE GIVEN UP …

Friday 26th July 2024 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

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