Tag Archives: fruit bread

Sunday 9th August 2026 – THAT WAS WHAT …

… I would call “a good Sunday” – that is, once the early part of it was out of the way, because the early part of the day was nothing at all to write home about.

As I mentioned yesterday. I abandoned my work early and fell asleep at my desk, and for quite a long time too. And when I awoke, I dragged myself into bed, and that was that.

Well, that was that until about 01:25, when I awoke, thanks to another good coughing fit. And despite trying my hardest, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there watching the clock go round and round and coughing all the time while I was doing that too. But as the day slowly started to dawn, I must have fallen asleep again, for I was awoken at about 08:40 by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

She’d brought with her some cuttings of rosemary, thyme and lemon thyme, and while she was doing my legs and feet as I was lying in bed, we talked about the herbs.

After she left, it took me quite a while to leave the bed, and after I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, it was 09:20 when I found my way into the kitchen.

The first job was to prepare my breakfast – porridge, black coffee and the last two home-made croissants. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Or, rather, I wasn’t. As usual, I found myself running up a side alley to the church at Barnack to look at the tower and steeple, and that led me on and on to several other places too. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this was why I didn’t receive a very good grade from university – I was being continually side-tracked and spent more time learning the things that were important to me rather than the things that the examiner wanted to know.

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to finish off. That took longer than it ought to have done too because I was continually drifting off into that semi-consciousness when all kinds of hallucinations drifted before my eyes. However, they are online now … "the notes, not the hallucinations" – ed … for you to consult at your leisure.

Once the notes were out of the way, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I was with a former girlfriend last night, and there was something about going to hospital. And when she came back out, I built this big plastic greenhouse out of one of these kits that you buy from a DiY shop. It was absolutely impossible to anchor it to the ground with its plastic outer coating applied, so I tied two wires from front to back and two wires from side to side, and where they intersected, I dropped a row of paving slabs on it from the door to the inside, and the paving slabs held down the wire and stopped the greenhouse blowing away.

This story about my girlfriend in hospital and the plastic greenhouse and the unique method of holding it down reflects a remarkably similar situation that is currently or has recently occurred elsewhere in a different plane of existence than in a dream. However, this is yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There was something about an Indian, a young man who came round to me for some tuition in something or other, but in fact I ended up giving him some tutoring in English. There were things that he didn’t quite understand, such as “why is it ‘tutoring’ and not ‘tuting’?”. I did my best to explain and gave him a few other examples. He asked me whether it would be possible for him to come again. I thought “well, why not, if he’s keen and interested in learning?” so we agreed that this kind of tuition could continue for a couple more weeks and we’d see where we end up.

This sounds quite similar to one of the guys to whom I taught webpage design in Brussels twenty-odd years ago when all you have to worry about was HTML 5.0 and *.css. And these days, I’m still using them, with a little bit of IFRAME and JavaScript added on for good measure.

I was with a friend of mine, and we were walking around the edge of some city that I knew well. There were several big tower blocks there, so we went for a walk. One thing we found was a small cat trying to jump up to a window to climb into a house, so I went over to try to pick it up and help it, but at that moment, a woman opened the window, so I had a laugh and a joke with her and then moved on. In the shopping arcade underneath these big buildings, there were all kinds of shops that we were looking at, and we picked up one or two things from there. But round another corner was the Woolworth’s shop. I said to my friend “here’s something that I haven’t seen for years,” so he agreed, and we dug our way through the bombardment ruins and found our way into the supermarket. It was really nice and clean and small … fell asleep here … but my friend was talking at one time about us being in a hotel a while ago. It was one of these very posh places, and we’d been on a course of some kind. I’d been interviewed for something or other, so I was late returning to my table. The desserts had been cleared away, so I didn’t bother too much about that. In the end, they announced that they were wanting nominations for someone to be the hospital ambassador, I suppose, for the forthcoming year. But you can’t nominate yourself – you need six people to nominate you, so I decided to let nature take its course at that. I had a black Mk III estate, a 2000E, and I wanted to put that back on the road, so I wanted to do some work on it, but I ended up talking to two guys from the hotel. One of them wanted some documents signed, and the one who was with him, he ended up saying that my music was really great and that if anyone had any problems moving cars and leaving after the conference, they had a mechanic on site They would suspend paying the bill until the problem had been fixed. I mentioned all of this to my friend, and he told me that it was not really as simple as that. He’d had a problem with a motorbike, and what they had done was to push it off a trailer, left it for a while, started it up, told him that it was fixed and charged him €16:00. That made me go to think about if I were to advertise this car mechanics service, just explain that it was for basic things and nothing really major.

This housing estate could have been any one of a dozen housing estates around which I walked in Moscow and Leningrad when I was there with the coaches in the 1980s.

It could also be where I used to live in Brussels, where we did indeed have a little shopping centre on the ground floor of one of the blocks of flats nearby. However, there was no “Woolworths” in that shopping centre, neither in Moscow nor in Leningrad either.

The conference sounds like one of the Open University Students Association conferences, although we weren’t ever likely to be allowed to stay in an upmarket hotel. Not on your Nellie!

Once everything else was out of the way, there was football. I had the match from yesterday to watch, and when I went to restart it, I found that I’d only just about managed to watch half an hour of it, so I settled down for a long session.

There’s no doubt that Colwyn Bay played the prettier, more technical football, but there were plenty of nice touches from the Rhydaman players too. Rhydaman’s players were also the most aggressive, and although I’d left the match on Saturday with Colwyn Bay 2-0 up, by the time the game was over, it was 2-2 and some of the Colwyn Bay players were quite close to losing their cool.

Later on, there was a baking session. And something that I have learnt today is that my fruit bread doesn’t keep for much longer than a week. When I went to look at it today, at two weeks old, it looked as if it needed a shave, so it went the way of the west.

That meant as well as a loaf, I also had to bake more fruit bread. The two loaves that I ended up making look wonderful, both risen up like lifts. But what I’m going to have to do with the fruit bread is the same as with the ordinary loaf, and that is to cut it in half and stick one half in the freezer to pull out when the first half is eaten.

There’s no tea again tonight. I’m off to bed as soon as I’ve written these notes, backed up the computer, etc.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about herbs … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once lived in the same building as a girl who was studying for a degree in cookery.
One night she told me that her best friend had been expelled after failing her exams
"How come she failed?" I asked her.
"She had to cook a dish of fish cooked with herbs, but the examiner didn’t like it."
"Why not?"
"The examiner told her that this was neither the thyme nor the plaice for this kind of thing."

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Wednesday 5th August 2026 – IT HASN’T BEEN …

… as good a day today as it was yesterday, unfortunately. Mind you, it’s been a better day than many a day that I’ve had just recently, not that that’s particularly difficult, all things considered.

Last night wasn’t any better, though. It was once more after midnight when I finished letting it all hang out and went to bed, looking forward to a nice long sleep.

Or so I thought, but 02:20 wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. But there I was, wide awake. However, from then on, it was me drifting slowly in and out of sleep, not knowing which was sleeping and which was waking. But I was definitely asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29, because I couldn’t remember where I’d put my telephone so that I can switch it off … "it’s on the bedside table in the alcove behind the head of the bed" – ed …

Once I’d remembered where the alarm was, I switched it off, and then we had the usual struggle for me to rise to my feet and go to sort myself out in the bathroom. It’s becoming ridiculous these days, the time it takes me to stand up.

Back in here after a good wash, the first thing was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was back in Wales last night, and I’d signed up for the local football club to go training with them to keep fit. On the first night, I’d brought with me my cousin, who plays for Gresford Athletic in the Second Division. So we were doing this keep-fitting together. One day he happened to mention that he was now without a club, and would this team be likely to want to sign him? They gave him a couple of provisional matches, and I could see from what he was doing that he was probably several divisions above the kind of players who were playing for our club. I replied, therefore, that I’m sure that they would, but they kept on dragging their heels about it and I couldn’t understand why, and I didn’t think that it was particularly clear to this lad who was hoping to have this trial … fell asleep here … I’ve just dropped the dictaphone … so I had a bit of a complain to the people in charge, and they began to make a little more use of him in the football team, but the dream ended suddenly because round about 02:20, I had another one of these dreams, dreaming about the bedroom window being left open all night, and so, as I say, there was this sudden alarm going off that awoke me, except that the alarm didn’t.

The main theme to this dream does make some sense to me. A player who had played in the Premiership and Championship of the English pyramid but who had been sacked due to “issues unrelated to the football field” had been signed by a club in tier two of the Welsh pyramid. He was obviously in a class well above that at which he was playing, but it all ended pear-shaped when he left the field one day in a Black Maria. A player of the same name has just signed for a tier two side, and the club is refusing to tell me if it’s the same player.

The bedroom window was open all night, by the way, but the waking up with the alarm is also something that is happening everywhere these days, and I’m hoping that I’ll manage to avoid having a head-on collision at sea. But whatever made me add that in, I don’t know.

Falling asleep and dropping the dictaphone was a short route to a tragedy, and I wish that I knew how it ended. However, I’m glad that I slipped back into that dream later, even though I didn’t go very far.

Isabelle the Nurse came round as usual. As she was dealing with my feet and legs, she told me to take it easy today. Very little chance of that, I’m afraid. I have plenty to do.

Such as to make my breakfast, as I began to do as soon as she had left. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once again, as he expounds away at his favourite Gothic period, explaining in minute detail the difference between Early Gothic, Fantasy Gothic and all of that, he’s managing to avoid real controversy. However, I don’t imagine that it will be too long before some creeps in somewhere.

Back in here afterwards, there were a few things to clear up and then I began to work on the notes for the next radio programme – a concert. And that wasn’t as easy as it was supposed to be. I had plenty of information about the group – they are one of my favourites, and they have been around and about on my radio broadcasts since the beginning. However, the venue is pretty much unknown so we were even poring over old maps to find some information.

Eventually, though, I managed to write enough, and so that programme is ready for dictating.

While I was at it, I came across another concert that had taken place a few weeks later at the same venue. I discovered a sound track for it in the big box of cassettes that I have, and although there are a few holes in it, I reckon that I can patch it up enough.

It’ll need some re-editing and some remixing too before it’s fit to be broadcast, but I have about three years to deal with that before the date of its broadcast falls on a Friday.

We had the usual interruptions, such as the break for the disgusting break and the midday medication, and I also crashed out for an hour or so too, which is no surprise given the night that I had had.

When everything was finished, round about 16:30, I went into the kitchen. Included in the order from Leclerc the other day was a broccoli, but so far, I’d done nothing with it. So I took off the flowering heads and blanched them while I diced up the stalks into tiny cubes.

The flowering heads were drained and the water was kept, and then I chopped a potato, a shallot and an onion into tiny cubes. The onions and shallots went into the saucepan first, and I fried them with some olive oil. And then the potatoes, and then the broccoli stalk cubes.

When I was satisfied that it was all mixed together, I poured the broccoli floret water onto the veg mix, added some coriander and a stock cube, and left it to simmer. And while it was simmering, I made the dough for two bread rolls.

Eventually, the veg was ready, so with the whizzer, I whizzed it all up, tipping a pot of plain soya yoghurt into the mix as I did so.

It made just about 1 litre of soup, so I sterilised an 800 gram jar in the microwave and put half a pint in it. That’s now in the fridge for another time.

When it was teatime, I had the other half-litre of broccoli stalk soup with those tiny pasta elbows and my two bread rolls. And it was delicious too, especially when followed by two slices of my home-made fruit bread for pudding.

Now back in here, I’m trying to type out my notes, but I keep on falling asleep. And while some of the notes that I’m typing make perfect sense, they bear no resemblance at all to anything that actually happened, so what’s going on?

In the end, I gave it up as a bad job, and I’ll continue with it tomorrow morning when, hopefully, I’ll be feeling much better and much less tired.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about football … "well, one of us has" – ed … a Catholic, a Québecker and a Mormon were at a football match when suddenly, the Catholic announces "Do you know, with one more child I’d have my own football team!"
"That’s nothing!" retorted the Québecker. "With one more child I’d have my own rugby team"
"That’s nothing!" said the Mormon. "I have seventeen wives, and with one more wife, I’d have my own golf course."

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Wednesday 29th July 2026 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was already sitting at my desk. And I had been since 05:50.

It’s not very often that that happens, especially these days, seeing how tired I am, so it’s nice to see it once in a while

Anyway, last night I was in bed by about 23:00 and settled down for a good sleep. But not for long, though. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke because I couldn’t be bothered to look. But the car park light was still on so it must have been before 02:30.

So I lay there for quite a while, tossing and turning, slowly watching the day dawn through the gaps around the edges of the shutters. In the end, I decided that I was never ever going back to sleep so I left the bed. At that point, it was 05:35

Back in here afterwards, it was 05:50 when the computer fired up, and the first thing that I noticed was that there was nothing on the dictaphone. That was really sad, but if you don’t have much sleep, you don’t have much time to travel anywhere.

Never mind. There are always plenty of other things to be doing, and by the time that the alarm went off, I’d dictated the notes for another couple of radio programmes which I downloaded to my computer, ready to add to all of the others that need editing.

But one thing that I am noticing is that there seems to me to be a general lack of interest and co-operation in all of this – a far cry from when we started this radio station seven years ago.

I managed to sort myself out somehow, though, and then I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to turn up.

We had an interesting chat about not very much as she attended to my feet and legs. And then, after she had left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman

We’re still discussing Gothic architecture … "and I’ve a feeling that we still will be in several weeks’ time too" – ed … and he’s still running down the religions and architecture of the Muslims and a few other places besides, as if he doesn’t know of any better.

Later on, back in here, I had a few things to do, and then once they were out of the way, I spent the rest of the day tracing the music that I need for the next radio programme.

It will feature ten artists, this programme, and to my surprise, I didn’t have any music by any of them. Mind you, they are all rather obscure artists who rarely ever made it into the mainstream. Consequently, I had to spend all morning, and some of the afternoon besides, downloading all this music

And downloading it was the least of my problems. Once I’d installed it all on my hard drive, then I had to reformat it all so that it would play on the radio company’s equipment. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either. It wasn’t until teatime that it was all finished.

Mind you, we did have a few interruptions. There was a pause for a disgusting drink at midday, and then Rosemary telephoned me again for a chat. Just like yesterday, it was a short chat today – a mere fifty-five minutes, that’s all, the same amount of time as yesterday. We are definitely losing our touch these days.

So, when everything was finished as far as I could go, I went to make my tea.

When I was tidying out the freezer the other day, I came across a portion of frozen chick pea curry that looked as if it had been in there for a hundred years. Things can’t stay in there for too long so I decided to polish it off. I was hoping to be able to eat the last slice of vegan pie, but that will have to wait for another time

The curry, with rice and veg, was as delicious as I expected it to be. When I was making these curries, I was at the zenith of my cooking powers. These days, with ill health and all of that, I’m quite out of practice. But now that supplies are running down, I’ll have to go back somehow into my previous days at home on the (kitchen) range when I used to make meals in bulk and freeze them in individual proportions. It’s been months since I last did anything like that.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office in my bedroom, once I’d finished tea, washed up and had my two slices of delicious fruit bread, I came back in here to do a couple of things and then to write my notes. And it was wonderful, with the heat of the sun streaming straight through the open window onto my comfortable chair. Even with the fan going and the window open, I was roasting.

However, when I was about halfway through, the usual wave of fatigue washed over me and that was that. I posted what I had written to date and then cleared off to bed before I fell asleep again in the chair

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about radio stations … "well, one of us has" – ed … one day, someone phoned up the local radio station during a request show.
He said "I want to let you know that I’ve found a wallet for a guy named Peter Smith. In it, there are two thousand dollars in notes, two of his bank cards, two credit cards, his driving licence and his identity card"
"That’s very kind of you, sir" said the presenter. "We’ll put a call out to him."
"Oh, don’t do that, whatever you do!"
"Why not? What do you want me to do then?"
"All I want you to do is to play a sad song for Peter. Okay,"

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Monday 27th July 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a big wildfire this afternoon near La Havaudière, between Granville and Avranches. All of the traffic is being diverted and it’s absolute chaos down there right now.

However, for a change, it wasn’t absolute chaos in here. I ended up in bed round about 23:00 and settled down for a good sleep. At some point, though, I awoke. I’ve no idea what time, as I couldn’t be bothered to look. However, there were high winds outside and it sounded as if it might be raining. Not that I cared very much. I just crawled back under the quilt and went back to sleep.

The next time that I awoke, it was light in here so, intrigued, I had a look at the time. 06:15, so I switched off the alarm and slowly staggered to my feet. Yet another early start recorded.

When I eventually made my way into the bathroom, I had the usual good scrub-up, and I remembered to have a shave too, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

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

I was with someone in my house, a girl, and I can’t remember who she was, but she told me that she was having a visitor round later that afternoon. Anyway, before I had the chance to leave, a large Afro-Caribbean-type of man, who came in and simply started to chat. I had a chat with him for a few minutes before I left. Then, just as I was about to go, he said “there’s someone coming up the drive. I think that it’s someone called Lucy”. The girl said “oh yes, that will be the Simpsons.” The door opened and a couple with a little girl came in. It was the little girl’s birthday today so they came into the house and came into the living room. The couple sat down but the little girl went straight over to STRAWBERRY MOOSE and began to tell him about her birthday. Then, her mother gave her a present which said it was from Strawberry Moose. Then everyone, including this man, sat down and had a little game, and that man began to look at the girl’s hair and began to rearrange it a little.

What a strange dream this is. It bears no resemblence to anything that has happened to me in my waking hours. It’s a total mystery to me.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up today as usual and chatted away about nothing as she fixed my legs and feet. Then, after she had cleared off, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And he’s off on his high horse again. When talking about the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As, he tells us that "in the minor ornaments we cannot fail to remark the constant tendency to anticipate isolated Gothic features" What he means to say here is “Gothic architecture copied many features of Arabian architecture.”

When discussing the Palace of the Alhambra, he tells us that "No amount of mere enrichment can atone for the violation of the great law which requires every weight to have, in appearance as well as reality, an adequate sustaining mass. Nowhere is this rule less regarded than in the palace of the Moorish Kings of Granada. A slender column supports a capital of far too great projection, this again supports an overlapping stilt or fragment of entablature, and as if this were not enough to destroy all notions of mechanical support, the arch itself in many cases does not spring immediately even from this entablature, but from corbels overlapping again ; i t is thus cut off from all decorative connection with the column below, and appears suspended in the air without any sustaining power at all. Nor is the effect at all improved when, as is sometimes the case, this stilt or entablature is supported by coupled columns ; as their separation, by dividing the apparent support, even adds to the idea of insecurity."
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … a real architect, being faced with the inconsistencies that Freeman noted, would have immediately gone to investigate the style and found out just why the building hadn’t collapsed.

Freeman’s attitude took me so by surprise that I knocked over my juice glass and the grape juice within it in surprise.

There were also all of the scores from the Welsh football matches over the weekend. Remember the other day when I told you that 53-year-old legend Marc Lloyd Williams had signed for Llanberis? He scored one of their goals in the 8-0 rout of Amlwch Town in the Welsh Cup over the weekend.

Then I came back in here to carry on work. There were several things that needed doing, and then I attacked the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working.

In a mad fit of enthusiasm that I wish that I could recapture for use every day, I finished them all off and they are now ready for dictation, along with about a hundred others. I really must buckle down somehow and clear this massive backlog. But now that my cough is back … "and in spades, too" – ed … that’s not likely to happen for a while.

At midday, I went into the living room to sort out my disgusting drink and midday medication and to prepare myself for dialysis. My cleaner turned up a couple of minutes later to apply my anaesthetic and to make sure that I was ready to go.

To my great surprise, the taxi turned up for me at 12:40, twenty minutes early. I wish that it would do that every day. There was our usual “other passenger” to pick up at the Old People’s Home in Sartilly but even so, we still pulled up at the dialysis centre at 13:25.

Just like Saturday, I was put into a room with two other people, and there was just one nurse to deal with all of us. Even so, I didn’t have to wait very long and I was up and running by 13:55. How I wish that they could do that every time too. And there was a fair amount to take out today. The machine wasn’t working flat out, for a change, but it was near enough.

Apart from the odd low blood pressure warning which, as usual, brought the nurse running, no-one else came to bother me. If there was a doctor on duty, he or she kept his or her distance. There was the occasional glance of the doctor who thinks that he’s in charge and that he runs the show. He kept his distance too. That meant that I could crack on with work, which is always good news as far as I am concerned.

Even better news was that when I was ready to be unplugged after my session, the nurse was ready and waiting to unplug me. When she had finished with me, I weighed myself and found to my delight that the four-hour session on Saturday had done its trick and even though this was just the usual three-hour session, I was finally down to my recognised dry weigh.

At 17:20, I was ready to leave and as the driver was already waiting, with someone else to drop off in Granville, it was looking as if a 18:00 return was on the cards. However, things all went downhill from there.

At the roundabout on the Avranches side of the village of La Havaudière, the road to Granville was closed, with a couple of policemen directing the traffic down a couple of the small country lanes. In the distance, we could see fire engines and police cars.

The narrow roads were total chaos, with long lines of traffic coming both ways. We had to fight our way along as best as we could, and it wasn’t easy. A lorry coming in the opposite direction would block up the lanes for ages while the drivers of oncoming cars sorted themselves out.

To get back onto the Granville road at Le Croissant, where the road was open again, that was chaos too. A huge line of vehicles was blocked by others on the roundabout coming from Granville and going round and round and round while they were trying to make up their minds which way to go.

By the time that we’d rejoined the road, dropped off this guy and dropped me off, it was 18:20, and that was disappointing.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside the premises and once she had me settled in a chair and armed me with another disgusting drink, she went about her business and I made tea.

Tonight, I had a rice salad with plenty of vegan cheese. It should have been “plenty of vegan ham” but I hadn’t checked the packet for four weeks, and when I looked this evening, I could see that it needed a shave before anything else so it went into the bin.

There were slices of my new fruit bread for pudding, and it really was nice – definitely a success, this, with dates, raisins and cranberries.

Back in here, I checked to see what had been going on down the road, and it turned out that a forty-acre field by the roadside near La Havaudière had caught fire and was busy burning away. We’ve had a few of those now, and perhaps a really good dose of rain is called for before the whole country burns up.

Next task was to write my notes for the day but the effects of dialysis proved to be too much and I was overwhelmed by a great wave of fatigue. I posted what I had written so far and then went to bed. I’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the fire brigade … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the two girls from Crewe who had locked themselves out of their house while they were clubbing.
Luckily, they had left a bedroom window open so they borrowed a neighbour’s ladder to climb up.
As they were halfway up, one of the girls remarked "ohh, doesn’t it make you feel like a fireman!"
The other one replied "don’t be silly. Where are we going to find a fireman at this time of night?"

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Sunday 26th July 2026 – TODAY, I HAVE HAD …

… another one of the laziest days that I have ever had, and about time too. I should put my feet up and relax more often, I reckon.

But it wasn’t always going to be like that. I was in bed last night by about 23:15 or so and was asleep quite quickly too. That was despite the howling gale that sprung up during the night

However, I didn’t stay asleep for long. Round about 03:30, I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This is what I found on the dictaphone later.

Someone shouted out Mae’r papurau’n anghywir – “the papers are incorrect” – and something about me being enwog, which means “famous”. I sat bolt upright at that and I’ve no idea at all what they meant by it.

Whatever was going on there, I have no idea. But it was dramatic enough to give me another one of these strange awakenings.

After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep and round about 06:50, I got up and went to the bathroom. Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone but that dream above was all. Outside, the wind had died down but it was damp as if it had rained through the night. That will make the local farmers happy.

With nothing else to transcribe on the dictaphone, I set about doing other things until Isabelle the Nurse came. She was surprised to find me out of bed, so I explained about my sleeping issues. She didn’t say much, just told me about her two weeks off and how she’d had to go to the doctor for her sinuses, and after she’d finished my legs and feet, she cleared off on the rest of her rounds.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast. Porridge, strong black coffee, juice and two of the home-made croissants that I made last weekend. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

In discussing Amr ibn al-As, conqueror of Egypt, and the mosque that he built in celebration, he says "he did not, like Constantine at Rome, or Mahomet at Constantinople, employ an existing building for his new use, and so impress an existing type upon future structures, but erected a new one from the ground in such a manner as might be expected from a horde of invaders animated by the fanatical spirit of their new religion of lust and bloodshed, under a chief whose name is mainly remembered as the destroyer of the noblest library the world had hitherto beheld"

Leaving aside the question of the Inquisition, the Albigensian Crusade, and the Conquistadores in Central and South America for the moment, the Great Library at Alexandria was first burnt by Julius Caesar in 48 BC and secondly, in 272 AD, by the emperor Aurelian. The story of Amr burning the library in 642 AD was not recorded until over five hundred years later, and many scholars, long before Charles Freeman began writing his book, have questioned its authenticity.

Back in here afterwards, I had the notes from yesterday to type, and that took much longer than it ought, mainly due to the number of times I fell asleep while doing it.

And then we had the football. First off was Stranraer v Falkirk. Stranraer are, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, in the fourth tier and Falkirk are in the first. We weren’t expecting too much and the result, a 3-0 victory to the Bairns, was not unexpected.

However, at times Stranraer slugged it out toe-to-toe, and it was difficult to tell who was the tier-one team. Stranraer can feel quite comfortable with themselves after this.

On the other hand, Greenock Morton put up the usual sad, dismal performance against Inverness, going down 1-0 at home. They’ve lost all four games and failed to score a single goal. And on the evidence of what I’ve seen so far, they could be playing until next weekend, out on the pitch all alone, and they still wouldn’t manage to score a goal.

After a disgusting drink, I had a few more things to do, and they took an age to finish, mainly because I kept on crashing out while I was trying to do them. I must have fallen asleep at least three times, sometimes for as long as an hour. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

And then it was baking time. So refuelled by one of these energy drinks, I tackled the question of home-made bread and home-made fruit bread. It took up most of the late afternoon and early evening, but even so, they turned out very well indeed and I can’t wait to get my teeth into them. They look absolutely delicious.

So right now, I’m going to check the statistics, back up the computer and so on and then go to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow and I wonder what’s going to happen there.
I have a bad feeling about it all.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greenock Morton’s dismal performances … "well, one of us has" – ed … a reporter from BBC Scotland Sport rang up manager Ian Murray and asked him how he was going to deal with the issues.
"They’ll be coming in for training on Sunday" replied Murray. "I have a load of traffic cones and the players are going to practise dribbling around them all day"
So on Sunday afternoon, the reporter rang back to ask how things were going.
"Dreadful" replied Murray. "At the moment, the cones are leading three-nil"

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Tuesday 21st July 2026 – THE ALARM DIDN’T

… go off this morning. Mind you, there was a good reason for that. I’d switched it off because a few minutes before it was due, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor. I wasn’t doing any more than that, but it was enough to claim an “early start”.

Thinking about it, though, it’s not really all that much of an early start. When you go to bed at about 20:30, being up just before 06:29 means something not far short of ten hours in bed.

And 20:30 it was when I went to bed last night. I’d hardly begun the notes from yesterday too but this wave of fatigue that turned up simply overwhelmed me and there was no escape.

When the alarm sounded, I reluctantly threw off the covers and picked up the ‘phone in order to switch off the alarm, only to find that the time actually was only 01:30 and the phone’s alarm wasn’t sounding at all

There have been a few times just recently when I’ve been awoken by a phantom alarm call. Yet it sounds so realistic so I really don’t know what to make of it.

One thing was for certain though, and that was that I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there for a few hours silently wishing that I could fall into the arms of Morpheus but with no success. Eventually, though, I managed to slide into that state of flux where I’m half asleep and half awake, although not always at the same time.

When I finally awoke, it was 06:09, so I decided that I’d give myself a couple of minutes and then leave the bed. Unfortunately it was rather more than a couple of minutes, but I still managed to beat the alarm this morning.

After a trip to the bathroom to sort myself out, I came back in here to listen to whatever else was on the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

It was getting close to Christmas Eve and I’d gone somewhere to spend Christmas. There was a whole group of us, including several people whom I knew from the EU. We were having something of a good time but it was getting late so I thought that I’d better start to make tea. I selected a few things here and there and made a start. In the meantime, there was an enormous row in the living room between a couple. The husband shouted out “right, well, I’ll go and make tea then!” He came into the kitchen, saw me cooking and just threw my stuff onto the floor. We had a huge row about that, which, shall we say, was “inconclusive”. I walked out of the kitchen, and I was just so angry that I couldn’t calm down for ten minutes. In the end, I went for a walk around. In the square or centre of one of these arcades where two big roads crossed, there was some kind of entertainment. People were doing magic and such. There was a huge crowd watching them. As I walked around the edge of the crowd, I noticed that one of them was a petite girl in a dark blue raincoat. I went over to her to chat and then I asked her if she would like to come for a walk. We had a good walk around and then she had to go. I went back reluctantly to where we were staying. That guy and his wife had gone but there was still some food left, and one or two of my friends had bought pizzas so we had a little bit of a picnic. But I remembered that girl saying that she’d meet me again at 21:00 somewhere on the south side of this crowd. About 20:30 I walked off. I was hanging around for a while there and then we both spotted each other. She’d changed her clothes so it was confusing. We went for a drive in the car, my old Zephyr 6, and I apologised to her for being dressed like this, telling her that I should have been dressed more regally, which made her laugh. In the end, I drove her home and gave her a kiss. I explained that I was having to go home, which was 500 miles but I’d still like to see her. She replied “why not come to see me on Sunday?” and she mentioned a time.

So where was my family last night? In the past, just as I was always about to Get the Girl, my family would turn up and throw a spanner in the works. But not last night. In fact it all seems to have worked in my favour for once.

The idea of this big group of people is nothing new either. When I first joined the EU, we newcomers were put in a group together. and a bunch of us would go out and do things like ice skating, playing tennis and the like. Gradually, though, we all paired off and I spent a pleasant few months in the company of a Greek girl, which was nice.

The disastrous kitchen scene has no parallel in real life but I can see why it was so upsetting.

The story about “hanging around” refers to an incident involving the Co-op in Denver Avenue, Crewe, something that might become clear to you all in due course, and I did once have a Zephyr 6, one of the big MkIV models.

There’s probably a load more mileage in that dream too.

The nurse turned up today, later than usual, and chatted away about nothing in particular as he dealt with my legs and feet. After he left, I could push on and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

We’re still in Romanesque Norman Northern France and Britain, but today he’s avoiding controversy. That’s partly because I’ve not read much of the book today. He’s mentioned quite a list of obscure examples of this period of construction so I’ve been looking them up and finding out what I can about them.

Back in here afterwards, I started on the notes from yesterday and they are all online now. It was perfectly timed, because it was just about the correct moment for a disgusting drink break and the midday medication.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual after lunch, and she shooed me into the shower. And today, I climbed in on my own and climbed out too. I’m getting much better at this.

After she left, I made a start on tracking down some music that I need for the next radio programme. There will be some really obscure stuff on there too so it took ages to get as far as I have done today, and there’s still plenty to go.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. and I found to my dismay that the stuffing that I’d taken out of the freezer for the taco roll wasn’t stuffing at all, so I had to make some more. And it really was nice too, lentils, tomatoes, mushrooms, onion and garlic in a spicy tomato sauce.

It was followed by two slices of my fruit bread, which was also very nice.

So right now, I’m off to bed, much later than I wanted it to be, but nothing unusual there.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the shower … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the two girls from Crewe, one of whom had just climbed into the shower.
"I forgot to ask you – can you bring me the shampoo" she said
"I’ve already put it in there" replied the other
"I know" she replied "but that’s for dry hair. Mine’s soaking wet now."

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Friday 17th July 2026 – AFTER THE DISASTER …

… of yesterday, today has been a much more satisfying, and a much more productive day, and for once in a long, long time, I am happy with what I have accomplished.

Not that you might have thought so during the night. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … it was 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed last night, looking forward to my long, uninterrupted sleep.

And there I stayed, too, until all of 02:03 (I checked). At that point, an enormous coughing fit awoke me (yes, the antibiotics stopped a week ago) and I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

At some point, though, I must have done, but it wasn’t for long and I was awake again, watching the darkness gradually turn into daylight as the sunlight slowly began to creep round the edges of the shutters.

The alarm shattered my reverie, and to my surprise, it didn’t take long for me to have my feet on the floor. Mind you, having my feet on the floor is one thing. Standing upright on them is something else completely.

Once I’d summoned up the enthusiasm and the energy, I went to sort myself out in the bathroom and then came back in here.

I had my CX500 out, so I thought that I’d go to see my friend on the Wirral. I went all the way there, but he wasn’t in. It turned out that he was in the local bar, so I went to look for it and there, I joined him. We were chatting about things and he mentioned that there was some kind of motorcycle rally taking place over the weekend in his area. We carried on chatting for a while and then I asked him if he wanted me to come up on the weekend to go to this rally, but he said “no”. I thought “there’s not much point carrying on this conversation” so I went to begin to go home. But I had no headlight on the motorbike. There was a sidelight but no headlight. First of all, I went down to another pub and had half of bitter. That was absolutely packed and I had trouble trying to find a seat. There was someone in there saying “God, this place is just packed with people drinking” so I shouted out “so what did you expect to find in a pub?” that brought a whole roar of laughter from most of the people in there. When I went to go, I climbed onto the motorbike and made sure that the sidelight at least was working, started up the bike and headed for home. But I was halfway down Electricity Street and Alton Street before I realised that I was going the wrong way, so I turned the motorbike round and headed for home. I stopped off on the way at a friend’s house in Winsford. He found a headlight bulb so I went to try it in the motorbike and it actually worked. I thanked my friend and my father. This other guy was here, he from the Wirral. He said to my dad and his friend “do you want to see two motor scooters?”. They had no interest in that so they said “no”, but it turned out that they were two types from Eastern Europe. One was a Korno but I don’t know what the other one was. Eventually, they went to see them but they were distracted by four kittens that came out of the garage. One of the kittens I knew, but I didn’t know the three others. When he went away to do something, my father, his friend and I just stayed there looking at these kittens.

There’s lots of mileage in this dream.

  • My father and his friend are here again, after making an appearance a couple of days ago. My father, I can understand, but not his friend, about whom I haven’t thought for something like thirty-five years.
  • As for my friend, there is a pub just around the corner from where he used to live. And there is actually a funny story about it, but the World is not yet ready to hear it.
  • He was also extremely moody and his rather abrupt “no” wouldn’t have been any surprise in real life.
  • Why I would be in Alton Street and Electricity Street (in Crewe) when I’m supposed to be on the Wirral, and coming home via Winsford is totally mystifying me.
  • The friend with the lock-up garages (and the kittens) is a different friend completely than the one on the Wirral.
  • In that particular friend’s garages, you might well be likely to find a couple of rare motor scooters from Eastern Europe, but as far as I have been able to find, there was nothing called a “Korno”. However, there is a village of that name in the Czech Republic.

And probably much more besides.

There was also a dream about me having a very tight timetable for the place where I worked. There was talk that I’d be having a few days off from the Wednesday to the following Tuesday to go to see a concert by a German composer, somewhere on the north coast of Scotland on the Saturday night. Nerina would be going with me and so would my brother and his wife. We met in a pub to discuss what I thought was the trip but it turned out that they had no intention whatever of going. They couldn’t recall mentioning it in the past, but I was certain that they did. But I’d warned everyone at work, but obviously we aren’t going now so it doesn’t matter.

Not that I’m likely to be going anywhere with my brother and his wife, a classical music concert wouldn’t be of all that much interest to me.

But the idea of organising everything and having it all fall apart at the last moment is nothing new whatsoever, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s something that happened frequently in the old days. As for working to a tight schedule, I’m sure that you have seen plenty of evidence of this.

But there was one boy who was fed up with having porridge and things like that for breakfast and was agitating his parents to have sandwiches. I hoped that that didn’t happen because I enjoyed my porridge in the morning.

This is something that I dread happening. Breakfast, with my porridge and toast, is just about the only meal I really enjoy these days and it would be an absolute catastrophe if I were to lose my appetite for it.

And that reminds me – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been talking a lot about the loss of my appetite following the chemotherapy sessions that I had. While I was browsing through these pages looking for something in particular, I came across this quote –
"At lunchtime, I had some vegan cheese on my butty and I’m a little disturbed because the taste seems to have changed. It hasn’t – it’s that my taste buds have changed since I’ve had chemotherapy and that’s disturbing me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m off my food right now. I don’t really fancy anything to eat and the idea of eating anything greasy makes me queasy."

That’s a quote from the first time that I had chemotherapy, and in particular the ENTRY FROM 10th APRIL 2016 – over ten years ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

The nurse was a little later than usual today, and he wittered away about nothing in particular while he dealt with my legs and feet. After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

At the moment, he’s having an interesting discussion on the difficulties that people had back in his day almost two hundred years ago, telling the difference between Anglo-Sacon and Norman stonework.

saxon stonework St Mary Magdalene, Geddington, NorthamptonshireIf you ever see them close together these days now that we know so much more, there’s no difficulty in recognising the differences

You can see the difference here in this photograph that I took of St Mary Magdalen Church in Geddington. The Anglo-Saxon stonework is on the left and straight ahead over the arch. Then round to the right, where it all becomes so much neater, that’s the Norman stonework. The Normans had much more experience of stonework than did the Anglo-Saxons, what with everything that they built in Normandy prior to the Battle of Hastings.

Back in here, I had the usual few things to do, and then I attacked the notes for this concert on which I’d been working. They are now all written and ready for typing.

After that, there was one that I started a week or two back, and that’s now all done too and ready for broadcasting, although that won’t be for a while just yet.

There were the odd interruptions while I was doing that. First of all, there was a disgusting drink break with the lunchtime medication, and then my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff.

While she was here, I had her take two of the drawers out of the freezer, and I sat on the chair and went through them, sorting them out. Some stuff was binned but the rest is now organised and I know what I’ve got and where it is. And doesn’t that make a change?

Back in here and after the radio stuff was finished, I began to tidy up the mass of papers that was hanging around in here. That’s mostly now done too. As I said, it’s been a very productive day.

However, I didn’t ‘arf have a fright. While I was looking at something out of the window, a big bird, probably a seagull, flew slap-bang head-first right into it. The noise was astonishing and I thought that the window had broken, but it remained intact.

I told my cleaner about it, and she went outside to look but there was no evidence of anything.

bird strike window u z leuven pellenberg belgiumNot like the owl that flew into the window of a place where I was staying in Leuven.

The poor bird – an owl by the looks of things – quite clearly left his mark on the glass there, and I don’t think that he could have survived a collision like that. But on my window, there’s not a trace.

Later on, it was time for tea. Chips, sausage and baked beans – the beans cooked with freshly ground black pepper and vegan cheese. Delicious as always.

And for pudding, I had some of the fruit bread that I made a few days ago. It’s a little dry, but the taste is magnificent and I’m really happy with that.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about appetites … "well, one of us has" – ed … a young guy takes a young girl out for a meal. To his surprise, she orders almost everything on the menu. And then she gulps it down.
"Blimey!" said the boy. "Do you eat like this at home?"
"No" she replies. "No-one wants to sleep with me there."

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Sunday 12th July 2026 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day Of Rest, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. A day when I don’t do anything at all and spend much of my time in bed, even down to having the nurses deal with my legs and feet as I slumber on.

So consequently, last night, totally and utterly exhausted and having abandoned my blog notes for now, I went to bed at about 22:00 with an air of profound optimism, didn’t I?

And although it took a minute or two to go off to sleep, I ended up being well away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. And there I stayed until all of … errr … 00:10.

That was when I awoke, and from then on for several hours, I was drifting in and out of sleep. And as seems to be the case these days, it was difficult to tell what period was which. Round about 06:00, I was definitely awake and there seemed to be no hope whatever of going back to sleep, so at 06:15 I was actually up and about.

After I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, the first task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was back in the Auvergne last night again and was standing for election to the town council. In the borough, in the part of the area where I lived, there was no opposition so I was “walked over” into the Houses of Parliament. And it was bricking really good as well and it looked quite an impressive thing to see, and I hoped that my descendants, or whoever completes the job, will have the same kind of senses to the colours … fell asleep here …

So this is the usual kind of incoherent nonsense … "you said it" – ed … that doesn’t make any sense at all and is totally meaningless. So much so that I can’t even remember dictating it. And it’s surely no surprise to anyone that I fell asleep in the middle of it all.

When Isabelle the Nurse turned up, she was amazed to find that I was out of bed and working. My reaction was that I was rather disappointed. I had hoped to have had a really decent sleep for once.

Anyway, after she finished with me, she wandered off on the rest of her rounds, still on foot. Everywhere was total chaos today with roads being closed up here for the brocante and down in the town too for the shopping morning.

Meanwhile, I was preparing my breakfast – porridge, coffee and home-made croissants – and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s still going on with his anti-Roman tirade at first, but slowly, he’s gradually warming to some examples of Roman architecture. And the difference? "But it was not the old Rome of Pontiffs and Augurs, of Consuls and Emperors, that was to mould the arts of Teutonic Christendom. Before she could influence the race on whom the spirit of the Church was to take the firmest hold, she had herself to bend before the Cross. The greatness of Rome is indeed exclusively heathen …. its Christianity was but the precursor of its fall. It endured but to pass the torch of truth to a race springing into life with all the fervency of youthful vigour, whose greatness might be cradled in the lap of the Church, and during its historic being have known no other faith. This was the work of Christian Rome, to lay the foundation among another people of a truly Christian commonwealth; ;"

Back in here, I had a few things to do and to organise, but would you believe that I crashed out? It was 11:00 when I awoke so I reckoned that I’d been out for forty-five minutes, and I didn’t feel a thing.

Once I’d gathered up my wits, I continued with the notes for the blog, and they are now on line at long last. That meant that I could have a pause for a disgusting drink and the midday medication.

When I was back and ready, I carried on with the radio notes for the next programme, and it’s almost finished now. I just have to find a way of losing five seconds, but that shouldn’t be difficult.

There was time for a footfest afterwards. The first match was Stranraer, of the fourth tier, against Ayr United of the second. And Stranraer gave Ayr a good run for their money, twice taking the lead, but eventually going down 3-2. That was followed by Greenock Morton of the second tier v non-league Linlithgow Rose.

As for that game, I couldn’t believe what I was watching, and I ended up having to watch the streams from both clubs to make sense of it. I’ve seen Morton play some bad matches in the past, but never as bad as this. Morton lost the game 1-0 and they were lucky to get nil. Linlithgow hit the post with the keeper beaten three times during the game.

What I noticed particularly was how easily the Morton players were muscled off the ball. If a non-league side can do this to Morton, heaven help Morton when the league gets under way.

Later on, it was baking time, and as well as producing another nice home-made loaf, I made a fruit bread too, and that looks pretty good. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I’ll tell you in due course how they turn out.

Doing all that baking wore me out so I was glad to have a sit-down afterwards. And there was another bottle of alcohol-free beer in the fridge. That didn’t last long either.

Anyway, now that my notes are written, I’m off to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow of course, and I don’t feel at all like going. But there’s nothing new there.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … in Russia, a peasant went to the bakers to buy some bread.
"I’m sorry" said the baker "but I’ve run out."
"What a stupid country this is!" exclaimed the peasant. "And that stupid Vladimir Putin. He’s the worst of the lot. This is all his fault."
Just then a Russian soldier who had been listening came over, brandishing his rifle. "You want to watch yourself" he said to the peasant. "I would be perfectly justified in shooting you, so you clear off home and watch your mouth."
When he returned home, his wife noticed his empty hands. "Have they run out of bread again?" she asked
"They have indeed" he answered. "And I’ll tell you something else for nothing too."
"What’s that?"
"I reckon that they’ve run out of bullets too."

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Tuesday 25th April 2023 – MY CHOCOLATE BISCUITS …

… are absolutely delicious. I’m well impressed with how they have turned out.

It’s a simple biscuit recipe of sugar, butter and flour in a ratio of 4:8:10. And then I ground up some almonds in a whizzer, added some vanilla and some of that concentrated orange essence and off we went.

And when it was all mixed together I added in a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and mixed it in. And then I rolled it out and cut it into small squares.

When they were baked, there was one that was distorted so I tasted it and I really do think that I’ve hit the jackpot with that. I’m tempted, when I have time, to make some chocolate-flavoured buttercream and make some bourbon-like sandwich biscuits. They should be extraordinary.

But that’s for maybe tomorrow. I’m more interested at the moment about what happened today.

As usual it started off pretty badly. Once again I took ages to go off to sleep. And I was wide awake again at 03:30. However I did manage to go back to sleep at one point because the alarm awoke me at 07:00.

It was a struggle to leave the bed but I managed to beat the second alarm, and after the medication, mails and messages I prepared for my Welsh lesson.

Once again there weren’t all that many of us there but nevertheless it passed off quite well and I was surprised about how much of the comprehension exercise I managed to complete. I actually had all of the questions correct but there was one where I’d guessed the answer from what I heard.

After my lunchtime fruit I had a baking session.

There wasn’t just the biscuits but also a pile of fruit buns. I’d run out of fruit bread this morning so I need to stock up. And they came out quite nicely too. I’ll definitely make some more of those. Some have gone into the bread tin and the rest have gone into the freezer where they can be pulled out as and when required.

While I was waiting for everything to bake or cook or to rise up I tidied out the food shelves in the kitchen to make sure that I knew what I had. Some stuff found its way into the bin. It was stuff that I’d bought from NOZ and I was surprised that the sell-by date was in 2020. It wouldn’t have been so bad had they been in tins but they were in fact in glass bottles.

A pile of stuff found its way into the bins outside too. The bag with the glass and plastic was overflowing so a little walk around outside would do me good.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. Not very much though. I’d joined the Army last night. I was obviously not cut out for the basic training. We’d all started, checked in and found out where we were sleeping. Next morning we had all the stupid army routine then we all had to assemble to go off on a bus somewhere. The sergeant in charge was reminding us to do this and do that but of course we hadn’t done it because we didn’t know and no-one had said. He said “turn your room keys in now because you should have all your possessions with you”. Most of the platoon had left their coats in their room so he was haranguing everyone. We all had to go back. I said “I’m sorry sarge” but at least I had a smile from him which I suppose was something or other.

With the time that was left I was editing down the final batch of notes that I have recorded for one of the radio programmes. It’s not finished yet of course because I wasn’t as focused as I might have been. Things are going to start to become complicated from now on because I’m now reaching the stage where I’ll be changing the format and content of my programmes.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll, and there’s enough stuffing left over to go into a nice curry tomorrow, with naan bread and yoghurt.

And while we’re on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m off to sign for my new apartment tomorrow morning. It’ll be a while before I move in because I have to give the tenant three months notice to leave and then I want to have the bathroom and the kitchen done.

So whatever, I’m going to have my work cut out once it all goes through.

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Tuesday 18th April 2023 – TODAY AT THE …

… hospital was even quicker than yesterday.

For a start, I didn’t have to sign in. Then I knew where I was going, and they didn’t have to weigh me or give me an electrogram.

And with the catheter already being in my arm, I didn’t need to have one fitted, so it was simply a case of giving me the medication.

Consequently I was in there at 08:45 and on my way home by 11:30. I even managed to catch the second half of my Welsh class.

Not that I felt much like it because I had another horrible night. And for some reason or other I awoke bolt-upright in the middle of a dream at 06:59 exactly so I fell out of bed immediately, just so that I can say that I actually did beat the alarm once again.

But not by very much.

It’s not possible to have a shower with my arm swathed in bandages so I had a good stand-up wash and then Caliburn and I headed for the hills.

The people at Avranches are really quite nice and pleasant. They have a good sense of humour too which always helps.

Back here afterwards I had a strong coffee and some of my fruit bread toasted with plenty of butter and then joined my Welsh class. Surprisingly it all passed off quite well and I was surprised.

After the lesson I sat down and listened to the dictaphone. And just look at where I went to during the night. It’s really no wonder that I was feeling so exhausted this morning. I started off in my apartment making breakfast. I put the beans on and a few other bits and pieces. Then I went into the bathroom to fetch some sliced bread from the freezer. I must have had the bread out previously and forgotten to put it back because it was just sitting on the shelf looking moth-eaten as if rats had been eating it. Of course there are no rats or mice anywhere in my apartment. I took 3 slices that looked really sad and put them down on top of the worktop. A huge pile of ants were suddenly disturbed from somewhere and started to scurry round all over the bread. That lot went immediately into the bin. Before that I forgot to say that when I went to go into the bathroom I couldn’t see a thing. I had to play around with the fuses in the wall to switch the fuse back on that control the lights at that end of the apartment. After the mess of the bread I went back into the kitchen. The beans were burning, the toast was smoking as if some bread from before was stuck in there and was on fire. It was all becoming a right mess with everything being burnt and I had nothing to eat.

And then I repeated the same dream pretty much again – about the bread and the kitchen etc being on fire and being eaten by ants and so on that I had earlier. I step back into dreams fairly often but to actually repeat one is rather strange.

Later on some Italian couple involved in some secret society had upset some group of Londoners. We’re going back into the days of Sherlock Holmes. He was investigating this. The Italian man had had an encounter with these four men just after he left home that turned very ugly. They then went to the woman’s house, rang the door and made her answer by taunting her on the doorstep. Sherlock Holmes had crept around the back and rang the bell at the back. The woman had to leave the people at the front and go to the back where she promptly fainted into the arms of Holmes. He quite simply set about the four of her attackers with a hatchet. Three of them he attacked but the fourth one took him by surprise with a pitchfork. He was lucky that he wasn’t badly hurt with the pitchfork but stood his ground and demolished these four guys with his small axe

Break into a stranger’s house and have a huge fight with him and then leave as a kind of pre-emptive strike against something and that really is exactly what I dictated. It’s as if I’ve missed something off the front). But in one particular house I noticed that he had all the ice trays in the freezer of water filling up but they were stacked one on top of another so as they froze they were gradually rising up being pushed out by the frozen water underneath them. I thought “what a good space-saving idea this is”.

The next one is payday. I just received my money and I was dancing about quite happily to some music on the computer. There was mush more to it than this but I can’t remember the rest of it at all.

Then we had 2 iguanas fighting in a hospital. They ended up right by a patient but suddenly a blast of cold air through the air vents on the floor sent them up in the air a little bit and stopped them from fighting. Everyone who was watching them was really amazed at this.

I’d also been away in Canada with a few friends. One of them was Alison. We’d had a much better time than usual because we’d learnt to have better value out of our time than we had done in the past. Then it was time to go back to school. I arrived rather later than I intended but there was still very few people there. I bumped into that girl Liz – not Liz Fox but the other one, her friend who was also called Liz but whose name I can’t now remember after all these years but I can see her vividly. I wanted to have a talk to her but she said “hello” and walked past. I could hear a couple of people gossiping about her from when she was at Primary School. There was some kind of discussion going on about someone. My friend from the Scottish Borders was there involved in this. The guy who was doing most of the talking saw me listening and trying to work out who was the subject. He passed me a Government report of a tribunal. The name wasn’t published but I could see from a lot of the evidence that I had a good idea who it was but I couldn’t put a name to it. I carried on reading it. I could see after a while that he was starting to become impatient. I ended up back in my classroom. A couple of girls came in. They began to talk. We mentioned vaguely the trip that I’d been on. I explained that it was really good but I didn’t go into any detail about it. We began to discuss something else. While we were there someone pulled up in a car. He made a really bad job of parking, left the car and staggered off. We could see that he was totally drunk. I asked who he was. They told me his name. We watched him. Someone said that he had left his 2 kids at home cooking. I’d never seen anyone so drunk as this and still standing on their 2 feet. There was lots more to this too but I can’t remember it now either.

Every now and again a dream comes up that reminds me of my school days and all of the wasted opportunities that I let slip through my fingers while I was there. The first part of that dream was another one that brought back quite a few “if only …” moments and how things really ought to have been so different.

Finally Nerina and I were having one of our big disputes last night. It led to me planning on leaving. I started to prepare my stuff. That meant going home which was a long way so I needed to make sure that I had everything. I couldn’t find the CD that I’d bought so I began to search for it everywhere. After a while Nerina came home. I asked her if she knew where it was. She told me to listen and I could hear a CD playing in the distance. I didn’t recognise it at first but eventually I worked out that it was Steve Winwood singing. That was the one that I wanted. She’d been recording it. She said that it had finished recording so she took it out and gave it back to me. I carried on packing. She was sitting on the sofa. I began to pass her things. There were these 4 oven gloves. I threw them to her and 1 hit her, 2 landed right in front of her and the other landed exactly where I wanted it to be, on the back of the settee behind her. It led to some kind of good-natured discussion after that. I reminded her of the time that she was baking a cake and it all went wrong. She threw it at the wall and I teased her about it and she began to smile. I said that it’s a shame that things changed in our relationship. Again there was much more to it than this that I can’t remember. At one point I was walking down Coleridge Way. There was an argument between 2 lorries, one a cement mixer. It went past the other lorry bu actually driving up on the kerb and scattering the pedestrians. Then it came back and did it again. When I reached where it was there were several pedestrians including a couple of kids lying on the pavement covered in blood as if they’d been struck by this cement mixer. It really was a strange dream.

It’s also another wasted opportunity too but I can really understand that regardless of anything else, she wouldn’t have thought it a wise idea to throw everything up and come off into the great wide-open world with someone like me, married or not.

The rest of the day has been spent finishing off some notes for a radio programme that’s half-completed, and then I made a very brief start on pairing off some music for the next radio programme. I’ll do some more of that tomorrow if I have another short day at the hospital. I know that it won’t be a short day on Thursday because I’ve already been told that the neurologist there is going to put me through my paces on Thursday afternoon.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. And I’m not sure what happened but my rice and veg were cooked to perfection tonight. I wish that it would turn out like that every time.

There’s plenty of my delicious stuffing left so it’ll be an excellent leftover curry tomorrow. There’s plenty of soya yoghurt to add to it instead of the soya cream and I have some naan bread dough in the freezer that I’ll have to take out of the freezer before I go to the hospital.

It sounds as if it might be a really good curry tomorrow and I hope that it is, especially as I seem to have got the hang of this naan bread.

And having found a good menu on the internet for vegan hash browns, I’ll be moving my meals into further uncharted territory in early course.

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Monday 17th April 2023 – MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE …

… hospital, they only kept me there for a couple of hours. I was expecting it to be all day.

When I arrived, I signed in and then went to the Day Ward. The nurse weighed me (and my weight is still slowly sinking down towards my best target weight) and gave me an electrocardiagram. They found that I had a heart which is good news as it proves that I’m not a Conservative.

They fitted a drain into me (which will stay in for the entire week) and then gave me a couple of bottles of intravenous drip.

That is in some respects disappointing. They gave me tons of that stuff while I was in hospital in Belgium and it didn’t seem to do me all that much good. I was expecting that they would be doing something else to help me overcome these issues that I’m having.

Still, I’m not turning down any treatment. I’ll take all that I can get if they think that it’ll do any good. And in any case, if it doesn’t work out I’ll be well-placed to receive more treatment of a different kind. I have to start at the beginning.

The intravenous drip was finished by 11:45 and then I was kicked out on my way home.

In some respects (but not in others) I was glad that it didn’t take all that long because I wanted to get home. I’d had another bad night, just when I thought that I’d got over those. In fact, setting the alarm at 07:00 counted for nothing because I was already up and about by then, having been awake for quite a while.

There was time to grab a shower before hitting the road. After all, I have to make myself look beautiful.

Once they threw me out I headed for home, a coffee and some corn flakes. I was hungry. But before I could come back into the apartment I was ambushed by a couple of neighbours and we had a chat for a while.

Once I’d organised my food, I had a bake-in. After all, I’ll need some food for lunch if I’m going to be back home at this time every day this week. So now I have a fruit and nut loaf along with a big pile of fruit and nut biscuits. And they are all delicious because I sampled them.

Biscuits seem to be quite easy to make really. There’s a base recipe of sugar, butter and flour in a ratio of 4/8/10 and then you add whatever flavouring you like. I found this afternoon that if you add a banana you deduct half the weight of the banana from the weight of the butter.

It’s also got me thinking about cocoa powder. I bet that I could make some nice chocolate biscuits with some of that creamed into the vegan butter.

Once again the air fryer was pressed into play because there were too many biscuits for the shelf in the oven. The air fryer bakes them quite nicely, but I can’t wait to have a bigger oven.

The effort was far too much for me though and once I’d settled down in my comfy chair I crashed out for well over an hour. I was clearly well out of everything after my exertions.

One reason why I was so tired, I reckon, was because of the kind of night that I’d had. Despite not being in bed for all that long, I’d been out on a considerable number of little voyages during the night that had kept me going. There was something to do with being on board a ship and fishing but I can’t really remember what that was. There was a boy who came up to me after I’d been giving a talk, a foreign boy whom I knew. He asked me in broken English “is it wrong to influence a judge?”. I asked “in what way? What do you mean?”. He replied “if I want her to come to bed with me”. I replied ” of course it’s not in that situation. Tell me about it”. He told me a little. I said “the best way to start is that people like to be talked about so you need to compliment her. Say how nice she looks. But don’t go too much overboard. If you do that it all sounds very false”.

And then I had to go off to work one morning. Another boy in the house had had an accident. He was in the Turkish baths steaming it off. Apparently he was far too ill to go anywhere. There was all kinds of discussion about who should do what when and where. Who needs a lift to work etc. I said “I’m quite happy to go and say goodbye to him and walk in to work”. In the end after a lengthy discussion this woman who might have been my mother I dunno said that she would go to clean out the Turkish bath when I’d finished saying goodbye before I went to work. One or two other people were there as well who had to leave. Generally it was total chaos that morning with all of this happening.

There was a family where there were several daughters. Daughter n°1 wanted to marry but her mother was totally opposed to her choice of husband so she even arranged with the preacher not to turn up at the wedding so she wouldn’t be able to marry him. Luckily she managed to find some other kind of itinerant preacher who married them. This was the story of the family gossip when everyone was together to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their marriage that her mother had thought wouldn’t last a week. They wanted her to be like her sister who as far as they were concerned married the perfect husband but the husband was away from home visiting his wife’s family when he received a text message from his wife, daughter n°2, that said “come home darling. I miss you. I have something for you that I want you to have”. It all sounded romantic so he dashed home only to find that he was given his divorce papers because she’d found out that he’d been cheating on her throughout all of her marriage.

I was back running another taxi business later on. I had some black Vauxhall Transcontinentals working for me. They had been in really bad condition when I’d bought them all quite old but I’d welded them up and they were quite good vehicles. I liked them very much. I was going off shift and cleaning my car out. It was absolutely filthy with bottles of pop and everything all over it. It was a real mess and it had taken ages for me to tidy it up. Then someone came over for a chat. I asked “do you want to see something funny?”. I showed him a paper that I’d received from a garage about this vehicle’s MoT along with some things that had failed it. He asked me “what did I do?”. I said “I took it to another garage because I didn’t believe half of what was written on this note”. He asked what they did and I answered that they charged me 30p to fix something and it passed. I shan’t be going to that first garage again.

There was another dream about a vicar in a church. In his parish some horrible crimes had been committed. The police investigation had gone on and on for ever. One day one of the parishioners, a very respectable upright man, came into church to look for the priest, presumably wanting a talk or maybe even wanting confession. The priest was down in the cellar sawing so he started to climb up. Just as he reached the top a couple of policemen pounced on the man, handcuffed him and dragged him off as if it was he, a most respectable family man, had been the one committing all these horrible crimes.

There was also something about a couple of twins whose parents were divorced. At the time they were living with their father. He’d taken them into work on a very quiet day because he had things to do there. While they were there some fellow employee kidnapped one of them. In fact he kidnapped them both but when a chase began he couldn’t carry them both so he dropped one and ran with the other. There was a big chase all the way through the factory. It went on for ages and he made his way out into the open heading for the car park. He was attacked by another employee and knocked unconscious. It was only then that the little girl realised that there was something wrong. There was a big discussion afterwards about this guy. He had previous convictions for all kinds of weird things. They wondered why a company like that had actually employed someone with his kind of history. His wife wasn’t surprised at all about her husband grabbing hold of this little girl and running away with her. That was a surprising thing as well that she treated it as something quite normal I suppose.

That’s not everything either. I was also out with a few people whom I know but you really don’t want to know how that particular story unfolded, especially if it’s tea time where you are.

While we’re on the subject of tea … “well, one of us is” – ed … I forgot to wind the heat back up in the air fryer after I’d baked my biscuits. Consequently the stuffed pepper that I’d baked from frozen hadn’t baked all the way through. The top hadn’t burnt, which was good news, but the bottom could have done with another 20° of heat.

Still, you can’t win a coconut every time and one of the things about making mistakes is that if you are lucky and have a good memory you can learn from them. I’ll have to try my best to do so.

So even though it’s early and I’m not all that tired after my sleep this afternoon, I’m going to bed. A good relax will do me good and we’ll see how things get on tomorrow. I’m hoping for a longer day at the hospital tomorrow with more treatment but I probably won’t get it.

But one thing that I’ve noticed from a map of Avranches is that all of the important shops are within staggering distance of each other. If I get away early on Friday I might do a lap around the shops there on Friday afternoon and see what they have to offer that might be different than what I can find in Granville.

That should be interesting.

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Tuesday 11th April 2023 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… yet another morning when I was up and about before the alarm went off. Things are certainly full of surprise these days.

After I’d had my medication the first thing that I needed to do was to think about what I was going to have for breakfast seeing as I had run out of fruit buns

Consequently I made a small loaf of bread and in a mad fit of enthusiasm I added a handful or two of raisins. Cooked for 30 minutes in the air fryer, it made a lovely loaf of raisin bread and I’m going to make more of this. I might even go berserk and add some sugar to the next one.

But anyway it was a lovely surprise for breakfast, toasted with vegan butter and wolfed down with a mug of hot coffee. I just wish though that my bread would rise better than it’s doing.

Next thing while all of that was going on was to redo this radio programme that hadn’t come out correctly when I’d prepared it. And I’m not sure why but using exactly the same music and the same speech, it ended up 19 seconds short. However a little bit of minupulation and a lot of time managed to fill it out.

After lunch there was plenty to do. Firstly I had to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of horse race taking place last night. It was won by a little girl who was given a horse’s name. There were several others in the field but she was the only human in there, although there were two children who were a little older who had also taken part in the race that was over something like 4 furlongs. The other 2 tired quite quickly and she romped home to win. There was another similar race but that took place beforehand and I can’t remember what happened about that.

And then I had an animal, either a cat or a dog, I can’t remember now. It was extremely well-behaved. Someone sent me some kind of miniature cake saw or something. When I had this tray of cakes I unfortunately dropped them on the floor. Of course I couldn’t really eat them after that but the animal whatever it was came in, saw it and started tucking into all the food on the floor. I thought that that was right seeing as it was the animal who had won all of this anyway. It deserves it.

I was also around Granville last night in the red Cortina estate. Who should I bump into but one of the regular readers of this rubbish who was quite happily wandering around. We had a chat for a while and then I headed home. I don’t understand why I didn’t invite him back to the apartment for a coffee or something. I drove home but on the way back in the rue Paul Poirier I ended up on foot again walking home. I was being chased by a young Indian squaw who was waving a tomahawk at me. In the end she said “I’m sorry but you can’t sleep with me”. I asked “why not” and she replied “I would have a baby out of wedlock and what then? I’d have to help my mother with the washing up” I asked what was wrong with that and she replied “I don’t eat breakfast in the morning”.

And I’m still trying to work that last one out.

Secondly, now that I’m feeling a little more athletic these days and more optimistic that when I’ve been to the hospital I’ll be in a better state of health to go out and about for my afternoon walks, I need to think about photography again.

The NIKON D500 alas is no more and while the NIKON D3000 still works, it was only ever meant to be a stop-gap camera. Consequently I resurrected the NIKON D5000.

There’s an issue with that in that the power doesn’t seem to be going from the battery into the circuit board so I’ve set steps in motion to have an estimate to have it serviced or overhauled, if it’s going to be cost-effective.

The idea of having a new camera is appealing but I’ve heard a rumour that Nikon is going to make “a major announcement” shortly and everyone is hanging on to hear the news.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent choosing music for my radio programmes for the future. I’ve not written the text as yet because that will all depend on when the programmes will be broadcast, because I’m working on a cunning plan right now for how my programmes will run in the future. High time that I had a little change around.

However I shall still be dictating some stuff and storing it up for use at another time.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg and, as usual, it was very nice. And tomorrow I’ll be having another bake-in as I try to figure out the best way to make naan bread for my vegan curry tomorrow night.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to bed as I’m having to go to the doctor tomorrow for some more medication and to sort out a few other things in town. I suppose that I’d better have a shower before I set off – I will have to look my best for the little walk out.

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Thursday 21st April 2022 – GLOBAL WARMING ANYONE?

When John Ross, the leader of the first European expedition credited with exploring the north coast of Lancaster Sound, came by here in 1818 and when William Parry examined it in 1819-20, they noticed what might have been the entrance to a bay, which Parry called Croker Bay after the then-Secretary to the Admiralty.

dry valley croker bay devon island canada adventure canada into the north west passage 2019 photo august 2019 eric hallThey weren’t actually sure about whether it was a bay or not because the whole coastline was covered in impenetrable ice so they couldn’t sail in to make sure.

And there I was 200 years later, 25 kms deep into what is quite clearly a fjord rather than a bay, at the mouth of a dry valley where a glacier once flowed and where there isn’t a single trace of ice.

If you want to look for the “Croker Bay Glacier” you need to travel another 5kms up the fjord and eventually you’ll reach it. Over the last 200 years or so, a belt of ice 30kms deep and heaven alone knows how thick has melted.

Anyway I digress … “yet again” – ed.

aeroplane 54aay baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022Outside this afternoon we’ve been having an aerial day but while you admire the light aeroplane 54AAY that flew past overhead making its debut on these pages, I’ll start at the very beginning … “a very good place to start” – ed.

And once more, it was a struggle for me to crawl out of bed again. I didn’t beat the second alarm, having gone back to sleep after the first one, but I was still up before the 3rd, even though it was “only just”.

And after the medication and checking my mails and messages, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise I found that I’d stepped back into a dream not once but twice.

It’s becoming something of a habit.

yellow powered hang glider pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022One of my former work colleagues starred in this one. It was something to do with his retirement. He’d been called out for overstaying his retirement by some kind of sea creature so he went down to attack this sea creature and had a fight with it. He was stopped and they arranged a proper bour of either boxing or wrestling between the two of them. it was rather unfair because this sea creature had 4 arms instead of just 2 and it had to have its gills reinforced. The fight took place and eventually the sea creature won it. The person commentating said that it was a really good fight but he reckoned that every non-human and probably one or two humans as well really enjoyed the result and how it panned out

And then I started dictating the next dream in French. I was at home and had invited some friends round. They were actually grown-ups and I was only quite young. We ended up playing cards which I thought was a good game. They were 3 middle-aged men and one had a wife but she didn’t want to come. We dealt, and dealt for partners etc. They asked what I had to drink. I had a bottle of beer on the side from yesterday that I could drink. I looked in the drinks cupboard and they had one of these boxes of wine and there was some whisky etc so I started to put everything out ready for people to help themselves to alcohol

helicopter pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022That dream continued afterwards and I’d actually met the wife. They were living in a big detached house very much like UK 1930s but it was in France. She was dreading the start of the French school year because her kids were going to school. I asked her if her move to France was permanent. She told me 20 good reasons why it was. We were having quite a chat when her husband came up and said that when he had the house tidied up and the kitchen arranged I would have to come over for a cup of tea by the fire

Later on I was talking to Percy Penguin, and it’s been a while since she’s put in an appearance. She was being very cagey on the telephone about something. I could tell that there was something going on but she didn’t seem to want to expand on it very much. I couldn’t seem to chisel it out of her. At the same time I was talking to a footballer who lived on the continent. We were planning some kind of event together. My family came on the phone and I started to chat to them and happened to mention something about my youngest sister. They replied “haven’t you heard?”. I said “no” and they answered that she’d died. I was appalled. I asked how. It seemed that she and her husband had gone for a breakfast brunch somewhere. Some security guard had knocked her husband’s cup or something onto the floor so they had “had words”. A fight started and my sister had tried to join in but the security guard pulled out his revolver and shot her 4 times in the groin. At that moment he had been arrested.

Airbus A350-941 F-HTRE pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022We haven’t quite finished yet, but we’ll have an interruption to watch F-HTRE go past overhead.

She’s an Airbus A350-941 owned by Air Caraibes and first took to the air in July 2019. She’s flying TX514/FWI14J from Orly to Fort de France in the Caribbean and went past me at 38,000 feet and 498 knots at vector 272°

But in the meantime I was stepping back into the dream involving my youngest sister. Everyone was now round at my house collecting her stuff to take away. I was busy writing a note to my brother expressing my condolences etc.

Once again it took me a couple of hours to come to my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, but when I’d come round I made a start on the photos from the High Arctic of 2019. By the time that I’d finished this evening I was up the end of Croker Bay pinned against a glacier.

There’s a huge batch of photos that I’ve dealt with over the last couple of days. But I’m not out of the woods yet. I have simply moved into different woods.

We had a whole variety of interruptions today, coffee and breakfast being not the least of them.

But on the subject of fruit bread, I had the last slice today.

home made fruit buns place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022That’s the cue for another load – this time it was fruit buns because there was nothing else to bake in the oven so I had the room.

And here’s the results. Enough to keep me going until I clear off next Friday, with a few in the freezer for when I come back too.

It’s basically a bread mix of 250 grammes with a pile of brazil nuts ground into a coarse flour, some dessicated coconut, raisins, sunflower seeds, chopped banana chips, some of those mixed dried fruits and a fresh banana all mixed in. And probably a few other things too that happen to be lying around.

And then when it’s all proofed, cooked for 40 minutes on a medium-high oven.

For lunch I took the remaining half-loaf out of the freezer this morning and it had been defrosting. And there’s nothing like fresh bread like that. I’ll have to make another loaf on Sunday, I reckon, while I’m doing my pizza and I’ll freeze half of that too.

taped off front of building place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022There was of course the usual afternoon walk around the headland.

However today I didn’t go very far before I came to a stop. Just outside the front door in fact.

There’s something afoot here just outside the building, and I’ve no idea what because I haven’t heard anything at all. But whatever it is, they have most of the front of the building taped off, presumably to prevent access.

The plot thickens, that’s for sure.

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022But anyway, we can leave that for a while. Let’s go and have a look down on the beach.

It was another quite nice day today and the crowds were out enjoying it. Down on the beach too there were plenty of people taking the air including a group of young women playing with a frisbee.

There were other folk down there too, poking around in rock pools, scavenging amongst the rocks and the like. We can tell that the tide is on its way out this afternoon.

And they had beautiful weather for it too.

trawler baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022While I was up here looking down onto the beach I also had my roving eye wandering around looking at what was going on offshore.

There was quite a haze today so I couldn’t see all that far but I did notice a couple of fishing boats out there. One that we can see here but there was another one further out as well.

And presumably they were working too because they were pointing away from the harbour and following the coast.

Of course, they are far too far out to sea for me to be able to identify them, especially in these weather conditions when I had to peer through a sea mist to see anything at all.

marker buoys baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022That wasn’t everything either.

Just down there offshore is a collection of marker buoys. It looks as if someone has dropped a few lobster pots into the water just there.

Mind you, that’s not all that far out and I suppose that they will just come along later this afternoon walking across the sand to collect them and their catch because I’m pretty certain that where they have dropped them is out of the water when the tide is right out.

That speedboat roaring past didn’t have anything to do with them anyway

However that’s not my problem. Armes with my face mask, I went to fight the good fight amongst the crowds of people on the path.

people taking photograph pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a recurring theme that runs through these pages as that oe me taking photos of people taking photos.

But here’s quite a new twist on the subject. Down at the end of the headland I looked back and saw a guy setting up a tripod with his camera perched thereupon.

And having done that, he took up station with his beloved and the self-timer did the rest, much to the chagrin of one of the workers at the coastguard post who wanted to drive past there in his car and who was obliged to wait.

But they did make a handsome couple.

fisherman pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022It wasn’t just with lobster pots and trawlers that people were out fishing this afternoon.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen someone perched on the rocks with rod and line at the end of the headland but today we had one of the aforementioned.

And it still bewilders me that these fishermen don’t have a basket or anything in which to put their catch. However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in all the years that we’ve been watching them, we’ve yet to see a fishermen pull a fish out of the water with rod and line.

There were no spectators on the bench at the cabanon vauban either today. They must have known that I was coming.

le roc a la mauve 3 chantier naval port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022From the end of the headland I walked down towards the port to see what was happening there today.

And there has been another change in occupancy at the chantier naval today. Le Roc A La Mauve III is still there showing little signs of moving but Anakena seems to have finished her overhaul and she’s now gone back into the water, ready for her summer voyages to the frozen north.

And how I wish that I was going with her too, but I suppose that you are fed up of me moaning about that. It’s high time that I went out and got myself a life. I need to do something to start moving again but with these heart issues and knee issues it’s not so easy.

But I have the doctor to see next week and the heart specialist at the hospital to see on the 5th of May so who knows? Something might start happening soon, but I’m not holding my breath.

l'omerta port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo April 2022Over at the fist processing plant it looks as if there’s a very long and complicated game of “Musical Ships” taking place.

Briscard was there but she went and L’Omerta came in her place. And then they swapped places, and today they have swapped back again. The excitement here is terrific and I might have to go and lie down in a darkened room.

Instead, I came home for a coffee, a session on the guitar and then (regrettably) I crashed out for a good while. I don’t know what’s the matter with me these days.

Tea was a curry made with leftovers, and delicious it was too. Tomorrow I fancy sausage, beans and chips, especially now that I have my air fryer. I’ve no excuse now for rubbishy chips

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’ll have a strum on the guitar and then go to bed. I could do with a much better night and then maybe I’ll have a much better day to follow.

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Friday 25th March 2022 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… expect, today has been nothing like as productive as yesterday was.

But, quite rarely, the problem was nothing to do with a lack of effort on my part – more on the part of someone else who shall be nameless who had me running around on the internet for three hours for what eventually turned out to be no good purpose.

There have been problems with these people in the past over “certain issues” and a little over two years ago I vowed that that time would be the very last … etc etc.

However I relented over the passage of time and subsequently, over the past few months particularly, I’ve been given the run-around over a couple of issues that have caused me to sigh with dismay but today – well, I dunno.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m living on borrowed time and every hour that I waste is an hour that I won’t ever have back again.

On top of that, the doctors have told me to do everything that I possibly can to avoid stressing myself out. It’s only my heart keeping going that’s keeping me going and it’s showing signs of strain, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. But once I stress myself out to such an extent that my heart is affected, I’ve had it.

It’s simply that I can’t afford the stress. There used to be a time when I thrived on stress – never mind your “Management By Objective” – my motto was “Management By Crisis” and it usually worked. But I can’t do it now.

What was even worse was that for the first time since I can’t remember when, I had a good sleep last night. There wasn’t much on the dictaphone at all.

Well, in fact there was, but one entry was the carbon copy of one over two hours earlier, so whether I simply dictated the same dream twice with a lengthy gap in between or whether in fact i dreamt it twice, well, we’ll never know.

We started off last night at the family pile in Davenport Avenue and there was something going on in the garden. it involved a pile of fruit that everyone was eating. I wasn’t down there with them but there was something about I had to fetch more fruit so I went back into the kitchen and found the fruit but it was all black and rotten and sweating and there were mice eating it etc. I had to chase off what I could. In the end the only thing that was any good was a banana, and that wasn’t any good either but I picked it up. One of the cats – or both of the cats – were in there and there was something the matter with him and they were all covered in some kind of black substance like some of the fruit was so I suhered them out of the room where the fruit was. One of them wanted to go upstairs and I wasn’t going to let it go like that so I picked it up. It wasn’t very happy and it was filthy but I took it in my arms and put it outside

And then I dictated it again.

Later on we were in Germany last night at a town fair. We were running it and helping these German people set up their stall. They were selling tools like spanners and dies and taps, etc. Then it seemed that I had forgotten to formally open the event so I had to formally open it with a speech but when I started to translate it into French everyone shouted “shush”. They weren’t interested apparently in hearing it in French so I went to the office and used the PA system to announce it instead, all over the fair. At the end of the night these German people were packing up. I asked them how they had done and they told me that they had sold over 3 million Marks of stuff. I asked if that was Deutsche marks or Reichmarks. We helped them get together but by now it was pretty late so I said that I could run them to the nearest metro station but they suggested that I run them to Blythe Bridge and the main-line railway station there. I thought “yes, I’d do that” but then it turned out that there was a problem with the lines and a lot of the small local stations had closed so for them to return home to Birmingham was going to be extremely difficult.

There was also somewhere where I was heading off somewhere for a job interview in Vienna. I reached the Underground but my ticket wouldn’t read in the machine to let me into the station. I tried it in 3 or 4 different machines and eventually I managed to make it work. Then I couldn’t find the line that I wanted to take me to where this interview was and even worse, I couldn’t remember which was the Metro station where I had to alight to go to this interview. I was being totally disorganised yet again.

Leaving the bed was once more a struggle but I did manage to beat the second alarm.

fruit bread home made bread place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022After the medication the first task that needed doing was to bake a pile of bread – fruit bread as well as normal bread.

The normal bread tastes as good as it looks, because I had it for lunch but the fruit bread didn’t do so well.

Firstly, I forgot to brush it with milk and dust it with sugar, which doesn’t help matters, and secondly, I forgot it in the oven and it ended up being baked for 10 minutes longer than it should have been.

Still, it’ll be eaten before too long. And it’ll probably taste just as good as it ought to do. Anyway, the odd culinary disaster here and there is par for the course.

Much of the rest of the day, when I was allowed to, I was going through the photos from the Canadian High Arctic. Right now I’m in Quernbiter Fjord among a pod of narwhals. There were some exciting moments on that day.

As usual there were several other more routine interruptions, such as a coffee break, breakfast (with the last of the old fruit bread) and lunch (with the first of the new normal bread).

people on beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022As usual, I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland, and the first port of call was the wall at the end of the car park.

Despite the fact that it was another beautiful day today, sun shining, quite warm and all of that, therre weren’t all that many people down there this afternoon. Certainly not like yesterday when we had hordes of people down there.

But whether or not there was anything going on out at sea, that was something else completely because the sea mist that we had a few days ago has closed in and I could see very little this afternoon.

So instead I wandered off down the path towards the headland to see what might be happening

people on bench cabanon vauban pointe du roc Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022When I arrived at the headland, I thought that I might have been in luck.

A couple of people sitting on the bench (minus dog, or polar bear, or whatever it was) by the cabanon vauban looking as if something exciting was happening gave me a ray of optimism but I reckon that the excitement going on down there had nothing whatever to do with anything out at sea.

And in any case, the visibility in that direction wasn’t any better as it was as I was walking down the path.

And so I called it a day and headed off down the path on the other side of the headland.

yacht school baie de mont st michel Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022On this side of the path I was rather more lucky with maritime activity.

One of the yacht schools was out this afternoon, with a big bunch of pupils sailing around in the bay. It’s always the case – at the start of the year there are dozens of them sailing around (although you can only see a few of them). But by the time we reach the end of the season, the numbers have fallen off dramatically.

And just to reassure you, I haven’t forgotten that I’m supposed to be making enquiries. But right now I’m more preoccupied with my Welsh exam in early summer and all of the (free) revision courses that go with it.

Sailing is for some other time – but I will do it.

joly france ferry terminal port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022In the photograph just now, you might have caught a little glimpse of Chausiaise moored at the front of the queue at the ferry terminal.

Behind her, in apparently the same place as she was yesterday, is the older of the two Joly France ferries that go out to the Ile de Chausey.

But what had caught my eye was the little boat that was moored behind her. And when I looked closer, there were actually two – a little shell-fishing boat that presumably came in too late to moor on a mooring chain, and one of the little port runabouts is moored alongside.

And the builders’ material is still over there by the crane. That’s not moved either.

fish processing plant port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo March 2022Meanwhile, in other news, a couple of things have moved from here by the Fish Processing Plant.

Yesterday we saw L’Omerta and Jade III moored over at the wharf over there but today they have gone.

Jade III is out in the bay fishing, according to her AIS signal, but as for L’Omerta, her AIS signal tells me that she’s moored in the harbour at Les Sables d’Orlonne where she hasn’t moved since April 2019 so we can forget about that.

On the way home, I didn’t even notice if anyone was parked by the Porte St Jean. I just came in for my coffee.

After a good session on the guitar this evening I started another task that I’ve been putting off for quite a while.

For the photos, I keep a monthly index but it always occurred to me that I ought to make one master index that would make searching for things so much easier without trying to remember when or where I was at the time.

So I settled down and made a start. That’s another job that isn’t going to be as easy as it might be either, due to all kinds of complicated reasons.

For tea, I added a small tin of kidney beans and some tomato sauce to the left-over stuffing and had that with some pasta and veg. I’ve had nicer meals than that, I suppose.

But one task that I had to undertake was to dismantle … “disPERSONtle” – ed … the sink waste pipe as some paper that had slipped down there. That’s a messy job and I hate it, for not the least reason being that I have to empty the cupboard underneath and there’s far too much stuff in there as it is.

So now I’ve written up my notes and done another little task that needed attention (more of which anon) I’m going to have a little 10-minute relax and then go to bed. My Welsh weekend starts at 10:30 and I need to nip into town beforehand for a couple of things, like the mushrooms for the pizza.

So what will my Welsh course bring me this weekend? And I hope that I’m in the mood to profit from it.

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Thursday 17th February 2022 – TODAY WAS SOMEWHAT …

… better today than yesterday and at least I manahed to accomplish a couple of things.

Actually it started last night when after I finished writing my notes; I finished off the notes for the radio programme and then in a mad fit of energy I actually dictated them. It can’t be any better than that.

There was something that resembled a reasonable sleep last night. Judging by the times that I dictated the notes of my travels during the night, I must have had a good four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

After that I was off on my travels and I spent a lot of time wandering around. I started off with someone from the Wemsh group, and I wondered when one of them would appear. We’d been doing something or other and a third person whom I know but can’t remember came up to me saying “I saw your note just now back there” but I couldn’t think which note it was at all. I hadn’t written one. We went back into the lounge room and my Welsh friend said something like “right, it’s TV time. There was a programme on there that we usually watch. I had to use the ruler to switch on the TV because it was so high up on the wall. Apparently it was already on – it just needed touching to reactivate it. It tunred out that it was the Wimbledon singles tennis final between Maria Scharapova and someone. He’d written a note or a poem or doggerel about her. The other match that was taking place was the men’s singles final between Boris Johnson and someone else and if that isn’t a nightmare, I don’t know what is. I was surprised about how good Boris Johnson was. he was really making this young guy work his position and for a big man he was a lot quicker on the court than I expected him to be. He had this enormous smash that ended up with him hurtling backwards and hitting the wall at the back. Then he began to pull all kinds of bits and pieces from under his shirt. We realised then that he was wearing some kind of kevlar body armour that had shattered under the impact of him hitting this wall. he was pulling it out bit by bit. When there was a lull in the noise in the stadium I shouted “it’s not a very good advert for kevlar, is it?” and everyone burst into laughter.

Later on I was on my way into work and was at the back end of Tunstall when I saw a motorbike at the side of the road, a Royal Enfield single. I had a good look at it and decided that it was quite nice and carried on to work. Later that day I had to go back out again. 2 girls from the office came with me. One was a girl whom I quite liked. The other one was quite nice but this one was something special. I had my red Cortina and we piled into it. We ended up back in Tunstall again. This bike now had a sign or something on it saying “Series BSA for sale” but it was quite clearly a Royal Enfield. I mentioned that and they said “why don’t you go to see the person and find out?”. I replied “probably because I would be very tempted to buy it”. We found the address so we set off. Soon the houses finished and we were in the open countryside. The second girl said “we’ve been this way before haven’t we?”. The first girl replied “yes. It was that office outing when you went wine-tasting”. I said “yes, and we had a good time at that”. As we drove down this road we were on top of the moors. The wind was really strong, rattling a caravan out in a field. All of a sudden we came to some barbed wire right across the road. We couldn’t go any further, we had to turn round in a farm drive and go back but the bank out of this drive was so steep that the Cortina struggled to make any headway and it was difficult to try to go back out onto the main road again so that we could drive off.

As well as that I was at a school last night with some pupils, actually at a railway station in the underground passage beneath the lines. Someone came down carrying what looked like a solar-powered satellite. They reached the bottom, stopped, had a think, turned round and went back again. I wondered what that was all about. There’s more to it than this but I can’t remember

Finally, someone came out of the library at work bringing something to me. First of all we were having a discussion about some meeting and playing the ‘cello where we had to sit, where we had to stand, how we had to behave. I didn’t understand any of this and I’d never played a ‘cello in my life. I wondered whether I’d misheard or mistranslated. I couldn’t get any of this at all. While I was trying to talk to someone about it, someone came out of the library at work and handed me a kind-of press cutting wrapped in sticky-backed plastic and said that it was very important not to lose it because it means that she can join me. I had a look and it was about Nerina. She’d been awarded either a Doctorate or a Master’s for a dissertation that she had submitted to the University of Québec. Of course I was quite envious because of the Québec connection. I wondered what it was about all of these little privileges she could have so I thought that I’d better go to see the guy who’s in charge of “privileges and immunities” and talk to him aboit it before I posted it on to her wherever she was. At that point I set off to walk home. There were crowds of people on the pavement and a very strong wind and was making very little headway at all. Everone else seemed to be walking okay but it was so strong that it was stopping me going forward. I went over this long railway bridge and had to work out my way home. My way home was going to take me back towards my apartment in Jette but it seemed rather strange because I couldn’t understand anything of what was happening at all with any of this. Nothing seemed to make sense.

When the alarm went off it was something of a struggle to leave the bed but I managed to beat the second alarm all the same.

After the medication, the first job to do was to make the bread as I’d run out.

home made bread fruit bread place d'armes Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022In fact I’d run out of all kinds of bread, normal as well as fruit bread. And realising that there isn’t a lot of room in my oven, I couldn’t make fruit buns so it had to be a fruit loaf instead.

The bread dough was one of the best that I’ve made so far, and for some reason that I don’t understand, the fruit loaf went together really nicely. I’ve not had one quite like this at all.

While they were baking I took out the glass and plastic rubbish to the bins outside, such is the exciting life that I live these days that I feel the need to write about it.

The ordinary bread was very delicious, exactly how it ought to be. As for the fruit bread, I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. But what I can tell you that half of the normal bread and half of the fruit bread have gone into the freezer. I can’t seem to get them to last more than three or four days and I suppose that that shows how fresh and natural the ingredients are.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent in some kind of desultory fashion finishing off the radio programme. And it took much longer that it ought to have done for the simple reason that I forgot to dictate some of the text.

beach rue du nord Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022As well as lunch, there was also a break for my afternoon walk around the headland.

As usual I went off down to the end of the car park to have a look at what was happening on the beach.

There were actually a few people walking around on the beach this afternoon – one in the middle of the beach and a family over at the foot of the steps.

And they had a nice day for it too. It was warm again for the time of year and it was quite sunny too. Just the right kind of day to go for a look at the sea.

repairing medieval city walls place du marché aux chevaux Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022usually I go and look out to the sea as well but today I was rather distracted.

We’ve seen them working on the medieval city walls over at the Place du Marché aux Chevaux for the last few months and now they seem to have moved around the corner of the wall.

We can see that the protective netting has extended round to there so that would seem to indicate that the workmen have reached as far as there now.

There were several large and deep cracks in the wall just there so they will be quite a while working on that part.

And that reminds me of the time that a nasty crack appeared on the wall of 10 Downing Street, but workmen painted over it before Boris Johnson could read it.

fishing boat baie de Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022Despite the nice weather there weren’t too many people out and about on the path so I had it pretty much to my self.

Out at sea though, when I finally managed to focus myself on what was going on out there I could see that there were whole fleets of fishing boats out there heading back into the harbour.

The tide was still a fair way out so I don’t imagine that the harbour gates will be open yet so they will be all queueing up outside.

At the end of the headland there was a family peering into the old bunker and another one looking at the monument to the missing sailors, but that was about the lot so I carried on towards the harbour.

yacht tiberiade le roc a la mauve 3 chantier naval port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022Down at the chantier naval there’s been a change of occupancy yet again.

Le Roc A La Mauve III is still down there of course, with her paintwork a long way from being completed, and as for Tiberiade, her sanding down is still going on and her paintwork is a long way from even starting.

And we now have another boat in there too – a yacht without a mast. And the yellow prop on which she is sitting, I haven’t seen that one before.

While I was there I took the opportunity to have a good look at the stern of Tiberiade and sure enough, there are no fishing nets on board her that I can see.

thora port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022From the chantier naval I carried on down the path towards the inner harbour.

Yesterday we saw Thora moored at the loading bay and today she is still moored up there. I don’t think that she’s been out and back again in the time available.

While I was writing out these notes I had a look on the shipping radar. Thora doesn’t have an AIS detector so I can’t see where she is, but I did notice that Normandy Trader has now come into port.

That means that tomorrow when we go out for our walk we’ll probably find that the swimming pool that is on the quayside will have gone too.

ch932880 Calean sm735890 lysandre port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022A little earlier I mentioned that the tide was quite well out and so the fishing boats will be queueing up to come into port.

The little channel that they dredged out at the side of the fish processing plant a couple of years ago is filling rapidly and some of the smaller boats with a lighter draught are already there.

There are two that I can identify. CH932880 is called Calean and SM735890 is called Lysandre– The SM tells us that she is registered in St Malo.

As for the other two, I can’t tell who they are.

chausiaise port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo February 2022Over the past weekor two we’ve seen Joly France, Belle France and Chausiaise moored together down at the bottom end of the harbour.

Today though we can see that Chausiaise has now moved and she’s tied up where the two Channel Island ferries usually tie up. Those two are still in Cherbourg, presumably being overhauled ready to go back into service.

On the subject of going back, I went back home for my hot coffee, half of which I forgot (I didn’t fall asleep, by the way) and finished off listening to the radio programme that I’d prepared during the day. And after all that, it’s come out quite well.

Tea was something of a disaster. I really fancied some chips seeing as I didn’t have any in Belgium, and as the microwave fryer doesn’t work so well, I tried doing them in the oven. And they took about an hour and a half to do.

What I’ll have to do next time is to see if cooking them for five minutes in the microwave first will make any difference, or else buy some proper oven chips.

So today was a little better, for which I am grateful. If I show the same daily improvement over the next few days then by this time next year I might actually finish something off.

Perhaps a good night’s sleep will do me good.

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