Tag Archives: fruit buns

Monday 4th March 2024 – JUST LIKE OLD …

… times last night.

Yes – while I was in bed last night I was tossing and turning around all through the night, there’s plenty of diverse stuff on the dictaphone and I’ve not crashed out once.

And so I’ve no idea what I’ve done wrong – or right, as the case may be – but it’s certainly working. So make the most of it – carpe diem.

It wasn’t as if last night was an early night either. It was just one of the normal “God help me – I’m running late again” type of nights that I seem to be having right now, but eventually I hauled myself off into bed and to sleep – after a fashion, that is.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed again and went to check the blood pressure. 15.3/8.5 this morning compared to 15.5/10.0 last night. So not much difference there.

So eventually I managed to crawl off and and go for my medication.

The fruit buns that I had cooked yesterday were sufficiently cooled to go into the freezer. There’s enough in total for three or four weeks. What with that and my home-mode bread, I’m glad that I ordered some flour at the last delivery.

Having tidied up and put away most of the things in the kitchen I came back in here to make a start on the dictaphone notes – and to finish them after breakfast. Erik Dromore, a Norwegian, whoever he is but I don’t know him, who had come to live in Wales. He was very interested in cars when he was young. He had a car when he was only 14 which made all of us jealous. He had a lot of fun trying to insure it etc and was always being involved in Police interactions etc. He developed it so that it would split apart so that if he was stopped the part with him in it could escape leaving the other part behind as a kind of dummy that would be investigated and found to be nothing whatever of any importance. But it made all of us jealous that he had his own vehicle and we didn’t and he was that age.

Later on I also had a message from someone at school; asking me if I’d seen a certain girl. She was at school yesterday and should have been there today but wasn’t. I told them to speak to her brother because he’d known much more about her movements than I would. After all, it wasn’t as if the girl and I were actually being a lot involved or dong anything at this particular moment.

And that was a shame because I would have loved there to have been. She was a girl on whom I had quite a crush when I was at school but like most girls whom I knew, she had far more sense than to become entangled with me.

She went to University in Manchester after school and to my surprise we actually bumped into each other while I was living there. We went out on a couple of dates, much to my delight, but it was clear that h whatever interest she had was going in a different direction than mine and it was pointless trying to pursue it

That was definitely some kind of story, not of “what might have been” but more of “what would never ever be in a month of Sundays”. There I was, a long-haired rocker playing bass and singing in a reasonably successful pub-rock band, driving either an old J4 van or a Ford Transit that wasn’t much newer. Picture me in a three-bed semi in suburbia with a wife, 1.8 cars and 2.4 kids.

And then … being involved … "did you miss the front off this?" – ed … in all of this liquid that we had to collect – I did mention that, didn’t I … "no you didn’t" – ed … where there was a liquid that had been made with porridge and garlic, stuff like that poured into a great big vat and we had to collect it together as a team despite being attacked by balls of this liquid being thrown by other people? We had to collect 5 big bowls of it. That was our prize but the other teams were progressively trying to stop us. This was another occasion where it seemed that every time we made one step forward we ended up taking two steps backwards. We were really struggling until I found a huge bowl of this product that had come into my bedroom during the night. I’d no idea how or why but it actually matched the consistency and colour so I took it in and they counted it.

Now come on. You don’t really expect a dream to make any sense, do you? But it certainly sounds exciting. Maybe someone will invent a TV reality programme about it.

But I liked the bit about making a liquid. It reminds me of 1998 at Nottingham where a group of us from the University at Summer School successfully invented a liquid that dissolved absolutely everything with which it came in contact.

And then at the University Summer School at Norwich in 1999 (where I went with Annette, the young girl from Barbados) where we unsuccessfully tried to invent a container in which to store it.

After that we were on a motorway somewhere. There was someone on a motor bike who had had a joust with someone who had been going on the same carriageway as facing them as they tried to prevent us from going anywhere. In the end, after several attempts we managed to get under way. As we were under way I’d been talking to the boy who had joined us for the first time. he was telling us that his father was involved in this and he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. Several of us told him that it was a wrong decision because your father would be there continually criticising you and measuring you against things that he did. In the end we talked him into going into our business. He was an extremely good catcher. At the end of the day he finished with cutlery in and none of any other runs of cutlery that the other team was throwing at us. He managed to identify our things correctly, keep them with us and throw away the other things despite how many other things they threw at us and how quickly they did it.

Then some girl was living in a houseboat. She was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a singer. She had accepted the nomination and was busy rehearsing things with her father ready to go up and receive the award. She lived in a houseboat, so it appeared, and had ween another community so had sailed up the canal to this other community to make her home. She saw a plot of land with landing stage that hadn’t been occupied by anyone. She asked the land agent about it who confirmed that it was free. She spoke to the estate agents about buying it and was quoted £5002 which was a really good price so she bought it and introduced herself to her new neighbours and said something like she hoped that everything would go according to their plans, to which they replied “they certainly would as long as she was to keep the music down and keep her pets from going in all the adults’ waste materials in the barn

Finally there was some guy loitering around the entrance to one of the caves in LORD OF THE RINGS. He was hoping to see a young elf-girl and sure enough, she appeared. He told her that he was planning on buying a new dress for the ball that was taking place shortly and would she like to come? She agreed. She felt with her fingers and was able to write on him his size so that the girl in the clothes shop would know what size to buy without having to measure him. He rushed off to the dress shop. To his dismay the dress shop was closed for holidays until 16th July and the dance was taking place on the 2nd. Never mind – he went to the elf shop to pick up his elf-weapon but again, the elf shop was also closed until 10th July for holidays so he was really frustrated about this – nothing he wanted was going to be available. One of the elves then sent him off in an unusual direction where he encountered a German clothing specialist who was unable to sort him out but came up with a few suggestions. He also encountered an armourer who likewise gave him a few suggestions. He shot off to the orc workshop and found that that was undergoing some kind of building repair work but nevertheless they agreed to give him something.

In the past I’ve had plenty of people make all kinds of suggestions to me when I’ve been stuck for something or other. But many of them have been physically impossible and the rest have been far from helpful.

However, wouldn’t it be nice if I could find a nice young elf-maiden to take to a dance with me right now? Not that it would do me much good of course, except for my self-esteem, and that’s quite important. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I may not be able to walk the walk but I can certainly talk the talk.

And that reminds me of when I was going to a dance at the Grand Hotel in Oostende a few years back. I squeezed into a crowded lift and said "ballroom, please"
Another passenger in there said "I’m sorry – I’ll move in further"

There was a pause in the middle of all of that for my fruit bun and coffee. And I do have to say that the fruit buns were the best that I have ever made, especially warmed for 30 seconds in the microwave. I think that I have the hang of those now, and the diced dates make a nice difference too.

But while we’re on the subject of baking … "well, one of us is" – ed … I need to think about my hot cross buns. Check my recipe to make sure that I have everything because my next order from LeClerc might be my last before the cut-off date for baking.

My buns from last year were something of a failure because the dough didn’t rise. But at least they tasted like hot cross buns and that’s important.

For the rest of the day I’ve been dealing with the radio programme that I should have finished yesterday.

There were plenty of interruptions, including time out to have a really good wash and to bandage my ankle where I have this problem

Luckily I have plenty of sanitary dressings which is good news. They should help keep the wounds clean

And my chili hummus? Absolutely wicked. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no danger of any vampires ever coming around here with the amount of garlic that I use.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper and how I enjoy making these. With pasta and vegetables they are delicious.

There’s enough stuffing for a couple of days too. I want stuffing on Wednesday to put in a left-over curry to go with my naan bread. Now that I have divided the flour mix correctly into 6 portions of 90 grams instead of 9 portions of 60 grams, things on the naan front are going better

So having finished my notes, I’m off to bed where I’m hoping for another restless night with plenty of dreams about food.

And about Zero, Castor and TOTGA too. It’s been a little while since they have been around

But then like that character whose name I have forgotten in “An Item Of Cartography” – "Life is all one big huge joke. Nothing matters much except having a sense of humour"

Sunday 3rd March 2024 – I’M NOT TELLING …

… you what time I awoke today. It’s rather … errr … embarrassing.

And I’ve no idea either why it should have been what it was. I was in bed at 02:15 – a pretty reasonable time for a Saturday night/Sunday morning and I’d had plenty of sleep during the day too so I can’t have been all that tired.

There wasn’t much tossing and turning about during the night either. In fact I can’t remember moving at all while I was asleep.

The only thing that I can think is that I’ve had another one of those fits that I’ve been having just recently. But even then, I’ve been aware of my surroundings. This morning I was completely and utterly out of everything.

But we have to learn from lessons like this. You CAN teach an old dog new tricks and as of right now this minute, I shall be setting an alarm call for a Sunday. 11:00 might not sound particularly alarming for an alarm call for me, but it’s certainly a novel situation in which I find myself these days.

When I hauled myself out of bed I checked the blood pressure – 15.8/8.4, which is no surprise considering that my ears were steaming. Last night’s figure of 16.2/11.2 was due entirely to the frustration in having to track down some new batteries.

Why they can’t fit rechargeable batteries into machines like this is beyond me. My fitbit is rechargeable and even my kitchen scales will recharge off an USB port. How my life has changed since I’ve had my RECHARGEABLE KITCHEN SCALES and don’t have to scrabble around any more for batteries.

Once I’d done that I cleared off into the kitchen for my medication, and then I suppose that I’d better have breakfast, seeing what time it was – porridge, cheese on toast and hot black coffee – whilst I carried on reading some more of Sir Norman Lockyer’s THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY.

He’s the guy who came up with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were star-worshippers and that their temples and pyramids were located and orientated so as to catch the light of certain stars as they rose and set. And I suppose that Lockyer was over the moon when he worked that out.

But several thousand years further on from the Ancient Egyptians there’s still plenty of star worship that goes on these days. But they aren’t the kind of stars of which Lockyer was thinking.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes, such as they were. A propos l’acteur Davy Buell il a continué vers le Texas où il a travaillé pour un petit moment, entré dans une Ordre réligieuse et puis était acteur à la télévision et acté dans les filmes qui sont biens connus par la publique américaine.

Yes, that’s what I said – In French, which surprised me completely. “About the actor Davy Buell – he continued on towards Texas where he worked for a short while, entered a religious Order and then had been an actor on television and in films that were well-known to the American public”.

It’s not the first time that we’ve had dreams in French. There have been several in the past. We’ve also had dreams in Flemish, Welsh and in Spanish too.

Yes, Spanish. Apart from having several Spanish colleagues at work from whom I was able to pick up the kind of language that you’d never learn in class, while I was having my “year out” after work in 2004/05 I went on a Spanish class at the University down the road from where I was living in Jette

That was quite an enjoyable year and an enjoyable class. I met that nice Asian girl with whom I had something of a fling but I can’t believe it (well, I can, actually) – even as recently as those days I still encountered parents warning their girls about me, and the girls taking notice.

It seems that I am fated to go wandering through the universe encountering this kind of opposition until I myself turn into a star – but no Egyptian will ever erect a pyramid of temple to worship me.

But do you know why there are pyramids in Egypt?
It’s because they were too heavy to move to the British Museum.

That reminds me of the time that I was in Egypt visiting the Great Tomb of Seti, I was told by a tourist guide that it was 3,200 years 3 months and 16 days old
And so I asked him how come they could date the tomb so accurately.
He replied "when I started work here they told me that it was 3200 years old, and I’ve been working here 3 months and 16 days."

There was more on the dictaphone too. Did I dictate the dream that I had twice … "no you didn’t" – ed … about being in that house and there being some kind of machine that had to fit on me like a blood pressure sleeve that would hopefully make me feel better but was one that I found very difficult to actually fasten on with one hand. It took a great deal of doing yet in the end I managed to fasten it on. It seemed to support me enough for whatever it was that needed doing. I had this dream not once but twice, once after the other.

That’s obviously related to this meeting that I have on Tuesday when they are going to be talking to me about some “mechanical aids” or whatever to help me with my problems. I wonder what they are likely to be.

Having done that I made a start on the radio notes – editing some in order to prepare the next programme.

The stuff that I dictated last night is going into the bin by the way. Whatever I wrote last week was total rubbish and makes no sense at all. Not that much of my stuff ever does, but we have to pretend about it.

There is however some stuff in a kind-of backlog so I made a start on some of that.

Not for long though because I had some hummus and some fruit buns to make.

Fruit buns first, and no banana today so I had to use more water. But piles of dried fruit, crushed nuts, sunflower seeds, desiccated coconut and the like. It’s all good stuff, took an age to knead but it went together quite well and rose nicely too.

While it was rising I made my hummus. One batch with chilis and a second batch with olives – and the missing ingredient was almost blood as I had cut myself quite badly on the blade of the food processor.

There was pizza dough to roll out too for tonight’s tea. And being plain flour it did really well too.

So the pizza was delicious, the hummus looks (and tastes) excellent and the bread rolls look great. I had a really good afternoon in the kitchen.

Shame about the morning though, but I hope that an alarm call in the future will help in that situation.

Nevertheless, what a state to be in? I ought to be ashamed of myself. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can’t go on like this. It’s ridiculous

If I go on like this people will be calling me Rip van Eric and that’s not the reputation I want. Geoff Goddin called the volunteers behind the resurrection of the Talyllyn Railway as having a "Boy’s Own comic spirit of adventure, involving enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility" and that’s much more like my style of doing things.

As Tennyson put it, "my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars until I die" – which won’t be long a-coming but I’ll do what I can until then

Hence the alarm on a Sunday as of now. And about time too.

Tuesday 20th February 2024 – MY WELSH CLASS …

… passed surprisingly well today and I’ve no idea why.

It’s not as if I’ve done anything different at all. I’m still having no end of trouble trying to remember anything with this teflon brain that I have. And “teflon” because nothing seems to stick to it.

Homer Simpson is famous for saying "every time I learn something new, it pushes something old out". My problem is the opposite. I can sing you any kind of song lyrics from any kind of obscure rock song of the late 1960s but trying remember why I’ve just walked into the kitchen is something else entirely

So I have this brain, but nothing is sticking to it.

At least I can remember where my bed is. That would be a catastrophe if I couldn’t.

But I couldn’t remember to go to it at any kind of reasonable time. It was another depressingly late night and I have to stop doing it. I ought to be going to bed much earlier than I do.

Even though it was only a short night, it was a comfortable one without too much tossing and turning. When the alarm went off I was in our bedroom at Gainsborough Road checking on Nerina. She seemed to be fast asleep tucked up under the blankets so I whispered gently “I’m just going up for my lunch now” and turned to go. Just then the alarm went off. I thought to myself “it’s just typical, isn’t it? I’ve just made sure that Nerina’s nice and comfortable and now she’s going to be awoken by the alarm”.

However it was in fact mine in my bedroom, Billy Cotton shouting his WAKEY WA…..KEY! to half of the street and the people on the Ile de Chausey so I fell out of bed and checked my blood pressure. Only 15.4/9.6 this morning compared to 17.6/10.6 last night. Things are getting better.

There was a full house of medication this morning. I have all of the pills and tablets that I need for another few weeks, as well as four injections that my cleaner brought me yesterday. In fact I’m not really short of much at all right now so I fail to understand how my next LeClerc delivery next week is going to be over €60:00 and 33 items. I must be going all suburban these days instead of living the usual hand-to-mouth.

Back in here I had a listen to the rest of the dictaphone notes from the night. This was the story of Springsteen’s first album. It was a totally unexpected hit and how the leader of the group – it wasn’t Bruce Springsteen – was actually in the bath when the news broke. All of the reporters and journalists came his way but he didn’t understand what was going on either. When the reporters found out that it was Bruce Springsteen who had written them some of the journalists tried to interview him but he was ready with a quip about how his girlfriend had written one of the tracks but no-one wanted to talk to her. But they were all taken aback by the success. Springsteen related to the fact that none of them could actually speak the language that was being used. It was all a kind of elite grammar and pronunciation whereas Morse and his friends came from the back streets and spoke in a different fashion than Sprinsteen who had written most of the lyrics of the songs.

But this is really the Springsteen story. When Columbia Records fist saw him he was a solo artist playing his acoustic guitar and they immediately thought “the new Bob Dylan” and signed him up. When he turned up with all of this friends and their electric instruments Columbia Records was so disappointed and shunted him off to a studio out in the sticks

With no promotion his first couple of albums bombed but I remember back in the 70s seeing a television programme in which he was complaining about the lack of back-up. And then BORN TO RUN happened.

And although Springsteen’s then-girlfriend Karen Darvin didn’t write any of the lyrics, it’s been claimed that the song SHE’S THE ONE, one of my favourites and for obvious reasons too, refers to her.

"no matter where you sleep tonight or how far you run
Whoa – she’s the one, she’s the one"

Meanwhile back at the ran … errr … bed, an office trip had been proposed and various people were thinking of going but the organisation was completely chaotic. The person who had taken on the job had suddenly fallen ill. In the end they managed to complete something and have some people ready to go, so everyone was ready for the next weekend. In te meantime they’d proposed some kid of race and I took part in it. I just followed someone round until the last minute and then overtook them and went through the chequered flag but she came and berated me for not telling everyone about this office trip. I told her that I hadn’t organised it. When she asked who had, I gave her a list of people whom I knew, all of whom are off sick. “I don’t even know who’s going but I’m sure that you can find someone around the office who can give you the information and see whether there are any places left to go”.

And I suppose we’ll now have all the old jokes about the certain people who were so disappointed when they learned that that proposed “Office Outing” referred to a day trip at the races.

But the funniest thing that I knew about office trips was the person who proposed a day trip on Concorde (when Concorde was flying) to somewhere interesting at a price not unadjacent to several hundred pounds per head.

He collected all of the money and when all of the passengers turned up at the airport they found that no such trip had been arranged and their erstwhile colleague had disappeared with all the money.

That’s the kind of thinking that I appreciate. It’s certainly a most elaborate and novel way to hand in your notice.

Having dealt with the dictaphone notes I revised for my Welsh lesson for a couple of hours and then went to make some coffee. The bread and butter pudding went the Way of the West on Monday so we’re back on the fruit buns.

The bread and butter pudding was in some senses a big disappointment. I made it beautifully and it tasted really nice too, but nature overwhelmed it quicker than I could eat it. Even dividnng it up into weekly amounts didn’t work if, like this last lot, there was a day that overran a weekend for some reason.

So we had a really good lesson and for a change I finished on the podium during a class quiz. And that’s something that hasn’t ever happened before.

This afternoon I had a little relax without doing very much for a couple of hours, and then attacked the radio notes. I’ selected, paired off and joined up all of the music for the first one and even begun to dictate the notes for it.

And while I was at it I even began to choose the music for the following programme. And if I manage to do that and dictate both lots of notes I’ll be up to the end of October once I’ve edited and assembled the backlog.

Having a stock saved up for the future is a good plan, and for obvious reasons too. I intend to live on, long after I’ve gone.

So having sent off the programme for this weekend, I went and made tea. A taco roll with stuffing, with rice and veg.

As for my new mayonnaise, the taste is absolutely delicious but it’s too thick. I was hoping that it would pour out of the bottle but it’s even thicker than store-bought mayonnaise. Next time I’ll use more milk to make it thinner so that it’ll pour.

So while the mayonnaise isn’t exactly what I wanted, it’s certainly proper mayonnaise as mayonnaise is supposed to be, and I’m not going to be troubled by vampires while I have any of this around the place. I might have gone a little overboard with the garlic.

IN a few minutes I’ll be going to bed. Despite a few wobbles here and there I’ve kept on going all through the day so I’m quite tired. A good sleep will do me good because I have plenty to do. My hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche tells me that "at present there are such goings-on that everything is at a standstill" and that sounds about right.

But not that I have much hope of doing it. When PG Wodehouse used to write his novels he said that quite often "I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit".

In my case though, it’s a keyboard and I curse a lot.

Sunday 10th December 2023 – MY VEGAN CHRISTMAS CAKE …

… now has some icing on it.

It’s not exactly the prettiest Christmas cake that you’ll ever see, but it looks much more like a Christmas cake this year than the one that I made two years ago, which looked more like Quatermass’s Experiment.

A great big thanks to Liz who dived deep into her memory and came up with a recipe for vegan royal icing using chick pea liquid, which I just happened to have, having made some hummus the other day.

And to Sean too who suggested that I treat the icing as if I was plastering a wall and do it in several thin layers. But I have to be honest and say that it does look rather like my plastering efforts used to before I discovered the trick of using a lump of wood thoroughly soaked in water.

Also in the photo is the batch of fruit buns that I made this afternoon for the next couple of weeks, and don’t they look much better these days than they used to when I was just setting out with my baking experiments?

Last week I’d used the last of the pizza dough that I had in the freezer so I made another batch. 2 lumps are in the freezer and I used the third to make a pizza tonight, which you can also see in the photo.

All of that effort today has worn me out, which is no surprise seeing as I had another turbulent night.

Being a Saturday night I was in bed late and didn’t have a great deal of sleep. By 10:00 I was up and about having my medication.

First thing that I did afterwards was to transcribe the piles of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We started off with a Paul Temple mystery but no sooner had it started than my feet became tangled with each other and the elastic strap that I wear around my ankles. I awoke rather suddenly and quickly before anything had happened

Then there was a series of car races. One of the competitors found himself in hot water because his car had been mis-described. It had been described as one particular model when in fact it was a different one that was 10cm longer so maybe more powerful. This caused quite an uproar with various people commenting on how such a thing like this shouldn’t ever arise, how important it is for the correct details to be presented and what they would do in similar kinds of circumstances etc.

Later on I was up to my ears in work. It was about 04:00. The specimens had to go to the laboratory and normally I would take them but at the moment a girl was going to take them. She’d be here at any time. As well as having everything out I had pastry half-rolled out on a laboratory desk etc. I was generally thinking that I’d be hours late. She turned up. Today’s subject was a red pepper. It took me ages to find a pen and some kind of ad-hoc envelope in which to fit it. Then I had to tell her about the other things that needed doing, for example, when you are sending in blood tests of families, if there are more than 2 children you have to send in the blood tests of at least 2 of them and not distinguish whether they were masculine or feminine children. This list went on for hours. In the end all I could find was some kind of paper pochette in which to put the red pepper. I imagined that by the time she organises herself with this and whatever else she has to do, the laboratory will have closed at 04:00 and that would have been it. She’d have been too late.

There was also some story about a really expensive diamond. It begins in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan when the Khan gave the diamond to his daughter. Following the invasion by the Russian colonialists in the 19th Century it was lost. It turned up later in a European auction house in comparatively modern times. On one instance it fell into my hands. I had the task of not only trying to keep it safe from marauding pillagers but to make sure that it was handed back to the current Government of Kyrgyzstan. I was beset by all kinds of perils etc in an effort to move this stone to where it ought to go. I was really like something out of a James Bond novel. Unfortunately in the middle of dictating the notes I awoke and the whole lot of everything that was left evaporated away out of my head.

Did I dictate the dream about the precious stone from Kyrgyzstan? … "yes you did" – ed … but I fell asleep after I’d dictated it and had a visit from a couple of people who were looking for the stone. I set a trap for them, caught them and began to interrogate them about what they’d been doing, who they were doing it for and the reasons why they were here etc.

And later still I was taking my exam for my French citizenship. I came to the part about different Provinces, different peoples, different lifestyles. Of course I ended up writing reams of stuff about it, most of which was totally unnecessary for the article. With Cécile we’d created some kind of life as a couple living in her house. That was something comparatively new for me but as usual, most of the stuff that I wrote was pages and pages long and gave no advice to anyone really (just like what I used to write for our old “Radio Anglais” programmes). And then I awoke.

There was a story about medals in World War II. One particular medal was illustrated by 2 brothers who flew for the RAF as night fighter crew during the opening period of the Blitz in a 2-seater Defiant. They were on their way to Buckingham Palace to receive their medals before flying home to Ireland at the end of their engagement. Something happened to the ‘plane and they both baled out … "as is any rear gunner could ever bale out of a Defiant. It’s practically impossible" – ed. One of them, his ‘chute failed to open correctly and he was killed when he hit the ground. His parachute ripped on a tree and you could still see a morsel of parachute in the tree if you were to look carefully. The second brother, his parachute opened but he fell into the sea and was drowned before he could be rescued.

Finally we were working in the stores, bringing out piles of stuff for a huge project that was taking place. Suddenly, halfway through, we had word that the project was cancelled. It was coming up to weekend and everything needed to be put back, which meant that we would be hours late going home. My partner and I shrugged our shoulders and made a start. The other people in the building, including Jon Pertwee and the girl attached to him, didn’t seem to want to start, being too busy messing around and teasing each other. I knew exactly what would happen – the moment that I finished packing away my things I’d be called into putting away their things. I decided that I’d slow down to a crawl. The conversation carried on about all the bad habits of Pertwee and how this girl had even brought him a cup of coffee in bed once at 08:00. He’d given her a kiss that had upset her but she took it in her stride. Nothing whatever was being put away. People began to remark about Pertwee preparing things for his own tidying-up at the weekend. I had a look and there were tons of wires and cables etc out on my side of the warehouse lying around here. If they disappeared overnight I’d be the one who’d be in trouble. While it was very interesting and enlightening listening to all this banter that was going on, I was beginning to have a few serious misgivings about things that were happening and things that would be happening. It didn’t look at all healthy to me.

With all of that going on I must really stop listening to the Navy Lark on Old-Time Radio before going to bed.

After lunch I made a start on the radio programme, the notes for which I dictated before going to bed. And I’m right – I AM losing the co-ordination between my eyes, my brain and my mouth. I suppose that as this cancer marches on through my body, more and more things like this will happen.

Halfway through, I knocked off for a while and went to the kitchen for my baking session.

There’s no doubt whatever that my new FOOD PROCESSOR really is the business. It’s also nice to have a set of reliable kitchen scales, which made life so much easier too.

Even though the bearings burned out on the grinder on the old whizzer set that I had, the rest of it still works and it whipped up the chick pea juice and icing perfectly. Having the correct equipment really does make life so much easier.

For almost four hours I’d been on my feet working without a break. At about 19:00 I sat down for the first time and by 19:01 I was well away with the fairies.

The vegan pizza was delicious as usual, and so now that I’ve finished my notes I’ll check my cake again, have a nice hot drink and then go to bed.

Tomorrow I have to tidy up as the ergotherapist is coming round. Mind you, if she sees me living in chaos and disorder it might be a good thing because it might mean that I’ll qualify for more assistance.

Actually, I’m trying to avoid having any extra help. Past experience shows that if people start to let themselves go, they keep on going. I’m intending to keep on fighting and do as much for myself as I possibly can.

My autonomy is quite important and I want to hang onto it. I’m not quite ready yet to be helped into my grave by anyone.

Sunday 12th November 2023 – AND THERE I WAS …

… planning on a nice relaxing day today with very little, if anything, to do. But as usual, all kinds of events come along to confound me.

What didn’t help was that it wasn’t until 11:42 this morning that I first noticed what time it was. And that is far from being the same as saying what time it was that I actually arose from the dead.

And if things start badly, things can only be worse. You should see the amount of stuff on the dictaphone from during the night. I must have travelled miles and that probably explains why I was so exhausted yet again once I arose.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails I sat down and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

All of them.

There had been a storm or fire or both or something in the big house in which we lived altogether and it had been badly damaged. There was a lot of repair work needed to be done to it. At the moment it was a question of trying to secure the premises against anything worse happening. We were basically divided into shifts and rotas about how to look after the property. I had to stand there on patrol at one point to keep away any onlookers or anyone who might be there for some kind of nefarious purposes. There was a lot of paperwork that had burnt and was blowing around. While I was standing there looking at it a few more bits fell from the ceiling to the ground. I was supposed at this point to go on patrol around the area to see who was about but I had a lot of difficulty walking and I’d be of no use if I had to confront anyone so I decided to let other people do that. When I walked round the corner there on the field even though it was raining were a few of my housemates playing cricket. One of them shouted “go and put the kettle on, Eric” but of course it was going to be extremely difficult because of the fire and the damage and because of my difficulties. In the end he left the cricket field and wandered off somewhere as if he was going to do it.

At some point there was a question of another young girl of woman being involved in this. When we finally met her we found that she was just as handicapped as I am so obviously she couldn’t stand her patrol looking after the building and patrolling the area for a couple of days. We felt that we should have known about her handicap beforehand otherwise we could have made certain allowances for her but now things are under way and already happening it’s rather too late now for that.

It was the custom of the hospital to send several patients dressed up as Father Christmas, his helpers and his reindeer to go and collect money for charitable purposes. This year though they decided that instead of making a sleigh they would do it with a motorbike and sidecar. They asked me if I would like to go but I couldn’t really get in and out of the sidecar very easily so that would seem to rule that out. Then they were having a lot of difficulty trying to think of someone else. I thought to myself that if I’d known that I was expected to do this sort of thing along with everyone else I’d have thought twice about coming here.

And that was another dream that I actually dictated in French.

Then there was someone in our group with a name something like Awotni but when we had a list of members we couldn’t see anyone who corresponded to that. I made some kind of light-hearted remark about Polish family names which was immediately greeted with distaste by some members of the group. Then I remembered thinking that maybe if this person had been treated for a long time he shouldn’t be in our group anyway or maybe the group isn’t the correct place for them to be because this group that I’m in is about everyone being able to do every different thing.

There was also a girl put into our group who didn’t seem to be capable of doing very much. We didn’t think much of that idea because we were all trying to be as equal as possible and doing as many tasks as we could. We didn’t really want anyone who didn’t have the courage to follow it all through. This person seemed to be treating it just as a way of relaxing than a matter of life and death like the rest of us thought that it was. We didn’t appreciate that kind of levity at these serious moments.

“I wish that you’d store your accessories and introduce them into the discussions as appropriate” we said to someone who seemed to be much more able to move about than the rest of us but who didn’t seem to work as hard. We considered that due to the health that everyone put in we ought to be doing so much more and there should be so much more solidarity amongst the patients.

Zero put in an appearance last night. Her father was talking about a Christmas dinner that he’d made and how she’d sat down from the start and eaten absolutely everything put in front of her, all the way through to the Christmas pudding. He was ever so impressed that she’d managed to take all of it. It was the way that he said it that made me think of some kind of double-entendre and to my complete surprise, in the middle of this dream I had an immense fit of jealousy.

It actually reminded me of the girl who went into a pub and asked for a double-entendre so the barman gave her one.

But it was a real surprise, as I could tell from how I dictated it. But at least after talking about Christmas food yesterday, it’s made me focus on what I need to do for Christmas. So Liz – I shall be relying on you to tell me when to start to make my cake to make sure that I don’t leave it too late.

And I’ll make sure that it’s squirrelled away so that Zero can’t find it. As Liz will tell you, I don’t “do” sharing when it comes to cake. However, if Zero (or TOTGA, or Castor) were here, I might be persuaded to make an exception.

My friends from the Wirral came to see me last night. We were talking about all the old times etc. In the end we had to go out to do something. And the wife had a pushchair with one of her kids in it. While I was eating my meal I’d seen a photo and I was trying for ages to place this photo. It suddenly occurred to me that it was the old petrol station in Hungerford Road (of course there never was a petrol station there). I eventually worked out where this photo was and decided that we had to go. There was a big problem about 2 of my cars that needed moving around, some kind of question about them having no tax, no MoT, all Cortima MkIIIs. I needed to move them from where they were stored. We had a huge debate about which one we should move first and which should be moved second. I wasn’t even sure to where I was going to move them. In the end my friend asked me about driving – how come the Senator was the only big vehicle that I had these days. I replied “actually I can’t drive any more anyway so there’s no point having a car. If I am able to drive in the near future it won’t be in professional transport so I won’t need a big car”. We then went back to discussing in which order we were going to move these 2 MkIII Cortinas.

And that’s a recurring dream, isn’t it? Having cars scattered all over the place with no tax or MoT which need to be moved around.

I was in Crewe again last night and had gone to a petrol station. I bumped into a guy … "Lee Jenkins" – ed … whom I knew who played centre-half for Haverfordwest. We began to talk about vehicles and how he’d bought a MkIII Cortina once and when he’d come to sell it he had over £1000 for it. I pointed to mine and said “do you mean like this?”. I was in my gold MkIII estate, the one in the barn in Virlet. His eyes lit up and he said “wow! It’s great!” and went to have a really good look around it. He asked if he could take it for a drive but I had to decline. He said “you’re probably afraid that I’d never bring it back!”. I replied “something like that”. I told him all about the vehicle, one owner from new, guaranteed genuine mileage etc, We had quite a lengthy chat about it.

And “wow” he may well say. Cortina MkIII 2000E models were pretty rare on the ground when they were new and current, but in my atelier in Montaigut is a 2000E saloon and the gold MkIII estate in my barn in Virlet is a 2000E estate of which there are known to be no more than half a dozen still in existence and which is worth a King’s ransom.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I was at work in Belgium. I’d gone out for a coffee break, to stand outside. While I was out there a girl came up and began to attack me, trying to push me into the lake. After I’d fought her off I went into the security hut. The guy there made me a coffee. We had a little chat about how crazy some people are in this building. I had to go to fetch something from my car. On the way back I met a Post Office girl trying to talk to a cat. It turned out that cats received telegrams. You had to give the telegram to the correct cat, not just to any cat. They were trying to train the cats to accept the telegrams which I thought was the strangest thing that I’d ever seen. I walked back down to the front door of the building, pressed the button for the sliding doors to open but nothing happened. I could hear people on the inside but no matter how I pressed the button I couldn’t make the sliding doors open so that I could go in. I thought “this is good, isn’t it? I’m locked outside the building now”.

What with stopping for lunch, it took me until about 15:00 to transcribe all of that – and it might have been done quicker had I not … errr … gone off with the fairies for a while.

Then I went to make my fruit bread. I took my time making the dough and it actually turned out quite well.

After I’d finished my lunch I’d taken the last of the pizza dough out of the freezer (so I’ll have to make some more next weekend) and it had been defrosting.

Just as I was going to deal with it Rosemary rang me for a chat and we had another one of our marathon sessions. She’s rather worried because she has a major operation shortly (which I why she couldn’t have come with me to Michigan) and she wants someone to either reassure her or to talk her out of it.

She talked about her operation at great length and in great detail, despite me telling her on several occasions not to. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly how I feel about operations and surgery.

But it’s not likely that I’m going to talk anyone out of surgery. No matter how ill even the thought of it makes me feel, I’m a firm believer in the principle of Macbeth and the murder of Duncan “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly”.

It’s much more painful to spend all of this time worrying and postponing it rather than to have it done quickly.

When they operated on my kidneys they didn’t even tell me. They just took me, bed and all, down into the basement, stuck a mask over my face and said “here – smell this!”. And that was the last that I knew about it.

As a result everything was running really late. But the fruit bread is, for once, cooked to perfection and the pizza was pretty good too.

So I’ll wander off and have a good sleep. For a change, there’s nothing happening tomorrow so I can push on with a few things without any interruptions.

Well, such is the theory. We all know how it works in practice.

Sunday 8th October 2023 – SO MUCH FOR MY …

… lie-in this morning. I was actually up and about by 09:30 this morning.

What’s even more surprising about that was that I didn’t go to bed until after 02:00 this morning. 7.5 hours isn’t all that much sleep on a weekday, but on a Sunday morning it’s quite depressing.

However, I should have been in bed a long time before 02:00. Once I’d finished what I was doing I began to dictate the notes for the 4 radio programmes that I have in the pipeline. And I won’t be doing that again.

Four programmes one after the other is too much to dictate in one session. Firstly, my throat was cracking up by the end of it and secondly, I was too tired to concentrate and I was making all kinds of mistakes.

So once I was up and about, I had my medication and then checked my mails and messages. And once everything was ready and I wound myself up, I began to edit the notes for one of the programmes.

After I’d finished making the programme I went and had lunch. And then I had a go at having a shower.

Earlier on in the morning I’d had a try at climbing into the bath and it seemed that I managed to do it, after quite a struggle. And so I bit the bullet and … errr … took the plunge.

Climbing in was one thing. Climbing out was something else completely but I finally managed it, and it wasn’t as difficult as it had been on Wednesday.

It’s still not much good though and I need to do something about it.

Strangely enough, after my shower I crashed out on the chair for a while and once I’d come back round into the Land of the Living, I went and did some baking. Now I have a pile of pizza dough and a large batch of fruit buns that will last me for the next few weeks.

While it was all busy proofing I had a listen to the dictaphone notes from the night to see where I’d been. I was walking through Nantwich with my doctor, going down Hospital Street. He was explaining to me what he wanted me to do over the next few weeks and next period of time. I asked him about different kinds of things for walking. He said that I needn’t do so much but that was not the point because I wasn’t supposed to be walking anyway. Obviously I still had to live and do my things. I asked about maybe having a bicycle. He said that it was clearly impractical and one or two other things like that. He suggested that we wait until the end of this current series of prescriptions before we decide on what we are going to do and where we are going to go, any more than we are at the moment. It would give us time to reflect and to find out what the alternatives are. I was quite disappointed but he was the guy in charge so we carried on walking down Hospital Street talking about nothing in particular.

And then I was in hospital last night. I was in one of the rooms where they sort out the stuff that arrives from other sections of the hospital. The first thing that came was a huge box on wheels full of all kinds of different bits and pieces that they were sorting out to send off to whoever needed it. The other one was wheeled in – something on four wheels with a handle at one end, wheeled in by a private soldier. It had on it “this is the box that Jimmy Fallon told us to prefer but we forgot”. There was a nurse there who had some kind of machine that was supposed to help people prepare for a bath. I’d tried to use it last time but for some reason the nurse muscled me out of it. I was determined to take my place in the queue and have a shower however the nurse in charge said “I have something special for you – something that I meant to give you last time”. She produced another weird kind of machine. She then asked me what I was doing in this queue. I told her, and she said basically that I have to forget about that for now because this other job has cropped up. I can see that I’m never going to be able to have this shower, am I?

Later on I was in a second-hand record and video shop with a few people last night. We were discussing certain films, books and the new copyright regulations. I mentioned HARRY POTTER AND THE DEADY HALLOWS which for some reason, was only available from one particular source, the official source of the copyright holder. You couldn’t buy it on Amazon or anywhere like that. When they tightened up the copyright laws, they decided that they didn’t have the right, even though they were the copyright holders, to sell this film so they stopped selling it with the result that there was no legitimate of buying the film anywhere. People were coming up with all kinds of ideas about how to make sure that you had a copy, like borrowing one and taping it etc. While this discussion was going on I walked out and went across the road. My niece had been talking to someone on the ‘phone about insurance, saying how much she’d had to pay just for her vehicle and my vehicle for a weekend to go somewhere to do something special. It was cheaper to have an annual premium anywhere else. I thought that I’d be over here in this other shop for when she decides to come out, but I hope that there will be some kind of organisation about a meal as I have no money on me at the moment.

Finally, I was with a French – or European – girl, it might have been Cecile or Laurence. We were supposed to be going out somewhere but she was in the kitchen cooking. I went in to ask her what she was making and to remind her that we needed to hurry. She said that she was making a meal of some description with beef, or, at least, she said that she would if she had some English sugar. I bent down, opened a cupboard, took out a packet and dumped it on the table. “Is this what you need?”. She laughed and I gave her the sugar. I gave her a tin in which I keep the sugar and said “when you’ve opened the bag can you pour the rest in here?” which she thought was strange because the tin wasn’t all that clean. When she’d finished everything I had to pour it into a plastic bag but ended up missing my aim with half the contents down the outside of the bag and all over my hand which was scalding to death so I put it quickly into some cold water. I had on my watch too so I ended up with my watch in the water.

My pizza tonight was excellent once more and it would have been one of the best ever had I not dropped a spoonful of oregano onto one corner of it.

But now that that’s all done and my notes are written, I’ll go back to preparing my on-line order for later on in the week. But I’ll be struggling to make it up to €50:00 because a lot of stuff that I usually buy isn’t available on delivery. The vegan range is particularly devastated and the vegan cheese isn’t there. That’s a tragedy.

But I’ll have to do the best I can and hope that one of these days I’ll be able to sort something out. I must admit that I did miss my little trip out to the shops.

Sunday 27th August 2023 – TODAY I HAVE …

… emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

As usual, on a Saturday night, I was late going to bed. It doesn’t make much of a difference really on a Saturday if I’m having a lie-in on a Sunday. But this morning I kept on waking up and by 10:00 I’d given up comple tely the whole idea of going back to sleep.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, being up and about is one thing. Being wide awake, fighting fit and raring to go is something else completely and I didn’t even have the energy to go and take my medication for quite a while.

After my midday cereal and cheese on toast I made a start on the next batch of fruit bread. It’s basically a load of bread buns but with all kinds of things in it like ground-up brazil nuts, mashed banana, desiccated coconut, sultanas, almonds, sunflower seeds and anything else that’s lying around.

It takes quite a lot of kneading but when it all goes together it makes a really nice dough.

While I was waiting for the dough to proof, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was back in the good old days of OUSA again. A few of us were hanging around together. For some reason I came across an absolutely enormous pile of money, notes, that could have been worth a fortune, and some letters which on the face of it had been written by one of our group. I didn’t know what to do with these things – I didn’t want to return them to the person to whom I thought they belonged because he’d want to know how I’d managed to find them. So there I was with this huge pile of money in my hand and someone noticed it – the girlfriend of the guy concerned. She asked me from where all this stuff had come. I replied that I didn’t know. I’d just come across it while I was doing some clearing up. I was as confused as everyone else about from where all this had come. She immediately took possession of it and came across the letters that had been written. She immediately associated them with her boyfriend, as I did and anyone else would have done too. She accosted him. At first this led to some very unpleasant minutes but then when she was reading some bits out of these letters to him there was a mention about going to the Eisteddfod. That rang a bell with me because when the Eisteddfod was on that year we were all at the students’ Annual General Meeting so I said “it can’t possibly have been him because he wasn’t at the Eisteddfod but at the Annual meeting”. Then I remembered that I actually had photographs of him speaking from the stage with the backdrop etc making it perfectly clear that we were there. I could remember talking about the Eisteddfod at the meeting so I went to find my information. At first I thought that it was this guy playing fast and loose with someone else but when I remembered talking about the Eisteddfod it couldn’t possibly have been him so I’d no idea what this was about at all.

And then I was in Edleston Road in Crewe, by the Imperial. My youngest sister and her husband were there. He was riding around on what looked like an old moped or something. One thing that we noticed was that in the street were a load of people going past on some of the weirdest pushbikes you’d ever seen, all kinds of strange, ridiculous equipment. One or two of them were totally unable to ride and kept on falling off, making fools of themselves. We wondered what was going on. It turned out that somewhere in town was a display of unusual cycles. At that point I happened to look at the moped thing that my brother in law was riding. It had a strange number-plate on it that I didn’t recognise. I asked him about it. He said that it was his father’s old bike, an old Rover from 1964 and there’s only 20-odd miles on the clock. he was trying to sell it but had no idea of what it was worth but it must be worth thousands. I asked him if I could look at it, which surprised him but eventually he let me have a look. It was something similar to an old Triumph Tiger Cub or something. I thought that I’d like to go for a ride on this but then firstly I couldn’t afford the kind of price that ha was thinking of asking for it and secondly a bike like this doesn’t belong on the road but in a museum. It shouldn’t be run about any old how, spoiling its value by running up the miles on it.

Later on there was another group of us this time having a chat. One of us was talking about programs on the computer, saying that there were some programs that link the computer up to the internet without you even knowing about it and anything could be happening. You could be downloading files from there or your own personal files could be uploaded to the internet and anyone could then really have a look at them. This sounded interesting so I was hoping that he’d say some more about it but as usual in this crowd he had quite a few girls and was more interested in seeing the girls that I was. But at that point I fell asleep.

Well, what I mean is that I’m always asleep when I dictate my notes but what does happen sometimes is that my dictating just tails off into nothingness and occasionally I begin to snore or, like last night, I dropped the dictaphone and it fell on my head.

Finally I was out in the countryside last night somewhere in North Shropshire. I had to take a little girl to school but there was really thick fog so you couldn’t actually see anything. We piled into the van anyway and set off, doing our best in this freezing fog. Gradually as we came to the tops of hills we could see that the tops were clear. When we reached the top of the hills we could see that there was a couple of other people with children walking that way. It was so dangerous to try to go past them that we ended up at walking pace behind them. It wasn’t until they’d stopped to look at something in the hedgerow that we could actually go past and drive on. We then came in to Whitchurch. The first thing that we noticed was a huge supermarket at a place called Crewe Square by a roundabout where the by-pass was, around Whitchurch. But this was nowhere that I recognised at all. We continued and found ourselves going down the hill past the old Grammar School into the town. I was really bewildered as to how I’d actually managed to come this way because it was a really strange way to come. I really couldn’t understand the route that I’d taken.

That wasn’t everything either, but you really don’t want to know about the rest, especially if you are eating your meal or something.

And at some point during the night I was definitely joined by Nerina, my friend from Congleton and also by Zero for a brief moment. It seems that I’m quite popular just at present.

While the fruit buns were baking I assembled my pizza. I’d taken some frozen dough out of the freezer earlier on and it had been defrosting during the afternoon. I’d rolled it out a while back and had left it to proof so I assembled it while I was waiting for the fruit buns.

Once again, it was an excellent pizza. This cheese that I can buy now seems to be doing the job and the cherry tomatoes that I cut in half and stick right on top of everything add the finishing touch

Tomorrow I’m going to have to start to gather up my paperwork ready for Wednesday and to order some stuff off the internet, like my new course book for the forthcoming year. High time that I organised myself.

After all, I’m not going to be here on Wednesday and I hope that, if I have the results that I would like to have, I won’t be here for a while either while they hack me to bits.

But I can’t see that happening very much. It’s not as if it will make much of a difference. As soon as they sort one thing out, something else goes wrong. I’m getting to the stage where I’m afraid to go to the toilet these days in case something else drops off.

Sunday 6th August 2023 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today but despite not having gone to bed until about 01:00 I was wide-awake at 08:45 this morning.

And not being able to go back to sleep, I was up and about by 09:30.

Imagine that happening on a Sunday. It’s not like me at all, is it?

Even more bizarrely, I didn’t crash out at all today. From that point of view, it was a really good day.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night, as I found out later on in the morning. I was back living in Shavington. I was in my bedroom when my telephone beeped to say that it had received a message. I didn’t pay any attention for a couple of minutes. Then I went to look. It was from my friend in Munich saying “I’m here”. I looked at the previous message which was something about him coming round. I stuck my head out of the bedroom window. I could see an olive-green W123 Mercedes saloon down on the street. I put my hand out to wave. He put his hand out of his car and waved so I went downstairs to open the door to let him in and make a coffee

Then we had a small kitten biting the arm of a big man. The mother of the kitten came up and took it away and jumped down to the floor with it.

Did I dictate the one that I was somewhere or other? … “no you didn’t” – ed …. There was a pub nearby. One of the guys came out and began to intimidate one of my employees. I went into the pub to find out who it was. He was the bodyguard of some well-known local hood or similar. I went over to him and told him in no uncertain terms to leave my staff alone. His response was to ask me what I was going to do about it. In response I came out with some kind of date like 19th August 2015 – a date that I’d picked randomly from nowhere. I said “I know all about that date and so will the police if you keep on threatening my employees”. It obviously struck a chord with him because he sat down and kept quiet after that. I’d love to know what happened on that particular date that I’d picked at random.

Did I dictate the dream where I had a little corner of a workshop garage somewhere? … “And you didn’t dictate this one either” – ed …I went there one day after work and spend a few minutes in the sink as soon as I arrived cleaning some potatoes and a plate. While they were around there, the people who owned it, their boy came over to talk to me. We chatted about this and that. he wasn’t so young – he was a teenager. I went and found some bread but it was quite rubbish. Some more people came in, sat down next to me and began to eat. I put a slice of bread in the toaster to toast so that I could eat it while I was making cheese on toast with beans and mashed potato. I had to scavenge around for the food and it all looked quite depressing. It had seen much better days. The place was absolutely filthy. I don’t know how I managed to keep it clean. Oil and dust etc everywhere.

Did I dictate the one about the hotel fire? … “not this one either as well” – ed …I was in my hotel room doing something. Something caught alight. I just sat there watching the fire spread and spread until suddenly I realised that everyone else would notice it as well and would wonder why I didn’t call the alarm. I pressed the alarm button and began to dress. At least I wanted to be dressed and have STRAWBERRY MOOSE with me but the fire spread so quickly that I was soon overwhelmed. I could hear everyone in the corridor panicking around after I’d pressed the button but I was still trying my best to dress in the middle of this huge conflagration.

Later on I’d picked up a train somewhere in the Balkans. I’d only booked on for a couple of stops. It was a slow, rambling train that went just about everywhere. I ended up being wedged into a compartment with a bunch of 7 or 8 girls. They were all speaking in a variety of languages so they ended up speaking English together. They seemed to be really interesting people. The train rattled on. In the end I decided that I didn’t want to alight but stay on and listen to all the conversation. Eventually I asked one of the girls where the train went to. She mentioned some small town in some obscure corner of the Balkans up Macedonia, Kosovo or Albania way. I asked where it came from. She told me some other small town way down in the south. She said “you’ll have a lot of trouble finding a place to stay at the destination you choose when the train ends because the authorities there aren’t very well disposed to foreigners. I can’t even take you home to lodge at my house for the night because everyone will ask questions”. Then she mentioned that somehow there is somewhere where I might have a room. I suddenly found myself involved in this deep conversation with this girl. All the other girls there were chatting away quite happily. I began to think that this was probably one of the most enjoyable train journeys that I’ve ever had, wedged in this crowded train with no food, not ticket, nothing. For some reason this trip felt as if it was something that I really ought to do. I was really disappointed when I found out that this was only a dream

My walk took me to another place where there was a 5-star hotel. I went in and managed to book a room very well known for very suspicious foreigners. It was in this room that the fire began. A little spark, and within 30 seconds there was a raging inferno. I had to press the fire button … fell asleep here …

Well, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I say that I fell asleep, I’m actually asleep while I’m dictating. I have this thing off to a fine art. But what actually happens is that suddenly everything on the dictaphone goes silent and then a few seconds later you can hear me snoring.

So my apologies to Percy Penguin (who doesn’t appear in these pages half as often as she deserves) for doubting her word.

For the rest of the day I’ve been dealing firstly with a couple of radio programmes.

Having dictated the notes for two radio programmes last night just before going to bed, I worked my way right through them and ended up with two completed programmes. So that’s something else out of the way.

Secondly, I made a big batch of fruit buns for the next couple of weeks. They look quite good too and I’ll tell you tomorrow what they are like.

Tonight’s pizza was another candidate for the best one ever. What helped, I reckon, was that the oven was stinking hot, having just been baking the fruit buns. It really did come out well.

Tomorrow is the start of my three-week Welsh crash course. I need to knuckle down and do some serious work and stop letting things slip away from me like this all the time.

What I need is another day like today, although that’s probably a bit too much to expect. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

Sunday 16th July 2023 – IF I EVER LAY …

… my hands on whoever rang my doorbell at 07:09 this morning they won’t ever do it again. I can’t even imagine why anyone would want to do that.

There I was, in the middle of an interesting dream too. That’s what was so disappointing about it all.

Even worse, I hadn’t gone to bed until late. After I’d finished my notes I dictated the dictaphone notes for the next radio programme and then loitered around for a while trying to tire myself out. It’s not easy to be tired when you’ve spent most of the afternoon fast asleep.

Regardless of the rude awakening I managed to go back to sleep again and it was a much more realistic and reasonable 10:30 when I finally saw the light of day.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise we were going through talking about people and describing people -in Welsh. I was describing someone and somehow I made them to be 500 years old. Someone asked me if that was what I really meant. Then someone rang the doorbell of the apartment so I awoke at that point.

Later on I was with my friend from Holywell in North Wales. We were in a city somewhere. She had a list of places to visit to do various thinks like pay her taxes etc. I took her to a place where she could see every building. I pointed them out to her one by one but she must have been confused. When she saw that the Rates Office was a ruin she had a panic attack. In the end I took hold of her and brought her down to the rates Office. I helped her through the rubble and steps. There was a young guy there who made a few light-hearted comments about his building. My friend began to thaw. I told him that I thought that the building was magnificent but that my wife didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t realise that I’d said it until I said it. I expected her to throw a fit on hearing that but she didn’t. In the end we organised her rate payments for her then I set out to take her to the next building on the list. I thought that if I go with her to all of them it’ll be dome much quicker than her standing on a street corner panicking.

Actually, a similar thing happened to me when I went with Marianne to Rome. She didn’t speak Italian so it made no difference when I referred to her as mia moglia to whoever we met, but I was talking to an Indian guy and forgot myself so much as to mention “My Wife” to him.

And then there was the time that I took my Greek friend to the airport in Brussels. Standing by the gate seeing her off and she was telling me “make sure you eat decent meals” and stuff like that, and a woman standing behind her said to her “that’s right – we have to make sure that our husbands look after themselves when we aren’t there”

She was another lovely girl whom I liked very much and I even went to learn some Greek so that I could speak to her family, but she was another one who had far too much sense to be involved with me

Meanwhile, back at the ran …errr … bed I went back to a ship carrying my duffle bag and a pile of other stuff. I met a girl who was going in the same direction so we walked together for a while. We came to the traffic lights to cross the road into the port. She said that she was just going to run across regardless of traffic. I explained that that was rather a strange thing to do because for a start I was heavily laden down and I wouldn’t be able to cross. We waited for the lights. I told her that they change quickly so we couldn’t dawdle but we crossed with plenty of time to spare and walked down to the docks. We ended up on a cliff top quite high up looking at the sea. There was a large group of us there waiting for the ship. We could see all the way up and down the coast. The tide was well in and the promenade was under water but there was no sign of the ship. She began to organise the passengers. Someone asked “how come you’re doing that,” She said “I’m going to see the Captain about having this job”. They laughed and said that that would be most unlikely. She reminded them that someone had been taken on to do a job simply because he’d enjoyed doing it before he’d been appointed. I said “it seems to be the only qualification around here”. That made everyone laugh. But we were up there on this cliff in the dark. We couldn’t see our ship at all the entire way up and down the coast. We began to wonder what on earth had happened to it

Much of the rest of the day has been spent in a desultory kind of fashion making a radio programme and that’s all now finished, up and running and ready to go sometime at the start of next year.

There was some time off to make some fruit buns. And they actually came out really well which is a nice surprise. I’ve not tasted them yet but I’ll tell you all about them tomorrow.

On the subject of baking, tonight’s pizza was as good as usual. They seem to be doing OK now. The dough in the base didn’t rise quite as high as it has done in the past and that was surprising but it didn’t change the taste at all.

So in a few minutes I’m off to bed. An early night will do me good and tomorrow I can crack on with Canada. I have a whole two weeks to back something out before my next Welsh course and I have to make the most of it.

Sunday 25th June 2023 – HAVING AWOKEN THIS …

… morning at 11:00, anyone would think that I’d had a decent night’s sleep last night.

However, having not gone to bed until 04:00 and probably later, and not having gone to sleep straight away either once I did go to bed, then leaving my stinking pit at 11:00 is something of a miracle.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. There was something going on out at Crewe Hall to do with World War II and the Air Force, whether or not it was a flying station I don’t know. I can’t remember it now but certainly it figured in the concept of World War II aeroplanes.

Then I was off to Labrador in a very confusing dream. It concerned people, a couple who separated because the guy wanted to live with someone else. That upset his children and then someone who found new novel ways of keeping his door closed so that no-one could open it and go into his room etc but I can’t remember it very clearly at all.

By the sound of things I wasn’t having a good night from that point of view.

Later on I’d been to see a house for sale in Middlewich. We had a little chat about it. I liked it very much but I couldn’t afford it even though I possibly could. We kept on having a look every time we went past. On one occasion I was there and met a guy and his young son. We went for a walk in the countryside past the old industrial area. There was a really good view of this house from there and we thought that it would make a really nice photo except that it would look really bleak in the winter from here. The sun was burning down and we were wearing shorts, no tee shirt. We came to a bird’s nest. We’d heard some birds listening to a radio which we couldn’t understand. It seemed that some bird had taken someone’s radio and flown off with it. We reached the nest with all these birds in it who seemed to be quite friendly. There was something at the bottom but I couldn’t see what it was. One of the birds interested me. It was dark green with flecks of bright red in its feathers. I was trying to identify it because I didn’t have a clue what it was.

At another point I’d been round at my niece’s and her husband. They were talking away about all kinds of things. I noticed on the wall a list of towns. One had a really bizarre name that rang a bell with me. I said to her husband “I know all about that town. Isn’t there some kind of huge hospital to which people travel from miles around and they are always on the lookout for people living in the area who would take in boarders who would come to the hospital? I was offered a job there once as a driver for the hospital transport. He wanted to know why I didn’t take it as a way of coming into the country. I explained that it’s only once you’ve had your resettlement interview when you’ve actually arrived that you’re referred to places like this for work. I said that I couldn’t have a resettlement interview because I was too old

Despite it being a Sunday I’ve actually been quite busy today – once I actually dragged myself into the Land of the Living. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, getting out of bed is one thing. Being awake is something else entirely.

So today I’ve had a cookery session.

And by the time that I’d finished I had a huge pile of fruit bread and a big batch of chocolate and ginger biscuits. The biscuits are excellent – I baked some of the offcuts in the air fryer and had a sample and the fruit bread looks really good too but I’ll tell you more about that in due course.

But once again, just at the very moment when I sat down for a little rest, Rosemary rang me for a chat. So another one of our marathon sessions that meant that I ended up with everything backwards. I’d timed the cooking routine and procedure down to the last second but hadn’t anticipated a phone call.

Tonight’s pizza was another excellent one. I’ve really got the hang of that now, which is no surprise after all of the time that I’ve spent developing my technique

So tomorrow I have the nurse coming round to inject me now that I have my new supply of Aranesp. So I’d better have a shower first thing in the morning to make sure that I smell nice. And then I hope that I can finish off sorting out all of the files and directories on the computer now that I’ve upgraded it so that I can crack on with some work.

High time that I got myself into gear.

Sunday 4th June 2023 – THAT WAS A HORRIBLE …

… night last night. I don’t think that I went off to sleep for a moment.

My left leg was hurting all the way through the night and I just couldn’t make myself comfortable.

So much so that I was wide awake at 08:00 and out of bed by 08:30 and when was the last time that that ever happened on a Sunday?

After the medication and the mails and messages I spent much of the day working on my Canada 2017 journey. I’ve now spent a week at my niece’s house, done some work on Strider and now I’m on my way for the Bay of Fundy to pick up Strider’s insurance.

That’s something that I won’t have to worry about in the future because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, Strider is up for sale. There’s no point in having him sitting rusting away at the end of my niece’s drive when someone else can make use of him.

Liz came onto the internet too. Her grand-daughter is into ballet and is off shortly to Portugal to perform. She’s appeared in a couple of videos just recently so Liz sent me the links to watch.

Tonight’s pizza was another masterpiece. I seem to have this off to quite a fine art now and that’s really good. I’m not sure how I can improve on how they are turning out at the moment.

What helped today though was that the oven was stinking hot when the pizza went in. I’d run out of fruit buns at the end of the week so I made a batch this afternoon and they look quite good. I’ll tell you tomorrow about how they taste.

There’s a little room in the freezer now to put the spare ones. While I was ferreting about in there I found a plastic container with some soup in it. Carrot and ginger it was, and I remember making that and how good it was.

And notice the use of the past tense. The soup no longer exists and it was just as delicious as I remembered it. It made a nice change from cheese on toast at lunchtime.

Despite what I said just now, I must have gone to sleep at some point during the night because there was some stuff on the dictaphone. I started off in the Air Force in World War I. My aeroplane had been attacked and I’d been killed. I was still somehow going through the lines of a song trying to work out the lyrics and have the tune fitted into them because it wasn’t as straightforward as it might have seemed.

Then I was in the mountains of Central Europe last night with a couple of other people. We’d been climbing these rocks and were having to move this wood about, these very long tree trunks. At times it was extremely difficult and complicated on these rocks. More than once we almost dropped them into the valley down below. When we reached a place where we could relax I was talking about cars. Someone knew where there was a certain type of car for sale but it was in Bulgaria. he translated the advert for me. I mentioned that I’d be interested in paying so much for it. In Bulgaria he said that’s an “anhorse”. I had to be very careful not to confuse it with “anhorst” and a few others that meant different sums. he coached me through it and then wrote it down. I looked at samples of his writing. There was writing of other people there. Some of it was really close together but very tall. He talked about whose that was. We agreed to make an appointment to see the vehicle but now we had to retrace our steps back the way we’d come with these two enormous tree trunks which was really difficult. We almost dropped them again in the same place. One of the other people suggested that he go in front so that he could hold them from the front while I held them at the back and we slid them along. How he was going to go to the front past me and these tree trunks was another big complicated issue. There was also a young girl there too but I can’t remember what she was doing or why she was there.

And then very early on Sunday morning I was heading into Crewe Town Centre to do something about this leg. I’d gone over the bridge in Flag Lane ready to turn into Delamere Street and they both came round the corner, my father eating some chips. I grabbed a chip and said that I hadn’t had any this weekend. I asked how they were and they asked how I was. We had a little chat really about nothing very much in particular

Shortly I’m going to bed – nice and early too. I’m absolutely whacked and I’ve already fallen asleep once or twice today sitting on my chair. I’m hoping to have a really good sleep tonight. I’m certainly tired enough but things never work out quite like that, do they?

Friday 19th May 2023 – AT LONG LAST …

… the internet is back up and running, as you might have noticed.

What has apparently happened, as the technician who came round just after lunch told me, was that there was a short-circuit in one of the apartments that had fused the main installation in the building.

They had repaired the installation but the short circuit persisted so they had to disconnect the circuit and gradually reinstate it apartment by apartment until they could find out which one it was.

Of course, it was in one of the apartments that is a “second home” for someone from Paris who wasn’t here so it couldn’t be fixed until they’d contacted the apartment owner and found a keyholder so they could go in, and of course it was in the circuit before mine which meant that I was disconnected while all of this was going on.

Whether that’s the case or not, I don’t know. But it will explain why the connection flickered on a couple of times quite briefly during all of this.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and it’s a real ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good. It gave me an opportunity to catch up on a mountain of outstanding work, which isn’t all done but it’s still progress, and also, because the technicians were coming to check my installation, it meant that I had to tidy up the bedroom. I even had the vacuum cleaner going for a while.

And while I was tidying up, I found the missing spare battery for the NIKON D3000 that I lost a long time (as in several years) ago. It had fallen underneath one of my bookcase units.

So how did I celebrate everything? Well, while I was in town this afternoon I treated myself to an ice cream. I felt that I deserved it.

Especially after last night. I was so engrossed in a couple of tasks that it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was stark out. It was an effort to haul myself up out of bed before the second alarm went off five minutes later.

Mind you, after the distance that I travelled durning the night, I was surprised that I made it back in time for the alarm. At one point I was living with a group of Mexicans from 100 or so years ago, the time of the Revolution. We were living on the margins. We weren’t actually revolutionaries or criminals. I can’t remember most of this but there was one part where we were in a cave and there was some kind of event taking place concerning someone who had made a promise that he’d pay to have his wine crop blessed and fruitful but hadn’t done so. And so they held him to submitting his youngest daughter, who was 10, to be sacrificed. He had to fill in all this form to state about her etc and that he was willing for her to go and that he recognised that he was in default for not having thanked whoever it was properly for promoting the fruitfulness of his crops

Did I mention the story … “no you didn’t” – ed … about the 2 girls who had tried to buy some wine from an off-licence to get a teacher at school into trouble? The server recognised them and wouldn’t sell it to them. He had his revenge quite accidentally. It was the school outing and he’d forgotten to tell the parents of one of these girls. She hadn’t gone to school that day – she was paying truant. She thought that everyone else would be at school and cover for her but of course not being there on a day when there were so few students her absence was noticed and someone complained to her parents. When this all came out, the shopkeeper had forgotten to tell the parents about the trip as well, he said “don’t forget that I remember you from the day when you were in my shop so be careful not to make a fuss. You can see why karma has caught up with you”.

And then I had to go to meet someone in the centre of London so Aunt Mary had given me a book, an ancient book about Civil Engineering that she wanted to sell and have some money. All of the booksellers were around Angel Bridge Railway Station. I arrived at the Metro and the guy in the ticket office saw me coming. He had a ticket all ready. I asked for a return too but he replied “no. This is a weekend ticket and you can use it any time like but you’ll have to hurry. The train is in”. I took the ticket, paid for it and dashed downstairs but missed the train, found that I was on the wrong platform, walk back up halfway and enquire of the guard or look at the sign to find myself on the correct platform ready to go. But there was something else in this dream about someone being pregnant. They were discussing the pregnancy and talking about gifts that they should buy. One of the girls was very upset that someone else had been chosen to buy the nappies etc because she said that she didn’t have all that much money. That would have been an ideal present for her bearing in mind her shortage of money.

And we’ve had quite a few dreams when I’ve been wandering around the Underground in London, haven’t we?

Finally I had to go to do some research on Emerson Lake and Palmer. I found someone who had some information on them who lived in London so I went down. She was a bus conductor on the buses. Rummaging around in her office I came across a book that was an assembly of photocopied press cuttings going back all the way to 1967, news articles and everything. It was an absolute goldmine and I was enthralled reading it. It mentioned a whole load of clubs and places in London that you could see from the window of this woman’s house. I was there making notes. When she came up onto the top deck of the bus to show someone some damage that needed to be repaired I told her about the book and told her that on no account was she to let it out of her sight. It’s something that she really ought to keep for posterity. When I finished I was going back downstairs to her house. They were talking about a car going for an MoT. I thought “I’m not doing anything this afternoon so I can take it”. I put the book in my rucksack hoping that no-one noticed and went round to see about this car. It turned out to be a pedal car for children. I thought “this is strange” but I’d already offered now so I’ll have to go. I asked her where I’d go. She replied “turn out of here, go up the hill to the roundabout and it’s the 5th street on the right down there”. I was trying to make a mental note of this but it sounded like more than 5 minutes away but I was already committed now so I’d have to go and do it. This book of press cuttings is a little gold mine. I’ve never seen anything quite like this, especially in a dream.

After the medication I came here and slowly unwound myself and then attacked another project. A while ago I’d found the soundtrack of an obscure German rock band that had performed at one of the Hawkfests some time ago.

Back in those days technology wasn’t what it is today and this was full of holes from a worn recording tape. Using the techniques that I’d been practising just recently about “cutting in” pieces of music from elsewhere in the track, I set about repairing the holes. It wasn’t easy, but I managed in the end to make something quite presentable and you’d never find the joins. Even I was impressed.

There was a break for coffee and a fruit bun and I do have to say that the fruit buns that I made in the week are excellent. And as for the biscuits, that I have yet to mention, they have really worked and are even better than the chocolate ones that I made a while back

By now it wasn’t far off lunchtime so seeing as I was expecting visitors I started to prepare for a shower but bang on the dot Rosemary rang me for one of our marathon chats.

Just as she finished, Christian from the radio came round for the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend. We had a drink and chat, and he told me about a local musician who is looking for a bassist. That piqued my interest, as you can imagine. It’s quite lonely here sitting in my bedroom playing with myself.

As soon as he left, the technician came round and checked that everything was working properly, and once he’d gone I could finally have my shower.

It was a painful walk into town to find some mushrooms for my salad tonight, and whet there were were pretty grim. Mind you they had some of those small peppers so I bought a couple for future use.

Next stop was the estate agent to drop off this paperwork, and then the long painful walk back up the hill to home, punctuated by a call at the new ice cream parlour that’s just opened

Back here I cleaned the peppers and put them in the freezer, and finally the physiotherapist turned up. His “marathon session” turned out to be 20 minutes but he had me working quite hard. I was glad when he left and I could have my hot chocolate and delicious ginger oatmeal biscuits.

And then , regrettably, I crashed out for about an hour.

Liz awoke me and we had a chat on the internet (now that I have an internet on which to chat) for a while and then I ended up with a late tea. Chips and mini sausage rolls cooked in the air fryer with a salad.

The mini sausage rolls are starting to run out now so I’m going to have to search for a vegan savoury stuffing so that I can make my own. Puff pastry is quite time-consuming and difficult to make so I might have to by a roll of ready-made stuff and use that.

So shopping to morrow, so I’d better have an early night. I’ll pop into Noz and see what there is there on offer. I could do with a change of diet. I’m still wading my way through the asparagus tips that they had but there are bound to be other exciting things.

Mustn’t forget the vegan yoghurt either. I’ve run out of that and it makes a lovely addition to my leftover curries. Things are definitely looking up around here.

Tuesday 16th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

… read this, then normal service has been resumed and we have our internet back. Round about 08:00 this morning when I was trying to do something interesting, the internet went “phut”.

Having contacted the Internet provider, they informed me that there was a “technical issue” and it will be out until at least Wednesday morning. As a gesture, they have offered us 200mb of mobile internet per day via our smartphones, but have you ever tried to type out on a smartphone keyboard the rubbish that I churn out?

Anyway, I had another more reasonable night last night and that makes quite a change. It’s a shame that I was rather busy and ended up not going to bed until later than I intended. It would have been quite nice to have had a longer more reasonable night.

And that’s not all either. I awoke bolt-upright at about 06:25 and couldn’t go back to sleep. Consequently, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

with the internet crashing out, I wasn’t able to do anything of the things that I needed to do and so in the end I transcribed the notes on the dictaphone from the night. I was with 2 friends at some point. We were driving somewhere down a narrow lane. As we continued a cement mixer came towards us. For some reason he had a change of opinion and decided to perform a U-turn and return the way that he had come. He stopped and reversed off to the side of the road ready to pull back round the other way but the bank of the road gave way underneath him and the lorry fell over on its side. We dashed over there. When we arrived he was busy extricating himself from the wreck. We asked him if he was OK. he replied “yes, there’s no problem”. We then wanted to know if there was anything that we could do but he couldn’t think of anything that needed doing. He could quite happily arrange all of that himself. To be on the safe side I took his phone number and gave him mine. I said that I’d phone him in half an hour and se what he was up to. where this happened was near a railway line. Just as we were talking a 4-4-2 tank engine fitted with condensing apparatus went past on the railway line obviously pulling an old London Underground train. We climbed back into our van and set off. These 2 people with me, 1 was a guy and 1 was a girl. They were a couple. I know who they are but I just can’t think who.

There was a group of us going into the house. We’d been out shopping, buying stuff. As we went in, one of the people noticed that my shoelaces were undone so he bent down to tie them for me. Of course I had a lot of trouble with my legs. Where he put his hand was right on one of my sore spots. I told him to stop, that he was hurting but he couldn’t understand and carried on trying to tie my laces. I was going berserk. I told him that I had cancer. He replied that I must be imagining the pain. For some reason it became a very complicated thing. In the end we went in. He was sulking somewhat. He asked “what about that think we were going to do if we had the part?”. I replied “I don’t have it but I know that it’s in here. It can’t be anywhere else”. He sat down and looked at his watch and made a note of the date and time, sitting there with his arms folded waiting for it to be produced.

With not much to do until my Welsh lesson, I did some revision, However, the trouble is that with having a teflon brain, nothing sticks to it and I needn’t have bothered really. My memory issues are quite annoying. And it’s strange – I can remember the words of some kind of extremely obscure rock song from the mid-60s but ask me why I wanted to go into the kitchen 5 minutes ago.

Trying to have a Welsh lesson on a smartphone isn’t easy either but it went so much better than I expected, and far better than when I tried it in Canada back in October.

Once the lesson was over, I had a really big baking session.

There is now another pile of fruit buns, most of which are in the freezer waiting for another day, and there’s a mountain of lovely biscuits. And I DO mean “lovely”, because I sampled them.

It’s the basic 4/8/10 recipe (sugar, vegan butter and flour) with vanilla essence, fleur d’orange, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and yeast.

Added to that was some diced fresh ginger and then some honey, and several tablespoons of oatmeal to restore the consistency after the addition of the honey.

You won’t find me telling you about times and temperatures because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my oven is pretty much hit-and-miss and nothing is consistent. Here in this apartment, it’s all done by trial and error.

While I was waiting for everything to happen I sorted through my collection of herbs and spices. And just like the bathroom stuff at the weekend, I found that I’d actually bought the spices that I needed when I was there on a previous occasion and had forgotten about them.

Ahh well! See my bit about “memory” above.

The rest of the day has been spent dealing with the dictaphone notes from when I was in hospital. The coughing, spluttering and rasping throat were difficult to decipher so I hadn’t really touched them until I would feel more like it, so I had a bash today, with nothing better to do.

There are still plenty more to go at of course – this isn’t something that will be done in 5 minutes, or even in the next week or so. It’s taken me 6 months to reach this point.

When the physiotherapist came round, I was actually … errr … relaxing, so he awoke me. But he needn’t have bothered because my neighbour in this building, whon he also sees, has had a bad fall and he’ll be spending all of his time with her.

How many sessions is this that he’s missed with me just recently?

Tea was a lovely taco roll with rice, using some of the stuffing left over from yesterday. There’s still a bit left so I’ll have a leftover curry tomorrow, with one of my naan breads from out of the freezer.

Looking back (and forward) to my meals just recently and my cooking and baking, things are definitely taking a turn for the better around here. Living down on the farm was enjoyable when I was fit and healthy, but cooking was somewhat limited and for obvious reasons too. Things are so much better here and when I eventually have a real and proper kitchen things will be even better.

But that’s something about which to worry on another occasion. Right now, I have things to do before going to bed. And with a bit of luck, the internet might be back up tomorrow and I catch up with whatever needs doing.

Sunday 19th March 2023 – WELL THAT WAS A …

… total waste of time.

It was a beautiful afternoon today, so much so that I had turned off the heating for a while and had the window open, so I reckoned that I’d go out to this Home Exhibition that was taking place this weekend.

It was a long walk – the longest that I’ve done since I’ve been back from Canada – and quite uncomfortable on my crutches, but I made it there all the way without too many problems.

But as I said, I needn’t have bothered. Of all the stalls that were there in this big marquee, there was only one that made any reference to bathrooms. And when I finally managed to speak to the guy in charge, he told me that he had no means of assisting with the installation.

And that’s no good for me.

So anyway, I just came back home. I didn’t even stop for an ice cream.

It was a tough climb back up to here and I had to make more pauses than I otherwise would have done, but I made it back and then collapsed on a chair.

It’s no surprise that I was tired though because apart from the walk into town and back, I’d also had another miserable night, following on the usual pattern just recently.

And despite it being a Sunday I was wide awake at 08:45 and out of bed by 09:30, and it’s not something that happens every Sunday. There have been Sundays when I’ve been lucky to see midday.

After the medication, the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. There were tons of stuff on it from the night. We were having a big argument. I can’t remember very much about it except that it was with some people who were not very well-educated. I had to write out an essay. It was to do with some kind of subject but my life story seemed to fit in there so I was in order of writing my life story. For some reason it had taken me so much time to make a start that I didn’t have much time left so I was doing it as a kind of “cut and paste” but with real paper, a pen and a pair of scissors trying to write it out so I could then cut everything around and fit it into the exam paper in the right kind of order. It was really quite a complicated thing. Then I had to write out the word “seizure” but I couldn’t remember how it was spelt. I asked someone who you spell it. Then I realised that instead I could just say the word “sizes” so I said that there’s no need to bother – I’ll use that instead. Off course “sizes” wasn’t the right word. That was one thing that while I was dictating this I couldn’t think of what words I was supposed to be using in this dream.

And then I was round at someone’s house. They were proudly showing me their anemometer that they had attached to the eaves of the roof of their house. I remembered the one that I used to have at Virlet. I was quite admiring it. They had some kind of set-up in the back, a framework with solar panels etc. I took advantage by fastening a pole to this gantry and putting a wind turbine on it. We went into the house. It was bedtime. I went to bed. All of a sudden this whole framework collapsed. My brother was actually standing next to it outside but he didn’t notice for some reason. I got up to go to see what had happened but immediately fell over because my right knee gave way. Eventually I managed to drag myself off out. They were busy trying to prop it up by driving wooden stakes into the ground with a hammer. I didn’t think that that would do the stakes much good but it was all they had. I had a sledgehammer but it was in the back of Caliburn. Every time this guy had it in the correct kind of place to hold up, my brother would try to adjust it just that little bit more and it would all collapse again. We were fed up of this and shouted at him to leave it alone. There were all kinds of things like bricks there that were separated by little bits of foam to stop the bricks knocking against each other. They had percentages written on them. I worked out that it was some kind of calculator that calculated the percentages for numbers of days in the year. I thought that the only way that this is going to work now is that if they put it back in the right order. But apart from the writing on it there was no way to determine which was the correct order and which wasn’t.

Later on we were on a bus trip in a white Van Hool Alizee taking us all around. I was a passenger. A lot of my family was on it. My mother was there and she was keeping everyone waiting because she always seemed to be the last to turn up. I said to my youngest sister “that will teach you to be born so late in life. If you’d been born before, you wouldn’t have had to wait for so long”. We were all waiting in this park by these iron gates for the bus to appear. While we were waiting there someone who was the guardian of the gates was asleep on the gate. Someone wanted to go out for a minute but they couldn’t awaken him so they just opened the gate anyway and dashed out after their 2 children who’d got out somehow. We all wondered what was going on because no-one had given us any explanation when we saw the woman suddenly dash out of the gates of this park.

Finally, a lot of turmeric had been used in flavouring some green beans that were cooking on the stove in a big pot. So much so that they had gone a greeny-yellow. We were trying to find people who had eaten from here to see whether in fact they’d turned yellow, there was so much turmeric in this cooking pot.

The morning was very quiet. I didn’t really do all that much at all. After all, it is a Sunday and I’m entitled to have a day off once a week.

Lunch was early today and then I nipped out to the Exhibition to make the most of the glorious weather.

Back here, once I’d recovered, I made a pile of dough for the fruit buns. Lots of dried fruit and the like to give it some ooomph. And I made enough dough for a dozen, with the idea that I won’t have to make any for a while. I’ll be just a couple of days short of Easter then when I run out and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I now have some hot cross buns in the freezer for Easter.

But while we’re on the subject of the freezer … “well, one of us is” – ed … I don’t know where I’m going to put the fruit buns that I won’t be eating this week. The freezer is jam-pack full with the couple of bags of carrots in there and I had a real struggle to open the drawers today.

There’s a bit more space in there now though because after lunch I took out the last ball of frozen dough for the pizza and it had been defrosting all afternoon. While my fruit buns were busy proofing, I kneaded the defrosted dough and rolled it out onto the pizza tray.

Rosemary rang up for a lengthy chat about an issue that is ongoing involving one of her friends in the UK. And while we were chatting I baked my fruit buns and assembled my pizza. And when the buns were baked (to perfection) I put the pizza in to cook.

With the oven being stinking hot the pizza was cooked to perfection too and it was delicious. I’ll make some more like that!

With a spare half-hour I dictated the notes for the radio programme so (in theory) it shouldn’t take too long to do the radio programme. “In Theory” because we all know about “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” that often “gang aft agley” when you are trying to do something.

We’ll have to see how it all pans out.

Sunday 5th March 2023 – MY VEGAN PIZZA …

… this evening was probably the best that I have ever made.

Not only was it cooked to perfection, it tasted absolutely delicious as well. And I can’t think what it was that I did differently to make it so nice because it was made exactly the same way as every other one that I’ve made just recently

Mind you, I did have plenty of time to make it because I was up and out of bed astonishingly early for a Sunday.

It was round about midnight when I went to bed and I couldn’t sleep for ages. I’ve been without my medication for several days and with restarting yesterday, I’ve started on the side-effects already as my body becomes accustomed to them again. and so I was itching all over like nobody’s business for ages.

When I awoke, I noticed the time. And it was ony 08:00. That’s just ridiculous for a Sunday. I tried my best to go back to bed but I gave up at about 09:30 and arose from the dead.

For the first part of the morning I didn’t do all that much. There was plenty of time to spare.

A little later I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There were 4 of us sitting at a table in a restaurant – me, the woman with me who might have been Rosemary or even my friend from Montréal, another woman and another guy. We were having a meal. I was having a plate of vegetables. For some reason it was taking me a long time to eat it. Everyone else had finished a while before me. We were talking about various things. It turned out that the other woman at the table was the carer of the father of the woman with me. She was talking about things that everyone would know. The subject of food came up. I mentioned some kind of salmon that we’d had once in New York that swam around in the underwater rivers and had apparently come from somewhere down in the South-West of the USA in this underwater river all the way to New York. As I was eating I asked the woman with me to explain it but she went on a story about water leaks, how no-one ever fixed them because water was a common commodity and they didn’t want to cut off the supply in order to repair the leaks, hence the water leaking everywhere. That wasn’t the story that I wanted to tell. The other woman talked about how she had to pay £6:00 every 3 days to buy a bus pass to take this woman’s father out for whatever he needed doing. I mentioned that in Granville public transport is free (which it is and I’m surprised that I could remember that when I’m asleep) so we had a chat about this. But all the time that we were talking, of course I wasn’t eating. The meal was taking for ever to disappear. In the end it was becoming quite embarrassing, the time that it was taking to finish my meal, too busy talking about everything else.

My curried leek and potato soup was delicious today. I finished the last of it for lunch and it made quite a nice change from porridge. And soaking my bread in soup instead of toasting it and smothering it in vegan butter made a nice change too.

This afternoon I made a batch of fruit buns and they tuned out to be really nice by the look of things. I can’t wait to start sampling them tomorrow – the first one anyway.

And while the dough was rising I made a batch of pizza dough. When I had my food delivered when I was really ill, they sent me a different kind of flour. I made the pizza dough with it and it came out really smooth. I’ll have to keep an eye open for more of this flour in due course.

It rose quite nicely too. I divided it up into three batches, put two in the freezer and rolled out the other one onto the pizza tray to let it prove. So while the fruit buns were cooking later on I assembled the pizza and that followed the buns into the oven once they had baked. Probably the oven being stinking hot might have helped the cooking process but it won’t explain the taste.

For the rest of the day I wrote out the notes for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing tomorrow, and even find time to dictate them. In fact I had to dictate them twice because for some reason I forgot to switch on “RECORD” for the first time. I’ll edit that tomorrow morning after I get up.

But not right now. Although it’s early, I’ve already crashed out once today and with a really early start tomorrow I need to be at my best.

And I have to telephone the bank and the visiting nurse tomorrow. Things are moving rapidly here and I have to make sure that I’m on target to complete what I need to do. Time and tide wait for no man.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: fruit buns

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