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Wednesday 30th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… another wonderful day out today. And I’ve been shopping today again too. It was really pleasant to hit the streets again and I enjoyed it tremendously.

And that’s even after the lack of sleep that I had last night.

In fact, it was after 01:30 when I finally hit the sack. I was quite wound up after all of my efforts yesterday and couldn’t settle down. Instead, I found a few things t do on the computer and had a wander around in cyberspace doing a bit of this and a bit of that. As for “a bit of the other”, I managed to restrain myself.

When I finally made it into bed, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for quite some considerable time.

However, I must have dropped off to sleep at some point because BILLY COTTON awoke me at 07:00.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t as tired as I might have been. I made it into the bathroom and sorted myself out, as far as it is possible to do so, and then went into the kitchen for my medication.

There was a beautiful draught of air coming through the open window (I’d left it open all night). And as I sat there, the sun rose from behind the church and immediately the current of air became warm. I was only there ten minutes too.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and the answer was a predictable “nowhere”, given the amount of sleep that I had had.

The nurse was in full chat mode and for a change it was quite interesting. He also mentioned another one of his friends who had some kind of connection with a building company. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I know all about his friends.

While we’re on the subject of friends … "well, one of us is" – ed … my friend turned up shortly afterwards and we had a good chat as we waited for the builder to show up (late, as usual, but we expected that).

When he turned up, we found that he was quite efficient, quite frank and quite easy to talk to. He made me fully aware (however, I already knew) that there would be no guarantee or promise that his company could start work within my deadline. It was that that impressed me the most.

He’s arranged for an appointment on 3rd June (when I should have possession) to measure up and talk to his contractors. And it can’t be done any quicker than that.

After he left we had breakfast and continued our discussion for a while, tearing apart all kinds of ideas and plans for downstairs.

Eventually, we decided to make the most of the lovely weather and went out to the car – or, rather, we went outside and my friend went and brought the car to me.

Our first stop was at Donville-les-Bains. The branch of my bank there is much easier to access and parking is easier so I went in and drew out some cash – the first time since I can’t remember when. Not that I need it, because I do have an emergency supply here in the apartment and I haven’t spent any in ages – but it’s always handy to have around “just in case”. And I won’t have many other opportunities.

After we left, we went down the hill to the seafront and had a very, very leisurely drive along the coast as we chatted about old times. We saw some wonderful sights, and made quite a few U-turns as our path led up into various dead ends.

We decided to go to Coutances for lunch and my Artificial Intelligence search engine made several suggestions as to where a vegan could eat.

However, I don’t know what France has come to these days.

When Marechal Foch took over overall command of the French Army in 1918 it is said that he said that he only had two conditions – "a free hand with the Army, and two hours for lunch". We arrived in Coutances well before 14:00 only to find that every single restaurant that we tried had closed its kitchen at 13:30

We ended up at the LeClerc supermarket where we grabbed some “Tricatel” food, thanks to a couple of nice serving wenches who took their time closing at 14:30 so that we could just about have time to be served.

On the way back home we stopped at Noz, my first time since October 2023 where I struck lucky with some fabric softener, some coffee, some noodles and a pile of frozen vegan food.

Leaving Noz, we drove slap bang past the place that my nurse had mentioned, so we went in anyway. His friend wasn’t there but a helpful girl gave me several pointers and arranged an appointment for someone to come to see me. There’s no harm in it, I suppose.

On our arrival home, we found that my faithful cleaner had been to LeClerc in Granville and had found my pyjamas as well as more of those curry patties that we had bought yesterday.

For tea I had lasagna out of the freezer, making space to put in everything that we had bought. It’s not ‘arf crowded in there but it all went in, right enough.

Our chat, reminiscing about old times, continued for ages. He showed me some photos of our project in the UK – the “before” and the “after”. The “after” is so impressive and looks wonderful and we will soon be ready to start Stage Two of our project but the “before” photos are horrifying and I was genuinely appalled.

Eventually he left to go back to his hotel ready for an early night as he has to set off for back home at 05:30 tomorrow morning. We had a lovely two days together, going to places, catching up on old times and discussing new times, but what kind of state is this to be in when someone has to drive all the way from Newport in Shropshire to take me to the shops?

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, later than usual yet again. Dialysis tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I wonder if there will be any more feedback from my rebellion on Monday

We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about going down a few dead ends … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of a report on male sterility that was published a few years ago.
A newspaper had laid its hand on the article and the headlines the next day were "Male Sterility – a dead end?"

Friday 18th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a visitor today

My tenant has finally decided to present herself to me this afternoon.
"What do you want to do about the kitchen in the apartment?" she asked.
"If you look behind you" I said "you’ll see some kitchen units in boxes. I ordered them, paid for them and had them delivered a long time ago. It’s rather late in the day to tell me about yours"

She then began a long complicated spiel about the difficulties she was having with the apartment for which she has signed.

However, I cut her rather short. "That’s not my problem" I interjected. Then I proceeded to tell her what my problem was. I explained my medical issues, in rather forthright terms and how she was contributing to them. I told her that I had proposed an exchange of apartment but she had refused.
"But I can’t walk upstairs. I have this bad back"
"Madam" I replied. "In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve just walked up 25 stairs this very minute to speak to me. Your medical problems are obviously nothing like as bad as mine and I have to do that at least three times per week on crutches"

We carried on with that kind of chat for a couple of minutes and then I interjected once more, saying "I have nothing more to add to the matter. If you have anything further to say, you must say it to the letting agent" and I escorted her to the door.

Now she can walk the 25 stairs back down again.

She’s obviously not received the letter that I sent to the letting agent this morning because I have now decided on a course of action.

Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s certainly true, especially when you have had a lot of night in which to think.

Having dashed through everything last night, I was finally in bed by not many minutes after 23:00, which made a very pleasant change. Looking forward to a good night’s sleep, I curled up under the bedclothes and made myself comfortable

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I had been up for an hour and a half. So much for my idea of a good night’s sleep. Of course, it’s dialysis night but it’s usually Saturday night / Sunday morning when I have sleeping issues. So it must be my guilty conscience preying on me.

But when you are awake at 05:05 and don’t leave the bed until 05:28 you have plenty of time, all nice and peaceful, to think of a plan.

My plan was firstly to go into the bathroom and have a good scrub up. And then into the kitchen and have my medication.

Back in here, armed with a mug of instant coffee, I sat down and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I came home from school and found my mother doing her usual things, talking, and then our father came in. He was talking about a couple of things that he was intending to do in the future. One of them was “we have to pack because we are moving”. This took everyone by surprise. He said “we’re moving to London – I have a job down there. I already have the house and it’s all ready for us to move”. “Oh God!”. My mother and I were completely taken by surprise because he’d never said anything to anyone. We hadn’t put our house up for sale and there were still lots of little tasks that needed doing. The first thought that went through my mother’s mind was “I bet he hasn’t bought a house. He’s probably rented a room somewhere for us and the next stop will be two rooms and a bathroom then some kind of council house”. My mother was very dispirited. So was I. I said “I don’t want to go”. She replied “that’s not like you. You’re always wanting to move on”. I replied “yes but I want to move on to my place on my terms, not go down to south-west London”. My mother replied “you aren’t obliged to go, are you?”. I replied “no, but I’ll have to find a job, all that kind of thing, leave school”. My mother was worried about all kinds of tasks that needed finishing off, like the garage floor, all of that, but it never seemed to change anything and we were just extremely unhappy and dispirited by it all.

That is in fact just like my family. They never ever planned anything for the future. It was always a question of carpe diem quam minimum credula postero as Horace would have said and “make it up as you go along”.
.
Another intriguing thought is “why did I say “South-West London” “? I actually lived in Wandsworth once for a couple of months, that’s true. I was so fed up listening to someone’s sad tale of “never finding work” and having an excuse for every suggestion that I made, that I took action.

What I did was to place an advert in one of these local papers in South-West London – mainly because it was the only area of London that I didn’t know very well – and within 48 hours I had a room lined up. I caught the train down and found my room, dumped my stuff and went for a walk.

Around the corner was a pizza restaurant advertising for casual kitchen staff and delivery drivers (evenings) and a few doors down was an Employment Agency with an advert in the window looking for bus drivers to drive schoolkids around mornings and evenings. So within 20 minutes of arriving at my digs I was effectively in full-time employment.

It really was that easy.

When my mother said that not wanting to go was not like me at all, she was perfectly correct. I was always the adventurous one. If I had had my way, our family would have immigrated to Australia under the “ten-pound Poms” scheme in the 1960s.

After I’d finished, I sat down and wrote out my letter to the letting agents, the one about which I talked earlier. I set out all of my medical issues and all the action that I had taken to date vis-à-vis my tenant.

And here’s the crunch. The lease will definitely finish on the due date. And if she wants to stay on afterwards, she can do so – but on hotel terms and conditions and at hotel rates too. I finished with “these terms are non-negotiable. It’s ‘take it or leave it’ and I want to hear no more of the matter. The discussion is finished”.

The way she came upstairs and went back down after having rejected my home exchange offer eighteen months ago “on health grounds” has only made me more determined.

The nurse came round to sort me out and I asked me if he knew anyone in the Mafia. He seems to know everyone else who might be disreputable. It might come down to asking “Luigi and a couple of the boys” to help me do a home removal, and we’re not talking about my apartment either.

Once he’d gone I could make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. We’re still in Kenilworth Castle having a good wander around looking at the architecture. And nothing has happened that is controversial as yet.

But seeing as we have been talking about breakfast… "well, one of us has" – ed … my hot cross buns were absolutely exquisite. Just as they ought to be, in fact. This is a real success.

Back in here, there was more discussion. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I should have had a ‘phone call from the UK last week. However, due to a family emergency it never happened.

Today though, we had a very lengthy exchange of messages, discussing the finalisation of phase one of my project and the projected start of phase two. We’ve had an estimate of sorts for the work and we discussed other work that we could also include. All we need to do now is to save up some money

Next task was to finalise my LeClerc order and send it off. They had almost everything too, and acceptable substitutes for what was missing.

We haven’t finished yet either. My niece and a couple of my little great-nieces (or great little nieces) contacted me for a chat and we had a lovely time together. Amber has just finished her exams and is quite confident that she’ll graduate in May. It’s streamed live and so she’ll send me a link.

Her High School graduation was streamed live too and I enjoyed watching it. It’s really hard to believe that in December 2003 she was such a tiny baby and I was bouncing her up and down on my knee in a car in a howling snowstorm in the Appalachians of Maritime Canada.

My first disgusting drink break, late that it was, was interrupted by the arrival of my cleaner who set about her afternoon’s task

After she left I could make a start on my Saturday At Woodstock, but not for long because my LeClerc order arrived and I had stuff to put away. With the LeClerc order came the tenant, about whom I spoke earlier, so I had her to deal with too.

Finally, I had everything put away (well, almost) and so I sat down to restart my Saturday At Woodstock.

And no sooner had I started then Rosemary rang. Just a short ‘phone call today – one hour and thirty-eight minutes. I forgot to mention earlier that I’d been speaking via text messages to Rosemary throughout the day, helping her to fix her computer at a distance.

It’s hardly a mystery that she’s having so many problems. I finally managed to receive her “SysInfo”. Her OSbuild is 5371 and mine is … errr … 5737, 360 rebuilds later, and mine’s not new. And her operating system is dated Seventh August … errr … 2020.

What I suggested to Rosemary is that she comes to help me move (if I ever do) and brings her laptop with her. I’ll fit one of my spare 250GB SSD units in it and give it a clean install from new.

What with one thing and another (and once you start, you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) it was a very late tea of salad, air-fried chips and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. All really nice, that’s for sure.

So horribly late, I’m going to bed. It’s dialysis day tomorrow. But what a day that was today. I’m glad that it was a Day of Rest. What would it have been like had I been busy? Just about everything happened today and that makes a change from the usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about Italian restaurants … "well, one of us has" – ed … a new Italian restaurant opened in Crewe and I went for a job as a delivery driver.
Nerina thought that I was crazy going for that job and that I’d never have it
However I did succeed in my application and when I saw her in the street later I gave her a wave as I drove pasta.

Wednesday 19th March 2025 – MONDAY THE FIFTH …

… of May is when I’m being summoned to Paris to hear the news about the results of the tests that I had a while back.

Obviously it can’t be all that serious if they are letting me wait six weeks to hear the news. France is not like the UK where they give you fictitious appointments two years hence and hope that you die before you have to attend and find out that the appointment didn’t really exist in the first place.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning how horrified and disappointed the professor at Leuven was when she told me at my cancer consultation nine years ago that she couldn’t find me a hospital bed for four … days.

And so May the Fourth be with STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I’ll hit the road the next day, presumably after having the dialysis in the morning instead of the afternoon.

But if they are talking about me having dialysis while I’m there, it means that I’ll be there for the Thursday at least.

One thing that will be certain, and that is that I’ll be in bed early when I’m there. I might not even leave it for the whole day. That has to be an improvement on how things are around here just now. It was another 00:30 retirement last night. I’m not sure how many of those there have been just recently but it looks as if 00:30 has become the new 23:00 these days

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly again and although I have a vague memory of something happening in the middle of the night, I didn’t move until I awoke at about 06:00.

Lying there festering for a while I thought "I may as well raise myself from the Dead rather than loiter around here" but the next thing that I knew, the alarm was ringing. I’d apparently gone back to sleep.

After I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom I went into the kitchen for the medication and found water all over the floor again. But there will be more news about this later.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I started out with Laurence and Roxanne. We’d gone to some kind of informal concert where everyone would be sitting around the entertainers rather than sitting formally in a theatre or something. We turned up and Roxanne went to sit down at the front with all the other children. I found a seat and Laurence came to sit down next to me. I put my arm around her but as soon as I did that she stood up and went to sort something out for Roxanne. She then came back and I went to put my arm around her again but then she stood up to do something else. It went on like this for half an hour until finally she came to sit down. She explained to me that she wasn’t very happy about me putting my arm around her. I couldn’t understand why because that was what I normally did but she was quite adamant that she wasn’t happy about it. I was beginning to think that for all the good that i’m doing here I may as well go outside and go for a walk on my own to settle down a little and calm down before something that went on that I might well regret in the future.

Amongst her other accomplishments, Roxanne was learning to play the harp during her Wednesday afternoon school music session. When we were out in Pionsat at the chateau once we saw an advert for a harp concert. We wandered off to find some tickets but it was completely sold out, much to Roxanne’s dismay. However, we saw a woman struggling to take a giant harp out of her car. “Clearly the harpist” I thought, and so did Roxanne. She told me how disappointed she was about not seeing her play so I told her not to tell me, but to go and tell the woman. So off she went, eight years old, and was chatting away to this woman for about ten minutes. When she came back, she was clutching three complimentary tickets in her sweaty little mitt.

Laurence used to say things like “I ought to change my name to ‘pense-à-tout‘” – ‘think of everything’ – “because no-one else ever remembers anything”. My answer to that was “and Roxanne ought to change her name to ‘reponse-à-tout‘” – “an answer for everything”.

Later on I was at a rock festival last night with Paul Rodgers of Free and some and some singer, I can’t remember. We’d formed a group for the occasion and had rehearsed fifteen songs. When it came to the night it was our turn to go on stage and make everyone listen. I had a little problem with my drum kit at the time so the guitarist simply began to play something to quieten down the audience. After I’d fetched my bass guitar and plugged it in I worked out what key we were in and played in accordance with that and It went much better. But there were only three railway stations, those on the Wirral that need to be changes in any question at all …fell asleep here …

Leaving aside the obvious point that Paul Rodgers was the singer of Free – it was David Kossof who was the guitarist – and what I would be doing with a drum kit, that’s another mystery. However that dream petered out into Heaven alone knows what before it became interesting.

Today’s issue with the nurse was that he objects to having to be here before the taxi comes at 08:30 to take me for the eye examination. I ought to book his friend for a precise time to take me in time for the appointment. But leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t me who booked this taxi but the dialysis centre, regular readers of this rubbish will recall his friend’s attitude to problems – “lie through your teeth”. That’s not the service that I want.

Breakfast was next – no book again today due to the lack of a power lead for the computer – so I was back in here quite quickly. I took advantage of the extra time by looking for a computer power transformer and cable (which I don’t have) and then beginning what is going to be a long process of tidying up the place, checking what I have, checking what I need etc for when I finally move downstairs, whenever that might be.

Today has been spent working on a radio programme. I’ve had to skip two programmes because they relate to concerts and I can fit those in whenever I have some free time … "when is that?" – ed … Consequently I’ve been working on 23rd January 2026, if that’s not too far ahead.

By the time I knocked off today I’d hunted down some tracks that I needed that I didn’t have, converted, reformatted and remixed them, paired them and segued them and written all of the text ready to dictate on Saturday night.

That was despite the disgusting drink break, the midday medication, my cleaner being here and not forgetting my wonderful shower. But how I’m looking forward to being downstairs when I can have a shower whenever I like – once the bathroom is converted.

But I mentioned the water all over the floor earlier. My cleaner noticed that the handle on my water jug is broken and there’s a crack down the back of the jug. So that’s something else to replace. I’d better spend Thursday afternoon going through Amazon seeing what I need for the new apartment and send off an order for bits and pieces like that.

Something else that happened today concerns the project in the UK about which I spoke towards the end of last year. It’s well under way and my friend who is in charge of things sent me the first photo of what has been going on and how it is going to look when it’s complete. And I’m impressed with this, that’s for sure.

If it carries on like this, I shall be well-pleased, even if it has cost me an arm and a leg to have it done.

Tea tonight was of course a left-over curry with naan and as usual, it really was delicious. The naan wasn’t as good as last eek’s though – that really was exceptional

Tomorrow I have the optician. With dialysis apparently, it’s important to have the eyes checked every six months or so with all the changes that are going on.

But while we’re on the subject of harps … "well, one of us is" – ed … Roxanne once dressed herself up for a fancy-dress party, so I asked her what her costume was supposed to be
"I’m dressing myself up to be a harp" she replied
"That can’t be a harp costume. It’s far too small" I replied.
She looked at me sternly. "Are you calling me a lyre?"

Wednesday 28th August 2024 – MY GINGER CAKE …

… is really delicious. Not quite fiery enough, I reckon, but that kind of thing comes with practice. The consistency was exactly what it should have been, except that it was cooked more at the top than underneath.

Usually that would mean lowering it in the oven, but that won’t work as it’s already on the lowest possible shelf, so it’s going to be to turn down the oven and prolong the cooking time.

But that won’t work if I’m baking bread at the same time, so it will have to do.

Consequently, given the shortcomings of my table-top oven, it was a resounding success. Just wait until I have a real oven, whenever that might be.

At least the sponge rose up as it was supposed to do.

While we’re on the subject of rising up as it is supposed to do … "well, one of us is" – ed … I rose up as I was supposed to do this morning when the alarm went off at 07:00

That was helped by the fact that for once I was actually in bed before my ideal curfew time of 23:00. Not by very much, I have to say, but even one minute is some kind of progress.

After I’d finished my notes last night I did everything that I had to do and then headed for the hills.

Once in bed I remember very little. I started my little bedtime mantra but didn’t get very far before I fell asleep. And apart from a couple of awakenings at various times, there I stayed quite comfortably until the alarm went off.

In the bathroom I had a really good wash and clean-up, followed by a shave and some clean clothes. I must look my best for my trip out today. Who knows? I might even meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

While I was at it, I washed my trousers and undies in the sink ready for next time. I try to keep ahead as much as I possibly can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Nerina and I were going through one of our phases and were walking down Hospital Street in Nantwich or driving down there, but we stopped at a pedestrian crossing to let a pedestrian pass. I recognised him as he walked past. He was a musician and after listening to his album thanks to a recommendation by a friend I’d actually gone out and bought a copy. I just happened to mention that I’d bought a copy of his album and we ended up having a very lengthy discussion about the music business before he left. He noticed a cut on the side of my face so told him that it was nothing to worry about and began to sing a parody of the Dire Straits song I’D PUT A BIT OF PLASTER ON MY FINGER, PUT A BIT OF PLASTER ON YOUR THUMB. He came running back wondering where he’d cut himself. I had to explain to him that that’s the lyrics of a song. Once he’d worked it out he went on his way quite happily.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that if I can write parodies of modern (well, for me anyway) songs while I’m asleep I’m doing really well here. And walking through Nantwich and encountering rock musicians would have been quite a usual occurrence in the mid-70s with a host of garage bands in the area and recording artists like Strife. They were some really good times with the pubs in Nantwich like The Wickstead, The Rifleman and The Bowling Green. There was a time when my friends and I were thrown out of most of the pubs in the town at one time or another.

There was a boxing match out in Aston, a girl from our class, whatever her name might have been. We set out in the car to go to see it. It was taking place outside the church. We knew that we had to rush. Nevertheless we arrived late and the fight was under way. It looked as if she had been hurt because she wasn’t her usual lively self for boxing. Her opponent, an older man, was there and they were standing toe to toe trading blows. She was fending off more of his but then she caught him with a beautiful overarm right just as he was trying an overarm right. It was a very painful, tired overarm right as well as if it was her very last effort that she put into it but it made a perfect connection on the point of his jaw and that was him out for the count. She won the competition again but this time it was much closer than it had been in previous attempts so we were going to have to work on why this was the case and do something about it for the next time

What beats me about this is that I actually mentioned the girl’s name. She would have been one of the most unlikely candidates for a competitor in a boxing match (having said that, had any of the girls in my year or thereabouts come up against a male boxer, my sympathy and commiserations would have been entirely with the boxer) but not only that, I don’t think that I’ve ever spent even a minute thinking about this particular girl since I left school. So what’s brought her suddenly to the forefront of my mind?

Later on we’d been sorting out some music concerts. There had been a complaint from one of the washrooms that all of the towels had been used by a certain group wiping the lipstick off their faces after being kissed by thousands of girls so there were no clean towels in the washrooms. A certain guitarist was also there on tour. He was a nightmare to handle as everything had to be absolute perfection but perfection according to his standards. He had no spatial awareness and no awareness of anyone else around him and their feelings and so on. Everything was all about him. It was a very complicated issue to deal with him. He was sacking everyone after the first show, replacing his staff and then firing them again after the second and we just couldn’t keep up with all of the changes. Neither could he. It was beginning to deflect from his show but he wouldn’t have it at all and wouldn’t listen to explanations from anyone that maybe he ought to moderate his unnecessarily high standards in order for a compromise to be made that would mean that everything would go ahead. The more people he upset and the more people he fired, the fewer people he would find who would be willing to work with him

Anyone in the music business would be able to name this guitarist – I did in my dream but I edited it out – whose constant search for perfection has had exactly the opposite effect to that intended. Anyone of any great competence will look at the speed at which our guitarist has been hiring and firing and decide that he’s better off where he is. It’s not at all like Neil Young who has often been criticised because of what is perceived to be the lack of ability of his backing group, Crazy Horse. But as he has said on many occasions, he’s here to have fun and a good time with his mates and make everyone happy, not to launch himself into an eternal quest for the unattainable goal of perfection.

The taxi was late coming for me but it was a lovely drive down to Avranches even if the driver kept the windows closed.

The letter that I had notifying me of my appointment showed a different time from the time that they had noted so I’ve no idea what was happening there.

Anyway, I was eventually seen and the first thing that the doctor did was to rip off the plaster and give me a lecture about having it covered. I felt like a small child up before the headmaster (although where I would find a small child up before the headmaster in that hospital I really don’t know).

So I have to keep it uncovered and let the air get to it, and like it. So far, I’ve managed to avoid not seeing it. How long I can keep that up I really don’t know.

The doctor ran her echograph machine all over my arm right up as far as my armpit, and passed it fit for service. So on the 4th September I’ll know when dialysis will begin.

While I was waiting for my taxi back I bumped into Emilie the Cute Consultant’s sidekick and we exchanged a few words. And then the taxi came for me

All the way back (with the windows closed again) and the taxi driver had to help me up the stairs – something that she found extremely difficult and so did I. Seriously, if my cleaner’s not available to help me it’s going to be a real struggle

First thing that I did back here was to have a very late breakfast. I’d had nothing to eat or drink all day as yet so I was ready for some food.

It was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse. "I was here at 08:20 but must have just missed you"

"Yes" I thought. "And the taxi was late so it was well after 08:30 when we left" but I didn’t say anything.

After breakfast I had a lengthy chat with a friend in the UK. We have a project on the go and that involved some lengthy discussion.

It should also have involved a transfer of money but the battery has gone flat in my card reader so I had to order another and the money will have to wait.

There’s some bad news about this project, but it’s not unexpected so it’s no skin off my nose really. But with having a professional on the job, there are already some considerable savings that have been made so it’s “swings and roundabouts” really.

Liz was on line too so we had a lengthy chat. She was keen to see how today went and what the plans are for the immediate future so I filled her in.

The cleaner was here too and she whizzed through the apartment.

Once everyone had gone and things had calmed down I went for a very late hot chocolate and a slice of ginger cake. And it really was delicious as I said.

But now I know that I can substitute things in my basic recipe, how about a coffee cake? What about strawberry cordial instead of water to make a strawberry cake, with real strawberries in there somewhere?

But this is how most recipes work – trial and error. Sometimes some of these experiments work in spades and other times they are absolute disasters.

After that I made some naan dough and put most of it to freeze but kept one ball for tonight’s leftover curry, which was delicious as usual and the naan was perfection.

But now I’m off to bed. I have no plans for the next two days so I might even do some work. But right now I’m listening to a live concert by a Canadian group called “Black Mountain” so I’ll be going nowhere for a while

But on the subject of Liz and “filling in” I’m reminded of the guy who went for an interview for a job at the Ritz Hotel in London
"You should fill in our questionnaire" said the receptionist
"Very good" he replied, and went outside and beat up the doorman.

Saturday 24th August 2024 – I HAVE EMULATED …

… my namesake the mathematician today and ended up doing three fifths of five eighths of … errrr … nothing.

Yes, it’s about time that I had a day off after everything that I’ve been doing just recently. And how much I enjoyed it too.

So much so that I actually sorted out a few squares of chocolate from the supply and treated myself. God alone knows what this would make my potassium count, but who cares?

After last night’s efforts and not going to bed and letting it all hang out after midnight, it’s nice to have a little treat like that. I certainly deserved it. Watching the football and writing my notes last night was exhausting work.

By the time that I’d done everything that I needed to do it was a long time after my preferred bedtime when I crawled under the sheets. And with just a handful of hours before the alarm it was just as well that I was asleep more-or-less instantly.

There was the odd bit of awakening during the night but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was fast asleep under the covers.

So when the alarm went off I switched it off and made my way into the bathroom.

First task was to deal with this little sample that the nurse wanted. And in my befuddled state at 07:00 in the morning I was confused and wrote tomorrow’s date on the side of the container. That will confuse them down at the laboratory.

Then I had a good scrub up and washed my shorts. That’s my usual Saturday morning task, to make sure that they are clean for the forthcoming week. It’s a pain only having the one pair.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of show on the television about some folk musicians. They were all sitting together playing some music. One of them had his bass guitar and played a few bass runs for one song and they were really impressive so we stopped the programme at that point ad went back to begin to talk about this guys bass playing, which was something that we didn’t really know. He told us a little story, and told us about these bass runs. One of the other people there joined in so I said “I’ll go and fetch my bass and we can have three of us together playing it. Someone else there had a recorder so they joined in. One of the bassists with the recorder couldn’t get the recorder in tune as if there was something blocking one of the reeds. No matter how he blew he just had a strange noise out of his flute or recorder, whatever it was. In the end we had to stop the programme again while he had to dismantle his instrument. It was really interesting because I would have given everything to have been on that programme as a bassist instead of as a simple interviewer but it just wasn’t to be. It wasn’t to be my day to get me on there. Everyone seemed to be far more interested in the story that these people had to tell than any story that I could add into it. And quite right too. It was why they were there – to entertain and to tell their stories. I have plenty of other opportunities to tell mine.

That’s a story that has an all-too-familiar ring about it. I always seem to miss out on an opportunity as there will always be “another time” which as we all know, is something that never comes around

This was a dream in an Immigration Centre where a young guy was coming into Wales to play football for one of the teams. He’d lived in Wales before, for four years and had played as a Junior and as a full adult in various teams before being transferred out of the country playing abroad but was now coming back. At first the Immigration officials were very unsympathetic but he overheard a discussion between someone else and the Immigration about a large group of people, one of whom was an undesirable, but that person was arguing so hard to let him in that it was embarrassing. This was what galvanised the boy into thinking maybe he ought to persevere with this officer about trying to come into Wales because it seemed to be that his case was much more solid than this other person’s yet so much interest was being taken in it. That encouraged him to press on wit his application rather than give up as he might have done before.

There are more than a few stories about things like this in British football where because of the strict Immigration laws, imaginative solutions have to be applied to some footballers coming from outside the EU, such as loaning them to clubs in Belgium where the Immigration laws are much more relaxed, until they have enough “European” time.

There was a charge for misconduct brought about against one of the leading clubs in the league. They had produced something like a 20-point plan showing why another club was in breach of all kinds of various regulations. At the Court hearing the offended club stood up and made the argument that apart from the title, everything else in this document was based on pure speculation. At that point I stood up and accused their solicitor of gaslighting because I’d produced some evidence about a Court case that had taken place and will take place in the future. That was included in this document so I knew for a fact that those allegations were perfectly true so I was perfectly convinced that the solicitor for this football team was trying to gaslight the meeting so I stood up and made my objection known. This went down extremely unwell and managed to rob me of a position at the summit of the football league for three or four days

This has a ring of truth about it. I used to write for an on-line Sports magazine called, would you believe, “Shitesports”. This was almost 25 years ago when I ran a spoof news column about fictitious events in Welsh football, but the chairman of one of the biggest clubs in Wales took it seriously and made several remarks that were considered to be totally out-of-place in the factual World, based on some things that I’d written in my column.

Isabelle the nurse came round later and we had a chat as she took my blood sample and then sorted out my legs. She was impressed that I’d done what she asked and done it so quickly too. She’s not used to this.

And then all of the supplies are fully stocked up. That took her by surprise too.

After she left I made breakfast and had a very slow start to the day, reading an ancient book on ley lines and the like. The author is of the opinion that ancient roads and trackways honeycomb the country and any like drawn between two ancient monuments will pass through dozens of churches, ponds and other sighting marks.

His theories have been rubbished – someone saying that you could do the same this with telephone boxes for example, but on the other hand, aren’t telephone boxes usually sited at crossroads, at monuments and outside churches?

The author is probably wide of the mark when he suggests that every case of a straight line can be laid at the door of a Neolithic ley-man, but I bet that there’s more truth in his assumptions than his critics allow.

This afternoon I had to mooch around for a while and then make an important ‘phone call.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning that I’m on the verge of spending a lot of money on a project in the UK. Wheels are now in motion and staff has been engaged, and I had a very long chat with my “colleague” to receive his report and set out a plan of action.

One thing that I have learned is that specialist tasks call for specialist help and trying to do tasks like this yourself end up costing you much more money than you will save.

If you have access to professionals, then make use of these opportunities and don’t worry about the cost as they will save you money in the long run.

The costs of me travelling back and forth to the UK, even if I could, would be more than whatever I would have to pay a professional consultant to act on my behalf and deal with matters by Zoom.

But more of this anon.

By now it was tea-time and I’d had no food since breakfast so I was good and ready. I’d promised myself sausage, beans and chips and that was exactly what I had, and it was delicious.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no-one makes baked beans like the British, not even the “British Recipe” beans in Maritime Canada, and I’ll be devastated when my little stock here runs out.

So now I’m going to dictate some radio notes and then go to bed.

But the guy with whom I was talking was one of the ones with whom I spent that glorious “Summer of ’76” camped out at that old sand quarry near Congleton. Part of the bank had collapsed so there was like a beach that went down into the lagoon and that was where we all hung out.
One of the girls was swimming in the water and shouted to him "why don’t you come and swim with us?"
"I can’t come in like this" he said
"Like what?" she asked
"Like this" he replied, opening his dressing gown to reveal that he wasn’t wearing his swimming trunks underneath.
He was a big boy too and sunk her at a distance of 25 yards. But later that night, apparently she crept into his tent for a closer inspection

Friday 2nd August 2024 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

… of lovely chats on the internet this afternoon.

The first was with one of my neighbours, the President of the Residents’ Committee who was so helpful when it came to buying the apartment downstairs

And the second was with a close fried who lives in Newport. He was actually best man at my wedding and we still keep in touch.

However last night, I wasn’t anywhere like in touch with my ideal night-time curfew of 23:00. It was actually after midnight before I finally hit the sack, running as late as I was. The list of things that I have to do before going to bed seems to have grown longer and longer.

But once I was in bed, I didn’t reach all that far into my little mantra before I fell asleep. That’s one good thing – that I’m asleep quite quickly whereas in the olden days I’d be tossing and turning for hours.

There were no stone cutter, no diggers, no nothing going on outside this morning so I slept all the way through until about … errr …. 06:15 when something must have awoken me. And I lay there semi-comatose until the alarm went off at 07:00.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and sorted out some clean clothes. Who knows? I might get to see Emilie the Cute Consultant at the Clinic so I have to look my best.

With clean clothes, it meant that I could give my undies and trousers a scrub in the sink. These days I wear these shell-suit trousers all the time because they wash and dry in no time, which is good news seeing how filthy I can be.

Next step was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I was doing during the night. I was in Shavington going to catch the bus to Nantwich and for some reason or other decided to walk up to the bus stop at the Elephant and Castle. I set out to walk and on my way I noticed in the distance the Farmer’s Daughter who has figured on these pages once or twice but she had short hair and that suited her head really well. She walked off somewhere and I was debating whether to go to follow her to see where she was going and to see whether I could summon up some kind of excuse to have a good chat. I walked up to where the Elephant and Castle is and put my hand out to turn right even though I was walking on foot. A couple of kids on the pavement, tiny kids who were presumably going to catch the bus to school saw me and waited on the edge of the pavement until I went past. There on the right hand side was an Austin Cambridge but it was “A” registration as in 1983 or 1984 but they stopped making Cambridges in 1967 and any vehicle that was subsequently registered would have had an age-related plate fitted to it, so why was this one carrying the plate of such a recent date. That was a complete mystery that needed to be resolved.

Yes, well I’ll tell you something for nothing and that I would not have been convinced if she wanted to cut her hair. I’m afraid that I’m quite the male chauvinist when it comes to girls’ hair. I think that long hair on girls is absolutely beautiful and it’s a cardinal sin for a girl to set out to disfigure that which nature has blessed her. But I’m impressed that I can remember banal details about car registration numbers and years of manufacture while I’m asleep.

As for The Farmer’s Daughter, there hangs a long tale that might be one of the many recounted at my funeral.

The taxi came bang on time which was nice and another passenger already in there graciously yielded up the front seat – it’s much easier for me to pop in and out of the front.

We set off for Avranches and first had to drop off the other passenger at the hospital, and then take me to the clinic across the road and up the hill.

This is a brand-new building and it does look impressive, although it beats me why they couldn’t have built it onto the existing hospital.

The nurse is there is one who has seen me before and she remembered me, which is rather sad going, I suppose. Once seen …

She asked me a load of questions about my current symptoms, and either she’s excellent at prognostication, the symptoms from which I’m suffering are well-known, she’s a regular reader of this rubbish or else she’s in league with the Devil.

It was interesting when she asked me things like "when you go to sleep in the afternoon, is it a sudden, dramatic sleep with no warning and no realisation that you’ve been asleep?"

You can say that again.

She weighed me again. And having been down past Target Weight 01 and close to Target Weight 02, my current weight is depressing to say the least.

She took off all of my bandages and dressings and commented about how well the surgery was looking. "Would I like to see?"

And so I told her to clear off and put a dressing on it, and it took her a while to do it. I think that she was hoping that I’d catch sight of it.

She’s formally forbidden me to wrap a dressing around the arm – just leave the plaster on it. And she’s going to ‘phone up the nurse and give her instructions. And so I’m suspicious.

But some good has come out of this meeting. I told her of my woes at the private clinic. She was horrified. Being a terminally ill patient, I’m entitled to 100% of my healthcare covered by the State. She showed me the paper that she has which confirms it.

The Private Clinic had no right to make me pay even a penny. So she’s asked to see a copy of the receipt and she’ll take it up with the Hospital’s Welfare Department

After she’d taken a blood sample she threw me out and the taxi brought me home where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me up the stairs and into my apartment.

She seems to think that I’m moving better than I did previously, and how I wish that it were true

Not having had anything to eat or drink as yet, I sat down to breakfast. And couldn’t move for a while afterwards, so when the nurse came round to deal with me later, the place was a tip with breakfast dishes everywhere.

After she left, I had some ‘phone calls to make.

The President of the Residents’ Committee is returning on Sunday so we had a good that about this and that.

It included the latest news about our neighbour, currently residing in the hospital. Things are not looking to bright for her future and we may have seen the last of her in this building

Once we had hung up I made a drink and then ‘phoned a friend.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I mentioned a project that I might be starting at some point.

It’s had a couple of false starts and deciding that it can’t go on for ever and can’t be delayed much longer, I have decided to go in a different direction.

This actually means calling for help. After all, the key to success has been knowing where to stop and when to seek the advice of experts, and if you have friends who can be depended up to help you in this respect, then so much the better.

And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is at the end of a chat that lasted a Rosemaryesque one hour and 15 minutes, I was a long way further down the road than I was after several months of prevaricating

Tea tonight was pie and veg, the last slice which was a shame because it was so nice. And it was followed by apple turnover and soya cream

Yes, my air fryer is great for warming up slices of pie and apple turnovers.

So now I’m off to bed, hoping for a really good sleep, and I mustn’t forget to wash my shorts in the morning. I forgot last week. Why I wash them on Saturdays is because with not going to bed until later, they have longer to dry.

But before I go to bed, let me tell you about the Clinic at Avranches and the guy in the next cubicle to me.
He works in the quarry down the road and wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way when they detonated some explosive.
"And it’s badly damaged my … errr … ummm …" he said, groping for the polite word.
"Rectum?" asked the nurse, helpfully
"Well" said the man "in all honesty it’s not done ’em much good"

Monday 20th May 2024 – YOU’VE PROBABLY ALL …

… read yesterday’s embarrassing blog entry now that it’s on line.

Ohhh!! The shame of it all. I eventually managed to make my way to bed, fully-clothed, at about 02:30 which, seeing as the alarm was set for 07:00 was going to be something of an effort.

Especially as today is another Bank Holiday and usually you wouldn’t see my head poking out from under the covers until about 11:00 I suppose

But all of that was back in the olden days. How times have changed. And not for the better either

When the alarm went off I arose from the dead and went for a wash in the bathroom to clean up

The dining area needed arranging for the nurse too but I arranged it somewhat differently to make it easier for me to stand up. The heights for my arms to push up so that I can stand up have to be calculated pretty precisely .

The nurse noticed a deterioration today. I told him how fed up I was with it all. I need to start laying the foundations for my eventual depart

After he left I came back in here and with an old, pretty full A4 binder and my pillow, managed to raise up the height of the chair so I can sit down with no worries about getting up again. What kind of state am I really in?

At least I was able to write out the blog entry from last night and post it on line.

This afternoon I had a lot of personal stuff to do. And do you remember that issue that reared its ugly head in the UK? The bullet is bitten, the die is cast
"The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it" and I shall be making one of the greatest expenditures in my life.

In fact, only the purchase of Expo, my second apartment in Brussels and my apartment downstairs here have cost me more, and the sad thing is that I won’t ever see the benefit of it.

Ahh well, such is life I suppose

That left me some time to transcribe last night’s diictaphone notes. And to my surprise, there was something. They were doing some kind of survey into criminal investigations. I’d been leading some kind of group that had a great deal of interest in this. We were comparing various things together to see about them. One year we had a graph that had an abnormal part in it so we looked further into it. That was what they called “The Irish Sex Scandal” when the Irish Government spent so long investigating a case before brining it to court that it was deemed to be – not “Perverting The Court of Justice” but whatever I mean … "defeating the ends of natural justice" – ed … to bring it to Court. The prosecution collapsed accordingly. We began to wonder whether there had been any other UK cases that had collapsed like this because of a want of prosecution. We began to look further into a lot of old cases to make sure that at least the defence had been correctly run and the correct information had been supplied to them for them to decide what to do with it

During the day I’d been crashing out here and there, which is no surprise given the sleep that I hadn’t had. When I was asleep in the morning I was doing something in the countryside. There was a campsite there. I was having a good wash but a couple of people were having a shower. It suddenly occurred to me “why don’t I have a shower instead?”. I gathered up my things and must have gone into twenty cubicles without finding a single cubicle that had everything one would need for a proper shower. There was always something missing. On one occasion I was menaced by a dog but as it approached me I menaced it back and it ran away. Twenty cabins I must have tried and not one of them had all one would need for a shower.

That sounds typical, doesn’t it?

There was still some time to write a few notes for a forthcoming radio programme before going to make my stuffed pepper and I’ll finish it tomorrow. But after my Welsh lesson. I’m going to bed now ready to be fighting fit for tomorrow

And by that, dear reader, I mean “fighting for breath and fit to drop”.

11th May 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… footfest this afternoon. It’s the semi-finals of the play-offs to decide which Welsh team will take the fourth place allotted to Wales in European Club competition in the forthcoming season.

TNS will go into the Champions League, hoping to qualify for the group stages at long last

Connah’s Quay and Y Bala will go into the Europa League by virtue of finishing second and third, and another place in the Europa League due to Wales will be awarded to the winner of the playoffs

And so we started off with Y Drenewydd v Penybont followed by Caernarfon v Cardiff Metro.

As you might expect, I was quite looking forward to it all. And for the first time since I can’t remember, I was actually in bed before 23:00. And that’s not something that happens all that often these days. I could have been in bed much earlier than I was too but with all of the aches and pains that I was carrying, it was really difficult to actually get into bed.

With having this early night, I was looking forward to a long, undisturbed sleep but it wasn’t to be. It was a really disturbed, turbulent night.

There was another phantom alarm call and I forget how many of these we’ve had just recently. I’ve no idea what’s going on with them – where they are coming from and what they are doing – but it’s certainly confusing.

When the real alarm went off I found that it was easier to move out of bed. Many of the aches and pains had gone and the pain in my hip had reduced a little and I could lift my leg more.

So now that I was out of bed I went to the bathroom and then into the dining area for my medication.

Having done that I set out the room for the nurse and came in here to see what’s happening in the big wide world. But as any student of history will tell you, the news today is just the same things happening to different people in different places at different times.

After the nurse had gone, having given me a shopping list of items needed, I came in here for a relax. And then I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had another niece last night. It was a non-existent niece, someone small and petite. She sat and we chatted for ages about her course and the future. When she was ready to go I asked her where she was staying. She hadn’t booked anywhere so I told her that my settee was really comfortable and she was welcome to stay on it. She wondered how any other person was going to stay there because there were two nieces wandering around and how I was going to distinguish which was which too. That was easy because one had a tie with a small emblem on it. The other one had a tie with a big emblem on it so I could distinguish them by that. I could see that this was going to be complicated but it didn’t seem to bother me on the ground that it’s all going to work out normally anyway. Then we had someone coming, brandishing a gun and being obnoxious. I don’t know what he wanted or anything like that but he totally disrupted everything that we were trying to do.

That’s nothing new. Whenever I was trying to do something back in the old days, there would always be someone coming along being obnoxious and trying to disrupt whatever it was that I was doing. And if there was a young girl involved anywhere, you could bet your life that they’d be down in droves to put le baton dans la roue as they say around here.

Then at one point a girl was pouring some new information into my travelling laptop. I was very concerned so I awoke to try to stop her but just at the point where it became liquid memory she began to pour the liquid memory I had to shout at her to make her stop and I really did shout as well. I washed hem and got ready and ended up back in bed until the alarm

Yes, I really did shout in the middle of my sleep. It’s a good job that these walls are 1m20 of solid granite or whatever would the neighbours have said?

Then we finished off with this complicated story about addition and subtraction over the numbers. I had quite a batch to do which I did mainly right and managed to ensure my team’s presence in the Scottish League 2 next season

And that reminds me – we have the first leg of the playoffs between Stranraer of Scottish League 2 and East Kilbride of the Scottish Lowland League at some point this weekend.

And then I had a message. There’s an “issue” simmering in the UK that’s been simmering away for almost 30 years. I think that I’ve mentioned this before. It’s now erupted and like Pandora’s Box, once the lid is off then that’s it.

There’s a considerable amount of work that needs to be done that should really have been done 40 years ago but it wasn’t, and the events of the last 28 years haven’t helped. So if you see me loitering on Boots Corner any time, you’ll know why I’m there.

After this I crashed out – from 10:00 until 11:50. Dead to the World as well. But not that I’m complaining this time because I saw Zero. While I was asleep this morning I was with a former friend. I’d finally managed to persuade him to come to see me with the intentions of thrashing out some programme about repairing all these cars that I have. I’d walked down this track through this forest and encountered Zero playing in a school playground so we’d chatted but that was all. I pushed on and came across my former friend and we began to chat. I was going to tell him that I had £90:000 for the programme but we never reached that far in the discussion. We had several bikes ad had to move them by moving two, dropping them down, running back for two more and advancing lie this. At one point I had to run back miles because the exhaust had dropped off a motor bike we were moving. While I was up on top of this grassy bank my former friend came back to see what I was doing so I showed him. He was furious. “this is jus attention to detail” he raged and urged me to hurry up. By now this grassy bank had changed into a roof with a chimney and some dormer windows and I couldn’t work out how to descend. I thought that manoeuvring by holding on to the chimney and pivoting round by hanging on to the edge of the dormer window would be my best bet but the window opened and I was left dangling in thin air with no prospect whatever of improving my position.

It was really nice to see Zero of course but this “no prospect of improving my position” sounds like how my finances will be in a few months after the news that I received earlier.

By now, breakfast had become lunch so I fuelled up with food and then settled down to watch the football.

Y Drenewydd finished 4th in the league and Penybont 7th so the game was held at Drenewydd. But home advantage counted for nothing as they were swept aside by what can only be described as a Penybont masterclass.

The game finished 5-0 for Penybont and believe me – Y Drenewydd were lucky to get nil. They were awful. It wasn’t just that Penybont were so good but that Y Drenewydd offered nothing at all

The other game between 5th and 6th and played at Caernarfon in front of a massive crowd was much more exciting.

Caernarfon roared down the left flank with a combination of Louis LLoyd and Morgan Owen more times than you can mention but the final ball was always either too short of too long.

On the other hand the Met soaked up the pressure and tried to hit on the breakaway and had three excellent chances to score but couldn’t find the target.

The game was drifting to a 0-0 draw and penalties when Marc Williams drilled a powerful shot through a crowd of players into the net

And as Cardiff Metro were throwing everything forward to try to equalise in the closing stages a breakaway involving Sion Bradley and Adam Davies saw Davies score a second for the Cofis

So the final next weekend will be between Caernarfon and Penybont and played at Caernarfon.

And then, dear reader, I crashed out again. And for an hour or so too.

Tea tonight was one of my breaded quorn fillets with baked potato and salad. I know that it’s monotonous, but it’s also delicious.

So that’s all that I’m doing tonight. I’m going to try to be in bed early and see if Zero will come back into my dreams.

And I’ll tell her "I dreamed about you this morning"
"Did you?" she’ll reply.
"No" I’ll answer. "You wouldn’t let me".

Thursday 29th March 2024 – SO THAT’S THE …

… end of yet another Welsh course. And that’s a shame because I quite enjoyed this one and felt that I was actually learning something instead of just going through the motions.

It seems to me that it’s a pretty good idea to go on these short holiday courses that relate to courses that I’ve studied in the past because it’s first of all a way of catching up with everything and then it’s also a way of reinforcing the basics

As well as that, it keeps my wheels oiled over the long breaks.

So I now have to look for courses for over the next few holidays too. Some of those will keep me running too.

But at least after this course I can say unfedarddegarhugain which is how a Welshman of two hundred years ago would have said “31st”. You don’t ‘arf learn a lot on these courses.

What I’m currently learning though is how totally disorganised I am about going to bed. Once again, despite a desperate rush to be early, it was still 23:40 by the time that I crawled into bed and that’s still not good enough.

Especially if the night is somewhat disturbed as it was, with me hearing phantom alarms going off at strange times. But more of this anon

When the real alarm went off I was deep in the arms of Morpheus again and I wasn’t sure at first whether or not it was a phantom alarm but realising that it was for real, I fell out of bed and groped for the tensiometer.

15.9/9.9 this morning on the blood pressure, which contrasts with 15.4/10.2 from last night. so what wound me up in bed then?

After taking all of my medication I arranged everything ready for the nurse to call so that she doesn’t waste too much time. She rang my doorbell when she came to visit my neighbour so when she turned up here I was already sitting in the chair waiting.

She didn’t stay long for sorting out my legs but she did point out a few supplies that we will be needing in early course so I added them to the list that my cleaner will be taking to the chemist’s. And the cleaner taught me a new phrase that I shall remember and reuse with vigour and vim.

After the nurse had left I had a little listen to the dictaphone notes to fins out what was going on during the night. We were back with that crowd again at the Wistaston Memorial Hall. One of the people there was the girl with whom I was friendly and whose father was landlord of the Whore’s Bed at Walgherton. Someone mentioned something about knowing her pretty well and I came out with a remark “not as well as me, I hope” which made everyone laugh. The guy didn’t say anything else which cheered me up a little but I can’t remember anything else about this particular dream at all. It was as soon as I said that that I awoke and the rest of the dream evaporated

It’s a shame that that dream evaporated because that was a really good weekend, that. I know that I have mentioned it before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall but for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few just recently, a rock group from Crewe with whom I was quite friendly was invited to play at one of the Festivals in the summer of 1973

They had no money so they arranged a concert at Wistaston Memorial Hall in order to raise the petrol money. Piles of us went and my friend and I made the acquaintance of two young girls, mine being the one mentioned above.

At the end of the concert the group still didn’t have enough money so they took with them anyone whom they could cram into their ageing, creaking Austin J4 van along with all their gear and who would make a contribution to the expenses. My friend and I went down on his motor bike.

We all had all kinds of adventures both on the road and at the festival that weekend, and I had a few adventures afterwards with the aforementioned young lady, but a long-distance romance wasn’t possible back then.

But it was thanks to her that the rock group “Strife” makes regular appearances in these pages and in my radio shows, because her brother knew their drummer. Consequently I met him a few times too and we are still in contact today.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed a group of us was discussing these murder mysteries. We came to the conclusion that Agatha Christie had disappeared to go into a nursing home to recover from a breakdown or something like that. We worked out by using one of our girls whom we arranged to disappear that we could follow the plot through fairly well but there was no reason to doubt in the end the official story because of course all that we were doing was some kind of speculation based on the facts rather than the facts themselves. It ended up with one of our girls going missing for several days and we working out where she was, and also with me going missing right at the end of it. But mine was because the alarm went off. The alarm was set for 01:30 and somehow it rang. Of course that was in the dream – it wasn’t the real alarm but nevertheless the false alarm thing actually awoke me while I was asleep having this dream. That’s a mystery to me too about this false alarm

It totally beats me why something so obscure as Agathe Christie’s disappearance in 1926 should rear its ugly head in one of my dreams. It was something that made headline news back at the time but it’s largely forgotten now and I’m totally surprised that it would be something that would spring to my mind during a nocturnal ramble.

But that’s what I mean though about the phantom alarm. I was convinced that it was a real one and I actually awoke and reached for the ‘phone to switch it off.

So what’s an alarm doing going off like that in the middle of a dream – an alarm that has nothing to do with either the dream or anything in real life?

Having finished the notes I prepared for the Welsh class. It didn’t take long because I’d already done most of it, having much more interest in this for some reason.

It actually passed off quite will too and I was really pleased. I quite liked the tutor and his little quirky habits, and I’ll sign up for other courses with Coleg Caerfyrddin whenever I get the chance. I’m determined to crack this one way or another.

My grandmother, if she were alive today, would really be impressed that I could speak Welsh. It’s a shame that she never taught my father, but Welsh-speaking was seen in a totally different light in the 1920s and 30s than it is today.

The cleaner stuck her head in with some of my medication too, and the stuff for the nurse. The rest of the stuff will come in early course.

The rest of the day has been spent dealing firstly with my LeClerc order, that needs to be sent off first thing in the morning if I want my buttered hot cross buns.

And I really do too. I opened the airtight tin in which they are stored and was absolutely overwhelmed by the smell. They really do smell like proper hot cross buns and look like hot cross buns too. All I need now is for them to taste like hot cross buns, and for that I need the butter.

The second task has been to deal with a problem that has arisen in the UK.

Despite having left the UK well over 30 years ago I still have “certain interests” there. I’ve felt for some time that I’ve been sitting on a kind-of time bomb, waiting for it to go off and sure enough, about three weeks ago it exploded.

Since then, I’ve had to gather my wits, gird up my loins, bite the bullet and any other metaphors that you care to name and think that at least, I’ve had all of this time to benefit by 30-odd years of peace, but now is the time to pay the price.

What annoys me is that if anything had been said beforehand, I wouldn’t have reaped the benefit that I had, but the issues would have been resolved much sooner. So, if anything, I’m annoyed at all the silence previously, not at the bomb actually going off

So now I need to get on and deal with it. Or, rather, have it dealt with, because I’m not going to the UK ever again.

The last time that I was in the UK for pleasure was in 2011. In 2013 I was there for half a day to pick up a lorry-load of slates to deliver to Central France and then in 2019 when Rosemary and I went to Aberdeen to pick up our ship to take up to the High Arctic of Canada. That’s quite enough.

Tea tonight was something from the European Burger Mountain, with pasta and veg. Simple and delicious thanks to the onion and garlic with the burger and to the spicy tomato sauce in which the pasta was soaked.

So early for once, I’m going to go to bed and dream of hot cross buns. But it will probably be something extremely obscure involving my family. Not a trace of anyone whom I would like to see, such as Zero, Castor and TOTGA

But talking of Agatha Christie though in a dream last night reminds me that Nerina once told me that she wished that she could have been Agatha Christie
"why is that, dear?" I asked
"Well, she married an archaeologist, Sir Max Mallowan"
"What’s that got to do with anything?"
"Well" she said "if I had married an archaeologist, the older I became, the more interested he’d be in me"

Sunday 17th April 2016 – DESPITE BEING SO TIRED …

… yesterday, I was awake by 03:00 this morning. And by 06:00 I had given up all hope of going back to sleep and I was up and about.

I’d even had time during the night to go on a little ramble too. And, in what I hope isn’t anything like a premonition, I had died. And yet there I – or, tather, my phantom – was, sitting on the floor with Liz, my friend who passed onwards in 2009, in Davenport Avenue sorting through piles of paperwork just as Nerina and I used to do on the floor in Gainsborough Road sorting out the paperwork for our taxi business back in the 1980s. I remember too, thinking about two lock-up garages that I rented in Crewe, one of them packed full of car body panels for Ford Cortinas and the other one that actually did have a Ford Cortina in it as well as a few other bits and pieces.

The funny thing though was, once I had woken up, I spent a good few minutes racking my brains thinking about where these garages might be and where I had put the keys before realising that it was all just a dream. It’s not the first time (and not by a long chalk either) that I’ve had difficulty at first separating these little nocturnal rambles from reality. And I’m not convinced at all as to whether it’s the dreams that are so realistic or whether it’s my real life that’s so surreal.

After breakfast, I nipped out across the road to the banketbakkerij for my Sunday baguette and my raisin buns. And the queue at the baker’s was right down the street. A very populated place, this is. The buns were just as delicious as they were last Sunday too, I have to say.

I had a quiet morning too, not being up to all that much. I just drifted around in cyberspace and watched a couple of old football matches that I discovered. That took me up until lunchtime and I do have to say that the olives that I bought yesterday are delicious.

I didn’t realise until about 19:00 this evening that I hadn’t crashed out this afternoon. That’s despite being awake at 03:00 this morning. That doesn’t sound right to me but there you are. I can’t believe that I’ve managed more than 16 hours (it’s now 21:30) awake. That’s not like me these days.

For tea, I had a vegetarian special pizza because I saw that it came with broccoli, and that is good for me. And on the way back, I passed by a choir practising on the steps of the town hall. That was a pleasant surprise and cheered me up a little.

But now I think that I’ve done enough today. I’m going to go to bed now and hope that I’ll be tired enough to sleep right through until the alarm goes off tomorrow.

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 – WELL, I HAD THE CALL!

Yes, at about 09:30.

“Mr Hall, we’ve had your blood test results. You need to come in this morning for a transfusion”
“I’m still waiting for the District Nurse to come, and it’s over an hour’s drive to Montlucon, you know.”
“Well you really need to be here before midday”.

And so that was that. With no District Nurse by 10:30, I was off and gone – on my way to Montlucon.

Mind you, I was off and gone long before that. Despite having once to leave my bed (for the usual reasons), I had a really good night to make up for the dreadful one that I had had the night before. And I was running the Formula One racing network too. My youngest sister was driving one of the cars and my niece in Canada was doing the voice-over television commentaries. However, we were under attack in our house (which bore a strange resemblance to Hankelow Hall, the abandoned stately home where we squatted back in the 1970s, except that there was a more modern extension built onto the back) by people who wanted to take over the running of the organisation. We were trying to defend it resolutely but looking out of the back, I noticed that a load of gear, including skis (for some reason), was being passed from the new extension into our house on the floor below through a window that should have been guarded by my elder sister. The door into our room was then battered down and into the room surged a crowd of people, TV cameras, everything, and my sister saying that we had all agreed to pass on our rights to this new company. I however made it quite clear that she was not speaking for me.
From there via several removes, I ended up back at my house in Gainsborough Road Crewe where I was living with a woman who was about 20 years older than me, and we had a daughter of about 11. The behaviour of this woman was extremely bizarre, which puzzled the girl and me a great deal.

So after breakfast, we had to play Hunt The Moose again. Today, Strawberry Moose was in the sun-lounge camping. And also reading a story to his new best friend Violet the sock-sloth.

Robyn was keen to join in of course. She loves having stories read to her and no-one reads stories like Strawberry Moose. And in exchange, she drew a beautiful picture of him.

At the hospital car park, there was hardly anyone about so I had a good spec right by the entrance just 200 metres from the front door of the hospital. And they were waiting for me when I arrived, which made a nice change.

“Only one go” I said to the nurse trying to inject the drain into me. “They had four goes last time that I was here”
And so she did it in one, and a more painful injection I have never had. Total agony.

Lunch wasn’t up to much unfortunately, but you can’t expect much in the way of special diet when you turn up a l’improviste. However, I had foreseen this, having been caught out last time, and I had packed a packet of crisps, a handful of Liz’s home-made vegan biscuits and a banana. They didn’t ‘arf go down well. What was not so acceptable was the inexcusable, unpardonable sin of forgetting me when it came to bringing round the afternoon coffee. The fact that I MAY just have closed my eyelids to give my tired eyes a rest is neither here nor there. What you can be sure of is that harsh words were exchanged – and I did get my coffee.

I also got something else quite important too. The internet speed at the hospital is quite respectable for a public place, and so I profited by downloading a huge pile of radio programmes and a Mr Wong film from archive.org. That should boost up my supply of listening and watching matter if I’m going to be incarcerated elsewhere.

And talking of that, I was also speaking to my friend Alison, with whom I used to work at The Conference Board – that weird American company in Brussels. She had a very serious operation in Belgium and was full of praise over the treatment and care that she received. I’ve always said that Belgian health-care is the best in the world and that is where I would go if I were ever seriously ill, and so I asked her which hospital it was that she used.

It’s the one at Leuven, and having made enquiries, Alison told me that there is in fact a dedicated lymphoma department there. Furthermore, she rang them and it transpires that they would be glad to talk to me, and they passed their number onto her to give to me.

Why I’m doing this is that they have already told me that they don’t have the facilities to treat me in Montlucon. If I need treatment I have to go elsewhere. Clermont-Ferrand is, at the limit, acceptable because I’m still within some kind of travelling distance of possible visitors and facilities, but anywhere else is uncharted territory with no possibility of visits. Smuggling supplies into the hospital will therefore be extremely difficult and I’m not going to survive on what food a hospital can offer me.

Not only that, I’m dismayed at how much Flemish I have forgotten since I’ve left Brussels. I reckon therefore that a spell of immersion in a Flemish-speaking environment will do me the world of good.

An added advantage of Leuven is that there’s a Belgian 2nd-Division football club – OH Leuven, in the immediate vicinity and public transport in Belgium is very good. I’m sure that I can smuggle myself out of hospital occasionally on a Saturday night. If so, I can track down a fritkot too, and Alison has already promised to be my conduit for illicit food parcels.

I was thrown out of the hospital by 16:00 and I was wondering whether to go home for an hour or so but I wasn’t feeling up to much so I came back here. As a surprise, Liz and Kate have made me some vegan ice cream – strawberry and also choco-mint. It wasn’t ready for tea though but it will be fine for tomorrow. I hope that I’m still here to eat it, and not detained elsewhere.

I met up with the District Nurse too. He’s concerned about the continued use of this anti-coagulant and reckons that I ought to speak to the doctor about it tomorrow. he can understand why I needed it but it seems to him that the crisis has passed. He reckons that it’s now at the stage where it can be doing more harm than good, especially if I keep going for the total of three months for which it has been prescribed.

I’m all in favour of that. It’s costing me an arm and a leg for a start, and it will also mean that I can go back to having my Sunday morning lie-in. These continued 07:45 starts are killing me off.

-2

Monday 10th August 2015 – MY PATIENCE IS NOW THOROUGHLY EXHAUSTED …

… and my good humour has now totally disappeared. I am never ever going to help anyone out ever again.

Just look at my beautiful concrete hardstanding.

I worked on old wrecks for years at Gainsborough Road in Crewe, and despite everything that was thrown at me, my drive there never ever looked anything like this.

But here I am, having spent a fortune on concreting my drive last summer so that I would have somewhere nice to work in my dotage, and this is what I get for helping someone out.

The guy who owns this old wreck came round to try to finish it off, but forgot to connect up the oil pipe. As a result, when he turned over the engine, I got the contents of his sump all over my concrete.

And if that isn’t enough to be going on with, he wandered off to think of a plan B, not only leaving his car in my drive but making no attempt to clean up the damage. That’s all over where people walk into my property of course, and it’s all soaked into the concrete and thoroughly ruined it.

Consequently tomorrow, as soon as I come back from Gerzat, his Hyundai is going out into the street regardless of whatever else happens. I’ll tow it out with the Kubota, get it as far away from my premises as possible, and then just leave it for whoever wants to remove it.

and if you are wondering why I waited until Tuesday to publish this, had I published this last night before I went to bed, as I usually do, there would have been nothing that would have been fit to print.

Monday 8th June 2015 – I THINK …

… that I am going to have to find a new top for my old Black and Decker workmate. I thought that the circular saw was making hard work of that final cut on the top of the beichstuhl this evening.

It’s a fine old workmate too – getting on for 30 years old. Nerina bought it for me in the days when Black and Decker stuff was good, when I was planning on making some fitted wardrobes at Gainsborough Road. She reckoned that it might motivate me to do them, and I did too!

It’s been around Europe with me on all kinds of construction sites and it’s outlived a couple of more modern reincarnations which have failed to last the pace.

Yes, I’ve been working again. Cutting out and smoothing out the lunette in the top of the beichstuhl, and then cutting out the lid for the sawdust container.

It”s all been sanded down and fitted with reinforcing struts – not that it needs them but I’d look pretty silly if it were to. I can finish it off tomorrow and give it the first coat of wood treatment

Apart from that, I spent the morning on the laptop talking to Acer. seeing as I’ve been having some success about various matters on various forums, I attacked Acer today about my new laptop which is painfully slow with Windows 8.1.

The official helpdesk guy was no help at all but the self-help forum came up trumps. I was given a whole list of things to switch off and to delete, and told where and how I can reduce screen graphics to a minimum. That has certainly bumped up the speed and it’s roaring along now like it ought to do.

Even more interestingly, upgrading the RAM from 2GB to 8GB is staightforward. It’s standard DRAM 3 stocked everywhere and someone is going to find a plan of how to fit it. This one is not like the other ACER Aspire laptops with the service hatch underneath – you need to take the case right apart to get into it.

Rosemary rang up for a chat, and I had an interesting chat with a cold caller. He didn’t understand my lifestyle at all – it made no sense to him whatsoever

So tomorrow I’ll continue in the shower room? We’re are advancing quite slowly, but advancing all the same.

And with today’s water temperature in the solar shower at 33°C and the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater where all of the excess solar energy goes being over 70°C when I knocked off, 5 litres out of the latter into the former gave me a glorious solar shower to finish off the day.

Thursday 2nd June 2011 – I FOUND A …

… lovely place to kip last night. A bit of old abandoned road near the Poplar Motors Cafe near Lymm on the edge of the M6.

Another one of those places that is totally deserted at night but when you wake up in the morning it’s swamped out with car-sharers.

And I had quite an early start this morning. Thanks for the text, Percy Penguin

With my early start it wasn’t long before I ended up on Trafford Park at Screwfix and Toolstation – my catalogues are out of date and need replacing.

And then round to Maccess – the auto-spars wholesalers – for some car bits (I still have my trade card for there from when I had my taxis).

Maccess has gone right downhill but I managed to spend £220 there all the same, including the new brake pads that I need for Caliburn (the guy at the MoT station said that they were down).

From there I sped along the M62 to St Helens to my storage unit. I’ve emptied that out and closed it down now.

A quick nip across the yard to Elite Workwear to order some more shirts with logos as the ones I have are getting a little shabby and I need some new stuff. It’s a reasonable quality, reasonable price and stops me worrying about what I’m going to be wearing.

Next stop was IKEA at Burtonwood but there was nothing really of interest there and so I went to the B&Q Superstore at Ashton-in-Makerfield for Caliburn’s suspended floor.

Here I really struck it lucky.

It seems that there was a salesman there from the B&Q Trade Counter working on a commission basis and short of his targets for trade customers. And the advantage of having corporate clothing and the like is that I actually look like a tradesman (which is, after all, the aim of it).

He asked for two proofs of identity which of course I don’t have, but one of the advantages of having a fully-signwritten van like Caliburn is that it looks kosher, no matter what the reality might or might not be, and that was the aim of that as well.

For the second piece of identity, which needed to be proof of a business address, did I not have in Caliburn the lease of my 1 cubic metre of mailbox in Stoke on Trent that I signed yesterday?

And so with a salesman desperately seeking a target figure and willing to turn something of a blind eye to the finer points of the paperwork, I now have a B&Q Trade Card, and you can’t knock that.

Especially as one of the reasons that I am here is to buy 5 glazed interior doors like the one into my little attic (that came from B&Q a few years ago).

I really can’t emphasise this enough – a van isn’t simply a means of transporting goods and possessions around – it’s 15 square metres of mobile advertising space and if you are in any kind of business you should make the most if it.

I reckon that over half of whatever it is that I have done has come due to the £250 I spent in having Caliburn signwritten.

And so to Crewe – and it seems that my house in Gainsborough Road needs a total rewire as the cabling is falling to bits. No surprise there – I bought the house in 1981 and the only attention that the wiring has had since then has been the couple of extra sockets that I added.

Actually, it’s probably them that need replacement – I didn’t have a clue what I was doing in those days … “and today?” – ed.

The estate agents also tell me that they had to replace the carpets on the ground floor as they were all threadbare. “Not to worry” I replied. “They were there when I bought the place in 1981” – which brought the house down.

“Well, you’ve had your money’s worth there then” said the agent.

After shopping at the new Morrison’s at Crewe, next stop was to rescue Percy Penguin, who couldn’t get home after work, and give her some personal attention.

And that was that. Here I am on Sandbach Services with a new mega-fast high-speed interent connection, and free too, thanks to Roadchef Services and BT Openlink.

I’m off to bed in a minute, if I can think of somewhere handy to sleep.

-1

Saturday 13th February 2010 – I must have been tired last night.

Crashing out for a couple of hours and then going to bed early and then sleeping through the cacophony that is my series of alarm clocks and not waking up until 10:24. At least I’m feeling better though today. I think it must be all of these bad nights of sleep catching up on me.

This morning that strange gold thing put in a brief appearance up in the sky so I quickly climbed up onto the roof and brushed off the solar panels. I caught a few amp-hours of sun before the heavens clouded over again. But I also dug Caliburn out of his snowdrift and went for a spin up the lane to see if I could get out. Good job I have my new snow tyres because I did manage to make the public highway with a little bit of luck and perseverence. A wise decision to get these tyres, I’ll tell you.

So with a little tidying up I came up here and carried on reading my book. It’s called The 91 before Lindberghand it details all of the successful Transatlantic air crossings before “The Flying Fool”. It’s a fascinating book, especially for me, because as you know I have quite an interest in historic aviation and on one occasion while poking around on an old industrial estate on Long Island I came across a replica of the “Spirit of St Louis” and I had the extreme pleasure of being able to sit at the controls.

Furthermore the book recounts the early airship developments for Transatlantic flight that took place at Atlantic City in New Jersey – another place that I have visited – and then goes on to talk about the legendary near-miss between an airship and a four-masted schooner at Barnegat Lighthouse, yet another one of my haunts.

After that, seeing as there was a gap in the snowfall I went into St Eloy to do some shopping and pick up some gas. I was going to say “nip” into St Eloy but in third gear at 25mph all the way then “nip” it was not. It was an awkward drive but I managed okay and I’m now stocked well up for whatever else this weather can throw at us.

In other news, it’s the 25th anniversary round about now of an event that could have got Nerina and yours truly five years inside without the option. We’d seen a house that we liked and so we put Gainsborough Road on sale and priced it for a quick conclusion. Unfortunately the owners of our dream house wouldn’t reduce the price by very much and the only offers we were getting for Gainsborough Road would have left us with a shortfall.

Now you might think that a mortgage or a bank loan would be the answer but we were both self-employed running my taxi business. And with taxi businesses being what they call “cash businesses” the cash had a tendency to … errr … evaporate long before it made its way into the accounts so the accounts only bore what might be described as “a passing resemblance” to the true state of affairs of our business. We could easily afford the kind of loan that we needed but the accounts didn’t seem to bear it out.

So what we did was that we scratched around for work – any kind of work at any price and it didn’t matter at all if we were never ever going to be paid to do it as long as it looked good on paper – and heaved it into the accounts of the taxi business. It vastly inflated our “recorded” turnover and made everything look so impressive. So much so that the Bank loved our figures and started to heave huge wads of cash at us.

Luckily – and I mean luckily – the chain collapsed. The house we were interested in was taken off the market and so we took mine off and handed the cash back. And why “luckily”? For the simple reason that going to dubious, if not spurious means to inflate your company’s turnover for the purpose of getting an additional loan from a bank or a building society almost inevitably guarantees you a one-way ticket to Shrewsbury nick (or in Nerina’s case, Styal) because sooner or later your little fraud and deception will be uncovered.

Running my taxi business for eight years taught me an awful lot and many of the things that I learnt I would have been better off not knowing. But then again what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I had a few incredibly lucky escapes. When I realised all of the risks that I had been running it completely spoiled my appetite for nefarious activities and I certainly wouldn’t do it again. It’s not something that I would advise anyone else to do. If you need to go to these lengths to support your lifestyle then you need to change your lifestyle to one that you can support and if you can’t do that on your own then you need to find professional help.

-6

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: gainsborough road

Wednesday 30th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

Friday 18th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

Wednesday 19th March 2025 – MONDAY THE FIFTH …

Wednesday 28th August 2024 – MY GINGER CAKE …

Saturday 24th August 2024 – I HAVE EMULATED …

Friday 2nd August 2024 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

Monday 20th May 2024 – YOU’VE PROBABLY ALL …

11th May 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

Thursday 29th March 2024 – SO THAT’S THE …

Sunday 17th April 2016 – DESPITE BEING SO TIRED …

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 – WELL, I HAD THE CALL!

Monday 10th August 2015 – MY PATIENCE IS NOW THOROUGHLY EXHAUSTED …

Monday 8th June 2015 – I THINK …

Thursday 2nd June 2011 – I FOUND A …

Saturday 13th February 2010 – I must have been tired last night.

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