Tag Archives: grenville perry

Wednesday Wednesday 26th August 2026 – CONSIDERING THE DIFFICULTIES …

… that I am facing every day, such as falling asleep spontaneously at some point, I have worked hard today and I’m quite proud of what I have done.

Not like last night though, where despite my best efforts, it was just past 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed last night. The nice clean bedding was wonderful and it really was a pleasure to be in there. And I was asleep quite quickly too.

But not for long.

At about 02:15 we had another phantom alarm. I awoke and was waiting for the repeater, but nothing happened so that was when I looked at the time. I don’t know what’s going on.

How many phantom alarms is that now? It’s definitely unsettling, and I’ve no idea how it’s all going to end.

However, I was soon back to sleep, and although I have the vaguest of memories about waking up, I was definitely asleep when the alarm went off.

It’s definitely dark now when I wake up, so my body clock will need to adjust – at least, that’s my excuse for the time that it took for me to get out of bed, stand up and head to the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

And then, back in here to check the dictaphone to see if anything else went on during the night.

I was at work again last night. It was a Friday and I’d finished all my work. There was nothing left there to do and it was still about an hour before the office closed, so I went to see the boss for the usual permission to leave early. Today, for some reason, he decided to refuse, so in the end I went back to my desk, and a group of us were there chatting away when some woman came in with a blue form and asked to see one of our team. We explained that he wasn’t in the office today. She was not happy about something on this form, so we had a look at it. As far as we could tell, it was perfectly correct and we couldn’t see what was wrong with it, but she was fed up with the persistence and the number of forms that she’d had. I said that the person who deals with your file isn’t in today. He’s quite an accurate officer but he’s probably not seen one of these forms before. She said that that was exactly what he told her. We agreed that she should come back on Tuesday when he would be there. In the meantime, I’d ‘phoned Nerina to say that I couldn’t come home early. She, jokingly – or perhaps not so jokingly – asked, “what’s her name?” so I explained to her that it was the decision of the boss at the office. She did one of these “oh yes”es as if she didn’t really believe it. At 17:00 we all went home, and once I was outside, I telephoned her to say that I was on my way home. Nerina asked “alone?” to which I replied “of course I’m alone” and we started this little teasing about “you’re only late home from the office today because someone special kept you there” – that kind of thing.

Usually, my dreams about work generally involve me on the point of leaving because I’m well past retirement age, so this is a new departure, just as leaving work an hour earlier would be.

And the officer who was not there to deal with that woman. I recognised who he was – the old Head Boy of the school when we were in the Upper Sixth. What’s he doing, appearing in my dreams, I have no idea.

Nerina’s teasing has an underlying serious aspect too. I don’t think that she was ever convinced about me.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. And I had a surprise for him today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, I had an intruder open my apartment door. I’ve decided now to lock the door when I go to bed and open it when I’m awake. This will cause problems for the nurses on Sundays if I’m lying in, so I gave the nurse a key that I’d had cut to add to their huge collection so that they can open the door all the same.

After he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, actually, I didn’t. I was led up a blind alley by something else that he wrote and spent a good while following the trail. I even ended up – don’t ask me how – reading the biography of Nicolae Moromete, a senior prison officer in Romania for the Communists when they came to power. Don’t ask me how I found myself there with him.

After breakfast, I came back in here where there were plenty of things to do. Once they were all out of the way, I turned my attention to the radio programme that I had started yesterday. I had to hunt down loads of music, have a good chat with my artificial intelligence chatbot about some of it, download it, reformat it, re-edit it and remix it.

Once I had the ten that I needed, I had to choose from amongst them a good opening track, a good second track and a good final track, then pair and segue every one of them.

And this will be an interesting programme, that’s for sure. For instance, have you ever heard Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” played with a lead violin? We have my friend Mark to thank for that.

There were several interruptions today while I was doing that – firstly, there was the disgusting drink break. Then we had Rosemary calling me for a chat, and finally, I fell asleep for about three quarters of an hour. So, pushed for time as I was, I managed to write over 25% of the notes as well.

That was what I call “a productive day”.

No tea again tonight. I grabbed a handful of biscuits instead. I can’t face any food again right now. I’m definitely not well.

So now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Nicolae Moromete … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me what I had learned about him
"Quite a lot" I replied. "For example, he was the person who came out with the famous quote ‘Under socialism, people guilty of nothing would still go to prison, but for less than ten years’"

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