Tag Archives: hadrian’s wall

Sunday 10th January 2016 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S MAGNUM OPUS …

… I suppose you are expecting something similar today. But Sunday is a day of rest and so if you think that I’m going to be working as hard as I did yesterday, typing out another 2200-odd words, then you are mistaken. You’ll have to make do with a mere 1556.

Mind you, Terry was back at work again this morning. Still a small leak from the stoptap under the sink. That’s down to a worn tap and the turning on and off yesterday has aggravated the wear. Being Sunday of course it’s not possible to find a replacement and so Terry resolved the issue simply by turning the tap fully-open, as tight as he could make it with a couple of spanners, and the metal-to-metal contact has done the trick. It means of course that you can’t now switch it off, but it won’t leak until the next trip to Brico Depot when he can buy a replacement.

Apart from that, I’ve been doing some of my 3D Animation course, although I can’t find the enthusiasm for this like I did with my course on Hadrian’s Wall, and on one of the support sites for the 3D program that I use, there’s also been a mega-sale for items that would fit a couple of my characters and seeing that I didn’t manage to treat myself to a Christmas present this year I treated my characters to a couple of new outfits. It’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good, even a 3D model character or two.

We had an excellent tea too. I’ve been having food fantasies again (I’m not sure why because I’m anything but starving being here right now), this time about boiled potatoes, broccoli and vegan pie. I’d even bought a head of broccoli last time that I was out at the shops. And sure enough, Liz conjured up something magnificent, consisting of vegan pie, boiled potatoes and broccoli. It really was a superb meal and I enjoyed every mouthful.

As for my nocturnal rambles, I suppose that you are waiting for something quite stunning, following the incredible rambles of the last few days. It’s not quite as dramatic as that because I imagine that whatever part of me goes off on these journeys is as exhausted as I am. But last night was certainly different.

I remember quite clearly going to bed, I remember switching off the laptop, but the next thing that I remember was waking up at 04:50 with the bedroom light still burning brightly. I must have been absolutely shattered to crash out just like that.

But I do remember quite a lot about my journey last night and, seeing as how at 05:00 I was wide awake after a trip down the corridor, I sat down to type it out.

I was in Belgium, in my old Vauxhall Senator, parked in Brussels in one of these large squares in front of a big building or monument with steps leading up to it. I’d rigged up some kind of temporary curtain out of a grey plastic sheet so that I could have some privacy in there while I had a doze but it wasn’t very effective. In fact, it was only when I installed myself in the back seat and pushed the surplus plastic over the back of the front seat that I was anything like comfortable. But from here I ended up in a police holding cell there, along with about 20 other young people of both sexes. It appeared that I’d been in a car with a girl called Annick (whose family name began with “C”) and she’d been driving but somehow in the confusion, I’d been arrested instead. After a while an officer came into the cell and said that he’d been in contact with as many family members as possible for all of the different people in the cell and that bail had been arranged for most people. When he called out their names, they would be taken out to sign the papers and then they could leave. And so gradually our ranks thinned out. And then some older woman came in and called out “Annick C….”. I explained that it was probably me, and explained the circumstances, so she crossed out Annick’s name and wrote mine down instead. I said to the girl standing next to me, a very tall, thin young blonde girl, very nervous, that it’s worrying when even a junior member of a foreign Police Force knows my name and my identity well enough to write it down without even asking me to give it. Clearly, I’m well-known to the Police in Brussels. And we ended up chatting, with her telling me that it was her first time ever being arrested and in a police cell. So I gave her some reassuring talk. An older man put his head around the door and called “Annick C…”, to which I once more replied that it was probably me, so he told me to come along. I gave this girl the “thumbs-up” sign to encourage her and set off with this old guy. He was clearly British, with a working-class Northern England accent so I asked him what he was doing here and how come he’d found employment in a foreign police force. He explained that he’d come over, ended up driving a bus full of children with behavioural issues, and “then we’d lost touch with each other”. He clearly seemed to know who I was but I had no idea about him. He took me into an office – a really big office with a huge table, about half a tennis court in size. I was to sit at one end and there was someone else at the other end. There was a small pedestal fan on a filing cabinet there, making a terrible racket so I asked if I could turn it off. “It’s my office” he growled.”Fair enough” I answered, “but I can hardly hear you”. He walked over to me and said “what would you do if I did this?” and gave me a huge kiss on the mouth, so I pushed him away and asked him whether he meant that for “Annick C…”. His response to that was to call someone else in, a big man in a pork pie hat, who proceeded to put my head in a head lock. I had realised by now that the purpose of this noisy fan was to flood the room microphones so that the police misbehaviour and the screams of the victims would be drowned out on the tape recording of the interview (this is a typical Belgian police tactic), but this headlock was puzzling me. It wasn’t hurting me at all or causing me any discomfort whatsoever, and I didn’t see the point of it.

So having finished dictating my notes, I snuggled back under the quilt and I was off again. This time, my father was there (my nocturnal rambles are becoming much more like a family reunion and that’s a frightening thought, if ever there was one) with his annoying habit of calling everyone insulting names. Anyway, I’d had enough of this so the next time he did it, I smashed a bottle across the back of his head and killed him. I found a large wicker basket, lined it with a large plastic bin liner, stuffed him into it and filled it with water. And then I hid it in the corner of the garage of an office where I worked. I disposed of his two dog leads (why would he have two dog leads?) anywhere about the place. As luck would have it, I found an identity document – not his but someone else’s – which resembles nothing like an actual identity document, and carefully scribbled out the owner’s identity details, making sure that I left just enough visible so that a really good investigator could read, with some effort, the identity, and then hid it near the body. Of course, eventually the body was discovered by some woman and the police were called. I was rather worried, wondering it I ought to have done so much more to hide the body and wondering if the identity card ploy had been careless, but I reckoned overall that it would run the police up a blind alley for a good while. I would have run much more of a risk by trying to dispose of the body just after I’d done the deadly deed.

I can’t believe the number of family members who have appeared quite recently in my nocturnal rambles. There were all kinds of issues in our family over the years. We weren’t really a family at all but, just like the family in the superb Frank Sinatra film Tony Rome, a “bunch of people living under the same roof” and in the end we made the decision that, like the Knights of the Round Table in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we would go our separate ways. It was the most intelligent way to put an end to all of the difficulties that we were facing.

Since then, I haven’t spent any time thinking about them and they, doubtless, have returned the compliment and so what’s going on with them playing major supporting roles in my rambles?

Weird!

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Saturday 12th December 2015 – REMEMBER …

… that I talked last night about my early night last night and waking up in the small hours? It was at about 05:00 that I eventually turned off the light and settled down to sleep again. Of course, I was in the really deep sleep cycle when the alarm went off, and so that really was something of a waste of an early night.

After breakfast, I went and had a nice hot shower – the one that I should have had yesterday morning – and then I settled down to do some work. I had to finish off my revision, and that took ages for some reason or other – and then I had my exam.

The exam didn’t take too long to do and I ended up with 93% as my score. I’m quite happy with that of course, but I can’t remember now where it was that I dropped my missing points. I had to complete an on-line survey too, and that seemed to take longer than the exam.

I’ve now started transcribing my notes from my journey to Canada in the autumn. High time that I caught up with this, having neglected it for so long. I have four weeks until my next course begins so I need to make the most of the time available.

And the district nurse came round to inject me, and tonight it was really rough. He really hurt me and I was in pain for about half an our afterwards, and I can still feel it now. I’m really not enjoying this illness one little bit and it’s all down to the little things like this. I hate needles at the best of times but people really are taking the mickey out of me.

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Tuesday 8th December 2015 – I WAS OUT …

… of it completely today. I spent most of the day up in the clouds somewhere in the distant land between the sleeping and the waking. It’s been absolutely ages since I’ve felt quite like this.

Mind you, there are a couple of really good reasons for that.

Firstly, I was on my travels again during the night. We were interested in a really big and wealthy businessmen, the Russian oil magnate type. I suspected that he had been up to no good and I was interested in finding out more about him and his activities so I called him into my office and began to ask him questions. I’d been told by my boss that these people were “untouchable” and that we shouldn’t interview them, and that if we did, we wouldn’t be likely to get very much sense out of them, but I ploughed doggedly on nevertheless.
And this led to me being on the London Underground with a girl, smaller and younger than me with loads of black curly hair tied in a kind of bow at the back and she was wearing black-rimmed glasses. We went to the refreshment counter for something to eat and drink but a young boy pushed in front of us. He asked for four coffees but said that he wasn’t to say that he’d been here because last time they had done something nasty to the coffee and he told the other cashier that he wouldn’t ever come again. We had a coffee and a sandwich (I asked my companion if she wanted two sandwiches but she gave me a dirty look) and we took them back to one of the two double beds on top of this iceberg overlooking a kind of ice-beach. On the ice-beach was a guy in swimming trunks admiring the view, the water, the clear blue sky and the bright sunshine, but there was a young woman in a bikini creeping up on him and, much to the consternation of my companion, she pushed him right into the water and he began to struggle desperately while we watched, open-mouthed.

Strange as it is to say it, despite all of this going on, I had the best night’s sleep that I have had for weeks. Apart from a visit down the corridor, I was flat out until the alarm went off and it was all totally painless. I could have stayed in bed like that for a year.

But the second reason is not so good. I had the results of my blood test this morning and my blood count is 9.1. It’s a far cry of course from the 3.8 of three weeks ago, but it’s still a long way short of 13 that is the minimum for good healthy blood. After the 9 pochettesof blood that I’ve had this last couple of weeks, this figure is a major disappointment. It’s no surprise that I’m feeling a little down in the dumps.

And so I spent most of the day stuck in this never-never land, using whatever lucid moments I had in some kind of effort to revise for my end-of-course exam later this week. But I was clearly wasting my time in this respect so I called it a night and crawled off to bed

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Monday 7th December 2015 – HOW ABOUT THIS …

… for being brought back down to earth with a bump?

I can’t remember now what we were discussing but Liz came out with a “well, if you are still with us on Thursday …”, something that I thought was a delightful statement of pessimism. It turns out that what she means is that if I’m not detained in the hospital on Wednesday when I go for my check-up, but that was not how it sounded to me.

My late night last night meant that I was right out of it all through the night, and despite the odd trip here and there to go riding the porcelain horse, I don’t remember a thing. I do remember though waking up with cramp in my good arm, and that was pretty inconvenient. But at least it makes a change from having it in my legs.

The nurse was late too, and seeing as how I was having a blood test today I had to sit around starving until he arrived, and that didn’t improve my humour very much. That showed when I was doing my course work for my Hadrian’s Wall studies. Going back over what I’d written and submitted during the day, I can see that I’m becoming quite petulant in my old age.

I really need to cheer myself up a little, although I’m not quite sure how I can do that, especially given the present circumstances and my current state of health. New Zealand sounds quite enticing right now, sitting on a beach in the sun while everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is freezing to death, but seeing how I need injections twice a day, blood tests twice a week and the occasional control from the hospital, it’s clearly out of the question.

But this leads me on the a fantastic business idea which, I’m sure, would make millions. I’m certain that I’m not the only person to feel like this – there must be thousands like me – so instead of having a hospital, we had a floating hospital and all the sick, miserable and unhappy people like me just steamed off on a cruise somewhere on our floating hospital. Looking out of our “hospital” window one day and seeing Venice – the next day seeing the Acropolis (well, you know what I mean) and maybe even going to visit them – I’m sure that this would cheer up almost everybody. It certainly would cheer me up. There must be some mileage in this idea and I shall have to make further enquiries.

But I’ve effectively finished my course now. All that remains is the revision and then the exam, and then we shall see how I’ve done. But the issue then is “what am I going to do next?”. My animation course doesn’t start until mid-January and I need something to keep me out of mischief until then.

Perhaps I ought to write a book or something similar?

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Sunday 6th December 2015 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY …

… and in what can only be described as a first for about a hundred years, I set an alarm for s Sunday morning.

Not that I wanted to, but the nurse is coming round some time between 08:00 and 08:30 to give me an injection of anti-coagulant and so I need to be here. Not much point in him coming if I’m still in bed asleep.

But I was glad that I awoke because I’d been on my travels during the night. You won’t be interested in them because I’m not. It was all about hospitals and injections and blood tests, and I’ve had a darn sight too many of all of that just recently. It wouldn’t have been so bad had a nice young attractive nurse featured prominently somewhere, but as if that were ever likely to happen.

We had some more excitement later. Terry and Liz have a Volkswagen Golf but it’s been off the road for a while due to an undetected fault. According to the ECU there’s nothing wrong with the vehicle, but it just won’t start. Several garages have tried (and failed) to get it to go. In fact, it’s just like Crawshay Bailey’s famous engine, and “going to Cardiff College for to get a bit of knowledge” would be about just as much use in this case too.

However, on the internet a week or so ago, there was a very low-mileage engine for sale at a very democratic price and so, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … the engine turned up at lunchtime. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, the new engine might be fitted this week some time and who knows? The car might even go!

Anyway, that was about all of the excitement for today. I’ve done a pile of stuff for my course on Hadrian’s Wall, and I’ve been told that in 5 weeks time my course on Animation will start.

Did I tell you about this course on Animation? As you know, I mess around with a 3D program on the computer, one where you can create your own models and perform simple animations, but I’m not much good at it. Whilst the poor specs on this laptop don’t help, a lot of it can be put down to my own lack of technique and so I’m going to be following this course to see what it can teach me.

And that’s really all today. We had the second helping of curry for tea tonight and it was even better, as predicted. And right in the middle of tea the nurse came round to give me my evening injection. Magnificent timing!

I had an early night too – the strain of an 07:45 start on a Sunday was far too much. But someone with whom I hadn’t spoken in ages came on line just as I was about to switch off the laptop and so that put paid to that idea.

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Thursday 3rd December 2015 – WELL, THAT SORTED THEM OUT!

Yes – clearly my discussion with the Accounts department yesterday seems to have worked, and galvanised them into action, because they rang me up this morning to say that the Direct Billing account has now been established and I needn’t worry about the payments.

As if I was worrying about the payments anyway. It’s no concern of mine. As I said yesterday, the hospital could have done all of this on the day that I was admitted.

Anyway, it’s amazing what you can do when you set your minds to doing it, isn’t it, Accounts Department of Centre Hospitalier Montlucon?

Before all of this erupted however, I’d already been on my travels. Down to the depths of the hospital and the domain of the Body-snatc … errr … scanners. It’s like a huge time portal (made by one of my former employers, General Electric) and you pass in and out of it on a cantilever trolley. I did of course ask if I was going to wake up in the 25th Century, but knowing the Auvergne like I do, it’s probably something for bringing people kicking and screaming into the present day.

I had to drink something totally disgusting before I was scanned and to give you an idea of just how unpleasant it was, this is the first place anywhere in any hospital in which I have ever been in mainland Europe where I’ve been offered a cup of coffee afterwards. But that didn’t work and even 15 hours later I can still taste whatever it was.

But there was a moment of light entertainment down there in the bowels of the hospital. In the body-scanner machine you have to wear a kind of helmet and there are different sizes of padding; depending upon the size of your head. Chief Body-Scanner went on a fruitless search to find the right size for me.
Chief Body-Scanner – “but don’t you have a big head?”
Our Hero – “well, there’s quite a lot in it!”.

After that, I was left pretty-much to my own devices and cracked on with my University course on Hadrian’s Wall. A great chance to catch up on the outstanding stuff.

But we did have some kind of interruption. The doctor came to see me “you can go home later on today. You’ll be back tomorrow for a check-up and again in another week”
“I’m not so sure that that’s a good idea” I replied. “I’ll have to disturb someone at work right now to come over 50 kilometres to pick me up, and drive over 50 kilometres back. And then tomorrow, he’ll have to drive me over 50 kilometres to come here and then over 50 kilometres back again. If I can stay until tomorrow afternoon, there will be someone in Montlucon already who can bring me back without the slightest inconvenience to anyone”.

And so common sense has prevailed and I’m here until Liz comes to fetch me tomorrow afternoon.

When Liz turned up later (with some spare undies and a punnet of grapes) I told her the news, and that is indeed the plan. I warned her and Terry to make sure that they had plenty of garlic in and to wear it around their necks when they go to bed just in case I feel thirsty during the night.

And so that was that today. But I didn’t go off to sleep easily. I had borrowed a couple of books from the library and one of them looked quite interesting – namely the story of the discovery of some “treasure” in 1924 in a small village called Glozel, about 60kms from here.

It turned out to be one of the most controversial treasure trove discoveries in the whole of the country because while many of the objects are of a typical early neolithic style, many of them appear to be made in the Medieval period and some even contemporary to the discovery. And this led to all kinds of village feuds, court cases and the like, and the affair rumbles on today.

Anyway, there I was, riveted to this book from start to finish and it was 23:00 when I arrived at the last page. It’s a long time since I’ve been stuck to a book like that.

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Wednesday 2nd December 2015 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I didn’t have a great many interruptions today. And even better, being free of tubes and pipes for once, I took advantage of the shower that is in my little washroom here and had one of the nicest showers that I’ve ever had. And don’t I fell better for it? It certainly cheered me up.

Last night’s sleep was nothing much to write home about, particularly after the good night that I had had previously. But nevertheless I was on my travels once more during the night. I was running a taxi business with a group of kids, all about 9 or 10 and one day we were clearing up the yard and gathered together an enormous amount of waste or scrap which was valued at £280. For this, I was offered a brand-new car and that seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime deal to me so I was keen to accept. But these kids must have misunderstood because they thought that I was swapping it all for a set of new tyres, which was nothing like the same deal. as a result they insisted on accompanying me to do the deal. But we ended up in the local swimming baths and the papers somehow or other found their way into the water and no sooner had I retrieved one of them then another paper would find its way into the water and I had to fish that out of the water too. And so on.

And so having sorted myself out, I had the first of my visits today. I have finally made the acquaintance of the doctor who is dealing with my case. And while she’s not yet completed her enquiries, it’s pointing more and more towards a lymphoma. But in other news, my haemoglobin count has gone right down again to 7.8 and that means that this afternoon I’ll be having another blood transfusion.

We then had the usual pantomime with the Accounts Department. I shan’t bore you with the details because I’ve talked about them before, and doubtless I’ll be talking about them again. But basically, they are moaning that I haven’t paid them anything for my treatment so far. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have an assurance from my former employers, and the idea is that whenever I go for any major treatment, I produce a card with an emergency phone number on it, the hospital or whatever phones it up and this opens a direct billing account. However, you might recall that the person on “reception” at the Emergency Admissions refused to call it up.

And so I had to request a form, which duly came, and I completed it and handed it to the hospital to fax off and to keep a copy so that they had all of the details to hand. But they refused to do that too, and so I had to post it off my snail mail.

And the result of all of this is that they now have to wait upon the pleasure of the Post office – and serve them right too.

While I was waiting for the blood I did the test that I needed to take for the end of my fourth week of my University course. I ended up with 90% which was disappointing as far as I was concerned because I fell down on the identification of the god Mithras and also on the pathological question concerning the kid’s skeleton that had been disinterred from under the floor of an army barracks.

I’m now four days behind on this course, despite at one stage of having been three days ahead. I need to get a wiggle on.

Later on, they came round with the blood.
“You’re having a lot of blood” said the nurse
“Well don’t worry” I replied. “If you run short, I’ll put on a black cape and prowl the streets of Montlucon at midnight”

They took so much time to organise themselves with this blood that by the time they had finished with the blood transfusion, it was after 22:00. I was too tired to try to watch a film and so I just crawled under the covers and went off to sleep.

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Tuesday 17th November 2015 – I’M FEELING A LITTLE …

… bit better today.

With having crashed out yesterday afternoon, it was gone 02:00 (more like 03:00, I reckon) when I went to bed. As for the alarm at 07:30, well, the least said about that the better. 09:30 it was when I crawled up here, and then I had to make some muesli as I’d run out yesterday

I had a good day on my course and astounded my tutor with an observation that I made about an Iron Age encampment in the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall. But with the late start, it was after midday when I finished.

I crashed out again for an hour or so, but then found from somewhere the energy to go outside.

First thing that I did was to fit Caliburn with new windscreen wipers. The ones that were on it were the originals since 2007, so eight-and-a-half years is some going. They weren’t much good, in fact. but when I was at the Auchan the other day, they were having a sale of windscreen wipers and so I took advantage of it, ready for the winter which isn’t surely far away.

Apart from that, I’ve started to empty Caliburn. There was food in there (tins and stuff), some of which dates from before I went to Canada in August, as well as a pile of washing that Liz did for me. It can’t stay in there for ever so I made some space in the downhill lean-to and most of it is stacked in there. Some other stuff, including the washing, I dragged up here (and I do mean “dragged”).

Tomorrow, I’m going to be brave and carry on with the emptying, including the tiles and the tile cement. I may not be up to much at the moment, but tiling doesn’t take too much effort and with the old electric tile-cutter that I have, that doesn’t take too much electrical energy

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Friday 13th November 2015 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve not done anything much at all. I really need to snap out of this.

However, the day wasn’t suitable for doing much outside – grey and overcast – although that hasn’t stopped me very often before. And furthermore, the weather has gone colder and I can smell winter in the air.

I spent today revising what I’ve learnt over the last two weeks on my course about Hadrian’s Wall, and it seems to have worked because I took my test this afternoon and ended up with 93%, with which I’m quite satisfied, although I fell down on transcribing the inscription on a Roman monumental stone which is a disappointment because the only Latin that I can remember from my schooldays is due to my keeping it up by reading monumental stones. So Puer amat mensam, say I.

This evening I went off to St Eloy and shopping and due to my bulk purchases last weekend I spent a mere €14:00, mainly on fruit and veg, and also on the rice that I forgot to buy. And the grapes were beautiful, so much so that I bought two bags, one of which I ate on the way home and the second I’ll eat on Sunday. Not tomorrow though because I’m off to Enval tomorrow night for the football and do you know what? I’m going to buy myself a cooked pizza for tea and eat it in Caliburn on the way home.

You might be wondering how it is that I manage to eat pizza when I’m out, being a vegan. That’s because whenever I go to Brussels I buy a load of the vegan cheese slices that are on sale at the health food shop opposite where Marianne used to live. There’s always a pack or two in the coolbox wired into Caliburn’s ignition circuit and so when I order my pizza, I order it without cheese and ask the pizza place if they will stick three slices of my cheese onto the the pizza.

Of course, it’s a waste of time doing that at one of these big pizza chains, but most smaller pizza places and pizza vans do it quite happily, and I know for a fact that the one at Mozac (on the way home) will do it with no problems as I’ve had it done there before.

But depressing news at St Eloy. There was a “dispute” at LIDL between two shoppers that ended up with a punch-up outside the shop. I left the UK to get away from aggressive confrontations like this and it dismayed me to see this kind of thing over here. Mind you, St Eloy is a little … well … down-at-heel and depressed and I suppose that some of the locals relieve their tensions and stresses with alcohol and the like.

But it’s still a sad thing to witness. I’m dismayed.

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Monday 2nd November 2015 – WOW!

Yes indeed. We’re having one of the windiest days that we’ve ever had since I began keeping records. We’ve had gusts of up to 47kph and all of the wind turbines here have been going round like the clappers. We’ve not quite had record wind energy figures, but we aren’t far off it and it’s still cracking up (although I’ve taken the records now so the rest will be added to tomorrow’s figures).

As for today, I was up fairly early, and after breakfast I spent some time on the computer. This course on Hadrian’s Wall that I’ve started to study is rather different. It’s done on line with embedded videos and that’s going to cause a load of problems with my sad internet speed. But it looks quite interesting.

Not many people realise this but there are two wall systems in the UK. Hadrian’s Wall between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Carlisle, and the Antonine Wall between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. Some people think that both walls were built by the same Emperor but the Northern one is definitely by the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Hadrian had only got one wall.

I didn’t have lunch today – I went out and started work instead and was rather carried away. We had beautiful sunny weather and with the wind we had a nice pile of electrical energy and with no dump load at the moment, I adopted plan B and fetched the chop saw.

I set up a workbench outside and started to attack the huge stack of wood that’s been building up outside over the past few years. Old branches and tree trunks that I’ve pulled up and cut down in the past as well as the old chevrons from when I replaced the roofs here.

The stack of wood doesn’t look much smaller but I’ve cut up enough to make a huge pile of wood. I’ve filled up the woodshed with some of it, and I’ve filled an IKEA bag to bring up here ready for whenever winter might arrive. But the chop saw idea worked in spades. With plenty of electricity to play with, it was 10 times quicker and 10 times less tiring than doing it with the hand saw. But there are some bits that won’t fit under the chop saw and so I’ll need the chainsaw for that, when Terry has finished with it.

But it does go to show. I once had a friend with whom I shared all of my hopes and aspirations about this place and my aims for the electrical system. I regarded him as being my best ever friend but then I found out that he was going onto a Land Rover forum on the internet and mocking my ideas, he and his friends having a really good laugh about it and a few offensive comments being thrown in for good measure. Of course, no friendship can withstand that, but it’s this kind of thing that is showing that I’m having the last laugh.

When I finished, I came up here to watch a film (I’m reverting to my old habits at long last) but crashed out instead. Once I had woken up, I cooked the pizza that I had forgotten to eat.

Tomorrow if the weather is good I’ll be carrying on with the woodpile. And if not, there are plenty of other things to be getting on with. High time I cracked on.

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