Tag Archives: haircut

Monday 6th July 2026 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was sitting in my chair, working. I’d actually been up and about for 45 or so minutes, and when was the last time that that happened?

But anyway, last night was another one of those nights where I couldn’t seem to push on and finish everything. While I was writing my notes, I had a plate of crackers and the vegan cream cheese in front of me, and I managed to finish all of that, right enough, but it still ended up being a horribly late night again.

Once I was in bed, I was asleep quickly enough, as usual, but once more, not for long. Round about 01:20 (I checked the time) I awoke, and that was that. It was another one of those nights where I tossed and turned, trying to make myself comfortable as dawn very slowly began to break.

Round about 05:30, I was wide-awake and with no apparent possibility of going back to sleep, I decided to raise myself from the Dead – although it took a good while to find the energy and the courage to do so.

However, I’m glad that I did because I managed to dictate the notes that I’d written ages ago for three radio programmes. It’s only one small chip off a very large block, but at least I’m making a start.

What was interesting about this, though, was that when I awoke, it looked as if it might be a bright, sunny day but within a period of fifteen minutes or so, a thick mist had appeared and I couldn’t even see the car park from here. “This bodes well for the rest of the day,” I thought.

When the alarm sounded, I was just finishing off the third so when I was ready, I went and organised myself in the bathroom, having a really good wash and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. However, I needn’t have bothered because there wasn’t anything there. After all, if you don’t sleep, you can’t really dream, can you? Either that or my subconscious is totally exhausted after last night. Instead, I found plenty of other things to do. There’s no shortage of work around here.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and chatted away for a while as she sorted out my legs and feet. And after she left, I had another lengthy struggle to raise myself up from the chair in the dining area to go to make my breakfast.

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

He’s managing to steer clear of controversy again today – but only in general terms. We’ve finished with Egyptian architecture, had a whistle-stop tour of Persia (which he liked) and India (which he also rubbished) and have now arrived in Greece.

We’ve not been in Greece even a couple of lines before he begins to wax lyrical, with eulogy after eulogy of praise for what started out as simple “post and beam” architecture of the type that he rubbished at Stonehenge. Consequently, we end up with paragraphs such as "Indian, Egyptian, even Persian art, is grand, striking, awful, but it is not, in the highest sense, beautiful : it exhibits power, and even genius, but genius coarse and unrefined, unfettered by the laws of taste and the perception of elegance ; its ornaments are grotesque and fanciful, its magnificence cumbrous and excessive. For grace, simplicity, and loveliness, we have still to look to that wonderful people, who, after the revolutions of so many ages, yet remain the centre of all intellectual greatness, whose history still furnishes the best lessons in the science of man’s political and social being ; whose literature must remain to every age as the ground-work of every intellectual study ; from whose poets we derive our first ideas alike of all that is lovely, and all that is sublime ; from whose philosophers we learn the first principles of the first of sciences, the laws of thought, and of the passions which stir the human breast. Such was the glorious land of Greece,"

So here we go again. Art isn’t architecture, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … And the Persian kings such as Cyrus, Cambyses Darius and Xerxes were busy trying to build empires, so their buildings were supposed to be impressive in order to awe the leaders of subjugated nations by their power and magnificence, as I have also said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …

After breakfast, I went into the bathroom, where I went one better than Dave Crosby, probably because I’d had the ‘flu for Christmas and wasn’t feeling up to par. So anyway, I’m not giving in an inch to fear so I set to work.

Back in here later, I had a few more things to do and then checked over the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and sent it off for inclusion in the stream. After that, I spent some time planning my next radio programme.

That took me up until my faithful cleaner arrived to apply my anaesthetic. And while I was preparing my bag ready for dialysis, she was going through all of the various prescriptions that I had. One or two of them were expired so she gave me a big bundle and asked me if I could ask the doctors for a new prescription, but with everything on it instead of having half a dozen pieces of paper.

While I was waiting for the taxi, I had a bit of a tidying-up session. There were some clothes hanging about, so some went into the laundry basket and my thick winter jacket, I hung up on the hook over the front door. And there, I made a huge discovery.

When I left the Auvergne, I was convinced that I’d brought three fleeces with me, but after all this searching for all this time, I could only ever find two. But when I went to hang up my jacket, there was the third fleece, on a hanger on the hook. How long has that been there?

The taxi was late arriving and we had to pick up someone else on the way. Consequently, I was late arriving at dialysis. However, to my surprise, they came to deal with me straight away and I was up and running by 14:20. Once again, though, it was a pretty intense session and I wasn’t at all looking forward to it.

Mind you, the connection wasn’t ‘arf painful. The guy who was doing it is here temporarily from St. Malo and rather than feeling gently for the correct spot, he just thrusts the needle straight in. However, although it’s quite painful, the pain doesn’t last very long.

As usual, they set the machine to take my blood pressure every half-hour, and so every half-hour a nurse came running over as the alarm sounded. My blood pressure is habitually very low, quite often below the “alarm” setting, and it’s no cause for concern but they still keep running over “just in case”.

Unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t on duty today, but the duty doctor took my prescriptions and wrote out two new ones, one from her for the medication and the second from the dietician for the disgusting drinks. And I see that now I’m expected to have four of them each day. I’m not sure how I’m going to find the time to drink them, never mind do anything else.

When the session was over, I was unplugged quite quickly too. Once again, my weight was just as Saturday – one of the lowest measures that it has been for years. Now I was ready for a nice, early start to go back home, but the taxi wasn’t and I had to wait about ten minutes for it to put in an appearance.

It was the young, chatty guy who came to pick me up, and as I was the only passenger, we had a good chat about not very much all the way home, and I was here by 18:40, which makes a nice change.

My cleaner was there, waiting to help me into the apartment (and I needed it too), and after I collapsed into a chair, she passed me a disgusting drink. I suppose that she thought it a good way to revive me, and after the miserable failure of the other day with an energy drink, she was probably right.

After she left, I made myself a quick meal. A mixture of kidney beans, mushrooms, tomato, onion and garlic into a taco roll which I ate with rice and vegetables. And I enjoyed it too, which is just as well because Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, there’s football on the internet as the Welsh clubs sally forth to do battle in European competition, so I won’t have time to prepare a meal.

Back in here afterwards, I had a few things to do and then I began to write my notes. However, I’d hardly written the first line when a huge wave of fatigue overwhelmed me. I didn’t recover either afterwards and, as usual, I thought that there’s only one place to be at a time like this.

Interestingly, I’m noticing that it always seems to be right after dialysis when this happens and I have to go straight to bed. I wonder what’s going on with whatever it is that they are doing to me while I’m there.

Anyway, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the thick mist … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminded me of a true story told to me by a woman with whom I once worked.
She told me that she was coming home from Liverpool to Stockport and there was such a thick mist that she couldn’t see where she was going. She was sure that she’d missed a turning and was now hopelessly lost.
As she drove up to a traffic light, she saw that in front of her was a lorry that belonged to a company in Levenshulme. "What luck!" she exclaimed. "I’ll follow it home and I’ll work my way out from there!"
After about an hour or so, the lorry came to a halt in a yard, so she went over to the driver and asked "whereabouts in Levenshulme are we exactly?"
"Madam," he replied "this is our depot in Preston."

Saturday 4th April 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again from last night. That tells you just how deep my sleep must have been.

And I needed it too. I’d been exhausted all day and as the evening went on, it went from bad to worse. With no tea again, apart from a slice of my delicious chocolate cake with home-made ice cream, I’d finished everything by 21:30 and by 21:45 I was tucked up in bed with my head buried under the quilt, and I went straight to sleep.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens every time I have an early night. And round about 01:20 too. But this time it was for reasons that any person of my age will understand, and I was obliged to leave the bed.

Once I climbed back in, I was asleep almost straight away and that’s how I remained until the alarm went off at 06:29. And surprisingly, I was in exactly the same position in the bed as I had been when I went to sleep. I can’t have moved a single muscle during all that time.

It took an age for me to summon up the courage and energy to leave the bed, and what with a clothes-washing session too, I was hours late going into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

There was also a task that I had to carry out while I was in the kitchen. As I said yesterday, Isabelle the Nurse and I had had a discussion about hot cross buns, and she had asked me if I had a recipe. And so, taking the book in which I write down all of my recipes, I wrote out the recipe for her, ready for when she arrives.

Back in here, with no dictaphone notes to transcribe, I had a few other things to do. And while I was doing them, I discovered that the attendance at the game between Colwyn Bay and Caernarfon attracted a crowd of 2357. That was higher than the average gate of Accrington Stanley in League Two and higher than eight games in League Two in March.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and was grateful for the recipe. We had the usual chat about nothing at all, and after she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE ROMAN FORT AT BALMUILDY on the Antonine Wall, written by Stewart Napier Miller.

In fact, read all of it because it’s now finished. And my assumption about the attacks by the natives on the fort are confirmed by his assumptions. He can, in fact, name two periods when the destruction was likely. The first being an invasion from the north that occurred, according to some contemporary writers, in 155 AD and another one being an attack some time later that prompted the evacuation of the Antonine Wall and the retreat to that of Hadrian.

So tomorrow, I’ll be starting a new book, if I wake up, which at this moment appears to be extremely unlikely.

As for my breakfast, my hot cross buns were excellent again, even if they are somewhat over-baked. In future, I’ll cook them at 180°C, regardless of what the recipe says.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, such as to watch the highlights of last night’s matches in the JD Cymru League, and then I attacked the next lot of notes for a future radio programme. And now, the two halves of the programme are complete, the joining track has been chosen and the notes written, ready for the next dictating session, whenever that might be.

And it might have been finished a long time beforehand, had I not fallen asleep for well over an hour round about midday.

After all of that I went into the bathroom and went one better than Dave Crosby, probably because I had the ‘flu for Christmas, and right now, I’m definitely not feeling up to par.

Later on, I went into the kitchen to make some more ice cream.

This time, it’s based on some chocolate milk with coconut cream, and by the time that it’s finished, it will have a stream of mint syrup running through it.

And I remembered my mistake about the cornflour when I made my first batch. This time, I heated half of the milk and added the cornflour into it to thicken it. When it cooled, nice and thick, I added it into the rest of the milk, and it seemed (to date) to have worked.

There was plenty of time left after that, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall a project that I mentioned on thirteenth of March or thereabouts, so I concentrated for a few hours on continuing that. It’s not going to be finished for ages, if at all because it’s an enormous piece of work, and it will take me forever, bearing the time that I have available.

Mind you, this is another one of those things where I could have done much more had I not fallen asleep at one point. In fact, I’ve been fighting off wave after wave of sleep all day, quite unsuccessfully at times. You wouldn’t think that I had had such a good sleep last night.

While I was having a little doze during the late afternoon, there had been a snowplough with a blade and rotating brush at the front and a salt spreader at the back, working the Trans-Labrador Highway. It came to a fast-food or coffee place and actually drove inside to clean up the inside of the building, especially the area in front of and behind the counter.

Part of the things that I have been doing today did include a discussion about the Trans-Labrador Highway and MY FIRST TRIP AROUND THERE IN 2010. And there was a discussion about snowploughs, although not cleaning out a Tim Horton’s or one of those places that was found by a High Court judge to be "guilty of exploitative marketing to children, some animal cruelty, anti-union practices, low pay, and misleading health claims.".

Anyway, that’s enough of that. These waves of fatigue have been doing me in all day and it’s surprising that I’ve accomplished as much as I have done. And so, I’m going to go to bed.

Once more, I’ve had no tea except for a lump of cake with some home-made ice cream. I’m more interested in sleep and trying to keep my weight down for dialysis rather than eating right now, although I won’t say “no” to my cake.

And in any case, with a lie-in tomorrow … "he hopes" – ed … tonight is a good night for an early night, so I shan’t hang about. I’ll go back into the kitchen and give the new ice cream a good forking, and that will be that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my home-made ice cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me "where did you actually learn to make ice cream?"
"Simple" I replied. "When I was small, I used to go to Sundae School. "

Thursday 15th January 2026 – I’M FED UP …

… of all of this, that’s for sure.

This afternoon, I arrived at the dialysis centre at 13:50. I was finally plugged in at … errr … 15:10. That’s one hour and twenty minutes that I had to hang around like Piffy on a Rock. As if I don’t have anything better to do than to wait on their convenience.

That’s how it has been today, one thing after another after another. It started off last night when I ended up going late for tea and not actually finishing until 23:30 or thereabouts everything that I needed to do.

With this racking cough that is still not improving and a nose that’s flowing like a stream in full flood, I didn’t really have all that much of a good sleep either. I did in fact go to sleep rather quickly, but I kept on waking throughout the night with a desperate desire to cough.

When the alarm went off, it was a desperate struggle to leave the bed and it took me quite a while to summon up the energy and make an effort to go to the bathroom, where I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

After the hot drink and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

I was in the hospital again. I’d been staying there for a while and they had changed my mattress around so that it would have sides of even wear rather than all going to be bogged down on one side. However, as soon as I changed my position to the other side of the bed, it was like being in a different bed and I ended up with a second lot of flowers, which was not what I expected. I didn’t really know what to do and how to react to this kind of thing, and especially the two deliveries of flowers, one for each side of the bed, that I’d had. That was becoming complicated.

That’s the problem with my mattress here. I turned it once, but now both sides are worn and it really does need replacing. As for the hospital and the flowers, I wonder what they are doing here.

Later on, I was driving my taxi around Shavington in the Basford neighbourhood, I suppose. There was something about a couple of red roses in the middle of the road. I’ve no idea why, and that’s all that I remember of this particular dream, unfortunately.

So I’m back to driving taxis again. I’ve not done that for a week or so. But flowers yet again. There’s definitely something happening today with those.

And then there was a third dream. It was about a university meeting, and there were hundreds, if not a couple of thousand, people there milling around. They were talking about plans for the forthcoming year etc., and then we had to go along and choose a place to stay on a student exchange for two weeks. They had all kinds of guides to help you choose, notebooks and music etc. I went straight over there and began to liberate all of the RUNRIG cassettes because where I was hoping to go was that I’d heard that there was an exchange to the Outer Hebrides or to an island almost out as far as the High Arctic. I was determined to be on that regardless. Once I’d collected all of these cassettes, I wandered round but couldn’t find any tutors. I asked a couple of people but no-one else could find them. They had all disappeared, so I wondered what was going to happen next – we needed to be allocated rooms, we needed to be fed etc. Then I suddenly realised that I’d been walking around without my crutches so I went back to where I’d been sitting. The girl who had been sitting next to me was there so I gave her a wave and said to her “you’re in trouble”. She asked why, and I explained that it was for letting me walk around here like this without my crutches. We had a little comment about it. Then I saw that the food was arriving so I went, but it was only the dessert. I couldn’t really see any vegan desserts so I had to hope that what I’d chosen was a dessert. Then the main course arrived, but it didn’t look very healthy. It was mashed potatoes and a kind of meat stew, something like that. It was strange that they had put the dessert first and the main course second. I couldn’t help it – I was nibbling away at my dessert rather than helping myself to a main course. I noticed that there was a vegetarian option but no vegan option. Everyone seemed to be taking lumps out of the vegetarian one rather than the vegan. There was also a starter there that was placed in the third position but that had nothing but cheese on it. There was no vegan cheese either. I couldn’t help but nibble on my dessert instead of trying to organise a main course. I was beginning to feel extremely frustrated by this time – not being able to find a tutor, not being able to register my choice of student exchange, not having any real meal to eat, and finding myself automatically nibbling on a dessert first. This wasn’t the kind of situation that I was hoping for.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have visited this island in the past during a nocturnal ramble. It doesn’t have a name but it’s right out of place, where it was during that previous dream.

But how many times is this that I’ve dreamed of walking without my crutches? It’s probably a good dozen or so. And then having one of these attacks of uncertainty that I have sometimes during the night. But dreaming about food is an unusual twist to this.

The nurse turned up early again and sorted out my legs. He didn’t stay long and I could push on and make breakfast. And to read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

James Curle has now started his excavations but is still setting the scene. He has, however, now worked out that the reason that the Roman fort wasn’t put in the most logical place, as I mentioned yesterday, was that there are the remains of a huge Roman camp there. and he’ll be excavating that in due course.

After breakfast, I gave in an inch to fear and went one better than David Crosby. Probably because, having had the ‘flu for Christmas, I’m not feeling up to par and it just increases my paranoia, like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car.

Back in here, there was post to deal with, a package that needed returning and a few other bits and pieces. Once I’d done that, I began to do some more work on the radio programme that I’d started the other day.

There wasn’t much time to do very much but nevertheless, I made a certain amount of progress before my cleaner came in to apply the anaesthetic on my arm. While she was here, she busied herself with a few small tasks about the place, seeing as she hadn’t been here on Tuesday, and then she wandered off, leaving me to wait for the taxi. I came back in here to carry on with the radio programme.

The taxi was a couple of minutes late coming for me, and then we had to drive out to the back of beyond to “rescue the perishing” – pick up someone else and take him to dialysis too. Consequently, we were several minutes late arriving.

Once I’d weighed myself, I installed myself in my bed and waited. And waited.

There was another new girl there today being given instruction by one of the experienced nurses. Consequently everything was done by the book with procedures rigorously obeyed. On top of that, another one of the patients, already plugged in, had a crisis so everyone downed tools and rushed to her aid.

The delay was such that the afternoon coffee was served long before I was even plugged in, so I had to sit and look at it while I waited.

Eventually it was my turn to be plugged in and, once more, it was all done by the book. As a result, it was 15:10 when my machine was finally switched on and running. I’d been waiting one hour and twenty minutes. To add insult to injury, the internet there was down so there wasn’t a great deal I could do, except to drink my now-cold coffee and read a few papers about ancient roads.

Actually, that was quite interesting because the author contends that roads such as “Dere Street”, once north of the Roman outpost camps north of Hadrian’s Wall, are not Roman at all but ancient prehistoric trackways used by the Romans. He contends that they do not show the typical characteristics of Roman roads, and they aren’t mentioned in the Iter Britanniarum.

He seems however not to have considered that if the Iter Britanniarum had not been written during the reign of Antoninus Pius but later, as several people suspect, it’s likely that the Antonine Wall between the Clyde and the Forth had been abandoned by the time the Iter Britanniarum was written, and so there wouldn’t be any Romans likely to be going beyond the outpost forts so there would be no need for a route guide for those roads.

During the session, the new nurse kept on asking me if I was OK, not that it made any difference, and although Emilie the Cute Consultant was the doctor on duty today, she sent a messenger to ask me how it went in Paris. I replied that it was as expected – there had been a deterioration in my condition – and I expected that once the news reached her, she would come dashing to my side to soothe my fevered brow. But she clearly doesn’t love me any more.

Eventually, they unplugged me, totally by the book of course, and by then it was 18:50. I’d been there for five hours for a session of three-and-a-half. As if I don’t have anything better to do with my time. Luckily, my chauffeur was waiting and she drove me home quite rapidly.

It beats me what’s going on there at times, because it always seems to be that no matter what time I arrive and in what order, I’m almost always the last to be connected and it really is getting on my wick.

There was a howling gale again and a driving rainstorm outside when we arrived so I was dropped off at the back outside the fire escape where there are only three or four paces to walk into the building. And being helped by my faithful cleaner, it was quite a comfortable walk.

After my cleaner left, I made tea, horribly late again after all of this. Rice and veg with a taco roll full of spicy Mexican beans and mushrooms. However, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have done because I fell asleep three times while I was trying to eat.

Back in here, I made a start on the notes for the day but having fallen asleep twice while trying to type and seeing that what I was writing was a load of gibberish … "nothing new there" – ed … I threw in the towel and went to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about cutting our hair … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of once being at work when I absented myself for half an hour and the boss wondered where I had been.
"Having my hair cut" I replied
"What? In the company’s time?"
"Well, it grew in the company’s time, didn’t it?"
"It didn’t all grow in the company’s time"
"Well, I’ve not had all of it cut off!"

Thursday 16th October 2025 – HAVING JUST FALLEN …

… asleep at the dining table in mid-meal, I suppose that I’d better hurry up, write my notes and go to bed before another disaster overtakes me. I’ve been having far too many of them just recently.

At least, last night wasn’t as late as some have been just recently. For once, I was actually in bed by 23:00. That was really nice. After all, a nice long sleep will do me the world of good, I reckon.

Ha ha! They were famous last words, weren’t they? Although it wasn’t until 06:15 that I actually awoke definitively, I’d had a very turbulent night and had awoken on several occasions.

Once more, it was another struggle to leave the bed and go to the bathroom. It was clothes-washing day too, with not having had a shower yesterday, so I gave my undies a good going over. I have to keep abreast of things like this.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to have travelled so far. I was going on a mission to work somewhere in a town centre. With the town centre of this place being very tightly controlled for parking, I’d written a letter to the local council to explain what I’d been doing and asking for authorisation to park there for free during the period for which I was there. The day that my work started there, I set off and arrived. I went to the council’s offices and was met by a young girl who was in charge of the official parking. She told me that they had received my letter and that I could leave my car in the official car park, but it needed someone to let me in all the time. So she went with me. I saw a room with all kinds of machines in it, ticket machines for this, ticket machines for that. She went to one of the machines and presumably pressed a button to override it, but nothing happened. She ended up going back to her desk for something. She came back and said “you might just sit here for a moment”, pointing to an empty seat by someone’s desk. “You can watch a James Bond film if you can understand the language”. I looked, and it was a fight between James Bond and some evil character but I didn’t recognise the subtitles so I didn’t know in what language it was in. She came back a little later and allowed me to go in. She told me that the letter that I had sent, which was in the office inside the car park, I was to put that on my windscreen so that people who didn’t recognise the car would see what was happening. I drove in, and saw that this fight with James Bond and this character was actually taking place on the staff car park.

Wherever James Bond fits in with all of this, I don’t know. But the story of the car park presumably refers to the situation in Crewe at the moment where a pile of car parks are being or have been developed, replaced by one multi-storey car park in which it costs the earth to park.

And next, I had to go up north, to wherever my landing was taking place. But it was the Navy that was in charge of the boundaries of this city, not the Army, so I thought that my likelihood of being given a pass to travel into the war zone would be about absolutely zero.

This doesn’t seem to relate to anything either.

It was the first round of the Nations Rugby Cup. We were all in hospitals so we didn’t really have a chance to see any of the game but we’d heard vaguely that the results had gone our way. Our game was to be played this evening and if we were to win it, we would qualify for the semi-finals. At that moment, it was Emilie the Cute Consultant who appeared. She was doing her rounds. As she was leaving, I called her over and asked her if it was true that we stood a really good chance of making the semi-finals. She said that there didn’t seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t, and we had a little chat about everything. It turned out that the final was being played on the rugby ground across the road from where we lived on Davenport Avenue. I said that if we made it to the final, I’d fight for her to have a really good place on the touchlines where she could watch it. However, she pointed to her stomach and said “well, it would be rather difficult by the time that the final is played”. I replied “don’t worry. I’ll make a trolley for you and I’ll push you over” which made her laugh.

So this is the first time that I’ve dreamed about Emilie the Cute Consultant. This is astonishing. Much as I like her, she hasn’t made anything like the impact on me that has been made by most of the other regular nocturnal visitors.

It’s most unlikely that I would be going to watch a rugby match when there are other more exciting things to do, such as watching paint dry and watching the grass grow. There was a sports field over the road from where we lived in Davenport Avenue (it’s now a housing estate) but it was a cricket ground and football pitch.

But while I was out there on that sports field, there was a girls’ school that was having its sports on there. I was wandering around giving some help and advice to different people. One young girl came over to me and said that she wanted to talk. I asked her what was the matter, and she told me that she’d completely lost all of her interest in this. While at one time she was receiving really, really good marks, she was now just receiving average marks – yn aml, she said – for most of her subjects and she was really disappointed. She wished that she could find her motivation from somewhere. So we began to have a really long chat about this.

Now, yesterday I was looking through some of my photos from a famous trip that I made a few years ago, and they brought back certain memories of a couple of incidents that occurred and which relate to this dream more closely than anyone could imagine.

By the way, yn aml means “often” in Welsh, and Welsh wouldn’t be a language that the subject of this story would have ever used.

Later on, I was back in work. I’d arrived late, about 09:12. I wasn’t very happy about my choice of clothes. I had oil on one of the shirt cuffs, and I was having real difficulty in moving. Trying to make my way to my desk, I was disrupting everyone else’s work because I was swaying about from side to side. I could see that some of my colleagues were becoming rather short-tempered. To finally make my way to my desk was extremely complicated. One of the guys was complaining that I was knocking his papers everywhere so when I tried to stand myself upright better, it was making things worse. Eventually, I could make my way to my chair by disrupting just about everything, but noticed that my computer was missing from my desk. As I sat down, the boss’s secretary came over, starting to hand over slips of paper about things that needed to be doing. She came to me and mis-pronounced my name, saying that a medical report would be required on me because for the last few weeks, I’d been eating nothing but vegetables. I was sitting there, thinking “whatever this report comes up, it’s no loss because I should have been retired a long time ago”. But at that point, just as the dream was becoming interesting, I awoke.

At one time, dreams about being over the age of retirement in a miserable working environment were an everyday feature of these notes, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s been a while though since the last one.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, sorted out my legs and then cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast.

Once I’d finished, I went one better than David Crosby because, although it wasn’t Christmas when I had the ‘flu, I am still not feeling up to par. It makes quite an improvement though, this new, trim me.

Back in here yet again, I finished the notes (Isabelle had interrupted me) and then began to prepare the next radio programme.

My cleaner came along to sort out the anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait. And wait. 13:35 it finally turned up, so we were hours late arriving at dialysis.

On top of that, there were dozens of tests to perform, and then my internet account there had expired and needed renewing, so today took forever

At least Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me again. And you won’t believe this but she now has an infection. I apologised profusely but she didn’t think that it was the same as the one that I have. It ruled me out of offering to console her. Imagine a cocktail of infections in my state of health.

So, horribly late, and with a collapsing blood pressure, I ended up leaving, to find that it was the cute taxi driver whom I like very much who was waiting for me. We had a lovely chat on the way home, talking mainly about cats.

My faithful cleaner helped me in and after she left, I emulated THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on a table inside a tin". Once more, I left some on my plate and, as I mentioned earlier, I fell asleep at the table.

But now, I’m off to bed, thoroughly exhausted and desperate for a good sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told her "I dreamed about you last night"
"Did you?" she asked.
"No" I replied. "You fought me off."

Friday 2nd May 2025 – AS I HAVE SAID …

… before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s not much point in going to bed early because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early.

So when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00, I was already in the kitchen sorting out the medication, having already done the necessary in the bathroom.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night I really was feeling quite queasy and uneasy and after I finished my notes at 22:20 and it wasn’t very much later than that when I hit the sack.

Once I was in bed it took a few minutes to settle myself down and once I did, then that was that. I remember absolutely nothing else.

That was until 05:50 when I had another one of those dramatic awakenings that I have sometimes. I lay in bed tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep, but when I heard the electric water heater switch off at 06:20 I gave up the ghost and arose from the Dead.

After the good scrub and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. Unfortunately, there was no Zero last night. However, there was a rock festival taking place. I was asked if I would deal with the sanitation issues so I tried several aspects of the toilets, several different designs, and in the end I simply went for the large pit with a big wooden board with holes over it. I had to supply all of the paper and everything like that, arrange to have the pits pumped out and it began to become extremely complicated. I began to wonder whether or not I’d bitten off more than I could chew with this. First of all, of course, I didn’t know how many people were going to attend – if it would be something like Woodstock with a 50,000 crowd limit but half a million people who appeared.

It’s a little-known fact that as part of my Degree in Environmental Technology, I have a Diploma in Environmental and Pollution Control so not only can I design a fantastic waste disposal site for you, I would be quite happy to design a sanitation system for a major festival. It’s clear though that I have my Woodstock Festival on the brain right now. I really ought to crack on and finish it instead of messing about so much.

And then I stepped back into that dream later. After we’d installed what we needed to do, a couple of other people and I, we went for a walk into town. We could see the crowds coming away from the festival behind us. They had obviously just installed their things. We thought that seeing as we were ahead of the queue coming up the hill, maybe we should go to the shops and buy some food because we had a suspicion that the food was not going to last anything like as long as the festival. We saw all kinds of things. We even saw them digging holes as if they were ready for graves. We entered a supermarket and began to look around and select things to put in a small basket. They had some of these iced buns with white icing crosses on them. They looked really nice so I said that I would have one. The girl with us put her hand inside and grabbed hold of one. She began to eat it. I thought “this is probably not the best advertisement for us that there could have been”. She was telling us that in the local paper that day there was a letter from a guy who had tried to come to the festival but couldn’t make it. He had written a huge, enormous letter of complaint to the shop that the shop had published in the newspaper.

One thing that you will find, if you listen to my radio programmes on Woodstock this coming August, is that food was a major issue at the festival. Many people gave no thought whatsoever to food, and the organisers had counted on 50,000 people, not 500,000 turning up.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself this morning or, if he did, I paid no attention. And after he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK. We are, as I expected, still in the Tower of London and so far, there has been nothing controversial in what he has said. That is rather disappointing.

Back in here, there was plenty to do today. The first task was to finish off choosing the music for programme 260403. That took longer than it ought because I didn’t have half of what I needed and some of it took some finding.

While I was at it, I also took the opportunity to research for the programme for the following week, 260410. That should be an interesting programme and no mistake.

Once I’d assembled all of the music I went for a disgusting drink break and then my cleaner appeared to do her stuff. After I’d prepared for my shower and washed my clothes, she helped me into the bath to have the shower, and it was delicious.(the shower, I mean).

While I was under the shower the ‘phone rang. So after I was out and my cleaner had gone, I rang the number back.

It was the taxi company who had ‘phoned. Apparently my authorisation from the Social Security only lasts for one year and it had now expired. I needed some more paperwork from the hospital.

Not exactly sure of what I needed, I rang the hospital. It sounded so complicated to me that in the end I gave the hospital the taxi company’s ‘phone number and left them to fight it out between them.

Liz rang me after that and we had a Rosemaryesque chat of over an hour, split in two because the hospital ‘phoned me back midstream to tell me that they had sorted it out between them, the paperwork had been e-mailed and everything was to go ahead as normal. And so I could continue my discussion with Liz.

It’s been ages since we chatted but she’s been up to her eyes in grandchildren for the last while, what with one thing and another. We had a really good chat about lots of different things, which was nice.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I was having “another think” about my apartment renovation. Liz and Terry have an “in” on a certain Social Network group so between us we worked out an advertisement that we could publish on there about the work that needs doing. And not only is it now published, it’s also had some response.

It’s just a shame though that they don’t live in this area otherwise I would have had them come and do it in a heartbeat. We all worked so well together as a team and in that really hard winter of 2010-2011 when it was too cold to work in the Auvergne, we went up to Brussels to my centrally-heated apartment and blitzed it from top to toe in just six weeks.

Liz has really good taste too and that helped a lot, to add some nice little touches to the place. And between the two of them, they managed to keep my feet firmly anchored to the floor instead of soaring off on some flight of fancy. It would be worth any price whatever to have them here doing the work, even if I had to hire a holiday let for them for a month on top of whatever they would want to do the job. However, you can’t turn the clock back and once people have retired, they want to enjoy themselves.

Having sorted out everything else I went one better than David Crosby, probably because last night I wasn’t feeling up to par. It increases my paranoia like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear because I promised myself this year. I feel like I owe it to someone.

Finally I could sit down and edit, remix, pair off and segue the music for programme 260403, miles behind time as usual, but ask me if I care..

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, vegan salad (with more of my delicious home-made vegan mayonnaise) and some of the vegan nuggets that I’d bought from Noz the other day, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert.

In between preparing and eating the food I made myself a very small 200-gramme loaf. I’m out of bread at the moment so until I have the time to make something on Sunday afternoon, that will keep me going. With the new water gauge, the loaf turned out to be spot-on. That was a good purchase.

So now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow afternoon (I don’t think). However, it’s the Welsh Cup Final between TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads.

The Nomads are desperate to win as it’s their only avenue into Europe but they are currently managerless after a very poor season by their standards so we shall see. There were three clubs in the Welsh Premier League, The Nomads, Y Drenewydd and Aberystwyth, who lost several of their bigger names in the last close season and their recruitment was simply just not good enough. They have all paid the price for that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about me being able to build a decent waste disposal site … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned that to Liz
"You’ll need to go out on the street and collect some rubbish then" she said.
"I refuse" I replied.

-1

Thursday 27th February 2025 – ANOTHER PAINFUL SESSION …

… in the dialysis centre today. And not just because of the needles either but because the stabbing pain in my foot started up again mid-session.

"Would you like a doliprane?" aske the nurse. Had it not been one of my favourite nurses I would have shown her where to put the doliprane, but I managed to restrain myself. I’m becoming quite good at that.

Not so good at going to bed though. Just as I was about to hit the hay a concert of 10,000 Maniacs that I’d done in the good old “Radio Anglais” days came around on the playlist. So that was me, well-gone for ninety-five minutes. Yes, there are many things more interesting than sleeping.

As it happened I didn’t go straight to sleep either. I tossed and turned for quite a while and at one stage thought that I wasn’t going to manage to drop off at all. But when the alarm went off I was definitely asleep, even though it had been a turbulent night.

At that moment I was discussing Tranmere Rovers with a friend of mine. I’d heard that Tranmere had signed a new goalkeeper and I asked him about it. He came out with a name but I couldn’t find it. I wondered whether it might have been someone with a similar name. We had a team-sheet for one of their next game and looked at the changes in the squad over the last week. There must have been about fifty new players signed. “This is surprising”. He asked about one or two. I said that it seems to be that they are going for quantity not quality and that is quite probably the wrong way round. We were chatting about that when the alarm went off.

That’s a familiar story. During the close season almost two years ago, in the run-up to the European matches Connah’s Quay Nomads had enough players to be able to put out two completely different teams each half in a warm-up game against Stranraer. However, as events subsequently proved, quantity is no substitute for quality and if they had signed five really decent players for the budget of ten run-of-the-mill ones, they would have done so much better.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, followed by a shave. And then into the kitchen for the medication, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. That’s twice during the night that I’ve reached for the dictaphone and the dream has evaporated right out from underneath me. But for the second one I have the image of a very small girl still engraved in my mind but I don’t know what she was doing or where she fitted in to this but she was there impressed on my mind even though the rest of the dream and the one before it have totally disappeared.

That’s becoming a rather far-too-familiar tale of woe these days and I wish that it wasn’t. I put it down to old age myself. It’s really sad how my memory is deteriorating.

Later on, a local farmer in Sandbach had written to the local Country magazine to write about the projects for his farm and what he was planning to do on increasing his investment etc in order to reap greater dividends. He explained that it was necessary to do that to keep ahead of the programme and to keep his agriculture on the move. In actual fact he’d been reading dozens of these farming magazines and decided to make a change in the way he operates his cattle and try something to be done in a different way. This was going to require a lot of investments and he was making a start on doing it right now.

It wasn’t actually Sandbach but Shavington. I can still see the place where it all happened … "your memory’s not that bad then" – ed … and it was by the Sugar Loaf in Crewe Road where I used to catch the bus to go to school. Not that I caught the bus for all that long because once I had built a decent(ish) pushbike I used to cycle to school

Finally I was going somewhere in a car. There was a long queue of traffic going through a tunnel. We were having to wait in this queue, and then a few vehicles in front began to move but the one immediately in front of me didn’t move. I had a look and there were two people beneath it. I wondered what they were doing. Someone behind me klaxoned so I explained to him. Then these two people began to push their car out of the way, apologised and said that their car won’t start. I replied “it’s not any problem” and carried on. A little further on I came across a couple of older motorcyclists. One of them, the woman, was telling me that now that they had retired they had bought a motorcycle to travel about but I watched the man try to climb on but he couldn’t lift his leg high enough to climb up onto the motorbike. He was there for about 10 minutes making an effort.

So after the previous night, there I was last night going for a ride in a car. Without Zero unfortunately. It would be too much, I suppose, to expect her to come along twice in succession but I can live in hope. However that “couldn’t get his leg over” is very reminiscent of the famous moment between “Johnners” and “Aggers” LIVE ON THE BBC.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and breezed out again in a flurry, stopping just about long enough to read my health card as tomorrow is her last day in this month and so she’ll be very busy. And then she’s Carnavalling.

After she left I made breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. We’ve been discussing Civil War military emplacements today, not that there are so many still extant. Tomorrow we’ll be starting on the earliest traces of industry and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve discussed this before. I’m interested to see what is his opinion of the wiping out of the industrial base upon the arrival of the Saxons.

Next stop was back in the bathroom where I went one better than David Crosby, presumably because I’d had the ‘flu for Christmas and I’m paranoid when I look in the mirror and see a police car. However, I didn’t give in an inch to fear and sorted out the sheep-shearer.

Back in here I carried on with my proto-Woodstock programme and wrote a few more notes but it’s not going as quickly as I would like. I shall have to finish it tomorrow regardless otherwise I’ll be doing it for ever and I have other things to do.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches and then I tidied up the kitchen while I waited for the taxi to arrive.

Today we had another new driver and I had to help her find a way out of here. It’s more complicated than usual today as all of the motor homes arrive ready for Carnaval. She was late arriving but she had her foot down for much of the way. It’s much easier now that yet another radar has gone up in flames. That’s three now in the area.

Last in at the hospital though, so last to be connected up. Despite all of the people milling around in there today, no-one came to disturb me except to bring me the coffee, and that suits me fine. I revised my Welsh and then chopped up a sound-track of a Canadian group who had appeared once at a Hawkfest

Unplugging me was about as painful as plugging me in, and the nurse reckons that I ought to try the anaesthetic cream for once and see what good that does. It has to be worth a try. I can’t go on like this.

One of my favourite drivers came to pick me up to take me home – the Belgian girl with the twins. We had a good chat on the way home but of course, late in means late out. It was a very weary me who struggled up the Twenty-Five Steps.

Tea tonight was steamed veg, vegan sausage and vegan cheese sauce. No pudding though because I’m still not hungry. My appetite has really diminished just now. All of the stuff that I didn’t eat at Christmas and said that I’d eat on my birthday will still be there next year, I reckon. I’m not sure if I will be.

So I’m off to bed now, ready for a work-in tomorrow and I shall keep at it until I’m finished. There’s a football match tomorrow night but I’m going to miss it and watch it at dialysis on Saturday – I may as well make good use of the time.

But seeing as we have been talking about old age and memory … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my cleaner the other day "two things happen to you when you reach my age"
"What are they?" she asked
"The first one is that you forget absolutely everything"
"What’s the second thing?" she asked.
"I don’t know" I replied. "I’ve forgotten"

Wednesday 11th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy again today and accomplished quite a great deal of stuff. So it’s hardly surprising that I’m feeling pretty much whacked right now.

Not that it’ll make much difference as I have a great deal to do tomorrow and Friday, and maybe even Saturday morning too. It’s all go here!

What I need is another early night like the one that I had last night where I was in bed a good few minutes before 23:00, and when I can do that, things are looking up.

Last night, for some reason or other I was finished by 22:20 and even hanging around for a while didn’t make it too late. I was asleep quite quickly too, with the hatches battened down until the morning. I don’t think that I moved at all

At some point during the night there was a young girl who was living on her own and having attendants, rather like the juvenile Queen of a country somewhere. I don’t remember very much and I can’t have gone very far into this dream when the alarm went off. However it was another one that could have been extremely interesting and it was a shame that it finished so abruptly.

It took me a while to gather up my wits – I can’t believe that they spread out so far so quickly – and when the room stopped spinning round I could stand up and head to the bathroom.

After the bathroom I headed off to the kitchen for my morning drink and pile of medication, which doesn’t seem to be shrinking any

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what happened during the night. I was back in the early modern era. I was in bed and trying to rise up but every time I tried to dress something came along to interrupt me, like a visitor or something like that so I had to dive back into bed as they came. This happened two or three times with someone like that coming along and me having to dive back into bed

Later on I was out walking with someone last night (so I’d obviously managed to finally leave the bed) and we’d walked miles. We’d been in the hills and had slowly started to come down out of the hills, just following a map. We hadn’t really all that much idea of the terrain at all or of the route except that which the map showed us. There was a path shown on the map so we followed it as best as we could. We didn’t meet anyone at all until we’d come down quite low when we saw some people wandering around. They took a track which led down into the valley. I asked my friend if that was ours. He replied “no, it’s the next one”. Then we had to think of a way to cross the motorway. We looked down and there was a motorway along the floor of the valley. We pushed on and when we were a little further down we saw a path that branched off from our farm track or cart track and this went straight down to the valley. There was a fence and then a footbridge over the motorway. We thought “we’re obviously not the first people to have come this way and to have found the utility of there being a bridge across the motorway here”. This bridge took us to the railway station which was on the other side of the motorway. We said to ourselves “well, when we arrive in town we’ll deserve a really fine meal. We’ll have a right slap-up nosh at tea-time after all our exertions”.

There was also something somewhere about going back to the family (as if that is ever likely to happen), wondering how long it’s going to be before they actually notice that I’m walking without using my crutches and things are all back to normal but I don’t know where that fits in at all

My long-term ambition, whether it’s feasible or not, is to recover the use of my legs and walk again. No-one seems to be able to work out what’s happening to my legs, or if they have, they haven’t told me. But every six months, as regularly as clockwork, they change the medication in the hope that they stumble on something that works, and who knows? One day they might!

The nurse was early again today. Of course, he doesn’t have any blood tests or injections to do. His poor oppo has been loaded with all of that and so she runs about half an hour behind.

The first thing that he did was to grab hold of my bread with his fingers, so he departed quite quickly with a flea in his ear. I couldn’t believe that he did that and he won’t do that again and walk out of here unaided.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK

He’s still shacked up with the First-Nation people, observing their habits. He notes that "It is a very singular and remarkable circumstance, that notwithstanding the striking similarity which we find in the persons, manners, customs, dispositions, and religion of the different tribes of Indians from one end of the continent of North America to the other, a similarity so great as hardly to leave a doubt on the mind but that they must all have had the same origin, the languages of the different tribes should yet be so materially different. No two tribes speak exactly the same language; and the languages of many of those who live at no great distance asunder, vary, so much, that they cannot make themselves at all understood to each other."

That’s something that I could readily understand. When I was in the Arctic I tried to learn some Inuktitut but it wasn’t really helpful because the Inuit in one bay would speak one language, you’d go 100 miles into the next community and they would speak a different form, and then a third further on, and then a fourth and so on. I was always one bay behind.

It was quite astonishing really that even in the 21st Century there has been so little mixing of the different Inuit communities up there in the Arctic. But I suppose that with the rapid warming of the climate, so evident up there in the North, it’s even less easy to move around than it was, as the ice doesn’t freeze over so much.

Once my leisurely breakfast was over, I came in here and began work. And by the time that I’d finished for the evening, I’d bashed out all of the text for the next radio programme, ready to dictate on Saturday night for editing and finishing on Sunday. That was some work, I’ll tell you.

There were several interruptions too. A friend of mine from school who now lives in the Orkneys wanted to test whether or not he’d configured an on-line video program correctly so we’d agreed that he could use me as his test bed.

Sure enough, he’d done what he needed to do and we had a really nice video chat, seeing each other for the first time for about 45 years. It’s really nice to see and talk to old friends, and new technology makes it oh! so easy.

Lunch was next – a slice of flapjack and some fruit, with water to wash down the midday medication.

My faithful cleaner turned up too, of course, to do her stuff. And that included helping me to have a shower. That was lovely of course and I can’t wait to be downstairs in my own place with a proper walk-in shower where I can shower whenever I like

After she left I went one better than Dave Crosby, presumably because it’s getting kind-of long. I could have said it was in my way. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear, because I promised myself this year I feel like I owe it to someone

And then Rosemary rang for a chat. And we’re definitely losing our touch. That chat was just 46 minutes long. More like a nod and wave across the street rather than a chat.

As far as the Christmas cake goes, I tried to explain to my cleaner what sugar I needed to make the icing for my cake, and Rosemary helped me out too. So hopefully, next week I’ll end up with what I need. It’s really awkward when I’m not able to go out and about.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread. And for once, the naan was deliciously cooked to perfection. I think that after all these years I’ve finally cracked the method of cooking them. You fry them, of course, but on a low heat, neither too low or too high. And don’t over-fry them

The ginger cake and soya dessert were lovely too.

So now I’ll loiter around for a short while before going to bed. I might even read some more of Isaac Weld.

He talks about religion and the conversion of various tribes to Christianity but notes that "some of the tribes have much less devotion than others; the Shawnese, a warlike daring nation, have but very little fear of evil spirits, and consequently have scarcely any religion amongst them. None of this nation, that I could learn, have ever been converted to Christianity"

Missionaries have been sent among the Shawnee and, commenting on another vice of the First-Nation and Native American people, "great pains have been taken, both by the French and English missionaries, to represent to them the infamy of torturing their prisoners;"

However, even the missionaries were not spared this. Amongst the Shawnee the first missionaries who went there ended up in the cooking pot hung over the fire.
The Shawnee performed a ceremony of dancing around the fire and the pot to celebrate the arrival of their next meal, but every few minutes one of the Shawnee would break off to slap the missionary across the face.
After a while the chief called him over and shouted "Stop that! We don’t humiliate our captives in that way!"
"But chief!" exclaimed the brave
"What’s the matter?"
"It’s that missionary!" said the brave. "Every time your back is turned he starts to eat the potatoes!"

Sunday 25th August 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was the best that I’ve ever made.

And having made some good ones just recently, that is certainly saying something.

In fact, all in all, it was rather a good day today, helped by the fact that I had something like a decent sleep last night.

It might have been after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed but it was before midnight. And with a lie-in until 08:00 promised, that meant that at long last I was in line for a eight-hour sleep. And how I’ve needed one of those after all of the events just recently.

After I’d finished writing my notes last night I had some dictating of the radio notes to do. And after dictating the notes for the additional tracks for the two programmes that were half-prepared, I found that … errr … that was all. As far as dictation goes, I’m bang up-to-date at long last.

There are half a dozen or so programmes that need the notes writing, so that gaps in the sequence are filled in, but that aside, I’ve now prepared programmes up to 25th April next year.

If I can keep ahead like this, or even maybe extend the distance at which I’m in advance, I’ll have a nice head of programmes to keep going after I shuffle off this mortal coil.

And so at 23:45, having managed not to knock myself or cut myself or bleed anywhere, I crawled into bed, wrapped the quilt around me and that was that.

With the alarm set for 08:00 it was a big disappointment to awaken at 07:20. But even though I couldn’t go back to sleep there was no danger of my leaving my stinking pit at that time of morning. as the old song goes,
"REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLING SPENT
IT MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED
THE SAD OLD DAYS THEY CAME AND WENT
GIVING WAY TO FRUITFUL YEARS"
and while you’re at it, listen to Glenn Cornick’s magnificent bass line.

So at 08:00 I arose from the Dead and headed off to the bathroom. And at 08:20 I was washed and dressed and back at the computer listening to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were having an expensive meal at a hotel. There were quite a few of us and we were on several tables. The boss seemed to be micro-managing the meal, telling people what they could eat and what they couldn’t eat, which was extremely annoying, leading to quite a lot of confrontation. When it came to the dessert, one of the desserts was “profiteroles”. There was a plate of eight mixed profiteroles and there were eight people at each table. When the server began to deliver the food he turned round ad said “huit profiteroles” and pointed to one of the tables. I heard someone at the table say “why is he allowed to choose the dessert for us?”. They said “there are eight profiteroles. Can you not choose your dessert. It makes no difference that he said which dessert this table could have. He’s nothing to do with this table”. Basically, we were told “this is what we were going to have, and like it!”. I stood up and told the server to take that away, come back here to interview each one of us and find out what each one of us wants”. He became extremely aggressive so I took two paces towards him, he took two paces towards me so that was it! It was a confrontation that had him in the end running away through the kitchen and outside with me chasing after him. I thought to myself “I’m going to get him organised and then once I’ve sorted him out I’ll be coming back here and getting hold of the boss to tell him what I thought of all of this” because I was now in one of these fighting moods that actually take quite a lot of stopping.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream where I’ve really been enraged. At one time they were a regular feature, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I thought that I’d calmed down since the last time and that it would be permanent. But it’s obviously not to be. However, I’m continuing to be impressed that I can remember big and complicated words, like “profiteroles” for example, when I’m asleep. And not being too afraid to speak my rather colourful mind when it comes to addressing my boss is a regular feature that occurred more than once in the real World too.

Isabelle the Nurse was quite chatty this morning and we had a lengthy chat about nothing whatever while she sorted out my legs. She was telling me that it was the annual Melon market today. I can’t say that I’m too disappointed to miss it.

While I was making breakfast afterwards, my former neighbour who is now in a Home ‘phoned me. I think that she wanted her morale pumping up because she doesn’t seem to be coping too well with her new situation. We chatted for about 15 minutes and I hope that she felt a little better afterwards.

After breakfast we had football – Stranraer v Elgin City. And that was a game of two halves if ever there was one. It finished 1-1 but the first half was all Elgin on the attack and the second half was all Stranraer.

There has never been such a dramatic change in a game. I don’t know what Stranraer’s manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it.

Later on I tacked the recordings that I’d done before going to bed. They are now edited and the programmes are completed.

While I was at it, I had a look at the back-up. There’s a big USB key permanently in a USB slot in this computer and I back up to it at least once a day. It’s pretty nearly full now but there’s a lot of stuff on there that’s superfluous so I went through and weeded out everything that has since been overtaken by events

Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting music – soundtracks and the like – that I’ve downloaded to the computer. I’ve been going through it this afternoon, converting it to an acceptable format listening to it and chopping up some of it into sound-bytes.

There are tons to go at that have been collected for quite some time so this is a long-term project but I have a feeling that it’s a losing battle. I seem to be downloading it quicker than I can process it.

Something else that I did was to go one better than Dave Crosby – maybe because I had the ‘flu for Christmas. Although I’m not likely to be looking in my mirror and seeing a police car any time soon.

The pizza was, as I mentioned, totally delicious. The dough was really light and fluffy and this new vegan cheese that my cleaner found the other week seems to melt better than the last stuff.

So let’s hope that she can find some more of it for next time

So running rather late yet again, I’m going to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight on Monday.

But while we’re on the subject of haircuts … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was the story of the one-legged man who went for a haircut at the barber’s.
The barber unfortunately snipped the man’s ear and the man began to complain
To try to ease the tension the barber began some light-hearted chat. "I don’t think that I’ve seen you here before …" he began
"You haven’t" said the man. "I lost this leg in the War"

Monday 29th April 2024 – I’VE BROKEN ONE …

… of my nice dinner plates this evening.

That’s a shame because I quite liked this set of crockery. But what’s surprising is that I’ve owned it almost 7 years and it’s the first piece of any sort of crockery and glassware that I’ve broken since I’ve been living here.

And the estate agents reminded me that yesterday it’s actually been seven years since I moved in. You’ve no idea how time flies. When we were kids our six weeks summer holiday used to last for ever, but nowadays a year passes in the blink of an eye and it’s very uncomfortable.

Eight years ago today I was living in Leuven in Belgium, going to the hospital every two weeks, going to watch OH Leuven in the Belgian second division and travelling on Belgium’s wonderful railway network to all sorts of bizarre football grounds for various matches

Going to SK Lierse was always my favourite of course. They had cheerleaders to entertain the crowd and they were much nicer-looking cheerleaders than those whom we encountered that night in that truckstop on Interstate 80 in Bangor, Maine, when we were on our way to a tractor pull in New Hampshire.

Of course, that’s all water under the bridge now. I won’t ever revisit the USA, won’t be going to see SK Lierse and won’t be going to Leuven either. In fact I’ll be lucky if I ever make it outside the front door of my apartment unless it’s in the company of a taxi driver taking me to a medical appointment.

And while we’re on the subject of medical appointments and taxis … "well, one of us is" – ed … I rang up the taxi company today to talk to them about my trips to Paris.

They need to be authorised by the Securité Sociale in advance and the hospital had obtained prior authorisation for three trips. Those three trips had expired and so they need to obtain some more authorisation.

When I was there last week I explained this to the doctor but I wasn’t convinced that she understood. Consequently my plan was to have the taxi company speak to the hospital to explain what was required and negotiate with them directly. After all, it’s all good business for them

However I needn’t have worried. The hospital has applied for, and received, prior authorisation for no fewer than FIFTEEN further trips to Paris. I’m not sure exactly what they are expecting, but it sounds extremely worrying. Are they REALLY expecting me to go that many times?

But anyway, that was today.

Yesterday I ended up going to bed quite late because of the football. Even so, it still took an age to actually go to sleep but once I did I slept the Sleep of the Dead and didn’t move an inch. In fact, it was another night when there was nothing at all on the dictaphone.

That’s a shame because as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what usually goes on during the night is much more exciting these days than what happens during the daytime. After the exciting life that I’ve lived, being confined to spending the rest of my days sitting on a chair is a pretty miserable existence.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed as usual, switched it off and wandered off to the bathroom, followed by wandering off into the dining area for my medication, the usual mounds of it.

Having set out the room as the nurse likes it, she dealt with my foot and puttees as this story about the prescription on the wall of the doctor’s office rumbled on.

We agreed that I’d ring up to make further enquiries and let her know what I’ve found out. And then she cleared off and left me to it.

It took half a dozen calls to the doctor’s before the secretary answered the call. I’d been trying for hours. Anyway she was convinced that the prescription had been written. Anyway, the doctor would be back at 16:00 so further enquiries could be made them.

With that news I rang back the nurse and that proved to be a complicated affair trying to connect to her. But we managed in the end and I could explain the situation to her. She’d follow it up.

Then the cleaner came round with the rest of the medical supplies so I explained the situation to her. She had to go there with a client this afternoon so she’d look herself for the prescription.

She called me back later to say that she’d been, she’d looked, but there was nothing there.

At about 16:30 the nurse phoned me back. She’d seen the doctor and he’d written nothing. So what’s this story all about them? It’s a total mystery to me. The plot sickens.

In the meantime this afternoon I’ve gone one better than Dave Crosby, presumably because I had the ‘flu for Christmas and wasn’t feeling up to par. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear because I promised myself this year. I feel like I owe it to someone

And they can come and collect it out of the waste bin in the bathroom any time they like.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent either working on the Unit of the Welsh course that I missed while I was in hospital or else I was asleep.

While I was working I was fighting off wave after wave of sleep, so much so that I couldn’t concentrate so in the end I gave up and had an hour fast asleep on the chair here inn the office. Then I could crack on and finish it.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper but taking the pyrex cooking bowl out of the air fryer it slipped from my grasp, fell on the dinner plate and broke it. That’s a really sad state of affairs because I now have an odd number of items

However in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter all that much as I’m never likely to have visitors here for meals. In fact, I’m not really likely to have visitors at all these days.

There’s plenty of stuffing left though so I’ll have a taco roll tomorrow and then on Wednesday have one of my leftover curries with what’s left. On Thursday I’ll send off my LeClerc order and stock up with supplies for the next few weeks

Right now though I’m off to bed, and hope that I’ll go off on a few voyages to break the monotony and not break the crockery.

It reminds me of that famous advert that I once saw – "Unbreakable tea service for sale – matching teapot, cream jug, sugar bowl, six cups and five saucers."

Thursday 25th January 2024 – I’VE BEEN OVERWHELMED …

… by a fit of positivity today, and I’ve absolutely idea where it came from.

It’s probably something to do with the choice of music. When I make up a playlist of Hawkwind or Help Yourself, Marillion or Alquin it brings back far too many distant memories that I’ve long since consigned to the dustbin of history – or, at least, I thought that I had

And as Gimli said to Legolas in LORD OF THE RINGS, "Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror"

Instead, I’ve been making up a playlist of Tangerine Dream. By an amazing coincidence, Edgar Froese, John Kay of Steppenwolf and my friend Lorna’s mum were in the same refugee column that fled from Tilsit in East Prussia in the winter of 1944/45 before the advancing Red Army.

Lorna’s mum, who was 12 at the time, told some horrific tales of the flight that people would have found hard to believe before the news of the events in Ukraine broke

But I digress … "again" – ed …

Tangerine Dream bring back memories of happier times – the hot summer of 1976 where we lived at an abandoned sand quarry near Congleton and the next couple of years when I was struggling to get myself and my life together again after several years in the Wilderness and ended up going from living in an old van to owning a brand new semi-detached house in the suburbs of Winsford in just 3 years.

Albums like TANGRAM, WHITE EAGLE, FORCE MAJEURE and EXIT with the two magnificent tracks PILOTS OF PURPLE TWILIGHT and CHORONZON that can only ever be played one after the other.

Then there is CYCLONE, the best of all the Tangerine Dream albums with two tracks that have never ever been off my playlist, BENT COLD SIDEWALK, and RISING RUNNER MISSED BY ENDLESS SENDER.

But maybe it isn’t. I found an old elastic knee reinforcement that I used a few years ago and I tried that last night. I’ve been wearing it ever since on my right leg and since then the pain seems to be manageable. Perhaps it’s that which is making me feel better

However, it’s still something of a misery in bed and I was moving around all night trying to find a comfortable position. Not that you would have thought so with the amount of stuff on the dictaphone. Even when I was asleep it must have been quite restless, and there were some strange, very strange comments on the dictaphone, such as “you can tell that I’ve been on this anti-potassium stuff. There’s a radio playing somewhere, there’s a speaking voice that I can hear presenting a radio programme from somewhere. There’s absolutely no radio anywhere near where I am and this time of night no-one would be playing a radio so loud that it would penetrate solid grès de Chaussee solid granite walls 1.20m thick. I’ve no idea what’s happening except that it’s really confusing me”.

And then I awoke (so I said in my sleep) in the middle of a dream. I was in a French class and was late back from a break. Everyone else was there so I had to fight my way through the crowds to a seat at the back. The teacher had given everyone an exercise that they had to write a letter as if they were in the final throes of preparing a music festival when someone had written offering his services as a singer. I had to hunt for the question first – it was on page 80 of our notes so eventually I managed to find it. When I went to begin to write I found that my notebook was completely full. I reached under my desk, went into my backpack, pulled out a scrap pad. The people around me were amazed that I had so much stuff and was so well organised that I even had a spare notepad. I just gave a smile and began to write down the question on the spare notepad so that I’d be ready to answer it and writing it down gives me a little chance to think a little

Talking of surprises, I think that the whole wide world would be surprised at the amount of stuff that that I have. I’m probably sitting on a fortune of stuff that I’ve never had time to deal with. And as for being well-organised, I think that even I would be surprised at that.

They’d … "who?" – ed … been playing in a rock band with Declan McManus of Leek’s sister and somewhere in the middle of the Sunday hall they’d been overcome by something or other. They thought that it was just grief but maybe there was some slight predicament that was needed but it grew worse as the day went on. His leg was positively killing him at night so they arranged for an ambulance to come and collect him and have a look at whatever it was but I don’t know the name of the film now but I remember thinking that it was an excellent film and deserved to be shown on mainstream television.

And apart from the fact that Declan McManus doesn’t play for Leek but for TNS in Wales, you don’t really expect a dream to make sense, do you?

After that we were suddenly in Crewe again. I was sitting rather than going for a walk and suddenly had an appalling fear or suspicion that someone was watching me and I couldn’t shake it out of my mind …fell asleep here…

At a later moment a bunch of crooks had stolen a pile of antiques from a place in South-West London, rather similar to something like one of the Ealing comedies. I was involved merely as a spectator. The retreated to their headquarters with all of their loot. They tried to take taxis in order to disperse but all of the taxis were booked. In the meantime I was ringing a friend of mine in Chester to tell him that I’d left my job there as an underwriting clerk. If he was still looking for a job there was one vacant and he ought to apply. I was greeted to a pile of silence so I said “right, see you there” and hung up. I went back into the room where they were arguing. Eventually one of them grabbed his share of the loot from the table, said “right, I’m going by bus”. Someone else replied “the buses from here don’t go to Finchley Central”. He replied “I don’t care. I can take a bus to the Angel, take a bus to somewhere else and catch a bus there. It’s better than sitting around”. That propelled one or two others to start moving, particularly the fellow who had organised it to suddenly get to grips with what was going on and get a settlement to the airport so that they could fly out of the UK quickly

Did I dictate that I was with Marillion last night? … "No you didn’t" – ed … Things had been slack for them on the music scene and they’d become taxi drivers. Someone had gone up to Fish to tell him that they’d seen a dead body somewhere. He was at the taxi rank picking up a fare so as soon as he dropped off the fare he went with this other person to go to look to see if they could find this body. The rest of his group turned up too to help. Then the alarm went off so I don’t know what happened next

It was a struggle to make it to my feet which is no surprise these days and to give you an idea of what’s going on right now, getting dressed, going into the kitchen, taking my medicine and then coming back in here took me 50 minutes. What kind of state is that to be in?

First thing was to check the mails and messages and then to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And then afterwards, seeing as I was in a malicious mood I rang up the garage to find out why they hadn’t been for Caliburn.

After the usual excuses they’ll be here for him on the 8th of February to take him for his annual controle technique.

And that’s a shame because just when I was getting myself under control and feeling as if I might manage a trip around the block, I have this really bad fall that knocks the stuffing out of me and sets me back.

While I was now in something of an aggressive mood, I rang up the supermarket to complain about why one of the products that i’d ordered and they’d delivered yesterday was damaged. I sent them a photo by e-mail and they agreed.

The result is that I’ve had the purchase price credited back to my account and I can keep the product. They were really quite nice and helpful too which made a lovely change.

Next task was to go one better than David Crosby, presumably because I hadn’t had the flu for Christmas and was not feeling under par. It’s been a while and it was growing quite long – at least, for how I like it these days – but now it’s all short and bristly thanks to the sheep-shearer in the bathroom cupboard.

Strangely enough, sitting on the chair in the bathroom after I’d finished, I crashed out for 5 minutes. While I was away with the fairies there was something going on in my subconscious about two cats having a playfight and someone picking up one of them.

Of course, that made me wish that the tenant in my apartment downstairs would hurry up and find somewhere else to live so that I can move downstairs and have a moggy adopt me. Only 16 more months until the lease ends but I can do with her clearing off a long time before that. The way that I feel right now, I’ll be finished off a long time before the lease is.

Once I’d returned to the Land of the Living I loaded the washing machine and gave the clothes a whizz around while I went to eat some fruit. Only apples and clementines – I don’t like the pears that they have and they had run out of the Eco bananas at the delivery site.

There was even some time to play the guitar – the first time for several weeks. But how sad is it that I can no longer stand up to do it and sing? I’m really surprised that I kept my good humour.

Once I’d hung up the washing to dry I went to sit down. I reckon that I’d done enough today. I really don’t know what had come over me with all of this effort, as Monica Lewinsky one famously said.

After my hot chocolate and Christmas cake (there’s not much of that left now) I carried on with the radio programme and wrote a few notes for some of the tracks that will be figuring in the programme. Just a few to dictate now and it will be finished and I can go back to my usual routine and record it on Saturday night.

In the meantime I’ve been giving my “Hawkfest” and “Isle of Wight 1968” programmes some thought, about who will feature and so on.

The Hawkfest isn’t too difficult. Back in the good old days of the anarchy of what was loosely called “Usenet” down in the bowels of the internet quite a comprehensive list of the first Hawkfest performers was “published” and I tracked a few down, even someone who lived in Congleton who had been up on the stage performing, but the first Isle of Wight is not so easy. There was a big pile of extremely obscure groups who played there, including one that at one time had had on bass guitar Lewis Collins, later actor in The Professionals.

Even finding their names wasn’t easy, and tracking down any of their work will be much harder than that.

As for tea, I changed my mind about what to have.

During the course of the day my mind had gone from gravy to cheese sauce and I don’t know why, but nevertheless I steamed some vegetables in my microwave vegetable steamer and cooked some falafel in a nice thick cheese sauce which I poured (well, it was too thick to pour, but you get the meaning) over the top. And it was just as delicious as I expected.

So right now I’m going to go to bed. And hope that I awaken in the same positive mind tomorrow.

First task (and straight away too) is to bake my bread for the weekend. That’s important and it needs to be done early ready for my mid-morning cheese on toast.

My bread rolls were a success so I might do that again, but this time hope that the bread rises more than it did last time. I really don’t understand why my bread doesn’t rise like it ought to.

It reminds me of the time that I went to the doctors to ask for certain “help, advice and assistance” about my meeting with a certain young lady of my acquaintance in April a couple of years ago and who has figured in these pages on occasions too numerous to count, especially during the night.

He took one look at my “problem” and said "I’ll give you the number of a spiritualist whom I know"
"Why’s that?" I asked.
"I’m a doctor" he replied. "It’s my job to heal the sick. It’s his job to raise the dead."

Thursday 2nd November 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the weather last night. It did become rather windy. Not that there was very much about which we needed to worry – the gusts of wind didn’t go any faster than a mere 207 kilometres per hour as measured at the weather station by the lighthouse at the end of the road.

As well as police patrols on the cliffs to keep people away, several roads were closed, including the one that goes along the promenade near the sailing school where the waves were washing over the wall into the car park opposite.

At 06:00 the emergency services and the council workmen were called out to begin removing the trees that had blown down everywhere and to re-erect the signposts that had been uprooted.

It didn’t help my sleep very much either. It seemed that almost every time that I was off on a nocturnal ramble around and about, a large gust of wind awoke me and that was that.

Nevertheless when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was flat out asleep and it was something of a struggle to raise myself from the dead.

Later on I tried to telephone the garage about Caliburn’s Controle Technique but there was no-one answering. I imagine that they were among the many people who didn’t make it into work today. I know that my cleaner never made it into town. She gave up after going 150 metres.

Armed with a mug of coffee and a home-made fruit bun I had a listen to the rather depressing voyages on the dictaphone and to reflect on what might have been. There was something about meeting people via the internet last night. I can’t remember all that much about it except that there was a warning that if you encountered anyone taller than 5’8″ you had to communicate the fact to the organisers rather than proceeding as you might normally do. It wasn’t quite as simple as that – it was a complicated affair about meeting people and not simply a dating site or something like that.

We set out later from somewhere in the North to go somewhere down South in one of the hospital taxi vehicles. It looked as if the paperwork for my stay in hospital to sort myself out had been accepted and I could now travel that kind of distance instead of being stuck to a hospital that was much closer to home but maybe isn’t as specialised.

And then we were discussing ways in which our department could improve its output. Among the many suggestions was one that we should work closer with the local authorities. I set out a four-point plan of what I felt that the local authorities needed to do with out work, which was continually being interrupted by the guy in charge. There was a fifth point that I mentioned that each side should show the other some respect. For some reason he blew up at that. he began to list all the things that he said had happened including the fact that one of my colleagues had spent several weeks preparing something to be worked on by the local authority. I asked him “if that’s the case why are we having this meeting today to discuss ways of doing it if our colleague has already done it?” to which he blew up even more. He made it clear that he had no interest whatever in listening to anything that we had to say. In the end I told him that if he’s going to call a meeting simply to listen to our complaints and then shoot us down in this kind of fashion there’s no point at all having the meeting and I was going to do some work that was more productive rather than waste time around here. Somewhere in this discussion there was a situation on a roundabout where there was a system of wooden stakes that had been installed on it. Everyone wondered what they were. Someone actually identified them as stakes used to hold bodies still when the bodies are being cremated. That had everyone puzzled as to why they would want to put something gruesome like this in the middle of the roundabout in the town.

We were back discussing the hospitalisation of a young girl, what we’d need to do to make her stay as practical as possible but a gust of wind awoke me just as it began.

And there I was back at the hospital again, back as a young teenager in the Admissions section ready to be given a bed etc. While I was checking in another gust of wind sprung up outside awoke me and made me lose my train of thought.

Back at the hospital yet again trying to enrol this young girl onto a course of hospital treatment but just as we were filling in the forms yet another gust of wind awoke me while I was in the middle of counting something and it disappeared.

At another moment some woman wanted a sink or wash hand basin installing in her house so I had a word with someone whom I knew and took all the material down there ready for him to start but he never turned up. This woman did nothing but moan all the time about why he’d never turned up, what she was missing etc. In the end I sat down and began to do the installation but apparently that wasn’t good enough either. We had everything that we needed in the end in the same place, the electricity, the water, etc. We could screw the sink to a batten somewhere. I was doing my best to have the job done quickly but she was making so much of a nuisance of herself etc that it was just making it impossible. Even doing things like asking her to read me the M number off the top of the bolt – she just handed me the bolt and told me to look at it myself which wasted more time regardless of how impolite it was etc – all kinds of situation like that. In the end I just did the job any old how. I could have done a much better job that I did but it was just taking so long with her continual interrupting me etc so I was glad to leave the house afterwards.

And finally we were back trying to get this young teenage girl into hospital ready for treatment but the noise of the wind was such that it was making it impossible for anyone to hear what anyone else was saying to whoever. It was all becoming extremely complicated. We ended up having to experiment with a diesel multiple-unit, a modern type, having it flying just a couple of feet above the railway line to see whether it would fit underneath the infrastructure etc ready for it to come into service as quickly as possible. Again there was all kinds of confusion with the noise of the wind and no-one could hear anyone else. We were having real difficulty completing these reports.

All of that and, for the first time, not a single person whom I recognised. That was disappointing. It’s been ages since Castor put in an appearance so I imagine that she’s now gone for good along with the Vanilla Queen whom I met in the Arctic in 2018. But it would be nice to see Zero or TOTGA again.

Usually though, it seems to be my immediate family who keep on appearing.

With going out to visit my neighbour this afternoon I had a strip-down wash (I’m not up to climbing into the bath for a shower after my fall the other day) and then changed all the bedding at long last.

Back in the bathroom I went one better than Dave Crosby. I’m not sure why because there’s no danger of me having the ‘flu for Christmas because Isabelle the district nurse came by to give me my ‘flu injection.

However, there could be several other reasons why I’ll probably not end up feeling up to par. But I won’t be looking in my rear view mirror and seeing a police car because I can’t drive these days.

Before I went to my neighbour’s, I put the bedding and a few other things into the washing machine and then at my neighbour’s, I showed her the letter that I’d written.

She suggested a few amendments so I’ll retype it later and then post it tomorrow if I succeed in making it to the shops. She also mentioned that we’ve been invited to another neighbour’s tomorrow lunchtime.

Back here I took the washing out of the machine and then shook my head wondering how I’ve managed to survive as long as I have.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the struggle that I had a couple of weeks ago to take a basket full of damp clothes to the clothes airer. When I came to Granville I bought a little trolley-type of thing, basically a plank with 4 castors, because I thought that I’d left the big one back on the farm.

As it happens, I hadn’t. It was in the back of Caliburn so I left the new one in a cupboard here. So today, I fetched it out, put the basket of clothes onto it, and then pushed it along with my crutches. If only I’d done that last time.

After that I came back in here and finished off all of the notes for the second radio programme and then went for tea – fried rice with some of those Chinese whatsits.

When they run out and I can’t buy any more, I’ll have a go at making them. Some of the stuffing that I make for my stuffed peppers maybe made a little differently and I can buy some of that thin brick pastry on-line. It should be interesting to see how they turn out

And that’s it for tonight. The wind has dropped so I might well have a decent sleep tonight in my nice clean bedding. And then depending on how I feel, I’ll head on the bus to St Nicolas and the shops to see what’s happening there.

It’ll do me good to go out and about

Tuesday 29th August 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… one of those dreams that really ought to be turned into a film. One that went on for ever and ever during the night.

It’s a pity that I can’t remember word-for-word exactly what went on during these voyages because if I could and I could write it all down I’d be sitting on a fortune in royalties.

But at least it explains why I had another miserable night where I struggled to wake up this morning. Beat the first alarm I did, but I would have liked not to.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I had to let the nurse into the building. He’s coming to check up on my neighbour again.

Most of the day has been spent sorting out the paperwork and filling in forms for the hospital. You’ve really no idea of the stuff that they need, and then I had to track it all down.

There was also the issue of trying to find out exactly where I ought to be going. I don’t think that I’ve ever encountered a hospital as large as this one. The building where I needed to be took some tracking down.

As it happens, it’s right across the road from where there’s a Metro station on a direct line from Paris Montparnasse. That means that if whoever it is who comes to meet me fails to do so, I can make my way there on my own in a reasonable fashion.

While I was sorting everything out, the hospital actually rang me. They asked if I could come any earlier for my appointment. I replied that allowing for trains and connections, I should be able to be there earlier, but who knows how the transport will pan out?

Something else that I did today was to go one step further than Dave Crosby. Probably because I had the flu for Christmas I wasn’t feeling up to par and it increased my paranoia, like looking in my mirror and seeing a police car.

And then I attacked the dictaphone nots. I was watching Morton play last night. They were absolutely awful and turned over quite easily by the team against whom they were playing. Everyone was in a state of shock. On the climb back up to the steps of the Supporters dressing room the supporters were saying all kinds of things about how they didn’t believe the result of what was happening. One guy just sat on a step right by the door totally speechless. It was difficult to pass him to go in so I left him and went for a walk around the grandstands. When I came back he was still there so I said some platitude like “come on guy, let’s go inside. We’re not doing any good sitting here” and took him inside the Supporters room where he sat down and began this really huge inquisition about what was going wrong with the team.

I had the dream that I mentioned just now – another one of these enormous dreams about a film last night. We were in the USA, me, my friend from South Carolina and another girl. He went off somehere and I arranged to meet him at LIDL, somewhere like that. The the girl and I, we were in Shrewsbury or Chester at the time discussing the commercialisation of the port at Chester. That was my task. She was a student who was interested in developments on the waterfront for artistic purposes. I explained the river and canal network in Cheshire and how we intended to bring it all together so commercial freight would end up in Chester and distributed by the rivers and canals to the towns, and how their produce would come to Chester and be exported on sea-going ships. This chat went on for ages. In the end I sent her off after my friend and arranged to meet at LIDL where I’d do my shopping. I turned up at LIDL but the place was tiny. I couldn’t move around in it. I was so fed up that I decided that I’d take the bus into town to do my shopping there. Off I went, but I suddenly realised that I’d arranged to meet everyone at LIDL, I didn’t have my shopping bag or my money and I was on a bus into the centre of town. There was a discussion in which i was interested about developments in workshops and safety systems for electrics. I explained that in my father’s workshop he had a system of push bars against all the machinery. If he tripped and fell, he’d fall against a push bar, that would hinge with the force of his body and cut off the power. Everyone was interested in the design of this so I was talking about it when my friend came along and we met by accident. We ended up talking about this system. I asked him where the girl was. He said that she hadn’t turned up and he hadn’t met her. From there, there was a meeting taking place to do with abortion. The guy running it was clearly in favour of abortion and there was a group there trying their best to manipulate the results and figures to reveal statistics in a different fashion who were anti-abortionists. It turned out that this girl was actually there, one of the anti-abortionists who was involved in working on these figures. This led to a confrontation right at the end. The guy who was promoting this meeting and the idea of abortion was her father. They had a confrontation in the middle of the hall. That’s how my film finished. It was another one of these long ones that went on for hours and was so realistic again.

Later on I was back in that dream. I’d been taken to a restaurant as some kind of gesture to compensate me for what had happened to me at that meeting. The guy was making crèpes and showed me how he made them. I had the idea to roll them out even thinner, which I did. We cooked them quickly and they curled up into a kind-of ball. He coated a couple with ice cream and chocolate and a couple more with fruit. We chatted about his crèpes. I was sitting there talking to my friend, I don’t know who it was. My friend was asking me if I’d seen a survey in the handbook that needed to be filled in. I said that I’d seen it at a glance so he told me to have another look because it was full of things about environmental concerns and how a school had been built to trap everyone in a certain valley so that their children would go to this elementary school. It was turning into some kind of environmental and ecological disaster. There was another school where in order to make life more healthy for children they’d bulldozed absolutely everything around it. They’d made a time-lapse photo of all of the demolition that went on around the school. It really was the most extraordinary thing because it looked as if you could see the whole demolition process taking place from space at an extraordinary rapid rate of knots. It looked frightening how they’d simply bulldozed whole neighbourhoods of houses to make an environmental haven for these children. I wasn’t surprised that everyone was so upset about all of this

And then later on I was back in this dream again, something to do with serving orange juice but I can’t remember it now. But nevertheless, it was all extremely exciting, everything that flowed from this dream.

Tea tonight was my taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing. Quite nice again too, it was. Quite delicious and even better after having marinaded overnight in the herbs and spices. There’s a little left which I’ll be adding to a curry on Thursday.

Then we had the football, Penybont v Cardiff Metropolitan. For the first half hour it was played at 100mph but gradually Penybont asserted themselves.

They played some really nice and stylish football at times and had some wretched luck, with the woodwork and the Met’s keeper Alex Lang making a couple of dramatic interventions.

The Met had a couple of moments too but nether side managed to score the important goal to break the deadlock.

But I felt really sorry for the Met’s centre-forward Tom Vincent. Having been booked earlier, he was booked again and thus sent off for kicking Billy Borge in the head. But it was extremely harsh because Borge dived in for a ball at thigh-height that Vincent was attempting to play. Borge shouldn’t have had his head in there at all. If anyone’s play was dangerous, I’d have said that it was his.

So now I’m off to bed, ready to fight the good fight around the SNCF and Paris tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to this trip at all but I’ll have to do the best that I can. It might not solve anything but it won’t solve anything at all if I don’t go.

Thursday 15th June 2023 – IF I EVER LAY …

… my hands on whoever rang my doorbell at some stupid time of the morning, like 04:00 or something like that, they won’t ever do it again.

What made matter worse was that despite what I’d said yesterday, I didn’t go to bed until quite late. Much later than usual in fact.

And when I did, I couldn’t sleep for ages afterwards. And then we had all that nonsense.

At least, I thought that it was the doorbell because that’s exactly what it sounded like. But there was always the possibility that I’d dreamt it. I’m not ruling that out.

And strange as it may seem, I was up early too. When the alarm went off I was sitting on the edge of the bed looking for my clothes. That was something I hadn’t done for a good few days.

After the medication I had another slow start to the day and it wasn’t until I’d had my mid-morning coffee and fruit bun that I was able to start work – that is, when I wasn’t curled up asleep on the chair.

And by the time that I knocked off I was in Paradise River poring over the diaries of George Cartwright, who in 1775 was the first European known to have visited the area and ” sent the people on shore to build the wharf on a point which I named Paradise”.

However what intrigues me is Carl Rafn’s “Antiquities Americanae” from 1846. I’ve been poring over them as well.

Rafn was the first scholar to take seriously the Norse Sagas of the visits to Vinland and his translations refer to a visit by Thorvald to an area and who was so pleased with this place, that he exclaimed “This is beautiful and here I should like well to fix my dwelling”

Thorvald describes in great detail the area where he is and it corresponds pretty much with what I see on a map when I look at Sandwich Bay. In fact, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I was near there I went out in a small boat to look at the geographical features along the coast there.

Rafn though made several miscalculations and ended up putting the Norse ashore in Massachusetts, something that confused people for 70 years.

Firstly, he calculated the distance that a Norse longboat would sail in an hour, multiplied that by 24 and then by the number of days to arrive at their destination.

However, in my opinion, it’s out of the question that, experienced sailors as they were, they would have sailed into unfamiliar waters and kept going through the hours of darkness. They would almost certainly have heaved to until daylight.

Secondly, Rafn calculated the distances based on the speed of a longboat. However the Sagas state that they bought a boat from a trader who put in to Erik the Red’s camp at Brattahlid.

It wasn’t until they carried out some excavations at Roskilde in the early 1960s that they came across a Norse trading vessel, or Knǿrr and that has completely different sailing characteristics

The physiotherapist came round this afternoon and had me walking up and down the stairs. And it’s difficult, that’s for sure. Nothing like as good as it was two weeks ago and that’s a real disappointment. I thought that I was making decent progress until that latest fall.

But still, no matter how bad I’m feeling, there are always people worse off than me.

With him coming I went and had a shower. And while I was at it I went one better than Dave Crosby. probably because I had the ‘flu for Christmas and it was increasing my paranoia. Sill, I’m not giving in an inch to fear because I promised myself this year – I feel like I owe it to someone.

This evening I was stuck for an idea for tea. But having a rummage around I came across some vegan bolognaise sauce with soya mince that I’d completely forgotten. The expiry date on the jar was about 100 years ago but in for a penny in for a pound and it was actually quite nice.

There’s half a jar left so I’ll have that next week with some more pasta and veg.

But a tragedy here – I’ve run out of brussels sprouts now after all of that pile I bought and froze at Christmas. I mustn’t forget to buy some more at the weekend, but I have a feeling that ready-frozen ones might have to do.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. Whenever whoever it was rang my doorbell, if that’s what it was, I was in Canada again, down at the end of a headland looking out to sea where there was another island. There was some kind of pond there. We’d measured it and it was 10kms across and ever so deep. There were all kinds of grids around, all marked with yellow paint as if there was something going to happen to them. There was talk about this island joining up with the part of Canada where we were. That would have happened much earlier had there not decided to be a vote on it. We made some kind of remark about how people complained that it was democratic where we were and not democratic on the island yet the agreement to unite had been taken by the mainland without any kind of vote at all yet the people on the island had been allowed to have a vote on it. We thought that to be extremely ironic.

Later on I was doing something for some kind of investigation. We had to go to Edinburgh so I went on the back of someone’s motorcycle. When we arrived in Edinburgh I couldn’t remember my way. Nothing in Edinburgh looked like anything that I ever knew. We became confused at a road junction on this motorbike and ended up on the pavement trying to work out our way. There were all kinds of people hanging around. The driver of the motorbike said “put your feet up on the pedals and hang on tight. These people don’t look very safe to me”. We set off still going the wrong way and came to an old house. We went in but couldn’t find what we wanted and lost our way again. We ended up back in a Government library with all kinds of old documents. We described this house to someone. he came up with several suggestions and showed us photos but none seemed to resemble this particular house, situated set back from the road on a corner by a railway line with a statue in front. While we were there we started to go through their records for something else. I found loads of interesting things like squardrom flying books from World War I. The papers we wanted we couldn’t find. They kept bringing us files telling us that these were the correct ones but none of the references matched. But I was having a whale of a time going through here reading all the old notebooks, pencils and Court reporters’ books. I thought that I could have moved in and lived here with all of this but none of this was actually finding the information that they wanted. He kept on coming up with stuff that he said was the correct reference but when I looked at it, it was nothing like the information that we wanted.

So now I really am going to bed. But I’ll change the bedding first now that I’m all clean and tidy. It’ll be nice to have some clean bedding. I really ought to change it more often than I do. Usually it walks into the linen basket on its own so I need to organise myself better than I do.

But not much hope of that. As Guildenstern said in “Hamlet” “dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream”

But as an anonymous writer once said about the father of George Cartwright whom we discussed earlier,
He had a genius for encountering difficulties

Friday 28th April 2023 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today. I’ve actually spent most of it asleep.

And that’s no surprise because I had another miserable night. Apart from the fact that I took an absolute age to go off to sleep again, I awoke at about 04:20 and just lay there vegetating for ages.

The alarm goes off at 07:00 these days and at 06:55 I found the energy (I’m not sure where from) to haul myself out of bed to beat the alarm. And that was probably the most energetic thing that I did.

The nurse came round as planned and took my blood sample. She had to take three goes before she could extract any blood from me. This is becoming ridiculous. I really am beginning to hate all of this.

It took me a while to come round into the Land of the Living enough to book all of my transport arrangements for my trip to Leuven. To my dismay my Old Fogey’s Railcard has expired and I’m having to pay full price for my travel, and I’m not ‘arf noticing the difference.

There are several factors contributing to the extra expense, apart from the absence of railcard

I’m coming home on a Friday, not a Saturday
I’m not taking the cheap route via Lille because I can’t walk quickly enough between one railway station and the other. Lille Flandres and Lille Europe are situated a good 10 minutes away from each other for a fit person. God knows how I’ll cope on my crutches if I tried that
The two cheap morning trains from Brussels, at 07:13 and 07:43, are fully booked and there are no seats available

And as for the last couple of times, I’m not staying at my usual hidey-hole either. It’s a long walk from the station and also if I want anything to eat it’s a long walk to the shops. There’s an Ibis Budget at the back of the station where I’ve stayed a few times, and that’s where I’ll be hanging my hat.

It took ages to sort everything out though. I went to pay with my Belgian bank account only to find that the app has to be upgraded. That took an age and when it had finally installed itself correctly the order had timed out and I had to start again.

And then there were issues with the SNCF app. That needed upgrading too and now that it’s done, it won’t open on my old phone. I’ve had to do everything off the computer and I’ll need to print out my tickets.

This afternoon the first thing that I did was to have a shower. I was feeling quite cold and I don’t know why and I thought that a shower would warm me up.

While I was in the bathroom I went one step further than David Crosby, gave in an inch to fear and cut my hair. Probably because I had the flu for Christmas, I reckon.

Back in here I fell asleep yet again, and that was that for quite considerable time. And when I awoke I really felt so miserable. It took for ever for me to pull myself together. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’ve been doing so well just recently.

There was time to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. At one point I was asleep but awake in a kind of dream watching something happen in front of my eyes on the road while I was standing behind a hedge on the edge. It turned out to be a scene from a sequel to a well-known film – a kind-of Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit or something. It turned out to be a kind-of trailer for a brief film where the producer shows his top-20 moments from his top favourite sequels to well-known films of that nature. We were there watching bits from The Hobbit, Harry Potter, this kind of film until he finally came round to his n° 1. everyone was praying that it wasn’t a certain scene but I didn’t get to see what it was because I awoke just as it was about to start the final scene. Just my luck

Did I dictate the dream … “no, you didn’t” – ed … about being on the taxis last night, having worked really hard with some really long hours. There was a lot of work to do around the Market Drayton area. One of the drivers phoned the people concerned and asked if we were still on for this work. They replied “yes” so he set off to Market Drayton. The way he went was down towards Woore and then across the old road to Knighton, that way. A way that I know well from my perambulations around that area in my youth. We were talking about some other people, Nerina and I, who we knew who had bought some kind of place out there. I had a couple of hours to spare so someone dropped me off at a little sweetshop-type of place. I went in and the guy said “you want upstairs”. I went up these incredibly steep stairs and found myself in this beautiful clean, tidy apartment. It was where one of my taxi drivers and his wife lived. They certainly weren’t the type to have had somewhere that was absolutely spotless. I was intending to try to ask if I could have a bath but when I saw how neat and tidy their house was I had second thoughts because I didn’t really want to mess it up.

And then one of my drivers had been out doing taxi jobs in Northern Ireland with my brother. They’d been away for a while. The guy who had organised it all came back and said that he would refuse to work with my brother again. He began to write out a whole list of everything that went wrong including my brother throwing some mushroom fried rice at him. I had to go off to do something. By the time I came back there was an enormous list. Part of the list was showing that everything in Northern Ireland had increased in price and how much was the increase. This list was enormous, on several pages. The guy in charge of everything said “I think that I’ve decided that I’m going to stop doing the cable car work from now on”. Another guy – a driver – rummaged through his bag and began to pull out things saying “I don’t need this, do I? I don’t need that now, do I?”. Something was strange about what he was pulling out so we had a look at it. It was actually the mirror arm of a car. Why he’d have one of those spare I really don’t know. In the end everyone calmed down and that left me and another driver to do the work for the night. I could see that there was going to be a lot of sorting out that needed to be done over the next couple of days to try to keep everyone happy again and try to stimulate some more business without running into some ridiculous costs.

By the looks of things I’ve been spending a lot of time back on the taxis just recently. And it’s not wishful thinking, I promise you that. For a while it was good fun and quite an enjoyable job but it eventually took on a life of its own and swept us all along in the momentum.

Tea tonight wasn’t as nice as it might have been and I don’t know why. The potatoes didn’t really make nice chips, I suppose, and the sausage rolls somehow didn’t inspire me all that much. My salad was nice though and I’ll have another one of those tomorrow.

Shopping is on the cards so I’ll buy some more spuds for chips for tea tomorrow but the freezer now has some room in it and I’m wondering whether a bag of frozen chips might be a better idea in this case. I shall have to look into that.

There’s more frozen stuff that’s been in the freezer since the Dawn of Time too and I’ll empty a few more bits and pieces to have with my chips and salad tomorrow. But right now I’m off to bed. It’s been a horrible day as I said earlier and the best thing to do is to forget about it and start again tomorrow

It’s been said quite often that no amount of alteration can sometimes change something that’s clearly not working, and it’s better to forget it and start again. I suppose that that’s probably why I have a younger brother.

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 – MY LEFTOVER CURRY …

… was delicious tonight. And plenty of it too. There was quite a backlog of food building up in the fridge that needed to be eaten and if I were honest, I needn’t really have added in a small potato to lengthen it

In fact, I’ve had plenty to eat today. The other home-made bun from the weekend, just as delicious as the first one on Monday. And then at lunchtime some soup from the container that I’d opened yesterday.

This afternoon I was invited out for a drink by the President of the Residents’ Committee of the building, at which there were a few nibbles, and then my curry tonight.

Being invited out by the President was interesting because even though the final act of purchase of the apartment downstairs hasn’t been signed, it seems that I’ve already been accepted into the inner circle.

Several of the apartments are rented out, several more are second residences so there aren’t too many that are full-time owner occupiers. What cheers up the people here is that the apartment that I’m buying will revert from a tenanted apartment to an owner-occupied apartment and that’s a rare reversal of fortunes for a modern seaside resort.

There are far too many apartments being sold out of private stock and into holiday accommodation and that’s killing so many coastal towns, and that’s mainly due to these casual letting websites that are now being swamped by exploitive casual racketeers.

But that’s a subject for another time. I’m much more interested in what happened last night. And there was quite a lot too because it was yet another night where I didn’t have a great deal of sleep, lying there tossing and turning and hoping that I would drop off at some time.

And I must have done too because there were plenty of travels that must have kept me busy. There was an aeroplane that had a pilot and a small crew on board. For some unknown reason the aeroplane started to dive forward towards the ground. Someone went into the cockpit and found that the pilot was asleep. They awoke him and he carried on flying. The exact same thing happened again. He’d fallen asleep again. The third time when they were trying to shake him awake they found that there was some kind of insect in the cabin. For some reason or other this insect had a power to put people to sleep. They managed to trap this insect and remove it from the cabin. From then on the flight proceeded quite normally just as it should without any problem.

And then there was someone in Jersey who had an agricultural business but had lost it for one reason or another. He had problems with the new purchaser or operator of the business and the business reverted back to him. He was obliged to carry on. I can’t remember any more about this now.

Someone wanted a change of room last night in a hotel or something and insisted on seeing the manager. What had happened was that there were some roadworks on the main road and the traffic had been diverted down a diversion which just happened to go past the front of the hotel which of course would keep everyone awake at night. There was nothing that the proprietor of the hotel could do about it obviously but he received all the blame for what was happening.

Later on I’d been to Shavington, Vine Tree Avenue, to visit my old house where I lived. When I left I was being watched all the way up the street while something was happening. I thought that the easiest way to do this was to nip in via a neighbour’s house and over the fence into the back and disappear that way. In the end I ended up knocking at the door of this neighbour. She was absolutely delighted and invited me in. Of course it was someone whom I didn’t really like and with whom I didn’t really get on but she was there making me welcome. We talked about bees and honey etc. She fetched her husband and phoned her children to say that I’d come round. I could see that rather than having just gone this way for a short cut I’d be here for a week if I wasn’t careful. I just couldn’t find a way of breaking off this meeting and leaving. Interestingly the names of the children weren’t the names of the children in real life. They were different.

Interestingly, when I lived in Shavington there were two families that were rather infamous for their lack of personal hygene and social niceties. And during the night I managed to find the address of one of them that was being occupied by the other.

At another point during the night a girl was presumed hanged herself or being untied by this snake during the song “Delilah”. The snake was slowly reaching its grasp. It looked as if there was going to be miles of arm of this snake left over by the time the snake had finished doing what it was intended to do with her. And if you can make any sense of what that was all about then please let me know because I don’t have a clue.

But when the alarm went off this morning I was having a cup of coffee. Not a real cup of coffee but a virtual one. I was actually back home. My mother had had to go to the shops for something or other. We kids had to get up. I was there with 2 of my siblings. We were looking at some notices that were plastered everywhere about words that we no longer used in everyday conversation. There was something about if Belgium and Italy elect Socialist governments this weekend it will be a first. Things like that. I didn’t have a chance to find out what was going on about it because the alarm went off.

Hardly a surprise that I was totally exhausted after all of that.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I rounded up the music for another radio programme that I’ll be preparing at some point. I don’t want to get too far ahead with the text of the programme because, as I’m finding out these days, more and more of the artists featured in my programmes are shuffling off this mortal coil and playing in that great gig in the sky which means that I have to keep on amending my programmes.

On the other hand, I need to keep some programmes all written up and ready. They came in handy when I was in hospital last autumn and there’s always the possibility that I’ll be in there again.

There was a pause for my lovely toasted bun, and another pause for the soup at lunchtime. In between, I tidied up a little here and there around the apartment ready for when the cleaner came. I also cut my hair and had a shower. I can climb so much easier into the bath these days so the physiotherapy is obviously working.

This afternoon while the cleaner was here I wrote up a few notes for the programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday and I’ll be doing the rest at some time in the near future. If I’m lucky I might even have the programme done before Monday too and then I can have a day off.

So having been entertained and having eaten my curry I’m off to bed for an early night. I need it too after the events of the last few days. Every now and again I go through these phases of having some really bad nights and by the looks of things I’m in the middle of another one.

Perhaps I ought to go out and about for a walk more often and get some exercise. Then I might be tired enough to go to sleep.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: haircut

Monday 6th July 2026 – WHEN THE ALARM …

Saturday 4th April 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Thursday 15th January 2026 – I’M FED UP …

Thursday 16th October 2025 – HAVING JUST FALLEN …

Friday 2nd May 2025 – AS I HAVE SAID …

Thursday 27th February 2025 – ANOTHER PAINFUL SESSION …

Wednesday 11th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Sunday 25th August 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

Monday 29th April 2024 – I’VE BROKEN ONE …

Thursday 25th January 2024 – I’VE BEEN OVERWHELMED …

Thursday 2nd November 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

Tuesday 29th August 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

Thursday 15th June 2023 – IF I EVER LAY …

Friday 28th April 2023 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 – MY LEFTOVER CURRY …

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