… are delicious. At least, the one that I had for tea tonight was. I had to leave them to cook for a lot longer than recommended because of the inconsistency of my little table-top oven, but the end result was well-worth it.
And for some reason, being in bed last night was quite interesting too. It was yet another very late night, but I think that we are all becoming used to this. Tea seemed to take ages to make and then when it was finished I wasn’t in much of a mood to do anything, and whatever there was to do took an age to be done. That seems to be becoming something of a habit too.
It was long after 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed and going to sleep was also something that took an age to be done, and it’s dangerous for me to be left alone in the small hours with nothing but my dark thoughts to keep me company. I have a lot on my mind right now, and it’s nothing about which I can do anything at all.
And seeing that it relates to something that happened (or, more to the point, didn’t happen) over 45 years ago, there’s not much point brooding on it. I’d chase it out of my mind if I possibly could but then, deep down, I don’t really want to. I’m in a bit of a mess at the moment and have been for several days.
Eventually though I did go off to sleep and there I lay, dead to the World until the alarm went off.
It really was “dead to the World” too. In bed I wear a tubigrip bandage over the plasters on my arm to keep them in place, and inevitably, when I roll around in bed, the bandage rides up my arm. But this morning, when I awoke, not only was I in exactly the last place and position that I remember before going to sleep, the bandage was exactly where it had been put the previous night. I can’t have moved an inch.
When the alarm went off I found it difficult once more to raise myself from the Dead but eventually I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash, scrub and shave. After all, you never know. Emilie the Cute Consultant might be there.
In the kitchen I sorted out the morning’s medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And to my dismay, there was nothing on it from the night. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on at night.
At least though, it really WAS “dead to the World”.
Isabelle the nurse was in a rush yet again and didn’t even have time to listen to my change of programme. She was in and out like a flash today.
And then I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.
We talked about the critic who said, and with which I am in complete agreement, that "a flurry of argument and counter-argument". Seriously, there is no place in any Academic publication for remarks that he uses to say that someone’s "argument rests upon a doubtful ‘perhaps’, an obscure ‘apparently ‘, a desperate ‘ must have been ’, and the baseless assumption that the Belgae had established dominion in Britain in the time of Pytheas".
Had I been his editor or publisher, I’d have long-since excised his remarks.
But turning to some more of his arguments, he’s puzzled as to why there is no evidence of tin production from Cornwall in the first two hundred years after the Roman conquest. Plenty before and plenty subsequently. "Yet if the tin trade had then been flourishing they would hardly have stopped"
In the period leading up to the Roman invasion, the inhabitants of Cornwall and the Roman Empire were at peace with each other. Then it took two hundred years of fighting for the Romans to establish themselves that far West and gain control of all of the mines for themselves. It’s hardly likely that during the period of the war and fighting, the Cornish tin merchants would be trading with the enemy.
Another issue that he’s having today is why, if Cornwall was where Cassiterides was and the shipping point led to an overland voyage all the way across Gaul rather than by sea direct to the trading port of Massilla, "The argument based upon the fact that the overland journey lasted thirty days implies that the merchants would have deliberately preferred a longer to a shorter route"
The answer to that is the “Voyage of Himilco”, that we mentioned a couple of days ago. He was the Carthaginian sailor who found his trip to the tin mines by boat so frightening that he wrote a book talking about attacks by sea-monsters and generally scaring his contemporaries to death.
Back in here I finished off my radio notes at long last and began to choose the music for the next radio programme. However, I hadn’t finished when I was once more take by surprise by the cleaner who came to fit my patches.
Once more it was a long wait for the taxi but it was the girl who brought me home last time so I didn’t mind at all. There were just the two of us and we had a nice, chatty time down to Avranches.
Plugging me in was painful as usual but nothing as painful whatever as last Saturday. I don’t think that anything could ever be. However, when the anaesthetic wore off I began to know about it.
During the last couple of days I’ve accumulated a lot of water, so much so that the machine doesn’t have the means to remove it all. I’ve no idea what they will do about that. But there was quite a crowd around me giving me an examination. Unfortunately, not including Emilie the Cute Consultant. She can come and examine me any time she likes.
There was something of a wait for a taxi home, and when it turned up it already had a passenger. But the driver was a history buff who knew, would you believe, all about the stuff that I’ve been reading, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed …, Cartier and Champlain, the exploration of North America, and so we had a lively chat on the way home.
My cleaner was waiting for me and she watched once more as I strode up the stairs to the lift. The handrail still isn’t fixed up to here and it probably never will be. They don’t seem to be in too much of a rush
Back in here I made myself tea. I baked the three pies in the oven and steamed a lot of veg in the electric steamer. I’ve not used that for ages.
Everything was really nice, especially the gravy, which I made with the steamed veg water.
So now it’s bedtime and tomorrow I have a Day of Rest when I’ll be doing some more of this radio stuff so that I have another programme ready if I can.
But in this gaggle of people around my bed this afternoon someone was talking about life in the Nephrology Clinic, when a sailor had been admitted and they had examined him
Apparently the Ward Matron had gone into the Nurses’ rest room, saying "there’s a sailor just been admitted to the Nephrology Ward and he has the word ‘Ludo’ tattooed on his private parts"
Of course, all of the nurses dashed out to have a look for themselves
A few minutes later the pretty young student nurse came back. "It’s not ‘Ludo’" she announced. "It’s ‘Llandudno’"
