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LIVE: Sunday 25th October 2026 – THIS WAS HOW …

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… a proper Sunday should be organised, and I enjoyed every minute of it, for a change.

Despite not finishing my notes and going to bed instead, it was by no means early when I hit the hay. It might not have been after midnight, but I bet that it wasn’t far off.

But never mind. Sunday is my Day of Rest and my aim was to sleep for as long as I could and be awoken by Isabelle the Nurse when she arrived, especially as today we were all treated to an extra hour in bed.

Although I awoke a couple of times during the night, I was soon asleep again, and it was indeed Isabelle the Nurse who awoke me when she came into my bedroom. I didn’t hear her ring the doorbell or open the front door to come in. Considering that I’m supposed to be a light sleeper, what use would I be if someone broke into my apartment overnight?

She gave me my anti-flu injection and then dealt with my legs and feet. Once they had been oiled and massaged, she had to hang around because there was a wait time of fifteen minutes to see that there were no unpleasant side-effects with this injection, so we had a cosy little chat about dialysis.

After she left, I raised myself from the Dead and went into the bathroom to sort myself out. Then, into the kitchen for breakfast – porridge, black coffee, juice for the morning medication and the last of my delicious home made apricot jam croissants. I’ll make some more like that next Sunday too.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Today’s topic concerns a visit of the group to Llandrindod Wells, and the first item is that of salmon fishing. Apparently a bunch of salmon poachers had been arrested in the river there, and the leader of the group was lamenting the fact that these days, salmon in the upper reaches of the Wye and its tributaries were few and far between.

However, he tells us that "as we have lately seen new and wise fishery laws passed, giving a much better chance to the upper proprietors than they ever had before, by the removal of fixed engines, a weekly close time for nets, and the prohibition of all fishing by nets after the first of September—all which regulations are very much in their favour—we may hope now for a better spirit to prevail. We have heard from more than one member of the Board of Conservators that there is every disposition on their part to act in the fairest and most liberal manner to the upper proprietors, and on the other hand it is fair to expect that they, the upper proprietors, will assist all they can in protecting the breeding fish"

On the following page, he records with pleasure of "Sir J. Bailey’s fishing cottage, then by the Nydd and its far-famed salmon catch of Cavan Shwn Lewis, where it is said Mr Charles Stretton killed twelve fish in one day".

With equal pride, he adds that "A salmon was taken as high up as Newbridge by angling, 39.5 lbs., and several over 20 lbs., and at Holm Lacey, four miles below the city of Hereford, the monster fish of 56 lbs. was caught by the nets …. Two other salmon were caught at the same draught, one 11 lbs. and the other 12 lbs. Numbers of others, varying from 35 lbs to 15 lbs, have been taken, and this season the capture of a 25 lb fish has been an ordinary occurrence."

It seems very much to me that his supposed admiration of the “new and wise fishery laws” and his crocodile tears over the salmon being “few and far between” were really nothing more than window-dressing.

Back in here later, I attacked the outstanding notes, and they are now on line. They took quite a while to do because there was so much of them. I don’t know how, out of a boring day like yesterday, I could have written so much.

One thing that I noticed, though, was that it was warm in here. In fact, the thermometer was showing 23°C. Consequently, I turned all the heating off to let things cool down a little.

After the outstanding notes were on line, it was time for the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then I was back in here transcribing the dictaphone notes.

I was mixed up with a group of people who were in all kinds of different things, like actors and so on. One or two of my friends had arranged for a weekend in Dublin. I thought that that would make a pleasant surprise for Nerina because it’s her birthday very soon. We all got down to making plans about it, and during the week, we ended up with about eighty-odd people. I mentioned to Nerina that we were going away for the weekend. When she asked where, and I replied “Dublin”, she went berserk and, for some totally unknown reason, completely lost her head about this idea. We had a huge row, which was complicated by the fact that I just couldn’t understand her reaction. Anyway, I went back to sort things out with my friends to see what they were doing and how they were going on, hoping that Nerina would cool down. However, she ended up taking a room in a really posh hotel in the immediate vicinity of where we were. Once we’d finalised all these details about Dublin, I went over to the hotel to see if she’d woken up yet, and the receptionist pointed outside, and Nerina was waiting by a set of traffic lights in Earle Street. I thought that from the position that she was in, she was not going to Dublin. I said “I suppose that you have finally decided not to go”. That triggered another huge argument. She said something like “I hope you have fun there”. I said “if you’re not going, then I’m not going, and we’ll go home”. “Right,” she said. “In that case, I’m not going home”, and stormed off. I was busy trying to scratch my head about all of this because I didn’t understand her totally unreasonable attitude about this.

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This is not an unreasonable dream because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we did have a travel club, a little group of us … "certainly nothing like eighty though" – ed … but it’s not been as active as it used to be since I lost the use of my legs and began dialysis.

Actually, in real life, the “traffic lights” were the zebra crossing in Earle Street between Tiko’s café and the Cheese Hall pub. However, there’s certainly no luxury hotel across the road from there. There’s a very cheap building with what used to be the old Victor Value supermarket and with government offices on top.

As for Nerina, it really was her in the dream. Her mother was Italian, and Nerina had inherited not only her mother’s cooking but also her mother’s Italian character. It took me a while to come to terms with her somewhat flamboyant emotional side, but once I’d understood the psychology behind it, I found that married life was refreshing and exciting, and, to be frank, since I’ve met other women afterwards, I really wish that things between Nerina and me had worked out better. Anyway, this dream went way, way beyond anything that I had ever experienced with her.

It’s hard to explain what was going on in this dream, but this was one of those rare dreams that seemed to be completely real when I was asleep. And although there is nothing in the dictated notes about this, I can still remember going with Nerina up a set of stairs over a shop to a small, candlelit restaurant with red furnishings and heavy dark oak furniture in the Victorian style, and also getting on board a train made up of individual carriages, although I was with just one other person on that train, who wasn’t Nerina.

And the bit about “busy trying to scratch my head about all of this” – this afternoon, I noticed a scab of some sort on the back of my head as if I had been scratching it so much that it had bled. That wasn’t there yesterday.

Later on, we had more football – this time it was the Scottish Cup between Stranraer and non-league Tayport, played in a monsoon at the bottom of a waterfall in a tornado.

Tayport played with the wind in the first half and made the most of it, going in 1-0 up at half-time.

But class will out in the long run, and in the second half, Stranraer scored three, with this site’s favourite forward, Robbie Foster, scoring one of them.

Greenock Morton’s game against Ayr United was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.

While all of this was going on, my chatbot was busy researching music for me, and he came up with piles of interesting stuff. He’s done about two days worth of my research for me while I’ve been doing other things, and that’s one of the benefits of artificial intelligence. And based on what he’s found, this programme is going to be a really interesting one, I reckon.

Later on, it was time to go a-baking, and a sunflower-seed loaf was first on the agenda.

While the was proofing, I began to prepare the ingredients for the recipe for the aubergine and chilli whatsit that my chatbot found for me the other day. And after I’d added the sunflower seeds into the bread and left it to prove for a second time, I fried the onions, aubergine and garlic lightly and then tipped them and everything else into the slow cooker on “low”, where they will be festering all night.

The loaf was magnificent. It had risen the highest that I have ever had a loaf of bread rise, and it’s cooked to perfection. As for the stuff in the slow cooker, it tastes wonderful, although before I have a helping of it, I shall have to remember to put the toilet paper in the fridge first. It seems that the measurements for the chilli powder are somewhat exaggerated.

While the bread was cooking, I had a bite to eat – the first food on a Sunday night for ages. It was a small helping of this vegan chilli meal that was on special offer at Leclerc, with a generous helping of steamed vegetables tossed in butter. It was nice, but if it had been sold at full price, it would have been expensive for what it was.

So with the notes now written, there are just one or two more things to do, and then I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … with the heating still switched off and the thermometer showing 18°C.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about playing football in heavy rain … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember discussing a football match at (thinks) Llanberis several years ago which was postponed because there was three feet of water covering the pitch.
Whoever the opponents were, I can’t remember now, but they were keen to play the game.
When I asked their manager why, he replied "Llanberis can switch on the floodlights, and we’ve brought a full complement of subs."

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LIVE: Sunday 18th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

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… seen a most extraordinary incident in a football match – the kind that will be played back on these “blooper” videos on social networking channels for years and years to come. And it won’t be any surprise because I had to look at it twice and still find it hard to believe, and so did the commentator and everyone in the crowd too.

But more of that anon. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing and was about to crawl into bed, it was long after midnight, and I’d been letting it all hang out until 00:30, I suppose. And that kind of time for going to bed is doing me no favours at all.

However, with no alarm clock and being awoken in bed by the nurse, at whatever time he comes on a Sunday, that’s much more positive.

Always assuming that I sleep right the way through, which in these days is highly unlikely, of course. And so it proved last night. It was about 04:30 or so when I awoke, and after that, it was one of those early mornings when I’m drifting in and out of sleep without anything being definitive. I was awake at 06:20, which I know because I looked at the time, and the next thing I remember was the nurse coming into the apartment round about 08:30.

He sorted out my legs and feet while I was still in bed, and then he cleared off until tomorrow. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, so a short time later, I threw off the covers, and when I eventually summoned up the courage and energy to stand up, I headed into the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning.

When I’d finished dressing, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast. It was only 09:15 too, so it wasn’t actually all that late compared to a weekday.

Breakfast was quite good today. There was the usual porridge, juice and cafe, and two more of my home-made croissants filled with apricot jam. Yes, they were really delicious. There was no book today, though. The travelling laptop is still in my bag, as it will be going with me tomorrow to the day hospital before dialysis. The time has come round for the second instalment of this product that stimulates my white blood cells. And if it gives me the same kind of boost as the first one did four weeks ago, it will be pretty good.

And when it’s all over, across the road I go, off to the dialysis centre without a break and, more importantly, without breakfast. And that will hurt the most. That is, unless, once more, the nurse who looks after me goes for lunch, forgetting that she has to put the anaesthetic on my arm. That will hurt much more when I go to dialysis and they come to plug me in.

After breakfast, I came back in here to carry on with yesterday’s notes, and you may well have noticed that they are now on line, almost two thousand four hundred words of them. That meant that I could now transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was round at my niece’s house last night, and it was the usual chaotic place with all of their families and friends there. I was having to leave that evening as I was somewhere near Stranraer. My niece’s husband was talking to me about an oak that he’d been growing since it was an acorn, and now it was ready to be cut down, and he told me that I could have it. He explained that he’d been curing it with mushrooms and everything like that. I kept on asking for him to tell me where it was, but for some reason, he was very reticent. Then they all decided to go to someone’s party up in town, but I was planning to leave that night and I had a lot of things to do. One of the things that I’d promised to do was to take all the scaffolding and piping that was by the front door and put it somewhere, so I’d already put it in my van. My elder sister, she should have been helping me as she promised, but she went to this party too. Now that the van was all ready, apart from the piping that I’d put in it – this tubing that I’d put into it – and I didn’t have the address of this tree and had stuck all these tubes in my van, so in the end, I went down to where this party was and took hold of my sister. I said “are you still going to help me move these things?” She replied “oh yes, I’ll help you tomorrow”. I answered “you know I’m leaving tonight” so she reluctantly came out of the party. I asked my niece’s husband if he had the keys to these two garages that he had across the yard at the bottom under the trees, and he gave them to me. They were two half-keys that you had to fit together in order to open the door. So I picked those up and then went outside. I saw my sister walking around the street, so I drove over to pick her up. She came over extremely reluctantly as if she had no interest whatsoever in giving me a hand to move these tubes and piping in the van, even though they were for her daughter’s husband.

There have been quite a few dreams in the comparatively recent past about being at my niece’s house, all of which have put the house in an unreal situation, somewhere a long way from its actual position in real life, and all of them recounting stories that have absolutely no basis in fact.

But the significance of Stranraer is easy to explain, seeing as I watch Stranraer FC’s matches almost every weekend and sometimes when they are playing in midweek too. We’ve also been going to parties on a regular basis through the night just recently too.

The oak tree is significant too, seeing as I’m reading a chapter on special trees in Herefordshire in my morning book right now, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, I bet that the oak in this dream wasn’t ready to be cut down quite yet either. They need a few hundred years to mature first. And the mushrooms relate to that chapter on parasitic mushrooms that we read too.

The scaffolding and tubing is interesting as well. Regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall, I own quite a bit of scaffolding that I bought from that huge painting project in Liverpool City Centre when I was in the UK once, and I also bought some heavy duty tubing from Stoke on Trent to use as wind turbine masts and so on. My van was full of the stuff when I came back from the UK that time.

And, of course, there’s the usual visit of someone from the rest of my family. They always seem to pop up when they aren’t required

This took me up to today’s football – Afan Lido, tenth in the second tier v Penybont, third in the first tier.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Afan Lido’s ground. They haven’t been in the first tier and televised matches since they were relegated at the end of season 2013/2014, and although it’s a fairly new ground, it was looking rather tired and neglected back in those days. However, it looks as if it’s had a refurbishment and a few good coats of paint and looks much nicer.

As for the match, I don’t think that there was ever a doubt about who was going to win it. Penybont was by far the better team and had, I reckon, about two thirds of the play. At times, Afan Lido were struggling to get out of their own penalty area. However, they held on for a good forty-odd minutes before Penybont scored their first goal, a header by a Penybont defender from a corner.

And then we had a calamity!

The very same defender who had scored the goal, about thirty seconds later intercepted a loose ball down by his own goal line. His keeper was up near the penalty spot, so we all expected a pass to the keeper. Instead, the defender, calmly and nonchalantly, kicked the ball into his own net to give Afan Lido an equaliser, and no-one watching the game could believe what they had just seen.

Whatever Penybont’s manager, Rhys Griffiths, had put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I’d like a drink of that myself because within three minutes into the second half, Penybont had scored two more goals to go 3-1 up. However, Afan Lido woke up quite quickly and managed to keep the Penybont attackers out for the rest of the game, albeit with some desperate defending at times.

Afan Lido had some good moments of their own too, and with a few minutes to go, they won a corner. The ball pinged around inside Penybont’s six yard area for a few seconds, then hit a Lido player and went into the net. I don’t think that he knew anything about it – he was just in the way – but it was a goal for his team and they were now just one goal behind.

As the game came up to the final whistle, the Lido won yet another corner. This led to a game of head tennis, and the same player as just now put the ball in the net. But while he and his team were dancing around to celebrate, the linesman had his flag up for offside.

So Penybont won the game 3-2, meaning that Afan Lido were just so close, but on the balance of play, the result did rather flatter Afan Lido.

There was yet more football after that. The first match was Stranraer away at Spartans. And the Stranraer juggernaut rolls on with yet another win, this time 2-0. Still top of the table, on goal difference from Clyde, and those two have opened up a five-point gap to third place. The next few months will be interesting.

There was another 2-0 scoreline too, this time in the game between Greenock Morton and Queen’s Park. And since having sacked their manager a couple of weeks ago, Morton have become a different team. The players have finally gained some confidence and are looking as if they are enjoying themselves, and they had more shots on target in this match than they had in all of the matches under Ian Murray. They fully deserved their victory this afternoon. Here’s hoping that they can keep it up.

Two other important tasks remained to be done. The first one was to freeze the remains of my shepherd’s pie. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several days ago I had invited comments from my readers. Most of the suggestions that I received had nothing to do with the shepherd’s pie, and they were physically impossible anyway, but Seàn sent me a couple of ideas, for which I was grateful.

However, in the end, I found some small ice cream containers that Marianne had had. They were 900 mg instead of 1 litre, and the portions of shepherd’s pie were just about the right size to fit in. They are now in the freezer, freezing away.

The final job was my Welsh homework, seeing as I’m not here tomorrow morning. That’s all done now, and I’ll review it on Tuesday morning before I send it off to be marked.

So now my notes are also finished, so I’ll just finish off everything else before I go to bed. Hospital tomorrow morning, and I don’t really want to go. Here’s hoping that the effects of the perfusion make it worthwhile.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pies … "well, one of us has" – ed … a well-known cook from one of these celebrity TV programmes went to Australia, and while he was there, in front of an invited audience, he made a lemon meringue pie, and all of the audience cheered.
He stood there, scratching his head in bewilderment.
"What’s the matter?" asked the producer.
"Everyone cheered" he replied. "I don’t understand it."
"Why’s that?"
"Because back in the UK, I was told that Australians like to boo meringue."

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LIVE: Sunday 11th October 2026 – AT LONG LAST …

… Microsoft has enabled the toolbar at the bottom of your screen in Windows 11 to be moved, as was the case with most other previous versions of Windows. Now I can move mine to the right of the screen where it belongs, and I can press on and work properly.

And having done that, I can push on … "and push off too" – ed … and deal with today’s notes, which I hope that I can complete before fatigue overwhelms me.

But the latter is the most likely, because although Sunday is supposed to be a Day of Rest, I haven’t stopped all day today, not even for a minute, despite this “Day of Rest” thing.

Last night, I was in bed at some silly time of night. As I said yesterday, although I intended to be in bed early, I ended up crashing out while riding the porcelain horse, and that set me back quite a while.

However, once in bed, I managed to go to sleep fairly quickly, and although I awoke a couple of times during the night, it wasn’t for very long.

It was Isabelle the Nurse who awoke me, steaming into the bedroom to deal with my feet and legs. She admired my “space” quilt and pillow covers and asked me if I was celebrating the return of the French female astronaut to earth the other day.

After she left, I tried to go back to sleep, but it was quite pointless, so by 09:30 I was fully dressed and in the kitchen. The first task was to make some croissants, so I set to work. And I found some apricot jam, so before I folded the pastry over, I put a spoonful of apricot jam in each.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Our author is still talking about the famous trees of Herefordshire, and he quotes a letter written by Sir Edward Harley, owner of Brampton Bryan Park in Herefordshire, written on 3rd September 1658, in the middle of one of the strongest storms to ever ravage the country, and round about the time that Oliver Cromwell died.

He tells us that "I wish the devil had taken him any other way than through my Park, for, not content with doing me all the mischief he could while alive, he has knocked over some of my finest trees in his progress downwards."

As well as that, in the book this unnamed “commissioner” writes about the hillfort called Croft Ambrey near Aymestrey. He credits it as being the site built by “King Ambrosius”, but if “King Ambrosius really did exist at all, apart from in the imagination of Gildas, he existed round about 450 – 550 AD, which was the crucial period of the defence of the Marcher areas of Cymru against the Anglo-Saxons.

However, later excavations on Croft Ambrey show that the hillfort was built about 1000 years earlier, round about 600 BC. It was quite a common Victorian misconception to think that hillforts date from the time of the Anglo-Saxon versus Britons period, and we have encountered this idea before in one of the other books that we read a while back.

Back in here later, I carried on with the notes from yesterday, and it was long after 13:00 when they finally went on line. Where on earth has the time gone? Things weren’t helped, I have to say, by my falling asleep for a while as I was typing.

The next job was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was with a girl last night. I don’t know who she was, but we’d been going out with each other for a short while. We’d heard some news about a friend of ours who worked in some kind of block of flats who was falling behind on his course because he wasn’t being given the ability to study where he was living. There was too much noise and too many people, and someone who already lived in that building was removed from the university not so long ago. We were being a bit careful about what we did, obviously, but we were trying to think of a way to solve this guy’s problems. Then there came the news at midday that a well-known college in Jersey, where many people go to study, had closed its doors, which was quite a surprise. There were all these students stranded on the island with no money and no way to go home. I, for one, started a fund, raising money on the internet to bring these people home, but we were having great fun imagining the situation in Jersey at the moment – all these people just having come would just have to go again, the roads would quieten down and the towns would quieten down. Someone had taken a few photos of the area, including my apartment, so that in due course, they could do some computer mock-ups and seats, and some kind of superimposed figures to make jokes. I tried to give my girlfriend a hug, but she was not in the hug-giving mood because her friends, who were in danger of losing their position to study, and I could understand exactly what they meant. It meant everyone calming down and diffusing to these kinds of organisations to make a start themselves.

Well, we start off with having a girlfriend, and that’s a novelty, to be sure. However, she won’t let me hug her at the end, and that’s much more like how things end up with me. Interestingly, my family doesn’t turn up to drop a spanner into the works, as they usually do at times like this. That’s some kind of good news, at least.

As for the rest of the dream, when we were at university, we had many people write to us and complain about the inability to study due to too many other distractions, and we proposed a raft of different solutions – working in the public library, going to bed early and then getting up early to work, before everyone else in the house gets up.

And the college collapsing, leaving hundreds if not thousands of people stranded a long way from home, reminds me of something, but I can’t think what it is.

I’ve just dreamt that the alarm went off and I got out of bed and went for a good wash and dressed myself. When I was sitting at the desk with the computer wondering what to do I found that I’d just woken up in bed, still in my nightclothes, so I don’t know what happened there.

This second dream was really so realistic that it did actually feel as if I had woken up and gone to change my clothes, etc. I really didn’t understand at first how come I was still in bed with my night attire. It certainly wasn’t a “phantom alarm” because whatever alarm it was didn’t manage to awaken the real “me”.

After that, we had football. And what a day it must have been for my two Scottish clubs.

Firstly, Greenock Morton were away at Arbroath. And being at the bottom of the table with just one draw and no wins, no-one expected very much. Nevertheless, Morton actually scored two goals, the first time that they’ve scored more than one this season. And although the Red Lichties pulled one back later in the game, Morton hung on to record their first win this season, and away from home too.

Then to Annan, where Stranraer were away to Annan Athletic. And for everyone who is claiming that Stranraer’s position at the top of the table is false, they were silenced when the score of this game was flashed up on the screen – Annan Athletic 1, Stranraer 6. And Stranraer were worth it too because they played some really good attacking football, something that has been missing from the club for the last few seasons. It really was a good match.

Later on, I had the homemade bread to make, but earlier, my chatbot had found a really good vegan cottage pie recipe, made with real cottages, so while I was waiting for the dough to rise and all of that, I made the cottage pie, and it went into the oven after the bread had cooked.

But latterly, I had Rosemary on the internet. She was stuck with her computer and wanted me to help her. So in between dealing with stuff in the oven, I was helping her. But I was running back and to between the kitchen and here, and I was absolutely exhausted.

As well as that, I was also talking to two of my friends on line.

But now that all of that is finished, I can turn my attention to my notes, and they are now finished too. With just a few more things to check, and then I’m going to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

One of my friends above is a retired doctor, and so, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about doctors … "well, one of us has" – ed … he was telling me that he had one of his patients come into his surgery with a lovely “shiner”, or black eye.
"How did this happen?" my friend asked.
"My wife had given me a slice of shepherd’s pie for tea last night."
"But how did this black eye happen?"
"Well, when the shepherd came in and saw me eating a slice of his pie, he wasn’t very happy."

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Live: Sunday 6th September 2026 – CAFE AU LAIT …

… is nothing like as good as Café Au Lit, Ay? … "and I bet that that went clean over the heads of most of your readers" – ed …

So when I was awoken by my friend bringing in a mug of coffee to my bedside table, I made no complaint at all, even if I had been fast asleep up to that point.

And “fast asleep” was quite right too. I’d collapsed into bed at about 20:30 and was probably asleep before my head touched the pillow. I was only going for a crash-out of about an hour then I’d wake up and carry on with the notes. That was the plan, anyway.

However, when I awoke and checked the time, it was 03:48 – much later than I had intended. Nevertheless, by 04:00 I was attacking my notes.

They were finished and on line round about 05:10, and I went back to bed. This time, though, I changed from my day clothes into my night clothes for the sake of decorum. And once more, I was asleep before my head touched the pillow.

When my friend brought in the coffee, it was about 08:15, and I hadn’t had three mouthfuls out of the mug before my nurse came to deal with me. And the Hound of the Baskervilles too, as well as his German lessons.

After he left, I finished my coffee and eventually made it into the kitchen, having dressed myself first. My friend was just about to be dragged out on walkies duty by the Hound of the Baskervilles, so I made another supply of croissants.

Once the croissants were in the oven, I set about making my porridge and also the juice for my morning medication. And everything was ready at the same time so I grabbed two warm croissants and put them on a plate to have after my porridge.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged my friend back, we chatted for a while … "with the friend, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed … and then I came in here to check the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it.

There was something about my middle sister last night. She was going to go to school in Paris. She was not really the sharpest knife in the box so we were wondering how she was going to cope. My mother seemed to think that she would cope OK with very few problems at all, but I said that I could imagine her getting herself lost on the Paris underground without any problems whatsoever. I didn’t think that anything augured particularly well in this plan to send her there.

This is one of those dreams that’s so unexpected. I’ve no idea why a dream like this would be going around my head. It’s extremely unlikely that she would have gone to Paris because she was not very good on her own in strange places. Not to mention the fact that our family would never ever have had the money to send her there.

But it’s interesting nevertheless that she appears in my dreams because she is the least likely member of my family to do so.

After that, there were two football matches to see.

They were both in Scotland – the first was Forfar Athletic v Stranraer. The Loons have always been Stranraer’s Nemesis but today, the tables were well-and-truly turned as Stranraer deservedly shellacked the Loons 0-3.

The next game wasn’t so interesting. Greenock Morton and Queen’s Park are struggling at the foot of the table so these three points were vital to both clubs.

Morton have recently signed about six loan stars, so I was looking for a vast improvement, but it wasn’t to be. From what I saw, it was a team that hadn’t knitted together yet, and a 2-1 defeat was about right.

There were several other things to do too, and then I made a start on fine-tuning the captcha. And I won’t tell you the saga about that because you’ll be pulling out your hair just as I would be if I had any hair left to pull.

Round about 13:30 we decided to take advantage of the lovely weather by going for a drive and buying a bag of chips at our favourite chippy in Avranches. So all three of us, my friend, the Hound of the Baskervilles and me, piled into the car like three superheroes and set off.

We went via a couple of garages in the area that were selling motorhomes to see what was on offer, but there was nothing that would fit in my friend’s garage so we didn’t pursue our enquiries. From there we went into the centre of Avranches but to our dismay, the chippy was closed.

Instead, we went to the car park by the cathedral. There’s a big public park there that is another one of the favourite places to visit of the Hound of the Baskervilles so he dragged his master off for another walkies. However, he spent most of his time being fascinated by the fish in the fishpond.

We came back a different way today – via La Haye Pesnel and Folligny, where we went to look at the old railway station and marshalling yard there. The yard was important because it was there that loads coming from the docks at Cherbourg would be trans-shipped to a train going to Granville and was heavily bombed by Stukas on 17th June 1940.

When the Germans arrived, they put it back into commission, and it was bombed by the allies in 1944 during the D-Day landings.

Back at home, rather much later than intended and not having had our chips in Avranches, I made a pizza. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve made one of those so, do you know, I’d forgotten how long the cooking time was? Consequently, we had a “rather crisp” base that, rather than a knife, you needed an axe to cut your way through it, and it spoiled somewhat the lovely taste of the topping.

The pudding afterwards was another one of these new soya yoghurts, and they tasted just as good as the previous ones.

There were still plenty of things to do so I came in here to do them, but as usual, there was an enormous wave of fatigue that swept over me when I was only halfway through my notes, so I posted online what I’d already written, took my nighttime medication and crawled into bed. I can always finish my notes off tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizza disasters … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met a friend who told me that he had burned his pizza while it was in the oven.
"What type of pizza was it?" I asked.
"It was a Hawaiian pizza" he replied
"So next time, put it on aloha temperature."

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Sunday 30th August 2026 – SUNDAY IS A ..

… Day of Rest, and nothing goes to prove it more than today because despite the stuff that’s piling up to be done, I have emulated my namesake, the mathematician, and done three-fifths of five-eighths of … errr … nothing.

Last night, I was in bed by about 22:00 and it wasn’t long before I was fast asleep. It wasn’t quite as simple as that, though. I was awake about three or four times at least during the night. But what a long night it was. In bed at 22:00 and when the nurse arrived at about 08:30, I was still in bed, fast asleep after the latest awakening.

He sorted out my legs and feet and then disappeared. And I went back to sleep.

It was 22:16 when I finally made it into the kitchen for breakfast – porridge, juice, the morning medication, black coffee and the last two of the homemade croissants. It was all delicious too. You can’t get better than that. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of days ago I said that "We’ve not had any outright vulgar abuse or “language lower than Billingsgate” but I’m expecting it to arrive sometime soon, and I’ll keep you posted." and I wasn’t wrong.

Today we had "From no part of a church had the old spirit further departed than from the monuments of the dead – no wonder then that they were the first to yield to the new corruptions ; that the arched and fretted canopy soon made way for the heathen column and entablature, and that the attitude of prayer was gradually changed for that of strife and debate, and attendant angels made way for the demons of a fallen superstition."

That was followed shortly by "When sacrilege had devastated the abodes of ancient piety and munificence, had levelled our most glorious temples with the ground, or at best substituted a single half-starved curate for the princely abbot and his monastic choir, and when the revenues which had been disposed in hospitality and pious works were scattered among the basest flatterers of an ungodly king ;".

But seriously, if you want to talk about “a single half-starved curate”, it’s not the Renaissance period where you need to be. Look at the condition of the clergy in the seventh and eighth centuries, where there wasn’t just abject poverty amongst the rural clergy, worse than anything that you had in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they also ran the very real risk of being cloven in twain by a dissenting nobleman or invading army.

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to type up. And that took so much longer, as firstly, one of my friends from Germany wanted a video chat, and that ended up in a very Rosemary-esque conversation, and then another one of my friends from Germany wanted a chat too.

Once the notes were on line, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. And WOW!

We were on holiday again, a group of us. It was a terrible place where we were living because people had all brought their family and friends. Some of these friends were spongers who wouldn’t do a thing for themselves and expected everyone else to chip in and do things for them, yet we were all supposed to be on holiday ourselves. Then there was a question of copying a lot of text for labels or something, so we had to rush and find a newsagent’s so that we could get a telephone directory and cut the things out, but there was nothing. In the end, one of my father’s friends went into the newsagents across the road to buy a paper. Then he found that he didn’t have any money so I said that I’d lend him 25p, but he just wandered off, so I bought the paper anyway. However, before I could get out of the premises, another group of two old women, and also two young boys were having a big problem because they had booked a cottage on the edge of town but had come out without the address. They had flown all the way here and didn’t have the address at all. They could describe the house and I knew that I had seen it because there was a Mark IV Cortina outside at one time, so I thought that I’d help them look. Then, I bumped into two girls while I was escorting these guys, and they tagged along for some reason too. Somewhere along the line, the friend of one of these girls disappeared, leaving just one, me and these two boys. We went into endless places where we thought that we would have a good view to see over whether we could see the house, but we couldn’t. And on one occasion, we had to hide because someone had let a giraffe out and it was banging on the doors and windows with its neck. As we were leaving one house, this girl and I and these two boys bumped into two ladies whom I used to take in the taxis years ago, so this girl and I stopped to talk to them. We were chatting away, and then, for some reason, I put my arm around this girl and she didn’t move at all. That took me by surprise because I’m not used to girls who let me put my arms around them, so I was wondering what was going to happen next.

So here I am, and I’ve Got The Girl at last. So what happened to my family? Why didn’t they come along and throw the spanner into the works as they always seem to do?

The start of the dream, though, is very much like several other dreams that we’ve had over time, with family chaos and all that kind of thing. And we even have a MkIV Cortina thrown in for good measure. But who were the two women who used to be my passengers on the taxis? And how come I recognised them? And what were they doing in an Alpine skiing resort?

This dream continued on much later, and I was back at home and everyone was making a huge row and noise. I’d actually built a proper water heater that would work off solar power, and when I tried it, it had actually heated water for me, which was nice. So once the ‘phone was free, I tried to telephone this girl. It took me a couple of goes because I didn’t quite work out what her number was. In the end, it was the first five letters of her family name, which were G-R-A-N-D. I finally spoke to her, despite all the interruptions that were still going on. In the end, I asked her if I could call her tonight, so she replied “round about 18:30 would be fine,” so I hoped that everyone had quietened down and gone by then.

So even though there was a good couple of hours between these two dreams, the second carries on from the first, and I still Get The Girl, if only everyone would shut up and go.

Nerina had to go to New York, and so I decided that I’d pack my suitcase and accompany her as far as I could in case I had the opportunity to stow away. We went all the way to Paris and then all the way to Charles de Gaulle Airport, but for some reason, that was in New York. We were wandering around the airport trying to find her ‘plane, so in the end I put her on it. But something happened and everyone had to leave the ‘plane, and for ages when they announced the delay. So we took a Metro into the city, and in the Metro, Nerina began to make a nuisance of herself by stopping and interviewing people if their papers weren’t in order or there was something else about them, and she’d have them sit and wait while she went to interview some more people. I thought that this was going to get really out of hand in a minute or two, so I made a discreet exit. Later on, we caught up with each other again. She said that she had been so realistic that she had lunch with another police officer, and it was only later that they worked out that she wasn’t. I asked her if she was given five years, but she said no, she was just told to clear off, to which I thought that she was extremely lucky. We ended up back at the airport, but not until I’d been trying to take some photos of things like the Eiffel Tower, which, in New York, of course, doesn’t exist, and a few other things. Eventually, we found our way back to the airport on one of these silly metro things. We arrived at her ‘plane and they were loading again. I went on with her and my suitcase, hoping that sooner or later there would be a spare seat. However, there wasn’t, so the captain announced that he was closing the doors, so I jumped off. I caught this strange metro system thing to New York City. It was basically like a locomotive engine pulling a load of open carriages behind it, and you had to jump on it as it went past. I came into the city and went and did some more sightseeing and photographing. We went down past a little church that was in a discreet back alley, and I realised that that’s where I store some of my cars. Then I had a think about how I could catch up with Nerina. I thought that maybe there would be a spare seat on an aeroplane sometime going that way, so we had a panic-stricken run to the airport metro, and I jumped aboard. However, I couldn’t find a seat on this Metro. I found a seat, but it belonged to a young boy who was talking to his mother next door, so I had to move. And when we came into the airport, I thought that I’d have to go up to one of the companies that flew to the USA to see whether there was a spare seat on a plane that I could buy

This is a lovely definition of “chaos”, isn’t it? Nerina and I can’t make up our minds whether we’re in Paris or New York, Nerina pretending to be a police officer, weird metro systems and even a place in New York where I have some old cars stored. This makes no sense at all … "nothing new here then" – ed … Still, it must mean something to someone somewhere.

Did I type out this dream about being in New York and reading about this murder of this musician? … "No, you didn’t" – ed … So I went out to look at his house. It was in terrible condition. The driveway was all blocked over with rubble and that kind of thing. There was a whole forest of pine trees that were overhanging – they were growing up the side of his house but were bent over with the wind and were covering his house and preventing the sunshine from reaching it. While I was there, the courts took an order against the occupants of that particular street to clear all these pine trees out. While I was talking to them, I said that I would do it. It would give me an excuse to stay in the USA. But it really wasn’t half a difficult job because it wasn’t just cutting down the trees. They were growing out of rocks, all that kind of thing. In the end I had a friend of mine from South Carolina come to help me. We slept in his bus and did the job as well as we could, and we ended up with this huge pile of trees. I asked the local residents if they wanted to take them away, but they didn’t. In the end, we had a huge load of firewood for burning through the winter. I gave them my bill, which was for $8500. While I was waiting for payment, I awoke. It has to be said that Nerina was there at some time. She didn’t really like what I was doing, and I was taking the opportunity to sort through some of my boxes that I’d brought with me with piles and piles of old paperwork in them. I found some of our earliest petrol receipts too, and a lot of stuff ended up in the bin. Nerina said that she wished that I had never started to look through these boxes. I replied that it was my intention to look through all of them in the end and throw out all of the rubbish and keep the correct receipts and sort them.

So my friend from South Carolina, doing an impossible job, Nerina appearing, finding the oldest receipts from my taxi business years ago (and I knew that they were the oldest because there was a receipt for fuel for the old Mark II Cortina that I had as a runabout)

But I can still picture the scene in my imagination, and it really was a mess, this house and the trees.

And my vote for my favourite one? Has to be number three, doesn’t it?

After all of that, there was more football from Friday – Trefynnon v Caernarfon.

Trefynnon are another newly promoted side, but again with no points at all. They can score goals, but they can’t keep them out. And Caernarfon are a team with bags of experience in the league, in the cup and in European competition.

This was a match where skill was impossible. The pitch at Halkyn Road is a disgrace, and if it’s cut up as badly as it looks on a screen after just three matches played, what’s it going to be like in March after a wet North Walian winter? “Hoof and Run” and “slog it out in midfield” were how this game worked.

But at least we had goals, and plenty of them. And Trefynnon gave Caernarfon a good run for their money, even though the score finished 5-3 in favour of the Cofis.

But right now, it’s bedtime, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow afternoon.

And as an aside, another artificial intelligence websearcher has used my website as a reference tool yet again.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about spanners and the USA … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one Fourth of July in the USA, I was handed a parcel that had been wrapped in paper tied with a ribbon that had the stars of the American flag on it, with a note – "if you’re working today, this should help you dismantle that car"
"Where did you get this?" I asked the messenger.
"Doctor Spooner gave it to me" he replied
"And what is it?" I asked
"Seeing as it’s Independence Day today, it’s probably his interpretation of ‘The Star-Bangled Spanner’."

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Sunday 23rd August 2026 – ONE THING ABOUT …

… yesterday that I forgot to mention was that when I awoke at 20:30 from crashing out, it wasn’t just the tiredness that I’d noticed. I was freezing cold and all the hairs on my arms were standing up. It was 22°C in here too, so it wasn’t actually the cold that was making me feel like that, but something else.

As usual, the answer to something like that is to go to bed. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, bed is my medication that cures everything. And you know that I’m ill if I’m prepared to miss a live football match in favour of bed.

So I ended up in bed at about 20:30 last night and I was asleep even before my head touched the pillow. But, as usual, not for long. I was awake at 00:30 and awake again at 02:00.

As well as that, I awoke a third time. I’ve no idea what time that might have been, but I couldn’t go back to sleep at all, so at 04:05 I was at my desk working on the computer.

No point in lazing around in bed when you can be working, and I had my notes from yesterday to write, so I dashed them off, put them online, and I was back in bed by about 05:30. I reckoned then that I’d stay in bed until the nurse arrived.

When he turned up, I was fast asleep in bed, so he awoke me and did the necessary with my legs and feet. After he left, I thought that I’d get up in five minutes and go for breakfast.

When I finally awoke, sorted myself out in the bathroom and went into the kitchen, it was 10:10. So much for my early start. I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

It now looks as if he’s summing up, and as he begins to discuss Gothic architecture on the continent, he reminds us that "England, with less of gigantic grandeur in particular buildings, and less of rapid development in styles, gives to all a harmony and purity which is peculiarly her own, and in the course of her slower progress, calls forth forms of beauty unknown to other lands."

All that I can say about this is that anyone who has viewed anything at all of the Gothic architecture on the continent will be wondering what on earth Mr (or the Reverend) Freeman was smoking when he was writing his jingoistic prose.

Back in here, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. That was a very painful exercise because I can’t believe how much I was coughing during the night, all of it recorded on the dictaphone.

This is another dream about roaming around in London. I wanted to buy a guitar for a friend of mine, but I didn’t really know where to go, so I went down to London and had a good wander around in the usual streets, in Oxford Street and so on to try to see if there was anything there. All I could see is the cheap kind of rubbish and crowds of people. I kept meeting crowds of people whom I knew too. Then I began to walk down to Tin Pan Alley, but I was almost knocked over by a taxi. Who should be driving that taxi but Emilie the Cute Consultant. I asked her if she could do me a favour, but she said that she couldn’t because she was too busy working – she had to go back to Crewe shortly. I said “yes, that’s the favour. You couldn’t run me to Crewe, could you?”. She replied that she couldn’t, so I was rather disappointed. However, she said that she’d have a talk with me very soon. I suppose that that cheered me up somewhat, and I carried on towards Tin Pan Alley with these crowds of people.

It seems that “in my dreams” is the only chance I have of seeing Emilie the Cute Consultant, even if she does turn me down. And she’ll “have a talk with me very soon”. That’s the line most people use when they are giving someone the brush-off.

However, being in London yet again would seem to be significant. This is the third or fourth time just recently that I’ve been here during the night. I expect that I’ll find out what it’s all about in due course

We were going off on another adventure, but this time, it was in my old J4 van. There were quite a few of us, including some people whom I didn’t know, and the van was quite loaded. The front of it was full of rubbish so we had to take all of it out and put it in the rubbish bin. That was when we found that this pile of oil had seeped onto the passenger seat so we were there scrubbing it, and the guy who was sitting there was rather disappointed. He was hoping not to get his clothes dirty. In the end, we managed to have it looking something like so we went to wash our hands. I couldn’t find the swarfega for ages, but eventually, when that guy had begun to wash his hands with fairy liquid or something, I produced the Swarfega and gave my hands a good wash with it and showed him the difference between my hands and his.

The J4 had long-gone by the time that I moved into Gainsborough Road, but this was where all of the action was taking place last night.

The guy sitting in the oily seat reminds me of that photo that was doing the rounds a few years ago – the old American politician sitting in his seat that was photoshopped into thousands of other photos all around the World.

After all of that, there was the football to watch. We started off with Penybont against Llandudno.

Whether or not you think that Llandudno’s position, for a newly promoted club, up near the top of the league is a false position, they certainly haven’t come into this league, as some newly promoted clubs have, simply to make up the numbers. They took the game to Penybont just as much as Penybont took the game to them, and in fact, from the kick-off, it took Penybont five minutes and fifty-five seconds to get into Llandudno’s half of the field.

In fact, the first Penybont goal was a marvellous overhead bicycle kick of the kind that was unstoppable, and had I been refereeing, or anyone else for that matter, their second goal would have been disallowed for a blatant foul on a defender

And this is the first game in which I’ve seen a club penalised under this new five-second rule for throw-ins, goal kicks and the like.

The 2-1 scoreline in favour of Penybont was about fair, but they can feel relieved now, just as Llandudno can feel disappointed.

Afterwards, we had Stranraer throw away a 2-goal lead to draw 2-2 against Stirling Albion. Stranraer had the Binos all over the place in the first half, and in the second half, the situation was reversed. Never was there a “Game of Two Halves” to match this one.

The next match was Greenock Morton v Arbroath. Although Arbroath won this game 2-1, this is the best I’ve seen Morton play since Ian Murray took over. And they finally managed to score a goal after about ten games of trying, and it had to be a sixteen-year-old schoolboy playing as an emergency full-back who scored it too, not one of the established professionals.

Finally, the fourth match was Trefynnon v Barry Town. This is the fourth game that Trefynnon has lost – this time it was 3-1. However, they played much better in this game and even took the lead. And had they scored the penalty that they were awarded when the score was 1-1, it all might have been so different.

They kept on playing and going on the attack as long as they possibly could, but the desire to score an equaliser when they were 2-1 down cost them dearly. Having committed everyone to the attack, they were torn open at the attack by a breakaway, and Barry scored their third goal with practically the last kick of the game.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that the field microphone was placed right by the Barry dugout, and we had someone from their bench bellowing out instructions to his players in the loudest voice I have ever heard and using the most disgraceful language that would have been out of order even in the fo’c’sle of a Greenland whaler. It really was a disgrace, and the club should be ashamed of their employee.

Apart from that, though, we had two Cymru Premier matches today that were played with a lot of skill, not like some of the midfield mauls that we saw last weekend.

So no food tonight again. I’ve written my notes and when I’ve done what else needs doing, I’m off to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight at dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greenland whalers … "well, one of us has" – ed … a couple of years ago, a crew member was washed overboard in the Davis Strait and was lost.
A year later, his wife had a visit from the Nova Scotia lifeboat crew. "We have some bad news for you, and some better news" said the skipper.
"Oh" says the woman. "Tell me the bad news."
"A body has been discovered in the sea near Luneburg" replies the skipper. "we can’t ask you to identify him because his body was all covered in lobsters and crabs, but by the clothing, we reckon that he’s your husband."
"So what’s the better news"
"We’ll pull him up again tomorrow and see what the catch is like then."

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Sunday 16th August 2026 – IT HAS NOT …

… been a very auspicious day today. It’s been a day full of tiredness and weariness, and I’ve crashed out I don’t know how many times as yet.

It all started to go wrong last night, as I said yesterday. I was hit with an enormous wave of fatigue and ended up going to bed long before I’d finished what I needed to do. I was asleep quite quickly too.

During the night, I awoke at some point, and I’ve no idea when because I didn’t look. But it was due once more to another one of these mega-coughing fits. The coughing is now back, and back in spades too, unfortunately.

It was another one of these mornings where I was drifting in and out of sleep and not being able to identify which was the real bit and which one was the phantom bit or the sleep bit. That’s happened a few times now, and it’s really unsettling, especially when I’m stuck somewhere in that glorious half-world in between waking up and being asleep.

One thing is certain, though, and that is at some point (maybe the fourth or fifth attempt) I did manage to go to sleep because I awoke properly and correctly. I stayed awake and eventually looked at the time. It was 07:33.

Sunday is, of course, my Day of Rest which usually starts with no alarm and a lie-in, having my feet and legs dealt with by the nurses while I’m still in bed. However, today, I simply couldn’t stay lying in bed. By 08:00 I was up and about, sitting at the computer working.

The nurse was surprised to see me up, which was no surprise really. After his three-week holiday he would probably be expecting to find me in bed. We had a little chat about his holiday, but he wasn’t very forthcoming. He dealt with my legs and feet and then cleared off on his round.

After he left, I made my croissants. I’d used the last of the previous batch last week, so I wanted some more. And while they were a-doing in the oven, I made my porridge and coffee.

The croissants were excellent – the best that I have ever made. They looked wonderful and had puffed up correctly, which made a nice change from the flat ones that I always seemed to have.

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

He’s continuing to keep himself out of mischief, although his jingoistic beating of the English drum is becoming rather tiresome. And he’s still hung up on the religious side of the fence. I don’t believe that in four hundred pages so far, there’s been one mention of an English secular building.

And “English” too. He’s not mentioned one building in Wales or Scotland either to date.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, such as to finish off transcribing the dictaphone notes. And they weren’t much use tonight.

I dreamed that I was doing something with this dinosaur exhibition. We were planning to move away from Granville at the end of their period and relocate somewhere else. They had a huge list of places to where they could relocate, and they asked me if I would check out one or two of them in Northern France. This was another one of these long, complicated dreams and it seems to have all evaporated from my mind

This relates to a discussion that we were having with Madame Dinosaur in the taxi on our way to Avranches yesterday about the potential sites that they have all over Europe for their exhibition and the difficulty at times of finding a dialysis centre, especially abroad.

There were a few other things to do, and then I continued writing the notes from yesterday. That took much longer than it ought to have done too, mainly because of the waves of fatigue that were sweeping over me again. At one point, I went to fetch an energy drink, but even drinking that didn’t make things any easier.

When I’d finished it and posted it on line, I started to enjoy my footfest. The first match was Stranraer v Spartans in the fourth tier of Scottish football. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a soft spot for Stranraer FC ever since I caught a game of theirs in the late 1970s when I saw the floodlights on in the ground when I was on a ferry coming back from Larne in Northern Ireland and managed to watch the game.

This was an entertaining game, one that Spartans should have won. But they missed – I don’t know how many sitters they missed – and Stranraer made the most of one of the few chances that came their way, winning 1-0.

The next game was the end of the Cambian United v Y Fflint game that I’d part-watched yesterday. This was a very equal match that Y Fflint didn’t deserve to lose, but when the side from the Rhondda Valley won a penalty in the eighty-fifth minute, then that was that.

After that, it was the turn of Llandudno v Trefynnon. Llandudno, a newly-promoted team this season, were leading the league, mainly because they’d played a couple of teams that were not expected to figure highly in the League’s championship order, and Holywell were one of the newly-promoted teams that were having a wretched time of it right now.

This was one of those games where, again, not much skill was involved. But it was played at a hundred miles per hour from one end to the other, and I was totally exhausted just watching it. Llandudno opened the scoring, and Trefynnon equalised, but as it was coming up to half-time, Trefynnon had a player sent off.

They held out until almost the final whistle, conceding two goals in quick succession, but a 3-1 victory was rather flattering to Llandudno, even if one of the goals was scored by this site’s hero, veteran striker Mark Cadwallader.

There were plenty of other things to do later, but I didn’t feel much like doing them. Not even making bread. I’ll pull half a frozen loaf out of the freezer when I need it. Instead, I did some things that I enjoy doing, which is nice for once.

There was no tea tonight either. I had half a dozen biscuits and the last of those pineapple chunks with a citron sorbet. And how nice was that?

So now that I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed, hoping for a decent sleep for once and that the decision to deprive myself of two means, tonight and last night, goes towards doing something about this weight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about dinosaurs … "well, one of us has" – ed … we were outside the exposition when a dinosaur wearing a crown came out.
"Come and visit our prectacle" it said. "It’s wonderful, magnificent, brilliant, superb, excellent, exciting …"
As Madame Dinosaur was stading next to us, I turned to her and asked "What kind of dinosaur is that?"
"That? It’s a Thesaurus rex"

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Sunday 9th August 2026 – THAT WAS WHAT …

… I would call “a good Sunday” – that is, once the early part of it was out of the way, because the early part of the day was nothing at all to write home about.

As I mentioned yesterday. I abandoned my work early and fell asleep at my desk, and for quite a long time too. And when I awoke, I dragged myself into bed, and that was that.

Well, that was that until about 01:25, when I awoke, thanks to another good coughing fit. And despite trying my hardest, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there watching the clock go round and round and coughing all the time while I was doing that too. But as the day slowly started to dawn, I must have fallen asleep again, for I was awoken at about 08:40 by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

She’d brought with her some cuttings of rosemary, thyme and lemon thyme, and while she was doing my legs and feet as I was lying in bed, we talked about the herbs.

After she left, it took me quite a while to leave the bed, and after I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, it was 09:20 when I found my way into the kitchen.

The first job was to prepare my breakfast – porridge, black coffee and the last two home-made croissants. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Or, rather, I wasn’t. As usual, I found myself running up a side alley to the church at Barnack to look at the tower and steeple, and that led me on and on to several other places too. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this was why I didn’t receive a very good grade from university – I was being continually side-tracked and spent more time learning the things that were important to me rather than the things that the examiner wanted to know.

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to finish off. That took longer than it ought to have done too because I was continually drifting off into that semi-consciousness when all kinds of hallucinations drifted before my eyes. However, they are online now … "the notes, not the hallucinations" – ed … for you to consult at your leisure.

Once the notes were out of the way, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I was with a former girlfriend last night, and there was something about going to hospital. And when she came back out, I built this big plastic greenhouse out of one of these kits that you buy from a DiY shop. It was absolutely impossible to anchor it to the ground with its plastic outer coating applied, so I tied two wires from front to back and two wires from side to side, and where they intersected, I dropped a row of paving slabs on it from the door to the inside, and the paving slabs held down the wire and stopped the greenhouse blowing away.

This story about my girlfriend in hospital and the plastic greenhouse and the unique method of holding it down reflects a remarkably similar situation that is currently or has recently occurred elsewhere in a different plane of existence than in a dream. However, this is yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There was something about an Indian, a young man who came round to me for some tuition in something or other, but in fact I ended up giving him some tutoring in English. There were things that he didn’t quite understand, such as “why is it ‘tutoring’ and not ‘tuting’?”. I did my best to explain and gave him a few other examples. He asked me whether it would be possible for him to come again. I thought “well, why not, if he’s keen and interested in learning?” so we agreed that this kind of tuition could continue for a couple more weeks and we’d see where we end up.

This sounds quite similar to one of the guys to whom I taught webpage design in Brussels twenty-odd years ago when all you have to worry about was HTML 5.0 and *.css. And these days, I’m still using them, with a little bit of IFRAME and JavaScript added on for good measure.

I was with a friend of mine, and we were walking around the edge of some city that I knew well. There were several big tower blocks there, so we went for a walk. One thing we found was a small cat trying to jump up to a window to climb into a house, so I went over to try to pick it up and help it, but at that moment, a woman opened the window, so I had a laugh and a joke with her and then moved on. In the shopping arcade underneath these big buildings, there were all kinds of shops that we were looking at, and we picked up one or two things from there. But round another corner was the Woolworth’s shop. I said to my friend “here’s something that I haven’t seen for years,” so he agreed, and we dug our way through the bombardment ruins and found our way into the supermarket. It was really nice and clean and small … fell asleep here … but my friend was talking at one time about us being in a hotel a while ago. It was one of these very posh places, and we’d been on a course of some kind. I’d been interviewed for something or other, so I was late returning to my table. The desserts had been cleared away, so I didn’t bother too much about that. In the end, they announced that they were wanting nominations for someone to be the hospital ambassador, I suppose, for the forthcoming year. But you can’t nominate yourself – you need six people to nominate you, so I decided to let nature take its course at that. I had a black Mk III estate, a 2000E, and I wanted to put that back on the road, so I wanted to do some work on it, but I ended up talking to two guys from the hotel. One of them wanted some documents signed, and the one who was with him, he ended up saying that my music was really great and that if anyone had any problems moving cars and leaving after the conference, they had a mechanic on site They would suspend paying the bill until the problem had been fixed. I mentioned all of this to my friend, and he told me that it was not really as simple as that. He’d had a problem with a motorbike, and what they had done was to push it off a trailer, left it for a while, started it up, told him that it was fixed and charged him €16:00. That made me go to think about if I were to advertise this car mechanics service, just explain that it was for basic things and nothing really major.

This housing estate could have been any one of a dozen housing estates around which I walked in Moscow and Leningrad when I was there with the coaches in the 1980s.

It could also be where I used to live in Brussels, where we did indeed have a little shopping centre on the ground floor of one of the blocks of flats nearby. However, there was no “Woolworths” in that shopping centre, neither in Moscow nor in Leningrad either.

The conference sounds like one of the Open University Students Association conferences, although we weren’t ever likely to be allowed to stay in an upmarket hotel. Not on your Nellie!

Once everything else was out of the way, there was football. I had the match from yesterday to watch, and when I went to restart it, I found that I’d only just about managed to watch half an hour of it, so I settled down for a long session.

There’s no doubt that Colwyn Bay played the prettier, more technical football, but there were plenty of nice touches from the Rhydaman players too. Rhydaman’s players were also the most aggressive, and although I’d left the match on Saturday with Colwyn Bay 2-0 up, by the time the game was over, it was 2-2 and some of the Colwyn Bay players were quite close to losing their cool.

Later on, there was a baking session. And something that I have learnt today is that my fruit bread doesn’t keep for much longer than a week. When I went to look at it today, at two weeks old, it looked as if it needed a shave, so it went the way of the west.

That meant as well as a loaf, I also had to bake more fruit bread. The two loaves that I ended up making look wonderful, both risen up like lifts. But what I’m going to have to do with the fruit bread is the same as with the ordinary loaf, and that is to cut it in half and stick one half in the freezer to pull out when the first half is eaten.

There’s no tea again tonight. I’m off to bed as soon as I’ve written these notes, backed up the computer, etc.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about herbs … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once lived in the same building as a girl who was studying for a degree in cookery.
One night she told me that her best friend had been expelled after failing her exams
"How come she failed?" I asked her.
"She had to cook a dish of fish cooked with herbs, but the examiner didn’t like it."
"Why not?"
"The examiner told her that this was neither the thyme nor the plaice for this kind of thing."

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Sunday 2nd August 2026 – THIS IS WHAT …

… an ideal Sunday is, as far as I’m concerned.

Once I’d cleared up a few outstanding things, I have been footballing for the rest of the day. And not to mention the lie-in this morning … "lie-in?" – ed … I told you not to mention that!

Last night, I was in bed round about 23:00 and asleep quite quickly too. But not for long. I awoke at some point (after 02:30 because the light on the car park was out) and lay awake tossing and turning for a considerable number of hours. When I looked at the time, it was about 05:05, so I thought that I might raise myself from the Dead at some point, but the next time I checked (after it felt as if it had just been a couple of seconds) it was 07:09.

"Right – give me thirty seconds and I’ll be up" I exclaimed. "Just let me close my eyes for another ten seconds or so first!"

And the next thing that I knew, it was 08:15.

"No point in getting up now" I thought. "Isabelle the Nurse will be here very soon." however, it was another good half-hour before she arrived. And that didn’t bother me at all because by that time, I’d gone back to sleep.

She shouted “hello” when she came into the apartment and I vaguely sort-of heard her, but I didn’t react. She came in here and found me still in bed, so she applied the cream and massaged my legs and feet, fitting my compression socks when she finished.

As she was leaving, she shouted “have a good sleep”, and I think that I replied with an incoherent type of grunt.

After she had gone, I climbed out of bed and eventually had enough energy and motivation to head for the bathroom to sort myself out. After that, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast – black coffee, porridge and two home-made croissants, with diluted fruit juice with which to take my medication.

What with one thing or another, it was 09:15 when I started to make breakfast, even having enough time to put Strawberry Moose back on the bed from where he had been during the night.

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

He’s still in deep discussion about Gothic and Romanesque architecture, comparing the differences between them and also the similarities, because there are plenty of similarities. "Still a square abacus, a Romanesque moulding, an intermingled round arch, show that we are hardly yet in the region of pure Gothic. The abaci are intermixed, round, octagonal, and square, the latter seeming to prevail ; and columns of semi-classical character, of which Canterbury affords almost a solitary instance in England, are frequently employed. Lancet windows, of various proportions, but often very short and broad, are most usual ; but circular windows, with or without tracery, and occasionally large pointed windows without tracery, occur. The tooth-moulding is rare, and, when it occurs, is not cut with the same boldness as in England."

Back in here afterwards, after a most enjoyable and relaxing breakfast, I came back in here and after I’d done a few things that needed doing, I made a start on finishing the notes for yesterday. And that took much longer than it ought, because I kept on going through those waves and waves of fatigue that keep on happening. Even after a lie-in this morning, too.

Once I’d finished the notes, I went for a disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then back in here, I started on my little footfest. The first instalment was the remainder of the match between Cardiff Metropolitan and Trefynnon. It was 3-1 when we left it with 17 minutes to go, but in the time remaining, the Met went on to score a further three goals. That was tough on Trefynnon because while they were always second-best in this game, they weren’t five goals worse. But as a newly promoted side, they were just caught on the wrong foot all the time.

The next game was the remainder of the game between Llandudno and Fflint. When we left this game, it was 2-1 to Fflint. However, Llandudno brought on their Dad’s Army of veteran strikers Marc Williams and Mark Cadwallader, both of whom have figured in these pages over a period of many years.

These two turned the game on its head. Each of them scored a goal to give Llandudno a 3-2 victory. This was, by the way, the best match that I have seen so far from the Cymru Premier League’s matches.

Finally, there was the live game – Connah’s Quay Nomads v Caernarfon Town. The Nomads took the lead in this game but not long afterwards, the Cofis equalised with a penalty after a Nomads player handled the ball in the penalty area.

In the second half, the game swung from one way to another with no one really having the better of it, but a snap shot by Zack Clark from the edge of the area towards the end of the game proved to be the decisive difference.

From what I’ve seen so far, Caernarfon and Connah’s Quay looked to be technically the best teams, but the most exciting teams to date are Cardiff Metropolitan, Flint and Llandudno. I’m looking forward to seeing many more matches involving those three teams.

I had no meal tonight – just a handful of crackers and biscuits, and now I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about football … "well, one of us has" – ed … a little old lady went into the bank in Liverpool carrying two sacks. One was full of £10 notes, and she put it on the counter.
"Where did you get all this money?" asked the bank clerk.
"I live next door to Anfield" she replied. "At half-time, loads of people come into my garden and pee behind my hedge. I’m so fed up of it that recently, I’ve been appearing, brandishing my secateurs while they are “busy” and demanding £10 … or else …"
"So what’s in the other sack?"
"I’m on my way to the pet food manufacturer. Not everyone has got £10."

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Sunday 26th July 2026 – TODAY, I HAVE HAD …

… another one of the laziest days that I have ever had, and about time too. I should put my feet up and relax more often, I reckon.

But it wasn’t always going to be like that. I was in bed last night by about 23:15 or so and was asleep quite quickly too. That was despite the howling gale that sprung up during the night

However, I didn’t stay asleep for long. Round about 03:30, I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This is what I found on the dictaphone later.

Someone shouted out Mae’r papurau’n anghywir – “the papers are incorrect” – and something about me being enwog, which means “famous”. I sat bolt upright at that and I’ve no idea at all what they meant by it.

Whatever was going on there, I have no idea. But it was dramatic enough to give me another one of these strange awakenings.

After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep and round about 06:50, I got up and went to the bathroom. Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone but that dream above was all. Outside, the wind had died down but it was damp as if it had rained through the night. That will make the local farmers happy.

With nothing else to transcribe on the dictaphone, I set about doing other things until Isabelle the Nurse came. She was surprised to find me out of bed, so I explained about my sleeping issues. She didn’t say much, just told me about her two weeks off and how she’d had to go to the doctor for her sinuses, and after she’d finished my legs and feet, she cleared off on the rest of her rounds.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast. Porridge, strong black coffee, juice and two of the home-made croissants that I made last weekend. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

In discussing Amr ibn al-As, conqueror of Egypt, and the mosque that he built in celebration, he says "he did not, like Constantine at Rome, or Mahomet at Constantinople, employ an existing building for his new use, and so impress an existing type upon future structures, but erected a new one from the ground in such a manner as might be expected from a horde of invaders animated by the fanatical spirit of their new religion of lust and bloodshed, under a chief whose name is mainly remembered as the destroyer of the noblest library the world had hitherto beheld"

Leaving aside the question of the Inquisition, the Albigensian Crusade, and the Conquistadores in Central and South America for the moment, the Great Library at Alexandria was first burnt by Julius Caesar in 48 BC and secondly, in 272 AD, by the emperor Aurelian. The story of Amr burning the library in 642 AD was not recorded until over five hundred years later, and many scholars, long before Charles Freeman began writing his book, have questioned its authenticity.

Back in here afterwards, I had the notes from yesterday to type, and that took much longer than it ought, mainly due to the number of times I fell asleep while doing it.

And then we had the football. First off was Stranraer v Falkirk. Stranraer are, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, in the fourth tier and Falkirk are in the first. We weren’t expecting too much and the result, a 3-0 victory to the Bairns, was not unexpected.

However, at times Stranraer slugged it out toe-to-toe, and it was difficult to tell who was the tier-one team. Stranraer can feel quite comfortable with themselves after this.

On the other hand, Greenock Morton put up the usual sad, dismal performance against Inverness, going down 1-0 at home. They’ve lost all four games and failed to score a single goal. And on the evidence of what I’ve seen so far, they could be playing until next weekend, out on the pitch all alone, and they still wouldn’t manage to score a goal.

After a disgusting drink, I had a few more things to do, and they took an age to finish, mainly because I kept on crashing out while I was trying to do them. I must have fallen asleep at least three times, sometimes for as long as an hour. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

And then it was baking time. So refuelled by one of these energy drinks, I tackled the question of home-made bread and home-made fruit bread. It took up most of the late afternoon and early evening, but even so, they turned out very well indeed and I can’t wait to get my teeth into them. They look absolutely delicious.

So right now, I’m going to check the statistics, back up the computer and so on and then go to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow and I wonder what’s going to happen there.
I have a bad feeling about it all.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greenock Morton’s dismal performances … "well, one of us has" – ed … a reporter from BBC Scotland Sport rang up manager Ian Murray and asked him how he was going to deal with the issues.
"They’ll be coming in for training on Sunday" replied Murray. "I have a load of traffic cones and the players are going to practise dribbling around them all day"
So on Sunday afternoon, the reporter rang back to ask how things were going.
"Dreadful" replied Murray. "At the moment, the cones are leading three-nil"

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Sunday 19th July 2026 – WHEN I AWOKE …

… this morning, there was bright sunlight outside and the birds were singing, including a dove that lives somewhere around here. So I checked the time – 06:29 exactly. So there’s nothing wrong with my body clock, is there?

Mind you, it wasn’t the first time that I’d awoken. I’d been awake on several occasions previously, usually when it was pitch-black, but I couldn’t be bothered to check the time at those moments.

Anyway, by 07:07 I was sitting at my desk working, having had time to organise myself in the bathroom first.

First job was to reply to a couple of messages that I’d received during the night, and then I could make a start on yesterday’s notes that had been abandoned before they had even begun.

For a change, I actually put my back into it and the notes were almost complete when the nurse came in. He was surprised to find me up and about … "and so were you" – ed … but I explained about the dreadful night that I’d had.

While he was dealing with my feet, he was complaining about the dreadful showing of the French team in the first half against England last night. He reckoned that the players out there, particularly in the first half, had absolutely no interest in playing and it was embarrassing to watch.

On leaving, he told me to take it easy, something that I had every intention of doing. First, though, was to make my breakfast. Porridge, coffee and the last of the two home-made croissants. I must make some more soon.

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

Well, actually, I wasn’t. He ended up talking about the Papal residency in Avignon, and although Nerina and I visited Avignon in 1991 and danced upon the bridge, I can’t remember much about it, and all my old 35mm photos are down on the farm. Consequently, I spent much of the morning reading about the time the Popes lived in Avignon and looking at pictures of the mediaeval magnificence.

Back in here, I finished off the blog entry for yesterday and it’s now on line. That was followed by listening to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

At something like about 04:40, someone came into the bedroom shouting “Ian Henstone! Ian Henstone!” who I couldn’t see what on earth he was looking at but the vet saw me and said “as you are here and all these … fell asleep here …

As for Ian Henstone, whoever he is when he’s at home … "if he ever is" – ed … I have no idea, but I do know of a Henstone Distillery.

And I’m not surprised that this degenerated into a load of the usual drivel … "you said it" – ed … with me falling asleep in the end.

Nerina and I were talking to some old woman about some cream that Nerina needed for something. It had to be a very special type that was not normally available. This woman said that she knew where she could obtain it so we asked her whether she would mind. She replied that it wouldn’t be a problem at all. A couple of days later, we went back to see how she was getting on but she said that she hadn’t received it yet. Just at that moment, a policeman appeared. He asked this woman for her name, which she gave him. He asked her if she had tried to obtain some cream made of some part of a duck or something from a herbalist somewhere, to which she replied that she had. The policeman replied that it’s not allowed for sale any more and formally charged her with a crime. Both Nerina and this lady pleaded their cases but the copper was adamant. At that point, I had something to do so I had to wander off, but I said to Nerina that when I come back, I’d love to see that charge that he’s given her. She asked why, and I replied that I bet it’s set down as “receiving” instead of “attempting to receive”. I went to do what I had to do, and then coming back down Victoria Street in Crewe, there was an old furniture sales place that had been empty for years but now had a big “Tesco” sticker stuck on the window, and there were people inside clearing up the inside. It looks as if we’re having another one of these local Tescos here. I went back to where Nerina and this old woman were. Nerina showed me the charge, and it was written down as “attempting”, but “attempt” had been written incorrectly. I thought “well, there’s a loophole here that I can exploit,” so I was quite looking forward to representing this woman in Court.

There’s a lot going on in this dream too. There’s more than enough to render the summons invalid. I’d love to prove that in Court.

And then the Tesco’s in the old furniture shop – that would be interesting too and help liven up the town centre, not that it would ever happen. But the need for special cream is something of more relevance to Laurence rather than to Nerina.

After that, there was football. There had been several matches in the Scottish League Cup yesterday, so I searched for the highlights of the St Johnstone v Greenock Morton game. And I rather wish that I hadn’t because, once again, Morton were awful and the 3-0 defeat rather flattered them. In my opinion, they were lucky to get 0.

When the match had finished, I did some reading before going for a disgusting drink break. And then I was working on another project for a few hours, just to keep myself busy.

By then the highlights of the match between Stranraer and Alloa Athletic had been posted on line. And Stranraer did really well, drawing 2-2 away to higher-level opposition.

Later on, it was time to go a-baking. And today, I made some bread. I wanted to try something different instead of the usual sunflower seeds, so I ground up a large handful of almonds and added them in. We’ll see how they react to the bread.

While the bread was baking, I assembled another half-dozen home-made croissants. And when the bread was baked, they went into the oven and now they are ready for starting next weekend.

And I think that I’ve fixed the problem relating to the drawers in the kitchen. I had another one collapse on me this evening, and while I was repairing it, I finally managed to understand why they kept falling apart. This time, therefore, I fixed it properly and little by little, I’ll go round and do the rest.

So having written my notes and generally done what needs doing, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep before dialysis … "and not before time too" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about distilleries … "well, one of us has" – ed … I had a friend once who drowned in a vat of whisky in a distillery.
"That must have been a quick end" said my friend.
"Not at all" I replied. "He got out three times for a bite to eat."

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Sunday 12th July 2026 – SUNDAY IS A …

… Day Of Rest, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. A day when I don’t do anything at all and spend much of my time in bed, even down to having the nurses deal with my legs and feet as I slumber on.

So consequently, last night, totally and utterly exhausted and having abandoned my blog notes for now, I went to bed at about 22:00 with an air of profound optimism, didn’t I?

And although it took a minute or two to go off to sleep, I ended up being well away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. And there I stayed until all of … errr … 00:10.

That was when I awoke, and from then on for several hours, I was drifting in and out of sleep. And as seems to be the case these days, it was difficult to tell what period was which. Round about 06:00, I was definitely awake and there seemed to be no hope whatever of going back to sleep, so at 06:15 I was actually up and about.

After I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, the first task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was back in the Auvergne last night again and was standing for election to the town council. In the borough, in the part of the area where I lived, there was no opposition so I was “walked over” into the Houses of Parliament. And it was bricking really good as well and it looked quite an impressive thing to see, and I hoped that my descendants, or whoever completes the job, will have the same kind of senses to the colours … fell asleep here …

So this is the usual kind of incoherent nonsense … "you said it" – ed … that doesn’t make any sense at all and is totally meaningless. So much so that I can’t even remember dictating it. And it’s surely no surprise to anyone that I fell asleep in the middle of it all.

When Isabelle the Nurse turned up, she was amazed to find that I was out of bed and working. My reaction was that I was rather disappointed. I had hoped to have had a really decent sleep for once.

Anyway, after she finished with me, she wandered off on the rest of her rounds, still on foot. Everywhere was total chaos today with roads being closed up here for the brocante and down in the town too for the shopping morning.

Meanwhile, I was preparing my breakfast – porridge, coffee and home-made croissants – and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s still going on with his anti-Roman tirade at first, but slowly, he’s gradually warming to some examples of Roman architecture. And the difference? "But it was not the old Rome of Pontiffs and Augurs, of Consuls and Emperors, that was to mould the arts of Teutonic Christendom. Before she could influence the race on whom the spirit of the Church was to take the firmest hold, she had herself to bend before the Cross. The greatness of Rome is indeed exclusively heathen …. its Christianity was but the precursor of its fall. It endured but to pass the torch of truth to a race springing into life with all the fervency of youthful vigour, whose greatness might be cradled in the lap of the Church, and during its historic being have known no other faith. This was the work of Christian Rome, to lay the foundation among another people of a truly Christian commonwealth; ;"

Back in here, I had a few things to do and to organise, but would you believe that I crashed out? It was 11:00 when I awoke so I reckoned that I’d been out for forty-five minutes, and I didn’t feel a thing.

Once I’d gathered up my wits, I continued with the notes for the blog, and they are now on line at long last. That meant that I could have a pause for a disgusting drink and the midday medication.

When I was back and ready, I carried on with the radio notes for the next programme, and it’s almost finished now. I just have to find a way of losing five seconds, but that shouldn’t be difficult.

There was time for a footfest afterwards. The first match was Stranraer, of the fourth tier, against Ayr United of the second. And Stranraer gave Ayr a good run for their money, twice taking the lead, but eventually going down 3-2. That was followed by Greenock Morton of the second tier v non-league Linlithgow Rose.

As for that game, I couldn’t believe what I was watching, and I ended up having to watch the streams from both clubs to make sense of it. I’ve seen Morton play some bad matches in the past, but never as bad as this. Morton lost the game 1-0 and they were lucky to get nil. Linlithgow hit the post with the keeper beaten three times during the game.

What I noticed particularly was how easily the Morton players were muscled off the ball. If a non-league side can do this to Morton, heaven help Morton when the league gets under way.

Later on, it was baking time, and as well as producing another nice home-made loaf, I made a fruit bread too, and that looks pretty good. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I’ll tell you in due course how they turn out.

Doing all that baking wore me out so I was glad to have a sit-down afterwards. And there was another bottle of alcohol-free beer in the fridge. That didn’t last long either.

Anyway, now that my notes are written, I’m off to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow of course, and I don’t feel at all like going. But there’s nothing new there.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … in Russia, a peasant went to the bakers to buy some bread.
"I’m sorry" said the baker "but I’ve run out."
"What a stupid country this is!" exclaimed the peasant. "And that stupid Vladimir Putin. He’s the worst of the lot. This is all his fault."
Just then a Russian soldier who had been listening came over, brandishing his rifle. "You want to watch yourself" he said to the peasant. "I would be perfectly justified in shooting you, so you clear off home and watch your mouth."
When he returned home, his wife noticed his empty hands. "Have they run out of bread again?" she asked
"They have indeed" he answered. "And I’ll tell you something else for nothing too."
"What’s that?"
"I reckon that they’ve run out of bullets too."

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Sunday 5th July 2026 – WHEN I AWOKE …

… this time, it was 22:25 exactly, and I was feeling almost as bad as I was yesterday. And just like yesterday, the only thing to do when I feel like this is to go to bed. And so, just as yesterday, I hauled myself over to the bed, fully clothed, and that was that. The only difference was that this time, I remembered to close the shutters.

It seems to me that I was definitely asleep even before my head touched the pillow, and there I lay until all of … errr … something like 03:00. Really, I’ve no idea of the exact time but it was after 02:30 because the streetlight on the car park had gone out.

From there, it was another night of drifting in and out of sleep, and which bit was which, I couldn’t really say. There were times when I felt like getting up and times when I was dead to the World.

The whole lot came to a shuddering halt, though, when Isabelle the Nurse arrived and she definitely awoke me. She sorted out my legs and feet and then went off on her travels.

By now, I was wide awake, but I still vegetated in bed for quite a while. Eventually, I went into the kitchen, where the time was showing as 09:28.

The first thing that I did was to bake the croissants. I switched on the oven and while it was warming up, I brushed the croissants with milk. When the oven was ready and warm, I stuck the baking tray with the croissants inside and set the timer to sixteen minutes.

While they were baking, I made my breakfast – porridge, hot black coffee and lovely grapefruit juice to wash down my medication.

When the croissants were done, I stuck two of them on a plate and sat down to eat my food.

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

Again, he managed to steer clear of controversy, but he’s now beginning to appreciate the Egyptian art that he denied existed at the very beginning. And so we have "And if any forms which might arise in such structures, any groupings of natural objects, or shapes given to artificial ones, appeared to the artist to be adapted for his purpose, they would be as unhesitatingly transferred to the excavated rock as flowers, fruit, and leaves, or representations of human and animal life."

Back in here, I began work on finishing off the notes from yesterday when I fell asleep, and now they are online, ready for your perusal.

After that, we had football, Greenock Morton v Stranraer in a friendly. And you could tell that this was Morton’s first game because they looked slow and lethargic. And as they tired, Stranraer came more and more into the game and gave them a few frights. Although Stranraer are two divisions lower than Morton, they looked much sharper. After all, this is their fourth friendly so far.

The final score was 0-0 and Stranraer definitely earned it.

Next was the dictaphone, and I was absolutely astonished by how far I’d travelled during the night.

I decided that I would go on a one-man campaign against the ridiculous amounts of overspending in Parliament, so I had to think of a way in which I was going to do this. By some kind of happy coincidence, the door into the Prime Minister’s office was open, so I just walked in to where he was sitting and told him about these stupid expenses that I’d discovered. I took his newspaper away from him to highlight some of the major problems. Anyway, I walked off with the newspaper and began to make a list from inside about what I could read of it that affected what I’m doing. When I’d finished, I went back into the office and down past all of the people to where he was sitting and took his next newspaper from him. This time, I stayed there and pointed out all of these expenses in this. We found maybe a dozen pages about the household pets in Buckingham Palace. He was horrified when he saw that one of the cats was actually receiving in food and treatment and all that kind of thing – more money than he was earning. I thought that this might shake him into doing something, but instead, he took the newspaper back and had me thrown out of his office.

This dream doesn’t seem to relate to anything that’s been going on anywhere, especially when I recognised the prime minister as David Cameron. I do, however, have to say that if ever I were in a position in Buckingham Palace, the first thing that I would do is to have some auditors in and let them go through the entire Royal Household accounts to trim out as much unnecessary spending as would be possible. Even without investigating and just looking at news articles, I can identify millions of Pounds of wasted money.

There was also something about me coming out of Wistaston Road, crossing over Edleston Road there at the traffic lights by Oak Street. There were a couple of other people there, young boys, who were teasing each other about the places where they worked.

This crossing is one that I know intimately, having crossed over here on numerous occasions. And with several of the offices that used to be down there in the good old days, I can understand why people would be teasing each other about their work.

My brother was trying to run a disco or something and wanted to know where he could get some loudspeakers from. He’d been looking through the newspaper, the Evening Sentinel, but couldn’t find anything. He didn’t think that there was anyone in the area. I told him about a company called “BOSS” that had an office in Hanley and sold hi-fi equipment, speakers and all that kind of thing, so off he went. He came back a little later with someone from the company, whom he showed around and downstairs and upstairs in his bedroom. Eventually, the guy from there sold him something, which we thought was rather crazy but my brother was determined on having them

BOSS is an American company so they aren’t likely to have a branch in Hanley, and opinions on their products are very varied. One thing is for sure, though, and that is that my brother could never afford anything that they are likely to sell.

Somewhere in this dream … "which dream?" – ed … was something about one of my garages and all the mess that was in it and the car spare parts, old cars and everything all over the place. It really did look a mess. I thought that one day, I’m going to have to get down and tidy this, or leave it for my heirs to sort out

This is another recurring dream – the old cars and spare parts stashed in lock-up garages. It used to be true, too, back in the old days before I came to live abroad. Not so much now, although my barn down on the farm could do with a good going-over one of these days.

We were staying somewhere in the country, in one of these big country houses where there was some kind of weekend organised. We were there on the Saturday night when two masked men burst in and held us all at gunpoint while they took all of the jewellery and valuables and everything like that. They put them into two sacks, one of which was a red sack. As they were leaving, my brother and I leaped out of the window outside and confronted the robbers. We managed to overpower one and put him on the ground. He was the one carrying the red sack but the other one got away.

The chances of my brother and I actively co-ordinating a joint plan would be about zero. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we don’t actually get on very well with each other and haven’t done for about thirty years, if not more.

Later on, Nerina and I were wandering around North London somewhere. We were on our way to the bank or the post office and had gone past the local cemetery and looked inside, which was magnificent. Then I suddenly remembered about these attackers. There was one person in our crowd who was one of these public school-types and I didn’t like him at all, so I said to Nerina that we ought to go round and have a chat with him to see what he could tell us. She said that he was ill and couldn’t be disturbed. I said “I bet you £500 that he’s the guy – the other guy for whom we’re looking”. We walked around on our way to the post office and came across this big place called “The Soho Curry Hut” with queues outside, so we went to have a look. It was selling a meal of curry for £2:50, a ladle of rice for £2:50, that kind of thing. I thought that this would be a lovely place to come for a meal one night, so we went to have a close look at it and a close look at the menu.

The cemetery reminded me of the big one in Montmartre, the Cimetière de Montmartre when Nerina and I were there very early one morning, looking around before the morning rush hour began. But the curry house sounds really interesting. I could do with a really good curry right now, I must admit.

As for the public school guy, and I can still see his house, a tidy cottage in the countryside, just like something out of an AGATHA CHRISTIE FILM. I’ve no idea why I fingered him as a likely suspect, but it would all seem to fit.

And how many times is that just recently that I’ve been in North London during the night?

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a sales associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

Later on, I knocked off to go and make some bread. I was reminded of a chat that I had a few years ago with a friend about the crusts of bread on a loaf, and I had a little theory, so I decided to try it. Instead of going with 190°C for five minutes and then 180°C for thirty minutes, I went with 200°C for eight minutes and 180°C for thirty-five minutes. And sure enough, there’s a lovely thick dark crust on the finished product.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, but the next thing that I remembered was that it was 20:41. I’d crashed right out without even realising it. It’s a good job that I don’t drive any more, isn’t it?

So now that I’ve finished my notes, I’ll just do the stats and backing up and then go to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … the local priest was out and about having a walk when he met a parishioner coming towards him, carrying a baguette in one hand. His other hand was slouched lazily in his pocket.
"Ahh" exclaimed the priest. "Here you are, coming towards me on this nice Sunday morning, with the staff of life in your hand."
"Well, yes, Father. "
"And pray, what is it that you have in your other hand?"
"A baguette, Father."

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Sunday 28th June 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve had a real, old, good and proper nightmare?

I’ve no idea when the previous one was, but I can safely say that the most recent one was last night. And it was too. I awoke, covered in sweat and with a racing heart before I’d even finished dictating it.

Usually, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t publish my nightmares because some might find them distressing, especially if they are eating a meal while reading them, but this one is so bizarre that I can’t not do it. There has never been a dream quite like this before in all the twenty-eight years that I’ve been recording them.

Actually, last night was quite an unusual night. I mentioned the other day that these days, it seems to be more and more difficult for me to make the distinction between when I’m asleep and dreaming and when I’m semi-awake and having these strange hallucinations.

Last night, though, was a classic example of this. I can usually say that “I went to sleep at such-and-such, awoke at such-and-such,” and so on, but not last night, I couldn’t. It was all a kind of weaving mix of this and that and at times, I really didn’t know where I was … "so what’s new?" – ed …

There were definitely times when I could distinguish by the light coming around the edges of the shutters that day was slowly dawning, but that could easily have been a dream, too.

When Isabelle the Nurse turned up, she awoke me when she gave her warning signal on the door and then she came in, in full-chat mode, which was all very nice, but all I wanted to do was sleep.

She took my medical card so that she could do her monthly accounts and then she left.

After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep so I gradually integrated myself back into the light of day and the real world. I was estimating that, when I finally left the bedroom, it might be as late as 09:30. No-one was more surprised than me, however, to see that it was in fact 10:45.

That was the cue to make breakfast – medication with juice, coffee, porridge and home-made croissants. And, of course, to read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

So far, I’ve reached page twenty-five of the real text after wading through all of the preface and introduction. And today’s highlights lnclude "the wonderful Druidical temples of Stonehenge, Avebury, and Carnac". However, he goes on to say "These, however, interesting as they are in an antiquarian point of view, as connected with the history and religion of the earliest inhabitants of Gaul and Britain, are altogether valueless in the regard of an architectural historian. Mere stones piled together without any attention to proportion or to any of the laws of design, and merely adhering by their own weight, can barely challenge the name of a building, and though exhibiting the mechanical construction of the entablature in perfection, have no title to be considered as works of architecture, and therefore cannot claim a distinct consideration in the present volume.".

Leaving aside the fact that architecture has to start somewhere at some time, if he considers that “posts and beams” aren’t “it”, then you would imagine that most of Greek architecture would be ruled out too.

Consequently, he goes on later to say "The three orders of Grecian architecture afford forms of perfection unsurpassed by mere human skill; it was only the yearnings of the heavenward spirit, the inspiration of the Church’s ritual, that could conceive aught more noble ; not purer, not lovelier, but vaster in conception, more majestic in execution, and holier in its end."

I can see me abandoning this book before I go much further. I don’t think that I can stomach five hundred and twenty-six pages of that.

Back in here, there had been some breaking news overnight. Christian Fuchs has resigned as Newport County manager, just a few weeks after saving the club from relegation. Only seven months in charge too. No wonder they are talking about “turmoil” down at Rodney Parade.

Then I turned my attention to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night.

We were back in the Victorian period here and there was some kind of big stately home with a wealthy family living in it. They were quite violent and outrageous in their behaviour with the locals, provoking people into having fights. I was down there, and I began to have one of those provoking things with me so in the end, I picked up this enormous cleaver, attacked one of them and hacked him to pieces. The other one fled into his room so I went to try to find him. Eventually, I did, and he tried to defend himself with a sword, but it was no use at all. I just hacked him to pieces too. I then just went to sit down in the kitchen to relax before the next morning. There were visitors to the house, and they went into the living room and found the carnage. Everyone screamed and fainted. I gradually managed to leave. I had somewhere to go in the Auvergne and there was someone else with me. We had to go to find out exactly where so we ended up at this bungalow on the moors. A tall, thin girl called “Big Molly” pointed out on the map where we had to go. My friend thought that it might take us about six weeks to get there, so we set out. We noticed her cycling off into the distance and I thought to myself “there’s something not right about this”. I shan’t be surprised if she’s there when we arrive. On the way back up the road, we went past a starving dog and a dead body, which was really skin and bone and clothes that looked as if it had been there for years. So we set out and went to London. We had to travel all the way across London. At one point in the city centre, I was convinced that I saw this Big Molly with a group of other girls, and so did my friend. He began to panic, but I thought that panic was not going to get us anywhere. We just need to keep on going and keep our eyes open. I found him cowering underneath a car in the city centre so I helped him out. We decided that we didn’t have any real choice but to push on, so “push on” it was going to have to be.

As I said just now, I’ve never had a dream quite like this ever before. I tried to analyse how I was feeling when I awoke and I came to the conclusion that it was about twenty-five per cent horror, fifty per cent unease and the rest being a mixture of curiosity and the profoundly different. But I was convinced that this “Big Molly”, even though she was only a teenager, was up to no good and I reckoned that her “no good” was absolutely no good at all. I could understand my friend panicking when we saw her again

But I’m sorry if this dream has upset you, however it really was so extraordinary that I couldn’t let it slip by unnoticed.

I was in Crewe last night, wandering around the streets looking for fittings for a job that I had to do at home. I bumped into a friend of mine from school and he was having a lot of trouble dealing with his telephone and his ordinary ‘phone and how to make them connect to each other. I was trying to give him some advice but he wasn’t really interested in listening. In the end, I mentioned that I had to go to the big DIY place on the north edge of town and we’ll be sure to find what we need there. I set off back down Earle Street into the town centre and was going so fast that I missed my turning and ended up right in the town centre so I had to go out, down Broad Street, back along Badger Avenue, and then up Middlewich Street again. It seemed to take an age. Then I met someone else from school and we were having a look round. He was pointing out certain things in the sale and so was I. I realised then that my shoulder bag that I’d bought with me to carry a load of stuff was completelly full and I couldn’t lift it onto my shoulder, it was so heavy. In the meantime, he was pointing out these enormous hand brushes and asked what they were. I explained that they were for Canada. At the same time, they had these enormous rubber boots, which I said were also for Canada, but they were size “small” for Canada. There was a French family standing nearby bursting out in laughter, and we had a quite long chat before I had to go.

This dream was set on a cold, dark night while the shops were still open so it must have been mid-winter. First of all, though, there isn’t a big DIY place to the north of Crewe (at least, not while I was living there, there wasn’t) and if there were, they wouldn’t be selling Canadian snow-clearing products. And there definitely wouldn’t be a French family in the shop admiring them either.

The drive at whirlwind speed along Earle Street was interesting too. I wonder what was going on there.

After the dreams, there was football, Stranraer v Dundela of the Northern Irish Second Division. Stranraer finished mid-table in the fourth level of the Scottish pyramid last season and so Dundela should be embarrassed by the ease with which they were rolled over. The score finished 4-0 to Stranraer and Dundela were lucky to get nil. Stranraer hardly broke out into a sweat.

For much of the afternoon I was working on another project that has recently started up while I made myself ready to watch Wales’s match v Spain in the UEFA under-nineteen championship this afternoon. That was a waste of time, though, because broadcasting is restricted to the UK unless I pay for an exorbitant match pass from UEFA. Had I known before kick-off, I’d have configured a VPN to cloak my identity, but it’s too late now.

So with no food yet again (and I’m not bothered, in case anyone is wondering), I have a few things to do and then I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow (I don’t think). It’s been a quiet day where I’ve not moved around much, but I’ve done a lot of work. And the work is still piling up. I’m never going to be finished at this rate.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the departing manager at Newport County … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was really considering entitling today’s entry "Christian Fuchs off elsewhere", but I decided against it in the end. Journalism ain’t what it used to be.

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Sunday 21st June 2026 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time for a long, long time, I’ve had a day where I can truly say that I have had a real Day of Rest and done no work of any type today.

Round about 23:00 was when everything was completed and I could slide in underneath the covers. And wasn’t I grateful for that? I didn’t take long in going off to sleep and that was that, at least for a couple of hours.

Round about 02:20, I awoke with one of the biggest coughing fits that I have ever had. It was still going on at 02:55 and I forget how many times I had vomited, the fit was so intense. It was certainly many more than four.

Eventually, it must have calmed down because I somehow managed to go off to sleep again. And there I lay until I awoke, “some time later”.

The reason for the awakening was the same that has provoked a wake-up on several occasions just recently, so after a while, I began to raise myself from the Dead. 07:50 it was, so I thought that I’d better hurry before the nurse comes around.

It was 07:59 when I came back to bed. “Plenty of time”, I thought to myself. And there was, too, because I’d actually gone back to sleep by the time he came in, and he awoke me.

After he left, having seen to my legs and feet while I was in bed, I went back to sleep again, and there I stayed until I next awoke – round about 10:35. By 11:00 I was in the kitchen beginning to make my breakfast – porridge and coffee, of course, all followed by homemade croissants.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

We’re still on Roman roads, and I have a feeling that we will be here for a while. He’s struggling over the modern names of various Roman forts, as many people still do today, but we can at least thank our lucky stars that, so far, he’s managed to keep “Richard of Cirencester” well out of the way.

Back in here, I went to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. But to my dismay, there was nothing on there at all. I’m always disappointed when I have a night like that, with absolutely nothing going on in the way of excitement.

Instead, I had a prowl through the internet and discovered that we’re back in football again. Many clubs playing in European competition are having a few warm-up games prior to their opening matches in two weeks’ time, and Northern Irish team Larne were playing away at our old favourites, Stranraer FC.

Stranraer usually record their games, and sure enough, THIS GAME WAS TOO with commentary by the legendary pair of Laurence Nelson and Brian Martim, two of the best TV commentators currently broadcasting.

After the match had finished, I really didn’t do anything at all. No bread-making, no pizza-making, no nothing. Instead, I had a little explore of cyberspace, mainly Hannibal’s campaign in Italy in the early days of Rome, and once again, I’m learning a lot. There are, of course, the stories of the Battle of Lake Trasimene and the Battle of Cannae, but there were several other battles that were equally disastrous for the Romans, such as the Battle of Ticinus and the Battle of Trebia, and more besides.

As well as that, I was engaged in a lengthy online discussion … "or heated argument" – ed … about a child of two separated parents. If the mother of the child is her legal guardian and she lives with her, but the mother has to go into a hospital urgently for a stay that might be for a long time, so that the child goes to live with her father, who is responsible for completing all of the paperwork regarding the new situation? The mother or the father?

There was also the question of whether the social services come into the picture at some point.

And it was all becoming somewhat overheated at some point, although I had no idea why.

At teatime, I went for my food, the other half of this vegan ham, vegan cheese and vegan salad that I made yesterday. And everything that I eat really is tasting of nothing but salt these days.

The sandwich took well over an hour to eat this evening, mainly due to me falling into several of these different cataleptic fits of the type that I used to have just before starting dialysis. I was hoping that they had long gone.

And now, I’m wishing that I had long gone because I want to go to bed, go to sleep and stay there. It’s past my bedtime, way past it already.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Hannibal’s campaign in Italy … "well, one of us has" – ed …, Someone once asked me "what do you get if you cross the Alps with several elephants?"
"Ahh yes" I said. "Victory at Cannae!"

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