Tag Archives: hospital pitié salpetrière

Tuesday 13th January 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why they send me on these wild goose chases halfway around the country and back so that some specialist in some hospital somewhere can tell me exactly what I already know and have known for several months.

As if I don’t have enough to do with my time.

And especially if it means crawling out of bed at some ridiculous time like 05:00.

Yes! 05:00! So last night I went without any food for tea, dashed through my notes, which were on-line at 20:27 precisely, the earliest time … "and by a long way too" – ed … that they have ever so been. And by the time that I finally made it into bed, it was just coming up to 21:00.

And when was the last time that I’d been in bed that early when I’ve not been feeling unwell?

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s an absolute waste of time going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So there I was, tossing and turning in bed, trying desperately to go back to sleep at just before 02:00.

That was a waste of time too, and I lay there, semi-comatose, until the alarm went off at 05:00 when I hauled myself out of bed and staggered off into the bathroom to make myself look pretty.

And that was also a waste of time.

The taxi came a few minutes early and luckily, it was one of my favourite drivers, the one who “presses on” like an old-school taxi driver and always has plenty to say for herself. She helped me finish my packing and then we set off.

So far, I’d been without food for almost twenty-four hours and without drink for about fifteen hours. I work on the principle of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out during the journey” — after all, four hours or so in a taxi is a long time. Nevertheless, I packed a couple of slices of my “energy flapjack” and a small bottle of water in case I have a diabetic crisis along the way.

We had a good run and a good chat all the way as far as Mantes-La-Jolie, in between Rouen and Paris, and that was where we hit the traffic and the farmers’ demonstrations. A wrong turn on the prif led us out on the autoroute towards Rungis and Orly further complicated affairs, and what was looking at one stage like an easy 09:45 arrival for my 10:30 appointment turned out to be a panic-stricken 11:25.

Having to find me a wheelchair (it’s a different building so I didn’t know where the doctor was and how far I’d have to walk, and we were already hours late) and having to understand the unnecessarily complicated system of lifts didn’t help matters.

While we were stuck in traffic, I’d telephoned the doctor to say that we’d be late, so he let in several patients ahead of me, which was quite natural. Consequently, it was 12:25 when I was finally seen.

He poked and prodded me, put all these needles into my muscles and passed an electrical current through them to test my nerve reactions, and then examined the results.

Before he began to test me, he asked me how I was feeling and whether there was any sign of improvement. I told him that I was feeling lousy as usual and I was sure that there was a definite deterioration since my examination last January.

His conclusion was "I’m very sorry to say that there is no improvement, and you are right about the deterioration."

As I said just now, I could have told him that without having to go all the way to Paris. What a waste of a day!

While I was there, I asked him about the stabbing pain in my foot. He told me that as my nervous system is slowly breaking down, things like this are to be expected and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. He actually put it into a more scientific explanation, but that was the gist of it.

My chauffeur was waiting for me when I came out, and after I’d been to warm my feet, we headed to the car. Getting out of the wheelchair was exciting, but in the end I managed it and we headed for home.

On the way back, I fell asleep twice, which is no surprise considering my bad night, and we arrived home to disappointing weather. In Paris, it had been bright sunshine, beautiful clear blue skies and quite warm for the time of year. Here in Granville, it was overcast, raining, windy and cold. At least we’d had no hold-ups on the road to delay us.

My faithful cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment and instead of a disgusting drink, I had a caffeine-packed energy drink. And I needed it too after over twenty-four hours of nothing to drink.

Having disposed of that, I came in here to listen to the dictaphone notes. I was actually surprised that there were some.

I can only remember fragments of this dream but there was something about being at home. We were in Vine Tree Avenue and there was something about the weather, but I can’t remember what. Then, my mother came into the living room to find out what we’d been doing. In this little box, I had a very, very small puppy. My mother asked about it and I replied that I’d found it somewhere. She had a look at it, and she agreed that it was really small, and because of its small size, we could keep it. There was much more to it than this, but I can’t remember anything once I awoke.

What interrupted my reverie, as I found out later on, was that in reaching for the dictaphone, I dropped the battery charger and all of the spare batteries onto the floor from off the little table behind the bedhead I shall have to pick that up in due course. But me with a puppy? Not that that’s ever likely to happen. Dogs and I just don’t get on. Give me a cat or two … "or three or four" – ed … any day.

Tea was the other half of Sunday’s pizza, which I wolfed down because there was football on the television, Y Barri v Llanelli. Y Barri scored a goal after two minutes but surprisingly, Llanelli, well-adrift at the foot of the table, managed to equalise.

It was only delaying the inevitable though, as Y Barri scored four more before the hour was up. You could see than Llanelli had effectively abandoned the game after that because their heads went down and they lost interest in chasing the ball, but Y Barri, once more, refused to turn the screw and played possession football for most of the rest of the game instead of going for the jugular.

That was disappointing.

And so, with aching foot and totally exhausted, I’m off to bed.
granville
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my trip to Paris and the Neurology department … "well, one of us has" – ed … the doctor told me "there’s some good news and some bad news#34;
"What’s the bad news?" I asked.
"The bad news is that you are going to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life"
"And what’s the good news?"
"I can get you a fair price for your crutches."

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Wednesday 7th January 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again when I awoke this morning.

That was quite a disappointment to me, because I’d managed to have more sleep than the previous night.

Mind you, seeing as there was no sleep at all on Monday night, anything is an improvement on that, especially a nice, balmy, early … errr … 00:30

The notes, the backup, and the stats were finished at a quite reasonable time, but there’s always some housekeeping to do before I go to bed. And this is where I became really annoyed because what would usually take ten minutes with the big desktop computer took forever with the steam-driven computing of the travelling laptop. The laptop is OK for when I’m out and about, but here at home trying to do some real heavy-duty work with it, it just grinds to a halt.

The day shall be cherished when the new laptop arrives, and when I can finally find someone who can build a decent office computer for me, I shall be delirious … "you mean that you aren’t now?" – ed … It’s disappointing that between all of us, we’ve not been able to lay our hands on one reliable supplier, or worked out a way to have one received in the UK and sent on over here.

Anyway, I was in bed at about 00:30 and fast asleep at about 00:31. No coughing fit or agonising pain in the foot awoke me, so I slept right through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Once more, it was a struggle to leave the bed, but I made it into the bathroom where I sorted myself out, and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to go with my medication.

When I’d finished that, I put away the rest of the shopping from last night, and that was a task and a half too. I hadn’t realised that there was so much.

Back in here, there was nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, as I said earlier, and it was just as well because Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

While she was sorting me out, I explained about my fainting fit yesterday. She’s of the opinion that it might have been low blood pressure, but that would be a surprise because usually, I can withstand some pretty low blood pressure readings, such as the 6.8 of the other week, without any problems.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast. Not a lot, but I managed to finish it today, which makes a big difference. Still nothing to read, so it didn’t take long.

Back in here, I checked my e-mails. And here was a big disappointment. The new laptop, which should be arriving today, is held up at the factory and is still awaiting delivery. The estimated new arrival time is “not known”. After what I said earlier, that is a tragedy.

Instead, I surfed through the internet pages to see what else was on offer. My eyes alighted on a laptop that had much higher spec than the outstanding one, made by a more reputable manufacturer, and for not very much more money, so I bit the bullet. And even as we speak, it’s in the post heading this way.

Although the mail that I received about the other one said that I could cancel it at any time, when I went to cancel that order, it told me that cancellation was “no longer possible”, even though it’s still at the factory. So never mind. When it arrives, it will be going straight back

The next task was to rewrite a couple of sections of code for my web pages. And how much *.html, *.css and *.js have I forgotten? A task that would have taken me ten minutes ten years ago took me a good couple of hours and it’s still not exactly how I want it. This is really sad.

After a disgusting drink break, I rang up Paris to find out what time I’m expected on Tuesday. And when they told me, I went for a lie-down.

After recovering from the shock, I rang up the taxi company
"There is some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that I have to go to Paris on Tuesday. you have plenty of authorisations left, and it’s for a consultation so I’ll be back the same day."
"So what’s the bad news?"
"The appointment is for 10:30"
"Oh dear – that means leaving at 06:30."
"Probably earlier than that if there’s snow on the ground. We know what happened on Monday"
So I’m being picked up at 06:00. God help us!

There were a couple of other things to do, and then I attacked the next radio programme, which will also be a concert. I edited the soundtrack and remixed it, cutting it down to about 58 minutes, and then dashed off some text for it.

It could have been finished too, except that I was … errr … away with the fairies … "although not in a manner that would have caused the editor of Aunt Judy’s magazine any excitement"- ed …

And properly too.

I was with my youngest sister. Somehow, we’d found our way into a kind of rich man’s home, which was at the top of a very steep hill. He had influential guests to come to see him, all of whom were criminals or crooks or something. When they arrived at the bottom of this steep hill, they would be accompanied up to the house up this really steep roadway by a group of people in some kind of 1950s Rolls-Royce or Bentley that was painted a bright mid-blue. We saw a couple of cars arrive like that. For some reason then, we were discovered, and we had to run. We came to the top of the bank where there was a really steep staircase of, ohh, hundreds of steps. My brother appeared, and he was in some kind of threatening mood, as if he belonged to this place. I looked at my sister, she looked at me, and the clipboard that I had in my hand, I threw it down the stairs, and we both ran hell for leather down the stairs. The clipboard only made a short distance, and then I had to pick it up every so often and throw it further down, and we’d continue running. On one occasion, I almost managed to catch it in mid-air as we arrived where the clipboard as before it had touched the ground. In the end, we reached the bottom, totally out of breath. I said “well, shall we ‘gang wham’ then?” in some kind of Geordie accent. She didn’t understand what I meant at first so after I’d repeated it a couple of times, I said “going home?”. She replied “oh no! You have to take me dancing and dining” and all these kinds of things, to which I laughed and said “I didn’t realise that I was supposed to be looking after you in that way”.

My brother, being menacing and threatening, is nothing new, although he was something of a paper tiger in that respect. However, being conspiratorial with my youngest sister might have been something that we would have done many years ago when she was a child, because she really was a good sport in those days, she grew out of it quickly with the stresses of work, marriage and family, as many people do

The Bentley, or Rolls-Royce, was interesting though, and I can still see it, even now.

Tea tonight was the last of the vegan pie, with mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, carrots and leeks. It was a struggle to eat it but I managed. And I forgot to have a dessert. But the vegan pie was nice and I’ll make another at the weekend.

So now, if the computer lets me, I shall be going to bed. I hope that this closing-down sequence doesn’t take another two hours.

But seeing as we have been talking about good news and bad news … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a conversation that I overheard between a doctor and a patient at dialysis.
"I have some bad news for you and some worse news for you."
"Go on, doctor, tell me the bad news."
"I’m afraid that you only have twenty-four hours to live"
"Good grief! So what’s the worse news?"
"I forgot to tell you yesterday."

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Friday 29th August 2025 – I HAD FORGOTTEN …

… all about the wind outside here.

When I lived on the first floor, I was at the back of the building and so my only encounters with the wind were on the rare occasions when I went outside the door – or couldn’t, because the wind was so strong that we couldn’t open the front door so I would have to go out of the back.

However, last night, I remembered all about it.

The wind had begun to rise as I was on my way home last night but I hadn’t really taken much notice. However, by the time I’d finished my notes and was preparing for bed, it was blowing quite hard, and then I realised that being in the front, overlooking the cliffs and the sea to the right, is not necessarily always a great advantage and that there are after all, some drawbacks.

But last night, I was so tired. I fell asleep a couple of times while I was writing my notes and no fewer than three times when I was … errr … contemplating the state of the nation. I was glad to make it into bed, when I fell asleep almost immediately.

And there I lay until all off … errr … 05:29. For once just recently, I awoke earlier than the alarm, and I was seriously contemplating raising myself from the Dead, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29, so I must have gone back to sleep.

It was a real struggle yet again to find the energy and enthusiasm to leave the bed and sort myself out. Yet again, it was over an hour, all told, before I ended up back in here after the medication.

First thing was of course to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night, I was doing something with some kind of radio equipment, I can’t remember what, when a couple of my friends turned up. They weren’t going to stay for long so it was necessary to clear the sofa of everything so that they could sit down. One of them volunteered to put all of the clothes away even though there wasn’t room for them anywhere. In the end, they both managed to sit down. Later, after they had left, I had to look for the clothes again. They had been rolled up in bundles and put on the stairs, each bundle, and several had been put into other places. One had been hung inside a CD cupboard, with the CDs from the shelves in that particular column being merged into other shelves in columns elsewhere. I was thinking that that probably means that I have to sort all of these out into alphabetical order again.

That’s a task that I still have to do, because the records, CDs and DVDs seem to be in any old kind of disorder, and sticking the clothes back into places where they don’t belong is also something quite relevant at the moment.

Later on, I was on a Plaxton Elite coach, driving it, taking a load of English kids back to boarding school. When I went to join it, it was crammed full of children and I couldn’t understand at first what was happening. It turned out that these kids were all French refugees who had fled France during the invasion by the Germans in 1940 and were being taken to some kind of hostel. I was charged with distributing all the food around. That became extremely complicated as people were moving around, and I didn’t know who had had some food and who hadn’t. There were all these giant biscuit things that I was distributing. Every now and again someone would raise their hand and ask for some more food. If I had some, I would take them half of one of these biscuits. Earlier, I’d been talking to a couple of boys about how comfortable it is to be going back to school. When I met them on the bus at that moment, I asked them what they thought of it now but they didn’t say very much. There was a mass of clothing on one of the seats right by where these two boys were sitting. I asked them what it was and they replied that it was a little French girl who was asleep. In the end, this began to become more and more confusing as I was awaiting the signal to leave and handing out these biscuits. I thought that at one moment that these biscuits will run out and what am I going to do then?

It would be a good dream to be driving a Plaxton Elite in wartime, seeing as they weren’t introduced until about 1968. And once again, in a dream, I’m worrying about something that might never happen, and that seems to be a recurring theme these days.

The nurse came as usual, armed with his blood pressure tester, and once he had taken one of the measures of the three that he was supposed to take, his batteries went flat … "in the machine, not in him" – ed …

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Once more, it’s hard to understand the thought patterns of our author, Montagu Sharpe. He’s spent several pages bewailing the loss of artefacts from the period, salvaged by all and sundry without any record being kept, yet on page 37 he tells us that when he spoke to the person who had discovered and uprooted the Ancient British stakes that guarded the ford across the Thames at Brentford, "He kindly gave me several specimens which I have since passed on to Museums and to interested persons.".

He goes on to add that "from the inner portions various articles as mementoes have been made".

A little earlier though, on page 32, he has a crisis of T Rice Holmesque proportions when examining some notes by JS Maitland on Caesar’s crossing of the Thames. He tells us that "Maitland, in his “History of London,” places Caesar’s passage of the Thames at Chelsea" and continues by saying "All that Maitland seems to have done in 1732 in support of his theory was to take a boat to sound the river for shallow places, and thirty yards west of Chelsea College found the “channel N.E. to S.W. was not more than 4 feet 7 inches deep.” ! ! He made no quest for the remains of the stakes which Caesar says lined both the bed and bank of the Thames, which have in great numbers been so found, guarding the great ford of the river at Brentford,"

That’s not what I would call a respectable academic criticism of Maitland’s theories.

After breakfast, I had a couple of ‘phone calls to make. The nurse is writing up his accounts for the end of the month and needs the prescription for the injection that he gave me on Monday. And so I telephoned the hospital at Paris. I tried on several occasions, but they didn’t answer the ‘phone, which is no good at all for an emergency helpline.

In the end, I e-mailed them, only to have it returned as my professor is on holiday. I had to resend it to his assistant.

But that gave me an idea. It was Monday when I had this new injection, and it was about Monday that my problems of nausea and dizziness began.

Accordingly, I rang the dialysis clinic, but once more, it took several attempts before I was able to speak to the doctor who saw me on Thursday. I explained to her that I’d had a new injection, and she confirmed that side effects of dizziness and nausea are quite common with this new injection.

My cleaner turned up early in the afternoon to do her stuff, and we had the nurse back at 16:00 to take the afternoon’s blood pressure, with new batteries this time.

After he left, the President of the Residents’ Committee came down to inspect the apartment. She loves it so I thanked her for giving me the tip about it going up for sale. Without her, I would never have managed to purchase it. She brought me a yellow tea towel, to match the walls, as a housewarming present. That was really nice of her to do so.

The rest of the day has been spent playing around with some Artificial Intelligence. So far, I’ve managed to run two Artificial Intelligence chatbots into endless loops, which goes to show, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Something else that I’ve found is an Artificial Intelligence server that downloads to your own computer. Even as we speak, I’m having a play around with that and downloading it, to see whether I can program it to be more random than it actually seems to be. It takes about 50GB of space, so I’ll be here for ever doing that.

Tea tonight was vegan nuggets with salad and chips, and now I’m off to bed, long after midnight but I’ve been dealing with all kinds of things this evening that have run me up a variety of blind alleys. And I’ll have the howling gale outside to blow me to sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember an old Andy Capp cartoon that featured two men struggling unsuccessfully to move a large computer through a small door.
"No problem" said Andy Capp. "Just plug it in and let it work it out for itself."

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Wednesday 13th August 2025 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… will see me installed downstairs, if all goes according to plan. It won’t be everything down there of course – just the essentials like the bed, the office and the kitchen. That’s the important part of everything. The rest will arrive when it arrives.

But it won’t be without its vicissitudes though. I’ve had the “summons” to attend hospital on Tuesday next week for chemotherapy, staying over until Wednesday afternoon. And it’s to Paris again. It seems that my plea to be treated at Rennes has fallen on deaf ears.

Something else that has fallen on deaf ears – my own this time – is my plea to be in bed by 23:00. Once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out

For no good reason, except that yesterday I appear to have written WAR AND PEACE instead of the usual notes, and that must have taken an age. And by the time that It’d taken the stats and backed up the computers, it was probably closer to 00:30 than anything else.

That’s not the worst of it. I was wide-awake at 01:50. So wide-awake that I was giving serious consideration to leaving the bed. However, second thoughts prevailed and I curled up under the covers again, where eventually I managed to go back to sleep.

Not for long though, because I had one of these dramatic awakenings at – would you believe – 04:10.

This time I couldn’t go back to sleep and so round about 05:00 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in the bathroom having a good wash, having already dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And not dictated them once, but twice. I made something of a pig’s ear of the first attempts and it was easier to start again.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in dialysis, but we were allowed to be up and about while we were being pumped around. There was one guy there who had a tablecloth over the top of his table and it looked as if he was baking. He was weighing out certain quantities of this and certain quantities of that. The guy who was in charge of supervising the dialysis section told him basically to stop doing that and to concentrate on being dialysed. However, the guy didn’t listen and carried on so the guy in charge began to make a few sarcastic remarks, such as “it looks as if you are making the tea for your mother” etc. In the end, the guy said that he was passing the time making this whatever it was and he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever he likes during the period of dialysis provided that he doesn’t upset or disturb the other people. It looked as if the guy in charge was going to have some kind of argument, but the first guy said “if you had been here a couple of hours earlier, you would have seen three women here from the other group making folders for different purposes. At that point, I stuck my hand up and said that if everyone were allowed to do all kinds of different things and people could do all kinds of different things during dialysis, I think that the period of dialysis would pass so much quicker than it seems to do at the moment”. The guy in charge wasn’t very impressed. He just put his head down and just totally ignored everything after that

Dialysis is quite literally the bane of my life. It really is three and a half hours wasted each time because there is nothing that one can do. We lie in bed, not allowed to move in case we disturb something, and no exercise of any value, nor any entertainment other than a TV is provided.

One thing about which I have been badgering them is to provide things like pedicures, bed-yoga sessions so that we could profit from the time that we are there, but that seems to have fallen on stony ground too.

Isabelle the Nurse was in a good mood this morning. Only three more days and then she’s off on holiday for a fortnight. That’s good news for her, but not so good for those of us remaining behind because we have her oppo for two weeks.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

Today, we’ve had our first meeting with Dr Dionysus Lardner. He was the Magnus Pyke of his day, one of the very first people to take science out of the laboratories and put it on the breakfast table in the ordinary home.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t always accurate in the events that he predicted. He told a tribunal hearing once that if the brakes failed on a heavily laden train going down a slope, it could reach speeds of 120 mph. Gooch and his boss, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had to remind him that there are such things as friction and wind resistance, and these would slow the train down considerably.

He also predicted that the larger the steamship, the more fuel it would need, and there wouldn’t be the space on board for all the coal, failing to understand that if you double the breadth and width of something, you increase the volume fourfold.

Try it yourself – for example, if you have two metres width and two metres length, at one metre high, you have four cubic metres of space. But if you double the length and width, i.e. four metres width and four metres length, at one metre high you have a volume of sixteen cubic metres.

And so there’s plenty of room for extra coal.

Further along in the book, I stumbled upon one of my favourite quotes. Gooch talks about the early days of railway operation, saying "When I look back upon that time, it is a marvel to me that we escaped serious accidents. It was no uncommon thing to take an engine out on the line to look for a late train that was expected, and many times have I seen the train coming and reversed the engine, and ran back out of its way as quickly as I could. What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now ?"

Yes, "What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now?" How many times have I said that when reminiscing about my adolescence and young adulthood?

We have however reached the interesting part of the book. He’s off on the Great Eastern laying the telegraph cables along the sea bed from Valencia in Ireland to Heart’s Content on the island of Newfoundland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we VISITED HEART’S CONTENT ON OUR MEGA-VOYAGE AROUND NORTH AMERICA IN 2017 when I went to say goodbye to all of my friends in Canada and the USA. Who would have thought that I’d still be here eight years later, defying all the odds

Back in here I attacked the radio notes that I’d dictated and despite several interruptions, they are all now finished and the radio programmes assembled. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the next one.

Seeing as we have been talking about interruptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the first one was the man who came to repair the electric door opening device. In a fit of pique and bad temper, I sent a somewhat … errr … intemperate mail to the building’s management team and, to my surprise, they reacted.

My cleaner turned up to do her stuff too, and that included putting me in the shower. Do you realise? That was the last time that I’ll have to clamber into the bath to have a shower. Te next shower that I have will be in my shower downstairs.

That is, if the plumber extricates his digit. He’s not the fastest of workers and he’s not going to have this finished by the time I come home from Paris. Mind you, he seems to be making a very thorough and solid job of everything.

Sadly, I also crashed out today, which is no surprise seeing how little sleep I’ve been having just recently. It was the hospital that awoke me, telling me the news about chemotherapy. And it was tough trying to follow the conversation, seeing that I was still somewhere up in the clouds.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry. One of the best that I have ever made, I reckon. And now I’m off to bed for a really good sleep ready for a good afternoon at dialysis. There’s nothing like optimism, is there?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my pleas falling on deaf ears … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the situation to my niece in Canada, with whom I have been talking today.
"That’s no surprise" She said. "The rest of the family thinks that you are a miserable pleader – or something like that, anyway."

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Wednesday 23rd July 2025 – AS I WRITE …

… up my notes from today, I am sitting, not "holding a rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other" like my hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche, but sitting on my chair at my desk in my nice, tidy, dust-free bedroom.

That’s right – against all of the odds after a wicked day, I have finally made it back home. And I found that my cleaner had been busy in my absence

Last night, I left you all (until I rewrite Tuesday’s entry sometime) gripping the edges of your seats as I climbed back into bed to await the arrival of the second half of my chemotherapy, little knowing at that time that it was the second third of three thirds of treatment. I had this lovely surprise to come.

This part of the treatment involves the product that my body so violently rejected nine years ago and having asked yesterday why they were giving it to me again, I was told that it’s by far the most effective treatment for what I have, and they reckon that I should persevere.

Translated into layman’s language, this means that knowing that no-one has survived more than eleven years with this disease and I have been suffering therefrom for ten years, minus the odd month or so, we are now reaching the critical stage.

However, knowing the effect that this product has on me, I went straight to bed and settled down under the covers.

They turned up about an hour later with the product. It was the nurse with whom I’d had that huge argument last time that I was here, but this time his behaviour was much calmer and much more like how it should be.

He wasn’t long coupling me up and after he left, I settled down to await the fireworks.

When he uncoupled me fifty minutes later, nothing had happened up to that point although I knew that it was only a matter of time. And I was right.

About ninety minutes later, I began to shake. And how! Had I been in a bath at that moment, you could have put all of your dirty washing in there with me and it would have become the cleanest that you would ever have seen it.

This went on for a couple of hours and what happened next, you don’t want to know if you are eating your meal. It was certainly impressive and the poor nurse had to clean the side of the bed and the floor near the head of the bed. And not just the once either.

It was exactly like in 2016.

The nurse gave me some pills to ease everything and round about 04:00 I fell asleep.

No-one disturbed me during what little night there was, and “little” is certainly the word because guess who forgot to switch off the alarm at 06:29? Mind you, I had actually been awake for a minute or so by then.

By 06:45 I was sitting in my chair trying to start work but with no success and when the nursing staff found me at about 08:30 they put me back in bed. I refused breakfast except for the apple juice and fruit purée which I saved for later, and went back to sleep.

At 11:30 the senior doctor awoke me. We had a lengthy discussion about the events of the night and I reiterated my comments about having future treatment at Rennes. She promised to discuss the situation with my consultant, but whether she will, and whether something comes out of it remains to be seen.

After she left, I managed to do a little something but knowing that the taxi was due to arrive, I began to pack my things.

It was shortly after this that they told me that there was a third part of the treatment, but this time they gave me the easing pills first.

The treatment didn’t last long but even so, the taxi driver had to wait while they finished off uncoupling me.

The nursing and medical staff was doing its best to persuade me to stay and to send the driver home without a passenger, but I couldn’t do that. Ill as I was, I couldn’t abuse the hospitality of the taxi company, so I went off with him.

We had a pretty uneventful drive home until we reached the outskirts of Caen where we were stuck for thirty minutes in a traffic queue without moving, just like in the 60s in the UK at holiday time with the explosion of car usage and the lack of upgraded infrastructure at holiday resorts.

It turned out to be a serious accident on the autoroute which needed clearing. We learned later that one person had died and another one was seriously injured.

When I arrived home, it was 18:40. I was so feak and weeble that I couldn’t climb the stairs. My cleaner had to help me lift my leg. Even so, I went by lift for the second flight and climbed down to my landing, which was only a little easier.

There was time for one of the new disgusting drinks, which aren’t actually disgusting, and then I went straight to bed where I crashed out for a good three hours. Totally painless.

On reawakening, first thing that I did was to listen to the notes from the dictaphone about the dream that I had had during the night, such as it was. Four medieval knights decided to set out on a crusade so they began to cross France on their way to the Holy Land. That’s all that I remember about this dream because I awoke with this pain in my foot again.

That’s right, having been for a few weeks without the pain in my foot, the chemotherapy re-ignited it almost straight away and that’s a disappointment.

So having written my notes for today, I’m going back to crash out again. If you want to know what happened on Tuesday, you’ll have to come back tomorrow because I’m certainly not going to do them now. I’m wasted.

But seeing as we have been talking about what happened after they gave me the second part of the treatment … "well, one of us has" – ed … the nurse told me "the trouble with you is that you have a weak stomach."
"Rubbish!" I retorted. "I’m throwing the contents much farther than most other people"

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Tuesday 22nd July 2025 – WHILST YOU ADMIRE …

… the photos of my kitchen last Wednesday (that I have finally managed to find the time to upload) and I change the day on yesterday’s blog post (and well done, Seàn, for spotting the deliberate mistake) I shall tell you about my day today.

new kitchen place d'armes granville manche normandy franceIt was quite late when I finally went to bed last night, and I listened to some music for a while as I would usually do.

But not for long, though, because a wave of fatigue swept over me after my exertions of Monday, so I switched off everything and went to sleep.

For a change, I slept all the way through to the the alarm going off at 06:29. That’s most unusual because at most hospitals (this one included) there’s a huge rattle of noise all the way through the night and with me being a light sleeper, I usually hear every moment of it.

new kitchen place d'armes granville manche normandy franceThe first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night.

Nerina and I had had another one of our arguments. We had been out with some friends and something had happened and I had ended up with some money from them about something or other I told Nerina about it and told her that she could take out of it some of the money that I owed her and could use it as some of the money that I owed her, and we could go to do something together She went into a really bad mood about that and announced that she was going to bed She didn’t understand, she said, why the first thing that I would do would be that when I had some money, to give her her share of the money rather than give it to her from my own funds I couldn’t understand her argument, because she now had her money back However she was really quite adamant so in the end I just gave her all the money, telling her that I’m not one of these people who counts Pounds and shillings and pence. She can have it all if she wants. I’m not interested I just don’t want the arguments or the hassle, but it seemed to carry on and it was not doing anyone any good. It was wearing me down.

new kitchen place d'armes granville manche normandy franceThat was one of the problems with our marriage (although I don’t doubt that Nerina had a few more suggestions of her own). We didn’t know how to talk to each other.

We were both totally stressed out and we showed it in different ways. I’d had a serious road accident that had left me with a fractured skull and, I don’t doubt, a personality change. Keeping the information from Nerina was probably, in hindsight, the wrong thing to do.

It took me years to come to terms with the new me and, at times, I still have some difficulty, especially looking back on some of the irrational things that I have done since and wondering “what on earth was going through my mind at that moment?”. It must have been very difficult for Nerina to understand what was going on.

new kitchen place d'armes granville manche normandy franceBut anyway, all of that was water under the bridge.

After the dictaphone, I had a leisurely ramble through cyberspace for an hour or so until breakfast arrived. And I asked for a double-helping of bread because I knew that after the chemotherapy, I wouldn’t be eating very much, and I knew exactly what the lunchtime menu was going to be.

Once breakfast was over, I had a little pause because I had an appointment to have my catheter port fitted at 09:30.

new kitchen place d'armes granville manche normandy franceConsequently, for my 9:30 appointment, they came to pick me up at 11:15.

We had an amusing little incident at about 10:10 when a doctor came to see me. "Ohh, are you still here?"

I was sorely tempted …. , as I’m sure that you can imagine, but I was very proud of the fact that I restrained myself and made a very non-committal reply. It’s very hard to work out, in a foreign country, who has a sense of humour and who doesn’t.

new kitchen place d'armes granville manche normandy franceAt the operating theatre, I had to wait and wait to be seen.

When it was my turn, I discovered that the operating table wouldn’t lower itself down to a height that I could climb aboard. I couldn’t make the steps so they had to look for a stretcher that rose up and down.

Interestingly, the table would rise upwards, as I found out later when they wanted to take an x-ray of their handiwork. So why they couldn’t have it so that it would go down is a mystery to me.

Back in my room at 12:50 they brought me my vegan lunch, that included a pork fillet. I suspected that there would be something like that in my meal. I’m not sure how they would expect that to go down well with a large population of ethnic minorities for whom pork is taboo.

We were then blessed with a stream of visitors who wanted to connect me u with all kinds of perfusions, including one litre of hydrating fluid, which I told them to cut out. They had told me at dialysis to try to cut out as much liquid perfusion as possible as it plays havoc with my body and with their machine.

"But it’s a medication" they argued, and read out the list of ingredients. When they reached the word “potassium” I reminded them that I have an excess of potassium in my body and I am taking medication to remove it.

This just proves that there is no such thing as “joined-up thinking” between the various bodies that are handling my illness and I’m going to be pretty much on my own in this respect.

They did however give me the first part of the chemotherapy – the Rituximab, which has very few unwelcome side-effects so I don’t mind that too much.

Tea tonight included fish for my vegan diet so I left that. What I didn’t understand though was why it didn’t come until almost 21:00. Luckily I’d taken some sandwiches with me so I munched on one or two earlier.

But now, it’s 21:40, I’m just about to write up my notes, and they have come to tell me that I am right now going to have my second instalment of chemotherapy.

This is the stuff that wipes me out for hours so I’ve no idea when I’ll be writing again.

However, I hope that you enjoyed the photos of my new kitchen. As usual, click on the thumbnail image to see a larger version

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the operating theatre … "well, one of us has" – ed … I expressed my dismay at being called so late.
"Why is that?" the surgeon asked.
"I’d rather the operation would be done as early as possible" I replied. "It’s the best chance you have of the scalpel being sharp."

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Monday 21st July 2025 – THAT WAS THE …

… quickest drive to Paris that I have ever had.

We left Avranches at 18:30 with an estimated travel time of 3.06 which is what it tells us almost every time, although with the heavy traffic around Caen and particularly around Paris, it’s much closer to four hours Today, though, we pulled up at the Haematology Department here at the Hospital Pitié-Salpetrière at 21:24 – a trip of less than three hours.

The first time that we actually had to slow down for traffic (never mind stop) was on the Prif about two miles from the Porte d’Italie, and then it was only a momentary braking and we kept on going.

And we won’t ever have a trip like that again.

Not that I was looking forward to it either. Last night was another one of those nights that went on and on and I wasn’t able to make much progress. I was hoping to be in bed early but once more, it ended up being round about 23:45 when I finally crept into bed.

Not that I stayed asleep for very long either. For the past few weeks I’ve been having one of these heavy summer colds and I awoke with a streaming head and a stuffed-up nose, feeling very uncomfortable indeed.

Despite all my trying, I couldn’t go back to sleep and in the end I abandoned the procedure, left the bed, and had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. A friend of mine was out there walking his dog last night amongst a crowd of people but that’s all that I remember of this dream. The rest of it seems to have evaporated as soon as I went to pick up the dictaphone and I wasn’t able to dictate any more than that.

That’s all there was, which is hardly a surprise because if you don’t go to bed until 23:45 and you are up and about at 03:30 the following morning, there hasn’t been all that much time to go very far

Having dealt with that, such as it was, I had a listen to the radio programme that I’ll be sending off for broadcast this week. I didn’t like the voice at all so I re-mixed and re-edited it. It’s not much better now but I sent it off anyway.

Having done that, I wrote the notes for another radio programme that was in the middle of the queue for which I’d sorted out the music quite a while ago, and then I sorted out the music for another one and began to write the notes It was what one would call a “productive morning”.

It’s Isabelle the Nurse’s last morning today for a week, so she was extremely busy with blood samples and injections that folk don’t want her oppo to do, so she didn’t have time to hang around.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK

Our author is still on his prowl around the churches, but also mentions the situation where "the houses of London were built of stone for defence of fire, which kind of building was used for two hundred years or more " but lately, "houses of timber set up in place".

You can see the seeds of the Great Fire of London already being sown.

After breakfast, I made some sandwiches for Paris and packed my backpack, fitting in all kinds of goodies to keep the lupus from the porte as they would have said in Ancient Rome … "well, puer amat mensam!" – ed … and then I was back in here to carry on with my radio programme.

However, I did have a brief power nap of about 10 minutes. This early start is playing havoc with my body clock.

My cleaner turned up on time to fit my patches and then we had a chat about moving stuff about. While we were at it, she moved the two boxes that I had packed yesterday and took them downstairs where I’ll empty them on Wednesday or Thursday.

While she was here, I told her about the very uneasy feeling that I have about this trip to Paris. I can’t explain why, but I’ve been uncomfortable about it all day and all last night. And I’m spoiling for a fight, but for no good reason, and I’m not there yet. Things are not going my way.

The taxi driver wasn’t very helpful today. He’s clearly not used to dealing with the elderly and the infirm, but he’ll have to learn, and quickly too.

At Avranches, once more I was one of the last to be coupled up and it was as painful as I have ever had. And one of the punctures missed its aim, and that made it worse.

What with this early start, I wanted to go to sleep, but no such luck. The doctor who doesn’t like his work, he was on duty and he shook me awake. They are afraid that I’ll have another crisis, I reckon.

He stayed around so we had quite a chat. I told him about the uneasy feeling that I’ve had all day but he wasn’t much help on that score. In the end, he left me to it and I could crack on.

Unplugging me was complicated too and once more, I was one of the last to leave, not helped by confusion at the weighing machine. However, we thrashed through the autoroutes with its accidents and overturned artic lorry (and I’m sure that you are thinking that I’m making this up) and arrived nice and early.

A nurse eventually took me to my room and my driver could leave, and then they took a blood sample. I valiantly resisted the idea of a perfusion and rehydration (why take two litres of water out at dialysis and then immediately put half a litre back in?) and they even brought me some food – of sorts.

So now I’m off to bed, ready to fight the good fight in the operating theatre tomorrow morning, and then the chemotherapy begins.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the nurse here … "well, one of us has" – ed … he looked at my notes and said "you have acute anaemia".
"Thank you" I replied. "I’m so glad that you like it"

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Friday 18th July 2025 – AT LONG LAST …

… I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

This afternoon, just before tea-time, I finally finished editing the notes for the “Sunday Woodstock” radio programme, and I’ve actually made a start on assembling it too.

It’s probably been the most difficult series of all of the radio programmes that I’ve ever made, from a technical point of view and also from a research point of view, and so I hope that it lives up to the hype that surrounds it. I’d be disappointed if it doesn’t.

And that is despite all of the interruptions that I’ve had today.

And as if there weren’t enough interruptions last night too. For some reason (probably, mainly bone-idleness) I just couldn’t make a start on writing my notes and it seemed to take an age to do anything at all. It was after midnight last night and I was still letting it all hang out.

Once in bed though, I remembered nothing at all until … errr … 05:50 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I seem to have quite often these days.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing, being out of bed is something else completely. It was about 06:10 when I finally found the strength and courage to haul myself out of my stinking pit.

After a good wash and scrub up I went to have my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. This is another one of those dreams that faded away the moment that I went to reach for the teenage mortar board … fell asleep here …

First of all, I have absolutely no recollection of anything at all. I certainly can’t remember this dream and no-one was more surprised than me to find something (such as it was) on the dictaphone.

Secondly, the significance of the second part of the dream totally escapes me. I’ve no idea where this “teenage mortar board” comes from.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up early for once. She’d had a good start and was keen to press on. Consequently, she didn’t hang around for long – just enough time for the heat treatment and to deal with my legs.

After she’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still wandering around the various churches of London and our author, John Stow, is still sticking in his thumb and pulling out some really interesting plums of knowledge.

We’re at St Swithin’s Church where, "on the back side … Sir Richard Empson … and Edward Dudley … had a door of intercourse into this garden wherein they met and consulted of matters of their pleasures." I shall make no comment whatsoever, except to enquire as to whether the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine knew all about this.

A little further on, we have a very lengthy and detailed description of the very colourful annual parade of the Fraternity of Skinners, finishing with "thus much to stop the tongues of unthankful men such as used to ask ‘why have ye not noted this or that?’ and give no thanks for what is done.".

But there’s so much of interest in this book that has been missed by temporary historians. There’s a very lengthy and complicated account of a series of land transactions in which several houses changed hands several times, and the price, according to our author, was "one rose at Midsummer, to him and to his heirs for all services, if the same were demanded.".

After breakfast, I made a start on editing the radio notes but I didn’t have much time because my friends from Ulm came round to say goodbye as they were heading to Bayeux to see the Tapestry and then driving home.

We had quite a lot to discuss and we took a long time to discuss it too. I may be busy and have a lot to do, but I’ll always stop to have a chat to friends. I don’t see people anything like often enough, and it’s nice that they take the trouble to come to see me.

My faithful cleaner was next to arrive, and she spent a happy hour going through the apartment with her brush and cloth making it look nice. We discussed the possibility of beginning to take things downstairs. I shall begin, I reckon, to sort out the kitchen and see where that takes me.

There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t need at the moment, and that will make some kind of room. If I box it up, my cleaner will take it down and when I return from dialysis, I can spend half an hour sorting it out each time that I pass by.

At some point in the day I was interrupted by a phone call. "Mr Hall – your next chemotherapy session is arranged for Tuesday and Wednesday next week, but we’d like you to come here on Monday evening straight after dialysis so that we can fit you with a catheter port.".

So here we go, then. I rang up the taxi company and gave them the bad news, but it’s also bad news for me. What I don’t understand is that if they know that this chemotherapy had such a bad effect on me nine years ago, why are they insisting on giving it to me again?.

Eventually, I could carry on with my editing, and that’s now all done. I can start to assemble the programme tomorrow morning and see where I finish. If I’ve not finished it (which will probably be the case) I can do the rest on Sunday.

But now, later than I would have liked, it’s bedtime again. I hope that I can have a good night’s sleep and plenty of exciting voyages because I could do with going out more often, as I’m sure you will agree. I’ll go out as often as I can, but I wish that there could be somewhere else to go instead of dialysis and chemotherapy. My little nocturnal voyages are the only possibility these days.

But seeing as we have been talking about going out and about … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to spend a lot of my time walking around, and I sometimes had some very interesting walks.
Graveyards were some of my favourite places in which to walk and sometimes I would talk to the people whom I would meet.
On one occasion, I saw a man standing thoughtfully by a grave so I wished him a "good morning."
"Of course not" he replied. "It’s a very sad thing to do."

0

Wednesday 25th June 2025 – I WAS NOT …

… alone!

And when they send me the bill for the €20:00 for the subsistence, I shall only pay half and the mouse that I saw at 05:25 eating the crumbs on the floor when I awoke can pay the rest.

What surprised me particularly was not so much the mouse but the nonchalant attitude of the staff when I told them, as if “we’ve heard it all and seen it all before”. One member of staff (the male nurse with whom I’d had that huge argument last night) even tried to chase it away into someone else’s room rather than try to eradicate it.

So now my mind is made up. When I move downstairs I am definitely going to have a cat – a female cat – and the problem with what to do with it when I’m in hospital is resolved because I shall bring it with me. It can have free board and lodging.

And if anyone tells me that animals aren’t allowed into hospitals …

So, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, the intravenous drip went on until about 03:00, with me trying to sleep and every half an hour or so a nurse coming to check and awakening me

When they finally disconnected me, I could at last have some proper sleep, which I did until all of 05:20, which was when I saw the mouse.

As I said earlier, it was the nonchalant attitude of the staff that surprised me the most. They seemed to think that it was quite a normal thing to have a mouse in their hospital. I wasn’t impressed, though.

After they left, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. While I was having a brief doze I saw a couple of heavy lorries go past with huge, heavy trailers on the back. From one of them, the trailer broke away and 100 yards further on the heavy metal container body on the lorry full of scrap metal or something also fell off. The trailer careered off down a side street and I remember thinking to myself “so that was the end of Mike’s Music Shop in Edleston Road”.

There used to be a music shop in Edleston Road – it moved there from Nantwich Road several years ago. I bought a lot of stuff, including my famous Gibson EB3 bass, from there. However, one of the owners died a couple of years ago so I don’t know if the shop is still there.

Later on; I ended up having a row with a nurse during a dream last night. He wanted to couple me up to a drip-feed thing in a very complicated way that I was sure wasn’t right. When he came to work on it, he found that he had to make the cables longer so he pulled on the cables and that nearly pulled the catheter out of my arm. When I shouted at him to stop he made something of a face and we had something of an argument … fell asleep here …

And fell asleep for two hours and eight minutes, so the dictaphone’s timestamp told me. And I’ve seen enough of these couplings-up to a Portable Patient these last ten or so years to know how it’s done and to know if it’s not done correctly. But clearly, that row last night must have been on my mind.

They had coupled the machine incorrectly, and ended up with pipes looking like a plate of spaghetti, all tangled up in each other rather than a nice flowing series of pipes; And the fact that they were all tangled together was the root of this argument, when he pulled on one and it pulled all the others

Breakfast (for me, anyway) came at 09:10 this morning and when I finished, and I wasn’t in the mood to eat all of it they coupled up the chemotherapy stuff.

And round about 10:00 the side effects began. I began to shiver and shake, I went deathly cold and a huge wave of fatigue swept over me. There’s only one cure for this – I went to bed, under the bedclothes to keep warm.

The nurses and the doctor were frantic with worry but I know about this kind of thing and I know the best cure is to sleep it off. They were having none of it though, and insisted on taking tests and measurements

There was also, as you might be expecting, the "would you like a doliprane?"

Round about 11:30 they finally got the message and cleared off, except for the cleaner and the nursing assistant who brought me my lunch, which I refused.

With the taxi coming at 14:30, I left the bed at 14:00, still feeling shaky, and packed my bags. And then went back to sleep.

The taxi arrived at 15:30 and as I was feeling a little better, I walked to the car, refusing the wheelchair, and settled myself down in a comfortable position.

The driver has taken me before, and he’s a nice, friendly guy so we had a little chat as we drove out of Paris. For once, the traffic circulation was fairly fluid so we would make good time

Once we were on the motorway I fell asleep and slept all the way to Caen, except for dealing with messages from my friend ond my faithful cleaner about my kitchen, which has arrived at last. I mentioned to the kitchen fitter that it had arrived, so he’s going to start work on his next free day, which might be some time at the end of next week.

He’s also been to another store and found what he needs from there and has negotiated a good price so he’ll be bringing all of that after I’ve paid for it.

When I awoke we were going round the north side of Caen. My driver reckons that it’s quicker at this time of afternoon and he was probably right too because we arrived back at home after just four hours of travel And we were greeted by a rainstorm of tropical proportions.

The boxes of kitchen stuff look impressive in the new apartment. I can’t wait for them to be opened and assembled. And then I climbed up here, feeling a little better than just recently, despite the pain in my foot that has now gone off to the back of the base of my little toe and in my heel since the Retuximab.

My friend had made some food to eat which was nice of him, and now I’ve come to write my notes before I go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about this pain in my foot… "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the nurses asked me "have you ever thought about acupuncture to solve the pain?"
"Yes I have as it happens" I replied "but I just didn’t get the point of it."

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Tuesday 24th June 2025 – THEY WERE WAITING …

… for me when I arrived, all lined up at the door. And before I’d even sat down on the bed they had pounced. It was like being a staggering wildebeest, beset with vultures.

And the worst part of all about it was when they mentioned the ponction lumbaire. That was when I knew that I was in for a difficult time.

There was something of a difficult time last night when, due to my dilatory habits, I didn’t finish my notes until midnight or so, and it was certainly later than that when I finally made it into bed.

Once in bed, I had a very peaceful night until about 05:20 when I awoke with another one of these dramatic awakenings, and by 05:45 I was hard at it at me desk.

As usual the first thing that I had to do was to transcribe my dictaphone notes; And I must have travelled miles last night. I was somewhere in rural France last night and came across a market. It turned out to be an autojumble of all kinds of bits and pieces. I went to stand in the queue to be served but no-one was serving really. There were all these dummies dressed up as people, and balloons painted with people’s faces painted on them, but there were no real servers. It was really ghostly and eerie. I walked around a little and found myself in one of the back rooms where I met a girl coming out towards the door. I asked her if she had an engine for a Panther. She said that she didn’t. I said that that was a shame because I was desperately looking for an engine for my Panther. She said that they were good bikes and that I needed a good engine for it. “They are good bikes because of their caiques” which I imagined she meant “sidecars”. She said that it’s a shame that I wasn’t here years ago because there was a place down by the road out that sold all kinds of bits and pieces like that. I replied “yes, that’s where the machine mart is now, isn’t it?” but she didn’t even remember where there was a machine mart. I remembered that place even though I’d never been in this town before. She wasn’t able to help me very much about an engine for this Panther. I hadn’t actually bought the bike at that time but had seen it for sale in one of these cheap garages, the frame and running gear but without the engine.

I would have loved a Panther, a nice, big 650cc single-cylinder “sloper” but trying to find one back in the early 70s was just about impossible. I met someone much later whose husband had had two but when he died, she simply gave them away. How disappointed was I?

As for the garage though, we have been here before on a few of our nocturnal travels, and we’ve also discovered old motorbikes here and there while we’ve been out and about.

There was something about vans now, these Ford Escort vans that we use for delivery. One of these places had a fleet of them. We’d been walking through the rushes and had finally made it onto dry land. Then someone went on up the hill to have a word with these garage people to see whether one of them would come down. There was some kind of story about them only doing certain kinds of jobs and only doing them within a certain radius and not very much in Ostland so it didn’t seem to be very hopeful. people were saying that this kind of service is not very good but it’s better than the nothing that was here before. There was one of my family with us too but he or she had difficulty manoeuvring … "PERSONoeuvring" – ed … or opening and closing … fell asleep here …

This is another one of those dreams of while I have no recall or recollection whatsoever and it doesn’t seem to relate to anything except, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we had a Ford Escort van for a while, an ex-Post Office one.

I was out with a friend last night. He was taking me to somewhere with a really big secret. It was extremely complicated and he wasn’t going to tell me anything about it. We got into the car and drove. This secret rolled and rolled and rolled as we drove. We ended up near Northwich somewhere, through this industrial estate full of these tiny little business units, many of which were empty and decayed. We eventually came to one, parked up and went in. There was a guy there who was brushing it out and trying to make it tidy. It turned out that he was the owner, and he had a tenant in at the far end, the end nearer the street. he was moaning about the tenant – how the tenant wasn’t tidy, his place had turned into a mess and had some bonsai plants. The owner had given him some but he wasn’t looking after them. As we walked through the shop I could see speaker columns and PA equipment, things like that. Nearer the door was more electronic stuff. I noticed that on the window was a letter addressed to me and my friend. I said something and he replied “yes, this is to where all of the correspondence for the two of us comes” of which I knew nothing about at all. In the end, he handed me a letter that he’d picked up that was addressed to me. I opened it, and it was from the Customs and Excise people telling me that they were refusing to export my pyramids, the ones that I’d sold to someone, because there was some issue about the card, some issue about the payment and the airline company being afraid that they would break en route. It was a big disappointment that they weren’t being exported because I’d received £600 for them. It was also a disappointment because with all this secrecy, I was expecting something much more important than this. I mentioned it to my friend and he replied “oh, no. We have to keep things extremely secret. The more secret it is, the better”. We went out and climbed back into the car. I said a couple of other things and he said “well, I’m going to have to do some more of this because I have to have that £400 back that I gave you as some kind of War information service”. I was wondering what was going to happen next.

This was one of those impressive dreams that seemed to go on for ever. I wish that I could remember who my friend was in this dream. There can’t have been a choice of too many. But the industrial estate reminded me of several places in North-West USA that I’ve visited and to which I wish that I could return. However, the idea that I would be wanting to export pyramids, never mind owning a few, would be bizarre to say the least.

There was time for a quick dabble into the radio programme that I am trying to prepare, but the I had to go to organise myself ready for departure.

After a wash and brush up, I went to prepare my things ready for departure and make some sandwiches because I know all about the food in the Paris hospitals. I packed a pack of crackers and some of my home-made energy fruit bars too.

While the Hound of the Baskervilles was taking his master for walkies, the nurse came and sorted me out, and then I had a message from the taxi “there in twenty minutes”.

At the appropriate moment we went downstairs where we met our driver at the front door. She carried my bags to the car and I followed along behind and climbed in. I’d had no drink and no food – on the basis of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out”.

The taxi had originally been booked for 10:00 but they had rung up yesterday to change it to 09:00. And I was right about the reason too. There was someone else to pick up – a woman who lived in an apartment in the centre of Avranches who had to take her seriously-ill baby to Paris.

Once we were under way again it was a rapid drive, and one thing that I learned was that both my driver and this other passenger knew how to talk. We had a non-stop chat almost all the way.

At a Motorway Service area on the edge of the suburbs of Paris we stopped to feed and change the baby, and I hoped that she would come back with a quieter one. I stood outside in the shade and cool breeze enjoying the weather and talking to a Moroccan guy who recognised my accent and asked if I came from Belgium. It’s not by any means the first time that I’ve been taken as being from Belgium. Old accents die hard.

Back in the car we drove off and went a different way into Paris, going through some of the nicest, prettiest, flowery suburbs like Plessis, an area that I have never visited before.

At a hospital down there, we dropped off mother and baby and then drove though some more leafy suburbs to he centre of the town and the Prif to the Hopital Pitié-Salpetrière, where we arrived exactly half an hour late.

There wasn’t even time for me to sit down, never mind have a drink, before everyone pounced upon me and began to push, probe and prod me. And prepare me for the ponction lumbaire.

They have changed he internet password here so I asked the young student nurse if she could enquire after the new one.
"C’est au-delà mes compétences" – “out of my range of duties” she replied, giving her shoulders a Gallic shrug.

She won’t last five minutes on a ward with an attitude like that, if she ever qualifies.

Eventually, everyone cleared off and the cute little nursing assistant, who can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes, finally brought me a coffee.

Surprisingly, the lumbar puncture was quite painless (mind you, anything is painless after a biopsie musculaire) and it would have been even better had the doctor not given a running commentary. She got the message though when I reached for my headphones and clamped them over my ears.

"You adopted a perfect position" she said.
"Well, it’s not my first time by any means" I said. "But if you’re going to do this again, can you tattoo a target on the small of my back?"

After they all left and I was lying down recovering, the secretary came to see me. And if I’d have behaved towards a female patient as she behaved towards me, I’d have been sent down for two years. I don’t know what she was after but I don’t have it any more.

They all came back a little later to wire me up to an intravenous drip. They explained what each one was and mentioned that one of them to combat nausea.
"Oh – is tea coming soon then?" I asked.

Rosemary rang for a chat but I had to cut her short (a mere forty minutes) because tea arrived. soup, salad, a pizza slice and some fruit salad. It’s a good job that I had some fruit bars.

Later on, we had an argument. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … they prescribe Doliprane for everything here. The country is awash with it, but they are really not just scraping the bottom of the barrel but through the base and into the muck underneath when they brought me not one but two Doliprane for “something that might happen”. You can’t go any lower than that.

When I revolted … "you’re always revolting" – ed … they threatened to call the doctor but I stood my ground and they took the Doliprane away. What is the matter with everyone that they dope themselves up with paracetamol at the first sign of any discomfort?

Then they wanted to bring me a urinal. Why? Because I might need to go to the WC.
"Why can’t I go to the bathroom?" I asked.
"How will you go?"
"On my two feet of course" I replied. "How else?"
"Is it possible?"
"How do you think that I do it at home?"

So they began to position the medication tree on the far side of the bed to where my catheter is.
"You’d better put it back here, or I’ll be tangled up in it if I turn over"
"But the pipe won’t be long enough to reach"
"So why wouldn’t I unplug the machine and take it with me and let it run off the internal battery?"
"You have two crutches"
"So why don’t I use the Portable Patient as one of them?"

Life is tough. It’s a battle to survive and if you want to survive you have to fight. Opting out and giving up the fight is the quickest way to the grave. I’m convinced that in the case of a serious illness, those who are prepared to fight and struggle are the ones who have the greatest chance of survival. No-one has ever accused me of taking the easy route when there’s a more difficult route to follow … "I’ll say!" – ed …

So now, coupled up to a machine or two and a raging blood pressure of 186/106, I’m going to give up the struggle, for the night only, and go to bed if only the high blood pressure alarm would stop sounding and nurses would stop dashing in to switch it off and summoning the doctor.

And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is that this male nurse and I are going to finish by having blows. He lost his temper when I stopped him from performing a task because he was tangling up the wires and pulling on my catheter.

When he came back with the doctor, I bawled him out and told him not to ever talk to me like that again. That led to a “frank exchange of views” between the doctor and me, ending with me refusing once more the Doliprane, and telling them both that my life is much more important than their medication.

If I die in six months in full activity, that suits me much more than living like a vegetable for six years stuck in a bed.
"You have a very serious illness" he said.
"And I’ve had it since 2015, and since then I’ve been to within 900 kms of the North Pole, and I’d go there and die tomorrow rather than die in bed. I’m seventy-one years old and I’m not going to live for ever, no matter what you do, so what difference does it make? I’m not going to cling on to m life by my fingertips in total agony.. "

But seeing as we have been dreaming about pyramids … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to the ghost of Sir Norman Lockyer who wrote THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY about religious sites in Egypt.
He asked me "do you know why there are pyramids in Egypt?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "Why are there pyramids in Egypt?" I asked, bitterly regretting, ten seconds later, having done so.
"It’s because they were too big to fit into the British Museum."

0

Monday 23rd June 2025 – I HAD A …

… special visitor during the night last night – someone who hasn’t been to see me for quite some considerable time.

But more of that anon. This time tomorrow I shall be … well … not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in a hospital bed in Paris where they will be starting this Rituximab cancer treatment.

Or, rather, restarting it, because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that was the product (or Mabthera, a generic thereof) that they gave me right at the beginning back in February 2016 after the chemotherapy failed.

And it worked at that moment too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was unable to walk and so ill that I had to live with friends because I was unable to cope by myself, yet six months later I was in Canada. I’m not expecting the same miracles this time, but any little help and relief that it might give me will be most welcome.

And in other news, it looks as if this apartment move will be taking place during the week of 18th-25th of August. That seems to be when the usual suspects are collecting themselves together, and I’m recruiting further volunteers if anyone else would like to join in. All are welcome and I do not practise any kind of discrimination at all. I hate everyone equally, regardless of race, creed, colour or sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, had I exerted myself last night I could have been in bed well before 23:00 but as usual, dillying and dallying about, it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled in underneath the covers.

When I awoke at 05:20 I was somewhere about in the dialysis centre but whatever it was that I was doing evaporated from my mind immediately … "not that there’s much in there to hold it in" – ed … which is just as well because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t like to dwell on that place when I’m not there. It’s bad enough that I do when I am.

The first task that I undertook when I finally settled down at the desk (at … errr … 05:50) was to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. And, as I said earlier, I had a special visitor come to see me. There was a group of us in a house somewhere and who should come in but our old friend (or mine, anyway), Zero. And what a long time it’s been since she last put in an appearance. I wanted to say “hello” to her but she walked right through the front of the house all the way to the stairs. I pretended to chase after, and she saw me, let out a squeal and ran upstairs. Her mother said something about going to frighten her away and that I had to look after her at that end of the room. My brother was upstairs in his room at the time and I could hear him and Zero talking to each other. I thought “how am I going to look after Zero at this end of the room if she has already gone upstairs?”. I thought in any case that he was supposed to be busy doing some things that he needed to do rather than sit around talking, but apparently not.

So here we go again. Zero having far more sense than to hang around chatting to me, and a member of my family turning up in my nocturnal rambles to spoil all my fun. I thought that we’d put all of that behind us, but apparently not. Presumably, some psychiatrist somewhere would come out with a few interesting remarks about this kind of situation, but it would all be news to me. There’s no other logical explanation for it, although whatever logic would have to do with what went on in my head during the night would also be news to me.

Round about 07:00 everyone else began to surface so I went for a good wash and scrub up ready for dialysis and Emilie the Cute Consultant, although I forgot to shave. And then we sat around waiting for Isabelle the Nurse to come to see me.

Almost as soon as she left, the taxi came round to take me to the Medical Centre to see the doctor about my heart.

At first, I saw his assistant who coupled me up to an echograph machine with a rapidity that took me quite by surprise.
"That’s not the first time that you’ve done this, is it?"
"Oh no" she replied. "Only a few thousand times.".

When she’d finished, she took me into the doctor’s room where he gave me a thorough examination.
"It’s not your heart that’s causing your problems" he said. "That’s working fine."

And that’s just as well because it’s only my heart that is keeping me going. With my low blood count and low blood pressure, my heart is having to beat about twice as fast as anyone else’s. Anyone’s heart can do that for a while, but mine’s been doing it for almost ten years. When it gives out, I’ll be gone in an instant.

But at least he found my heart and I still have one. I’ve not turned into a Conservative yet.

"Where’s all your paperwork?" he asked.
"No-one told me to bring any" I replied. "The dialysis centre arranged this appointment. I imagined that they would have sent you whatever you needed"
"You should always bring all of your medical paperwork with you when you come" he said
"I’ll remember that" I replied. "Do you know where I can hire a fork-lift truck?"

But as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Back here (in the rain) I was halfway through eating breakfast when the ‘phone rang.
"What are you doing tomorrow?" a voice asked
"Not a lot" I replied.
"Good. Come to Paris and we’ll start the Rituximab"

So there we are. Now a frantic ringing-round to book taxis and obtain permission from the Securité Sociale.

My cleaner turned up as usual to fit my anaesthetic patches and then we waited around for a while. As the weather was now back to sunshine, we went downstairs to wait outside.

The taxi was bang on time with our other passenger already in, and we shot off to Avranches at the Speed of Light, me with my eyes closed. It’s not very often I feel nervous as a passenger these days.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s no point being ten minutes early anywhere if you have to spend that ten minutes washing your underwear.

When we arrived there were three ambulances ahead of us unloading the horizontal patients so I knew how this would pan out. And when one of those ahead in the queue had a crisis and everyone had to rush to help, I knew that that was that.

Having a trainee didn’t improve my morale much, and my 13:30 arrival turned into a 14:30 coupling up.

The doctor came round to see me to ask me how I was.
"OK at the moment but it won’t be for much longer if you keep on prescribing me these" and I showed him one of the boxes of tablets that I’d been prescribed on Saturday, a product that contained lactose.
"And your doctor moaned at me a few weeks ago when I had that attack of pancreatitis"

He didn’t stay very long after that.

The dietician came to see me too, to ask how I was getting on with the disgusting drink that she prescribed for me.

When I told her that I was taking it as instructed, she replied "Good" and renewed the prescription for another three months. I should have said nothing.

Julie the Cook was back from her holidays and she had ten minutes to come to sit on my bed for a chat, which was nice. She’s a really nice, bubbly, cheerful girl and always has a smile on her face. She can also perch on my bed any time she likes.

When I was uncoupled, I went out to the taxi but we had to wait (and wait, and wait) for another passenger who needs a lot of assistance. And who is dropped off first so it was at 19:37 when we finally arrived home.

My adjustable stool had arrived this afternoon and so things are looking much more positive downstairs. The stool will certainly ease my cooking issues, as I can now sit down while I’m at the worktop cooking, and take the weight off my knees.

Tea tonight was baked potato, salad in balsamic vinegar and a mix of falafel and veggie balls. It was delicious as usual.

Tomorrow I have bags to pack, sandwiches to make and food to rustle up, seeing as I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. They say that I’ll be back on Wednesday, but we shall see. I’m really grateful that my friend is here to deal with the kitchen that will (hopefully) arrive.

But first, I’m off to bed in the hope that Zero will come back.

Seeing as we have been talking about the doctor’s surgery just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … the patient before me was complaining about having a very sore throat
"Right" said the doctor. "Go over to the window, stick your thumbs in your ears and stick out your tongue as far as you can."
"Will that make me feel better?" asked the patient
"Oh no" replied the doctor. "My wife’s standing on the pavement outside."

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Tuesday 3rd June 2025 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been. I certainly seem to have packed a lot into it. And there will be more to come in due course – much more.

And considering how little sleep I had last night, I reckon that I did quite well too, even if I did have a little doze off once or twice in the taxi coming back from Paris. Yes – I’ve been to Paris and back today in a taxi.

But not for much longer, so they seem to think.

Last night, any dream that I might have had about going to bed early was shattered by yet more prevarication and aimless wandering around in cyberspace before I could summon up the energy. And with the alarm set for 06:30, I knew that it was going to be a short night.

But never mind the alarm. I needn’t have bothered because I was wide awake yet again at 05:50 and up and about, having a really good scrub, by 06:00.

No medication this morning, and no breakfast either. I’m working on the principle that “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out at some inconvenient moment in the middle of a four-hour journey”.

Instead, I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson last night. We were on the trail of some kind of primitive life-form like a large snake or slug that was slithering around London bringing terror with it. We – or someone – had come across it and there had been some kind of conflict, and the creature had escaped so Sherlock Holmes was reviewing the confrontation. He decided that it was light that frightened it more than anything else so later on Sunday night we arranged for all of the lights in a certain area of the city to be turned off and we set out to hunt it. Watson made the point that surely this is dangerous with all of the people wandering around the streets. Holmes said that there’s not one member of the serving class of London who would be out on the streets at this time of night. We heard a noise and saw a movement so we constructed our ambush, which was basically to be in the dark and have a light burning underneath a dark lantern so if the creature were to come to us as we were the only people on the street we could illuminate it with this dark lantern and be able somehow to overpower it and deal with it accordingly.

A dark lantern is just like an ordinary lantern, except that it has a thick black cover over the lens. You light the lantern, close the cover, and there is no light emitted. When you want there to be light, you simply lift up the cover. It’s the Victorian equivalent of an on-off switch.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall however that in the past we have been on several nocturnal rambles with Holmes and Watson, although I don’t recall that we had too much success at whatever it was that we were doing.

Later on, I dreamed that I was in hospital and it was dialysis time. I had to make myself ready for dialysis and was not looking very forward to it so I was sitting there in my bed and then drifted off to sleep. I awoke again with someone shaking me awake, like at the hospital yesterday when it was a nurse but today it was no-one – I just awoke and slipped off to sleep in the middle of that dream again

It sounds just like the little student nurse who awoke me yesterday, with a little shake. But it’s really sad that I’m dreaming these days about dialysis. As if I don’t have enough problems about it during my waking hours, never mind spoiling what are supposed to be enjoyable, relaxing rambles.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up nice and early to sort out my legs, and she brought with her the first of today’s news. There is apparently a large van outside the building and my tenant and her friends are busily loading it up. So it looks as if this move might actually be on.

It’s a good job that Isabelle came early because no sooner had she left than the taxi turned up – a good half-hour earlier than I was expecting and I was nowhere near ready.

Nevertheless, in the glorious sunshine I staggered down the stairs and across into the waiting vehicle, seeing for myself that this move really is happening. However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have no sympathy with her, and even less now, having seen her walking across the yard carrying boxes of things when I can’t even carry a saucepan out of the bathroom.

The drive to Paris was exciting – road accident after road accident, bus on fire, car overturned on its side, half a dozen collisions. And the queues around Paris meaning that despite setting out half an hour earlier, we were half an hour late arriving.

The news about the biopsy the other week is that they have actually found something. It seems that I might be suffering from something called AMYLIODOSIS. Traces of amyloids have been found in the nervous system in my legs.

This is apparently what they were suspecting ever since the beginning and why I have had so many tests. However, until just now, the amyloids have been remarkably good at hiding.

It seems that the thinking in the past was that my recurring illness was something that was causing my neurological issues, but now they are slowly coming round to wonder if it’s not the reverse and that it’s the neurological issues that are causing the other problems.

The first positive result is that the anti-cancer treatment, that costs €4950, can be stopped as of right now. This begs the question “what do I do with the full, unopened bottle sitting on my shelves?”.

The second positive result is that the doctor tells me that the treatment they are going to try is one that involves a stay in hospital for a couple of nights every month or so …. and when he said that, a few bells began to ring in my head.

… and they will throughout that time be giving me an intravenous drip … which rang yet a few more … called Rituximab. And that was when the siren inside my head went off

"Haven’t I done this before?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact, you have" he said. "Back in 2016"

So in nine years and many, many miles, we have gone round in one big circle. If we aren’t careful, we’ll end up like the Oozelum Bird.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was so ill back in 2015 and 2016 that I couldn’t fend for myself and luckily, Liz and Terry took me in for four months and nursed me, something for which I shall always be grateful.

One of the problems there was that I was having enormous difficulty walking and had to learn from the very beginning again. However, after six months of treatment with Rituximab (actually, its generic equivalent, Mapthera), I was IN CANADA.

Of course, I’m not pretending that I can do the same thing again, but being able to walk would be something. However, I mustn’t build up any wave of optimism. I’ve been told quite clearly that this isn’t going to be a cure – just a relaxation of the symptoms at best.

They have told me that the first two sessions will be done here in Paris, and if it all goes well, they’ll find a more local hospital, that might be either Caen or Rennes. So it’s just possible that if it works, I might not be going back to Paris.

The drive home was completely uneventful – there wasn’t even the slightest sign of a traffic queue until the autoroute junction at Caen. And we were home by 17:30, when I found that my apartment downstairs was indeed empty and shuttered up. No keys in my letter box though. I shall have to see the letting agent about those.

Back in here, I had a disgusting drink break and then relaxed in the chair until tea time – a taco roll with rice and veg followed by ginger cake and soya dessert.

So early as it might be, I’m tired and so I’m going to bed in a few minutes to see if I can have a good sleep after my exertions.

But seeing as we have been talking about Holmes and Watson … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one of our previous rambles I spoke to Holmes.
"You don’t seem to be as popular these days as you used to be" I said
"It’s true" he said. "The young people don’t seem to care for me these days. I relate mostly to the previous generations"
"I see" I replied. "You’re more like an Old People’s Holmes then"

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Tuesday 22nd April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 04:15 you don’t have all that much time to go a-wandering by the time that the alarm goes off.

What is surprising is that despite the short amount of sleep, I’ve not been at all tired today, not even for one single minute. It must therefore be the dialysis and not the overall state of my health that’s causing these little “moments”. And as it happened almost every day before dialysis, we can narrow it down to something to do with my kidneys.

So last night, or, rather, this morning, after I’d finished my notes I wasn’t all that tired and found a few things to do but eventually I thought that if I don’t go to bed now, I never will and that’s no good at all.

It took an age to go off to sleep but once I did, I remember nothing further until the alarm went off. And then didn’t I have a struggle to leave the bed? Not that that was surprising because the stabbing pain in my foot had started up again.

For once in my life I couldn’t face the bathroom so I thought “tough” and went into the kitchen for my medication.

Back in here, I found nothing on the dictaphone so I spent some time making notes about the next radio programme or two to keep me occupied.

Isabelle breezed in, in something of a rush as usual on her first day back. She mentioned that she was off to visit the town of Avallon in Burgundy. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnation will recall that we visited it years ago as part of our quest for the legends of the Knights Templar

After she left, I made breakfast and then read more of MY BOOK. I was correct about not spending long at Kilpeck. This morning we arrived in Knaresborough.

As usual though, I was distracted. I spent more time reading about the conflicts between the Kings, usurpers and Barons in Yorkshire in Medieval times than I did about the castle. And then following up a clue, I managed to track down a copy of John Leland’s “Itinerary”.

Leland was one of the first travel writers and his book was written towards the middle of the Sixteenth Century, in which he described his ramblings around England and Wales. Its interest as far as I am concerned is that he was a big fan of castles too and described them in great detail. Our author Geo T Clark makes several comparisons between what Leland saw and what he saw 300-odd years later, indicating how much of the superstructure had disappeared in the interval.

After breakfast I began to make the series of ‘phone calls that I talked about the other day.

By the time that I’d finished, I had my summons for the hospital in Paris (and that was a job in itself). I’m expected to arrive there Monday 5th May between 14:00 and 17:00 and I’ll be there for a week. My dialysis is arranged here in Avranches for the Monday morning and I’ll be having it in Paris on the 8th. I’ll be back on Friday evening.

The taxi is booked too. Early morning on Monday from here to Avranches and then after dialysis, straight to Paris. They’ll wait to hear from the hospital for the return.

There’s someone coming to see me on Wednesday about my renovations downstairs. I had a lovely mail this morning from the letting agent "on further consideration, your tenant has decided that she will rent a storage box as of the 3rd June, put her affairs in store and move in with relatives."

She’s obviously received my letter of the other day and it has had the desired response. Consequently I’ve been advertising the work on some of these “artisan” sites run by the various professional bodies, designed so that their members can look at them and see what work is available. I’ve already had one response.

With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, this removal planned tentatively for the last week in August might even take place. Several friends have offered to come to visit and help out, and there’s always room for anyone else to lend a hand.

What I shall be doing is talking to a few workmen, having some kind of starting and finishing date, and then handing in my three-months notice to the letting agent. I don’t mind a couple of months’ overlap of accommodation. It’s far better than finding myself out in the street.

The rest of the day has been spent radioing. 260306 is a concert, as I mentioned a few days ago, 260313 is nothing special and 260327 is another concert, one that I caught in, of all places, Montréal where my cousin’s son-in-law was sound engineer.

260320 is going to be interesting though. 20th March is “International Francophone Day”. Leaving aside French rock bands like Magma and Gong, have you any idea how many rock songs by British and American groups there are that contain lyrics either wholly or partly in French?. I’m up to thirty-four and I’m still counting.

Remember the other day when we were talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us was" – ed …? I’m disappointed in my AI search engine, that only came up with three that would fit in my programme. I had plenty of ideas myself of course … "and about the music too" – ed … and a brainstorming session in an Internet forum came up with the rest.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Tea tonight was the stuffed pepper that I should have had yesterday, with plenty of stuffing left over for my taco roll and leftover curry, which shall be on Thursday this week.

And now, hardly tired even after the turmoil of last night, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I have my faithful cleaner coming to sort me out and apparently she’s bringing an assistant, so I’ve been told. I shall need to be on my best behaviour.

But seeing as we have been talking about house renovations … "well, one of us has" – ed … I hope that they turn out to be better than the last lot that I had.
When I moved back to Crewe from Winsford in 1981 I had some local builders in. One of them was pulling nails out of his bag to knock into the wall, but he was throwing half of them away.
"Why are you doing that?" asked his mate.
"They are defective" he replied. "Made backwards. When I pull them out, the heads are the wrong way round."
"You fool!" roared his mate. "They aren’t defective at all. They are to be used in the wall behind you!"

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Monday 7th April 2025 – WE HAD ANOTHER …

… short session of three and a half hours at the dialysis centre today. Even though I wobbled a couple of times and crashed out for five minutes, I made it to the end

But seeing as we are talking about crashing out … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was in a different bed today where I could see everyone else in the public ward. And without exception, everyone else crashed out shortly after their machines were set under way. That doesn’t make me feel quite so bad now about crashing out.

Something else that we very nearly had this morning was another early start. Despite not going to bed until late, I was awake at about 06:40 and was debating whether to raise myself from the Dead – I’d even put the light on – when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE beat me to it

It’s quite surprising that I was awake so early because I didn’t go to bed until after 01:00. I’d finished my notes, the statistics and the backing up well before that but as usual something came along to disrupt me and I can’t remember what it was right now. It was probably a very good concert and I’ll always postpone bedtime if something decent comes round on the playlist. … "Actually, you were designing kitchens" – ed …

But once in bed I fell asleep quite quickly, but only for a short while and then we were back on the turbulent, somewhat mobile nights.

Whatever it was that awoke me at 06:40 left no impression on me whatsoever. It wasn’t the bin lorry, and it wasn’t the hot food delivery to the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs either because they both turned up when I was awake and trying to summon up the courage and the energy to leave the bed.

Billy Cotton made up my mind for me and his rattle certainly is raucous coming from this new ‘phone. No-one will sleep through this, that’s for sure

In the bathroom I had a good wash, scrub up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant and then went for my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and no-one was more surprised than me to see all of the stuff thereupon. When I switched on my computer there was a message “you must go to full-screen view for this” it said, so I pressed on the full screen and there was a humanoid figure, a female one. Apparently I must have been trying to manoeuvre some of the limbs during a 3D exercise or something and somehow I’d become distracted and closed the window before I’d finished what it was that I was going. Now that I was in this full-screen I could read all the notes and see which would be the best way to resolve the issue with which the error message was dealing.

It goes without saying that in the middle of the night I didn’t actually switch on the computer. But manoeuvring … "PERSONoeuvring" – ed … the limbs of 3D characters is something that I did quite often when I was working in 3D down on the farm.

Then there was that I had to put a fascia panel across underneath the fridge and the model initiative size before its transform so that I know where everything should be

This of course makes no sense at all, but then what does? As we have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … There are all kinds of rubbish that comes to the fore during my nocturnal rambles … "and not just then either" – ed … But the fascia panel reminds me of something that I saw when I was looking at kitchens. A plinth of wood to cover the feet of the units, four metres long by about ten centimetres wide, will cost me €39:00

Later on I had another visit during the night. I was actually in hospital. At one stage in my life I’d fathered a child with someone but the relationship didn’t stick and the mother and I went our separate ways. I was in hospital last night and into my room came the sister of this girl and her mother and my little daughter who was about three or four with a couple of other small kids. I chatted to them all because I liked them. My daughter climbed onto my bed, standing there having quite a long chat about her birthday, what she’d had for her birthday, what she was going to do with her birthday money and everything like that. It was a lovely dream.

It’s a question that I’ve often been asked – "do you have any kids?" and my response is always the same – "none that I know of – no-one has come knocking on the door yet". Nerina didn’t want any kids – we’d had a couple of long talks about that – and that suited me at the time. It was only when Laurence, Roxanne and I set up home together in Jette that I realised just how much fun kids could be, especially girls. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that all kids should be girls, they should be born when they are five and at age eleven they should go into hibernation until they reach eighteen.

And then we were on holiday somewhere. We started off by going in a car and it was evening. We were driving towards Chester and came to Bluestones crossroads and turned right up the A51. We were heading towards the reservoir and noticed that the traffic had stopped so we stopped too. I could see the lights in the distance – this was a huge, enormous queue of vehicles that stretched for miles. We began to think about turning round and going back across country via Worleston, that way. Just then, a lorry came down pulling a bus with it and the bus had all been smashed in. There was another breakdown vehicle behind it pulling something else. Then the police came and told everyone to go back. They had us roll backwards down the hill towards Bluestones again so I let off our handbrake to roll back and all of a sudden rolled at an incredible rate of speed almost out of control. I really had to apply the brakes to make it stop but for that little moment it was frightening.

It was frightening too, I can tell you. I can still see it now.

And finally, I stepped back into that dream again. There was a group of us and we were going on holiday again. This time we were back at the hotel where we had started and a bus pulled up, dropped off a load of people and went again. A few minutes later another bus from the same company, one in Calveley, dropped people off as well. We wondered if this was anything to do with the accident and these people were maybe passengers on one of those buses that had been in an accident and the bus had brought me here. This time we left again and boarded a bus, an old double-decker. I was with two other guys so I grabbed a pair of seats with a free one in front but they all wanted to sit at the back. I looked round but there was no place to sit at the back so they couldn’t really do that anyway. Then we set off and were out doing something and all came back. We’d been through a forest and had been told to be careful in the forest. There were these people gathering the old decayed wood and burning it. One of them was pushing some kind of load and came to a T-junction in the forest path but instead of stopping, they just went straight on and straight through the undergrowth opposite the T-junction. We thought to ourselves “that’s not being careful, is it?”. Then we heard some music, trumpets and trombones. We had a look and it was one of these West Indian marching bands in the forest playing their instruments to entertain the workers presumably. We thought “we’d seen these on the road a little earlier. I wonder what they are doing here”. We came back to the bus and we boarded it. I grabbed three seats but the other two guys complained that they wanted to sit at the back but there was only one seat free at the back so again I wasn’t quite sure how they were all going to manage to sit at the back.

Why there should be a West Indian marching band in a forest in the UK is totally beyond my comprehension. As for the bus though, I travelled on loads of Crosville “K-series” buses, the type that they had before the Lodekka with the five-eater bench seats upstairs and the aisle down the offside. Crash boxes and manual steering, they were wicked beasts and once someone worked out the principle of the cranked axles so that they could drop the floors by a foot and the Lodekkas arrived, they soon all disappeared.

The nurse tells me that I need new compression socks – the ones that I have are wearing out rapidly, he seems to think. So as I don’t go near my doctor’s these days, I set him the task of persuading my doctor to write out a prescription.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’ve finished our guided tour of Dursley Castle and have gone north to Durham. At the moment we’re talking about the history of Durham Castle and at least, the history of these places is interesting, but I don’t imagine that it will be too long before we have the guided tour.

Back in here I attacked the Welsh homework and one of the things that I had to do was to write a review of a film that deals with Crime and Punishment so I chose THE ITALIAN JOB, one of my favourite films. There was a second option, which was to write about famous criminals in your area. I considered that option for a moment but I decided to let someone else write my life story.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and it was a good job that she was early because so was the taxi. It was my favourite taxi driver, back from her holiday and the two other passengers with me in the car with her, we were regaled with tales of her holiday adventures.

The ‘phone rang en route. It was the hospital in Paris telling me that according to the hospital register I’m expected on Monday 5th May in the afternoon so I need my dialysis in the morning. But ominously, they have arranged a session of dialysis for me there on the Thursday. That is ominous. It looks as if it’s going to be a long stay in Paris.

We arrived early at dialysis and had to wait fifteen minutes for them to open the door. I was third to be plugged in and the good news was that I need only stay for three and a half hours.

While I was being dialysed I backed up the computer and while I was sorting some things out on the laptop I came across a book about the ephemeral railway line near where I used to live in the Auvergne. It took forty years to agree to build it, ten years to build and lasted just eight years before it closed down.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came for a chat to see how I was doing, which was nice of her. I mentioned to her about Paris but I’m not going to confirm it until I have a formal summons in my sweaty little mitt.

My taxi was waiting for me when I was unplugged and we had a nice, chatty drive back home. My cleaner was waiting for me and helped me upstairs. And wasn’t it lovely to be back home at 18:35?

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with veg and pasta followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake with soya dessert. There’s plenty of stuffing left for the next few days too.

Now I’m off to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow. I need to be on form.

But before I go, one of the things that Emilie the Cute Consultant mentioned was this stomach x-ray that has been prescribed for me at the end of May.
"Why are they doing that?" she asked.
"I’ve no idea" I replied."I imagined that you had prescribed it"
"It’s nothing that I have asked them to do" she answered
"And there I was" I said "thinking that you wanted to see more of me. And let’s face it, once you’ve seen the contents of my stomach there’s not an awful lot more of me left that you won’t have seen"

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Monday 31st March 2025 – THAT WAS MUCH …

… more like it at the dialysis centre this afternoon. Julie the Cook’s plan of putting an ice-pack on my arm for ten minutes and changing the size of the needles, and Emilie the Cute Consultant’s plan to connect me up in another part of my arm combined this afternoon to make it one of the least painful sessions that I have ever had.

Something else that was comparatively painless was going to bed last night. I might not have beaten my old 23:00 curfew but I was certainly in bed and asleep before midnight. The timestamp on one of the recordings on the dictaphone confirms that.

At one point I did awaken though – to throw off the fleece that I’ve been wearing in bed this last week or so. It’s been comparatively warm this last day or two and last night, for the first time, the warmth carried on through the night.
"Sumer is iceumen in
Lhude sing cuccu"
and all that.

When the alarm went off, I was dead to the World and it was a valiant struggle to my feet and into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up. And a shave and change of clothes too! After all, who knows? I might meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After giving my old clothes a good scrub in the sink I went into the kitchen for the medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

Last night I was out driving taxis. I can’t remember all that much about it because it disappeared quite quickly when I awoke but there was something about me going off to fetch my evening meal. It was something on toast. I had to wait for my evening meal until I’d taken £30:00 so far on that particular shift but it was something of a slow night and I seem to have been waiting for ever. Eventually I took my excuse of everyone else and went home to have something on toast for tea.

Just recently I seem to have been spending a lot of my sleeping hours driving taxis. I’m not quite sure why because I won’t ever drive again so even if I were to have any ambitions in that respect, they would be thwarted immediately. Perhaps that’s why I’m dreaming – I’m pining for the open road.

That dream about taxi driving, I stepped back into it later on. The taxi driving was some kind of cover for a real criminal event that was stealing women and selling them off into slavery in the Middle East. This had been going on for several years. The police finally latched onto the trail of something so these two people discreetly hid out of the way in their town somewhere and the police chased after whoever it was who they were chasing. They had some extremely interesting chases and captures but these two people still eluded them. However a couple of policemen were watching them for some reason or other but this man and wife were doing nothing particularly illegal but the police were interested in them. One day during one of these big car chases something happened that led one or two of the police cars to return to the town. At the time, these two people were sitting in an open-air restaurant halfway up a mountain near a U-bend on a main road. They were having a meal with these two policemen watching them from another table. Suddenly, they were surprised by this police car coming back and coming up this road. The police car stopped outside this restaurant and the two guys went over to talk to it to make their report. They indicated to the policeman where these two people were sitting so of course these two people began to panic

There are quite a few stories I could tell you about that too, not concerning me, I hasten to add. However I once had an extremely uncomfortable encounter with several taxi drivers in the back of Hanley once when I was engaged in a completely different activity shortly before leaving for Europe, and shots were fired

later on I was on board the train again going to Moncton. It pulled into the station at wherever it is … "Matapedia" – ed … and they announced “terminus – all change”. I suddenly realised that the train was running on the winter timetable and the train stopped here. Everyone went on by bus. I had to find my shoes and put them on, sort out my baggage. There was another guy there who was making ready to leave so I said “we’re on the winter timetable now” to which he replied “yes”. I showed him one train trip on a strip that I had cut out. I said “my friends back in the UK can’t believe that this is the winter timetable”. he burst out laughing, shook his head and said that it was sad. “yes” I replied “and the worst of it all is that they think that this is one train per day, not one train per winter”. We had a chat about Canadian Railways. He asked where I was from so I told him “near Manchester”. We had quite a lengthy chat on board the train about nothing whatsoever while we waited for the bus to arrive to carry us on.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall OUR LEGENDARY JOURNEY ON CANADIAN RAILWAYS to Moncton and back in 2022.And shame as it is to say it, Canadian Railways are a national disgrace and an embarrassment to a developed country. I’m used to travelling on state-of-the-art high-speed trains all over Europe, but what passengers are offered in Canada is more like state-of-the-Ark equipment. Apart from a small handful of commuter lines around Montréal and the city of Québec, there is just one passenger train east of Montréal, and that runs just three days every week to Halifax. In any civilised country, the equipment used on that service would have been sent for scrap years and years ago. We crawled along at an average speed of 35mph from Montréal to Moncton and I was on that blasted train for almost 20 hours. Then I had to wait three hours for a four-hour bus trip to take me to the family pile. If you don’t have a car in North America, you have some very major problems to confront.

Isabelle the Nurse didn’t stay around for very long today. It’s her final day before her break so I imagine that she had plenty of blood tests and injections to handle with people refusing to let her oppo do the.

But once she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’ve reached a very interesting point in the book today. We’re discussing languages and he seems to think that the syntax and sentence order in Welsh is very similar to the sentence order in some North African dialects. He quotes one researcher, saying that "he finds the similarities between Old Egyptian and neo-Celtic syntax to be astonishing ; he shows that practically all the peculiarities of Welsh and Irish syntax are found in the Hamitic languages."

Why that’s important is because there have been traces of common bone structure between some North African people, some Iberian people and some Brythonic people, to such an extent that it is suggested by others in more modern times that a wave of invaders that came to Britain round about 4000BC took that particular route

He goes on to consider similarities between the Babylonian temples and the pyramids etc of Egypt and then, in discussing Maeshowe on the Orkneys, he (and many, many other people have) compared the design, contruction and finishing of the chamber at Maeshowe with some of the pyramids.

According to later research, Maeshowe was constructed in about 3000BC and was abandoned round about 2500BC in dramatic fashion, with personal possessions left behind.

It can’t have escaped your notice that if work began on Stonehenge round about 2600BC in a much less skilful fashion, it would be likely to have been built by different people from a different part of Europe, unaccustoned to the fine proto-Egyptian work. And according to my invasion cheat-sheet, the Beaker people arrived in Britain round about that time. One modern researcher who carried out a DNA analysis "calculates that Britain saw a greater than 90% shift in its genetic make-up" in other words, some pretty ruthless ethnic cleansing.

Back in here I had things to do and was still doing them when my cleaner arrived to fit my anaesthetic patches. The taxi came early too, but it was not to my advantage because we then had to go out and about to pick up two other people.

At the clinic I was one of the last to arrive so of course I was one of the last to be plugged in. But the good news was that the amount of water to be lost was just marginally under the three-and-a-half hour limit so I would be home early tonight

Apparently I have been allocated a personal nurse who will handle my dossier and it’s Julie the Cook who has drawn the short straw. She filled me in on what that implies before she went home. And apparently it does NOT include soothing my fevered brown.

She’s arranged an appointment in May for me to have a scan and x-ray on my stomach. Whatever for, I have no idea. I prefer not to know.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came for a little chat today which was nice of her. She can come to chat to me any time she likes of course.

The hospital at Paris rang me up too. This appointment that I’m supposed to be having, its not with the Haematologist but with the Neurologist so the dialysis centre will have to organise something with them.

There were a few wobbles this afternoon at a couple of moments but I kept on going until the end. But any hopes of being home early evaporated as there was another medical emergency, this time involving someone else and all the nurses dashed off.

A nice chatty driver brought me home in the sunshine and it was pleasant to be back in the warm daylight. I stood outside without a jacket for a few minutes and soaked up the air.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by orange, gigner and coconut cake with soya dessert.

Welsh tomorrow of course, and I have a lot to revise so I need to put in another good effort. But right now, I’m off to bed

But seeing as we are talking about my train trip in Canada … "well, one of us is" – ed … there were three Americans and three Canadians sitting together on my train to Moncton The Americans had a ticket each but the Candians had only one between them
"How’s that going to work?" asked the Americans
"Wait and see" replied the Canadians.
When the inspector came down the aisle the Americans prepared their tickets while the Canadians dashed into the toilet.
After chacking the Americans, the inspector knocked on the toilet door and one Canadian slid the ticket out underneath. The inspector stamped it and walked on.
On the return trip back to Montréal, they were there again.
This time the Americans had only one ticket, but the Canadians had none
"How’s that going to work?" asked the Americans
"Wait and see" replied the Canadians.
When the ticket inspector came down the aisle the Americans dashed off into the toilet
The Canadians sauntered slowly along to the toilet in the next carriage but on passing the toilet where the Americans were hiding, one of them knocked on the door and said "ticket, please?"

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