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Sunday 7th December 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

… to bed last night, I was looking forward to a really good sleep and a nice lie-in until the nurse arrives and shakes me awake at about 08:45.

And I deserved it too. What with the football running late and my own lack of effort and motivation, it was quite late – long after midnight – when I finally crawled off to bed. It seemed to take an age to finish off everything that needed finishing.

But cruel fate intervened last night, as it so often does. Firstly, it was another one of those nights where it didn’t seem as if I’d been to sleep at all. I just seemed to be lying there in a kind of semi-conscious daze throughout the night.

Secondly, round about 06:00, I was wide-awake and it was totally impossible to go back to sleep, no matter how much I tried. Round about 06:50, I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

Being up and about at that time on a Sunday morning, I took full advantage and dictated all of the outstanding radio notes. Unfortunately, not being able to see clearly at that time of the morning, I made something of a mess of them and they will take a good while to sort out.

After the usual visit to the bathroom, I wandered off into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and to take my morning medication, and it was there in the kitchen that the nurse found me.

He was quite upset that I hadn’t taken advantage of the bed, and to be honest, so was I, but it can’t be helped. Anyway, he sorted out my legs and was soon gone.

Once he’d left, I could make my breakfast (including the last of my homemade croissants) and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, he is talking about a road that leads to Berwick-upon-Tweed but notes that "it is between 50 and 60 miles long, and no part of it appears to be mentioned in the Itinerary of Antonine." – the Iter Britanniarum.

Most people these days date the Iter Britanniarum to the reign of Caracalla on the grounds that many of the roads that are described within did not exist in Antonine’s time. So if the Iter Britanniarum really was prepared in the time of Caracalla, this road here must be a really late addition to the road network

He also talks about Chew Green, right on the border between England and Scotland. There, he tells us that "there is a complication of camps. A camp, 330 yards square, is overlapped by another camp, 330 yards by 200 yards, and encloses three smaller camps, one of which, about 110 yards square, is more strongly entrenched than the others. ".

Of course, with a description like that, I had to go for a look. And THIS WAS WHAT I FOUND. It’s another magnificent sight. You’ll see the modern track running from north-northwest to south-southeast. If you look slightly to the west of it, north of the fort with all of the defences, you can make out the track of the Roman road.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe. And once more, I was surprised at how much there was to transcribe. In this dream, I’d hired a new cleaner. I was showing her around the place and telling her what I would like to have done. I mentioned to her that I had two kittens and they spent a lot of time asleep, and if they were asleep, the best thing to do was to leave them where they are and not touch them. Just let them sleep until they awaken. That was as far as I went into this dream.

God help me if I ever have to hire a new cleaner. I am really lucky with the one whom I have, and I shall be lost without her. Yes, and I would love to have a cat, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed ….

There were three of us, and we were having to trek to this mountain that was in the distance. It was really snowy and a deep winter but we were on our journey. I was the smallest of the three so I was the one at the back while the two others were wading through the snow to make a trail. We passed into a forest and we could see the mountain, ohh, a hundred miles away in the distance, but we continued on our trek. At one point we came across a firefly that was buzzing around in our tracks. We thought that if it is going to report to its maker or whatever, then we would be in difficulty. However, it buzzed around us for a short while and we could push on. We then arrived in Crewe, but by this time, there were two of us and a girl. We climbed down into Earle Street near where Tiko’s used to be, and there was a Native American going past on his horse. We asked him if he ever went out to the Navajo country. He replied that he didn’t. We mentioned something about looking for a guide, but he gave us a very long lecture about white men pushing into his territory, how his people had had enough and how they were going to go on the warpath. This girl made a few comments to him in what was apparently his native language. He listened to her but it didn’t mollify his stance anyway. Later on, we learned that he had in fact gone onto the warpath and was busy devastating the homes and ranches of many settlers out there in what was formerly his hunting ground.

This was like a trek in LORD OF THE RINGS when everyone was going on a quest. But presumably, the Native American has to do with what I was reading the other week.

And then, I was living in Brussels and after all of the money that I’d spent on my kitchen and my nice apartment, my landlord was giving me notice to leave. That was extremely depressing. As it happened, the telephone rang so I had to go out and do some taxi work. At one point, I found myself not too far away from the free newspaper offices where they had all kinds of adverts, so I decided to go there and talk to someone to see what they had for apartments to let. Luckily, there was a parking space outside so I went in. The first thing that the guy asked me for was the number and reference, which I didn’t have. He said that if I hadn’t booked an appointment over the ‘phone, I couldn’t be seen, so I left. I picked up a couple of passengers after that. They wanted to go to various hotels around the city. The first one, I had a rough idea where it was but I almost ended up driving past it. The second one, I managed to drop the people off outside the door, and then I went back for my breakfast. While I was squeezing my lemon, a girl came in. She said something like “that’s my lemon squeezer.” I replied that I thought that it was mine, so we had a discussion about the lemon squeezer. Then, the two people from the hotel came in. I was talking about going back out after I’d had my breakfast, but they were surprised. They didn’t realise that I worked all day. They just thought that I worked an eight-hour shift or something. Then, a couple more people came in. They were musicians on their way to a performance in Germany. They had a video of themselves pulling up at some hotel in Germany and having to unload everything out of the car, including a bike, when it came to going into their room, and how the corridors were so small and winding that they damaged the walls and they damaged their equipment and they damaged their possessions as they found their room. I don’t know if I dictated … "no, you didn’t" – ed … but right at the end of that dream about the hotel and taxiing and Brussels, I was trying to write a note for a friend of mine, asking if she was coming up to see me, to bring me a copy of the “Vlan” and if she could make sure that I had a copy of the “Vlan” every week when it came out.

This ties in with a dream that I had a while ago about living in Brussels and having two apartments. However, I owned both of those. At one time though, I was thinking of fitting out the kitchen upstairs, and I’m glad that I didn’t; otherwise, I would have lost all of my investment when I moved downstairs.

It must have been an interesting discussion, arguing about a lemon squeezer. And here we are, taxiing again. What’s going on here?

Back in my comfortable office chair, there were the highlights of Stranraer v Stirling Albion to watch. And how the score ended up 3-2 to Stranraer, I really don’t know. Stranraer hit the woodwork half a dozen times, had half a dozen shots cleared off the line, and the Stirling Albion keeper was in outstanding form, saving another dozen or so point-blank efforts.

As for Stirling Albion, they had just two shots on target …

After a disgusting drinks break, I began to edit one of the sets of radio notes, but I found a problem – the left-hand track was eight seconds shorter than the right. It seems that it stopped recording for a short while in mid-stream. It took quite a bit of cutting and pasting in order to add exactly the right amount of speech back in and to synchronise it.

There wasn’t much time to do it either, because I had to knock off and make a start on my Christmas pudding. It took all afternoon to prepare it, too. Then I had to steam it for over three hours in a pan of boiling water.

While it was steaming, I made my pizza. And it was another really delicious one. And once again, I could only manage half of it. It’s worrying, actually, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. When I had my appetite, I was eating about two hundred and fifty grammes- worth of base, with all of the associated toppings. These days, I’m managing about eighty grammes of base, less than one-third.

So right now, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, and I don’t feel at all like it, but then, that’s par for the course, isn’t it?

But seeing as we have been talking about the Roman camps at Chew Green … "well, one of us has" – ed … during the excavation of the site, they found two skeletons together in the same grave. They were totally undamaged, and there were no weapons or armour among the grave goods.
"It looks as if they didn’t die fighting" said the chief archaeologist. "Not even amongst themselves in their grave."
"Ah well" said his assistant"they haven’t got the guts, have they?"

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Wednesday 3rd December 2025 – ISN’T IT NICE …

… to have a day off without having to rush around to various medical appointments, physiotherapy and all of the like?

It was definitely what I would call a “relaxing day”.

Having said that, of course, it would have been nicer had I managed to have had an early night to go with it (regardless of whether I wake up early or not) but that was, unfortunately, rather too much to expect. By the time that I’d finished my notes, the statistics and the backing-up and been to the bathroom, it was as near as 23:30, which makes no difference

That’ll teach me to fall asleep when I’m writing my notes.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, but I awoke on a couple of occasions at some crazy time of early morning. Although I managed to go back to sleep on a couple of occasions, the final time, at 05:40, I was not so fortunate.

After tossing and turning in bed for a while, at about 06:10 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. A stagger into the bathroom to clean myself up, and then another stagger into the kitchen to make my hot honey, ginger and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was out walking again and came over the top of a hill and was walking down this cobbled road that took me into this medieval town. It was a steep hill down, and from the top, I could see right over this city. I slowly reached down to the bottom, where, lying on its side, was this absolutely enormous motorbike scooter type of thing that was being used as an advertisement but had fallen over. They had five or six motorbikes that were attached to it by a rope. What they did was to set off on the motorbikes and begin to pull this motorbike. It went upright and it pull-started the engine. When it pull-started the engine, someone climbed up onto it and they disconnected all the motorbikes. Someone was extremely angry because what had happened had wrecked his Honda Benly. When I looked, there were three or four Honda Benlys, two of them with police fairings on. I’d never seen that many Honda Benlys in one place at any one time. As I walked off further on, this scooter had now become a huge articulated American bus which was being transformed into a hot dog stand or something like that. There was a message painted on the side of it – “why don’t you Europeans realise that we Americans love ‘great’?” It was certainly huge, this thing.

This was a surreal dream, that’s for sure, this giant scooter or motorbike. You wouldn’t be likely to see a Honda Benly being used as a police bike, though. They were the first of the high-revving 125cc twins that Honda imported into the UK, back in the early 1960s. I had one even earlier than that, a grey import that came into the UK as a personal possession of a sailor. I wonder where it is now, though. A friend of mine was looking after it while I sorted myself out during an “accommodation crisis”, but we had a dispute over some matter or other and I haven’t seen him, or the bike, since.

I was with a group of people and we were pulling some horse-drawn waggons. We went up this really incredibly steep hill, these waggons struggling to move up, but when we reached the top, we could see that there was one of these small Mexican towns below us so we went down very carefully. The contents of our waggons excited some kind of attention but we were sufficiently armed to keep everything at bay. We noticed that there were a few white women down there being mistreated. They had obviously been caught during some kind of border raid etc by these bandits. At first, we ingratiated ourselves with the bandits, but somehow at night, we managed to slip out. By this time, we had an armoured column with a jeep, a few lorries, several tanks and a couple of support vehicles and we headed off towards Granville. I remember saying to someone that all this action is going to take place in an area that I know really well. We drove north, and there was some kind of incident at a cross-roads but whether that was before we climbed that hill or not, I don’t know. We carried on travelling north, and at a fuel station at the side of the road, we pulled in and refuelled all the vehicles. One thing that I noticed was that we fuelled the vehicles from our own supplies and not from the fuel in the fuel station. I thought that that was a strange decision to make. As we were about to rejoin the road again, we saw another column in the distance, so we waited. It was the column of an American general, so we waited until his column had passed and we slipped into the rear of it. In the meantime, these bandits had recovered and were absolutely furious that we’d managed to escape and taken their prisoners with us. So that set out on our tail. Being much more mobile than we were, they were very, very likely to catch us before we’d gone very far

When I was typing this out, I had a feeling of déjà vu and I’m surprised that I mentioned it in the dream. I know where this road junction is – I can see it now. It’s the one in between the hospital roundabout and the roundabout at the start of the ring road. And what I can see in my mind is a pile of dead bodies scattered about all over the place as if they have been caught in an ambush.

The bit about the waggons and the Mexican village seems to relate to the film THE WILD BUNCH, which, despite the negative rating given by many critics, is in my opinion one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Fleeing from the Mexicans in an armoured column means nothing to me, though.

The nurse turned up early and sorted out my legs for me. He didn’t have much to say for himself today and was soon gone, leaving me to make my breakfast and to read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

At the moment, we’re stuck up on the Yorkshire Moors, trying to decipher the story behind Wade’s Causeway. This is a metalled road that leads to precisely nowhere, as fas as anyone has ascertained. Geographically, its line seems to point towards an empty bay on the coast, which is in a straight line from the end of the known road. Codrington thinks that that’s bizarre because there was a known Roman signalling station at Whitby, just along the coast, so why didn’t the road point in that direction?

In fact, every historian has a different opinion about the road, and some don’t even think that it was a road but a collapsed border wall of the kind of Hadrian’s Wall. Others are not convinced that it’s Roman, and that it might even date back as far as Neolithic times

After he left, I came back in here.

While I was going through the football news, I came across A MOST AMAZING INCIDENT IN WELSH FOOTBALL. at Mochdre along the Welsh coast.

Like everyone else who has read the article, I am gripping the edge of my seat in eager anticipation of finding out just exactly what the referee did or was alleged to have done!

To celebrate my day off, there was a pile of soundbytes of quite some length that had accumulated over the last couple of weeks so I set about cutting them into individual soundbytes. That took an age and it wasn’t until about 17:00 and two disgusting drinks breaks that I’d actually finished.

Mind you, I could have finished earlier but unfortunately, round about 15:00, I’m afraid that I crashed out for an hour or so. I thought that with dialysis and having organised a less-active life for myself this last few days, I would have been over all of this, so that was a disappointment.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sorting out the music for the new radio programme, editing, remixing, pairing and then seguing the songs. Tomorrow, I’ll start to write the text and hope that I’ll have the time to finish it so that I can dictate it for the next early morning.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta followed by ginger cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed.

Dialysis in the afternoon tomorrow, so I’d better be in good shape for it. I don’t want to go back to three times per week if I can possibly avoid it.

Anyway, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about motorbikes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ll tell you a true (and it really is true, too) story about a friend of mine on the Wirral who is a big biker-type of person.
He had been complaining for quite a while about how his wife didn’t understand him. But one day, things began to improve and he began to feel much better.
"What’s cheered you up?" I asked him.
"Well, our marriage has been on the rocks for a while because of her lack of interest in my hobbies, but things have changed" he replied. "I had a long talk with some friends, and I ended up getting a Harley-Davidson 883cc Sportster for her."
"Blimmin’ ‘eck" I replied. "That is just one hell of a good swap, that is!"

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Monday 24th November 2025 – THESE LONG SESSIONS …

… at dialysis are quite difficult to bear, but I’m going to push ahead with them all the same for as long as I can, especially if it means that I can have an extra day at home.

By the time that I made it back home this evening, I was totally exhausted, and it was just as well that my tea tonight was already prepared without any intervention on my part.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. By the time that I was finally ready for bed, it was about 23:20 and there have been nights much later than that in the past.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed. I’d no idea what time it was that I awoke because I didn’t check the time as I usually do. But I was contemplating having a quick glance at the time when BILLY COTTON beat me to it; so it can’t have been too far short of 06:29.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to find my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom. In the kitchen, I made my got lemon, ginger and honey and drink to go with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

It’s surprising how much there was on there too, considering that I remember nothing at all. There were different kinds of spraying machines. I counted about three different types, and for one type, water came out of the jets with such force that it lifted the pipework up off the ground. Someone wanted to know the name of that type of thing, and I knew it but I couldn’t think of it. It was something like the Douche Marie or something. I was wracking my brains for ages and I couldn’t actually think of another name by which that kind of machine is called.

Everyone has seen these videos, I imagine, of people holding two Kärcher pressure washers, one in each hand, and being lifted off the ground by the force of the water. It was something like that.

And then I was on my way to a family wedding. I arrived at some different town and was walking through there looking for the place to go. I came across a bathroom so I thought that I’d nip in there and read the time, but it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see what time it was. But my mother was there. She stuck her head in and saw me, and was about to say something but she changed her mind and walked away. After I’d finished sorting out some water, I went into the main room. There was all my family and everyone whom I knew so I simply said “hello, people”, found an empty chair and sat down … fell asleep here … and anyway, so they were sending meals around at some point during all the speeches. My meal came on my black glass chopping board. I thought that this was unusual. There’s a special name for a meal that’s served like this but I couldn’t think of it at the time and I still can’t now.

As if I’m ever likely to go to a family wedding. But why would my black glass chopping board feature in one of my dreams like this?

There was a taxi to go to the station but the taxi was hours late arriving. We were all beginning to panic about this. We’d made enquiries about walking there but I’d have to change partner thirteen times between my house and the station. There was me, my girlfriend, my brother and his girlfriend or wife and we were waiting. Another taxi turned up for someone else so we asked about ours. The driver decided that he would go back to the depot and find out what was going on, and my brother went with him. Just then, our taxi turned up so I shouted to my brother but he didn’t really pay too much attention – he was too busy on the ‘phone. So we went somewhere into the vehicle, but there were some things like some plastic hurdle fences in there so we’d have to fight our way around them to get into the car. For some reason, I sat in the front instead of in the back with my girlfriend. The car set off and after we’d been driving for a couple of minutes, I noticed that my brother wasn’t on board. I asked what happened to him, and one of the girls said that he had decided to run. I thought that thirteen changes of partner was a lot, but it’s bound to be more now. This is making life extremely complicated to reach the railway station on time before the train that we wanted departs.

These dreams of indecision are a regular feature of my nocturnal rambles, but it’s usually to do with my activities rather than someone else’s. And who was the girlfriend? Fancy having a girlfriend in my dreams and not knowing who she is. That’s a sad state of affairs.

There was a film being shown somewhere. I had a friend of mine round and I recommended to him that he went to see it, because it was an extremely classic film. I was away – I had some taxi jobs to do – so I went to pick up a family from a poor area of Crewe and they actually had a copy of the book and one of the kids was taking it with him to read. So off they went and off we went. A short while later, I had to go to take them home. I’d picked up my friend from the cinema in the meantime and when I reached the home to drop off these people, I saw that the boy put this book in the waste paper bin. I picked it up and said that before I go, I’ll mention to the family to see if I could borrow this. We went off somewhere else and while we were driving, I noticed that the book was on my dashboard. I’d mentioned that I was going to ask to borrow it but it looks like I already have.

The film was actually THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, based on A BOOK OF THE SAME NAME written by Erskine Childers. The book is much, much better than the film, even if Jenny Agutter is in the film. It concerns a couple of amateur yachtsmen who stumble across a rehearsal for a German invasion of the UK just before World War I. I actually have a copy of the book.

Ironically, when Childers was serving in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, he carried out many patrols over the area from where the invasion was said to take place. However, he came to a sticky end after the war. An ardent Republican, he was executed by the “Treaty Irish” in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War.

With that friend, he was a guitarist – he wasn’t, he was a drummer – and we were round at my house because we were going to meet some guitarist. There was a concert or gig being played and he’d been looking for a bassist and a drummer. My friend asked what kind of music we’d be playing. I said that according to this guitarist, it would just be basic, well-known twelve-bar standards. He asked whether this person was a boy or a girl, and I said “I don’t really know. I’ve never actually met who it was”. We set off and reached this rehearsal hall and there were several people there. I gave some stuff to whoever was in charge to make a meal. He looked, and told us of four or five things that were missing. So we piled into this car, and had another girl with us and we set off for the shops. I suddenly realised that the Intermarché in Pionsat was much closer so we went to the Intermarché at Pionsat and wandered round, picking up the things that we needed. I noticed that at the till, there was a bin full of reduced stock. I looked in, and there was a huge tin of custard powder there for sale for €3:01. I thought “it’s a long time since I’ve had some real custard” so I added that onto the list too. There we were, with all this food that we’d bought and I thought that at this rate, these rehearsals are going to be over and it’s not really worth going back because it’s taken us so long to do all this shopping.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find a giant tin of vegan custard powder somewhere? I’m having to make do with a sweetened béchamel sauce with vanilla flavouring and it’s not the same.

The nurse turned up as usual, but he didn’t stay long. He goes off on his week’s break this evening so I imagine that he wanted to finish his rounds as quickly as possible. I could then push on with making breakfast.

This morning, I finished MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

In the past, we’ve talked about how certain words in the English language have changed their meaning over the passage of time. At least, I hope that that’s the case here when she talks about the commemoration of the battles up on the Bozeman Trail, saying "It is well the programme was no longer, or I should run out of expletives"

And like the previous Mrs Carrington, she has no sense whatever of irony. She notes, when talking about the area in which the battles took place, that "it is not to be forgotten that the Sioux themselves had stolen it from the Crow Indians" and "many of the Sioux, themselves, were beginning to realise that their occupation had been one of force, and not of inherent right."

Just what, exactly, was the American army doing up on the Bozeman Trail in 1866? Pot calling the kettle “black”, methinks.

She also notes a report from one of the contemporary local newspapers in Sheridan, that "the time ought to come before many years, and will come, if the present policy is carried out, when the Indians will have the same rights and duties as other Americans"

That was written in 1909 and we are still waiting even now for this to come to pass.

Back in here, I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off, and then I spent the rest of the morning revising for the lesson tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and that I had to wait for the taxi. Not only was it running late, due to a weird decision by the controller to insist that the driver took her break in the middle of nowhere, we had to pick up in Donville les Bains and then miles out on the road to Villedieu.

As a result, I was quite late arriving but at least, I was connected up quite quickly without having to wait around.

Or so I thought. One of the needles failed and they had to start again later.

Apart from a brief visit from the doctor, I was left pretty much alone, and when I was finally unplugged, the driver was already waiting for me.

Back here, my cleaner helped me back to the apartment, then after she left, I warmed up the half-pizza from last night. It’s even nicer twenty-four hours later.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover from my recent efforts. And I need a decent recovery because I’m still quite exhausted and I can’t see it ending.

But seeing as we have been talking about invasions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Duke of Wellington was told during the Napoleonic Wars that a prominent group of citizens planned to form a regiment of volunteer cavalry "but not to be sent overseas".
With one of his usual scathing remarks, he replied "except in the case of invasion, I suppose."

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Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

… of mine seems to be starting to bear fruit. At dialysis this afternoon, I was asked "do you still want to do three sessions per week of three hours, or to try two sessions of four hours and see how it goes?".

As a consequence, for the foreseeable future I have my Saturday afternoons back, assuming that all goes well. Of course, if it doesn’t, they will think again but let’s enjoy the moment for now.

It’s about time that I had some good news because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

It wasn’t such good news last night, though. Once more, despite trying my best, I was late going to bed. I really don’t know why I can’t seem to concentrate on things like this these days.

And once in bed, I might have been asleep quite quickly but it wasn’t for long because I was wide-awake again at 03:10. At some point I must have gone back to sleep but I awoke again at about 04:30 and that time, it seemed to be for good. I lounged around in bed for some time but at about 05:30 I called it a night and left the bed.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, I went into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to accompany my medication. That drink really is wicked

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was something like a LORD OF THE RINGS adventure. Several people had gone into a large cave deep underground to liberate some kind of sacred, heavy chain. When they took out the chain, they made something of a noise and several enemies began to appear. These were the typical gruesome Middle-Earth type of enemies and these people were involved in some kind of battle. But I missed out something in the middle, which was when they pulled out this huge chain, there were plenty of other things too. He ordered his men to pick these other things out and pass them to him to keep. However, many of his men wouldn’t. Some of them did, but they were definitely not happy. One of them dumped a load of this stuff onto him, over his head, as a gesture of defiance after he had made a huge noise lifting up this chain. For some reason, this attracted the evil spirits and it became a fight to the death. Eventually, someone shouted “cut!”. It was of course a Hollywood-type of movie thing that had reached the end of a scene.

Wouldn’t that be nice if it were to happen in real life – finding yourself in a really sticky, unpleasant situation and all that you need to do is to shout “cut” and it would end? But what’s going on that a situation like this has suddenly appeared?

There was also something about going on an office trip somewhere. I was going with two or three other people and we decided that I would take my cat and one of these other people would take their dog, a collie. We asked a girl whom we knew if she was coming with us. She said that she couldn’t because in the evening when they would come back, there would be nowhere to park on the market. We found that to be a strange decision and tried to persuade her, but she was adamant. We set off walking through Crewe and were at the bottom end of Victoria Street. Someone said “well, it’s at the back of the fruit shop”. So we wandered our way up Victoria Street through an alleyway into the rear of the fruit shop, which used to be the old road that went down to the Ritz Cinema. There was a marquee there, and we went in. This was where everyone was assembling to go on this office trip.

What is surprising is that I can still remember where Perry’s Fruit and Veg shop used to be in Crewe Town Centre after all these years. As for the back entry that led into the street that dropped down to the Ritz Cinema before it was all swept away in a mad fit of demolition, the dream was actually perfectly correct.

The Ritz Cinema was great though. I’d fixed the projectionist’s motorcycle once so we had free admission. We’d go there in the late afternoon fifty and more years ago to watch the brilliant films of the day. Quite often, we’d be the only people in there but when we left in the early evening, there would be queues all the way down to the old Co-op.

The nurse turned up early today. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my feet. After he left, I should have gone for breakfast but I was engrossed in something else. In the end, it was a late breakfast.

Having finished AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE by Margaret Carrington, I’ve started reading MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington.

She was Henry Carrington’s second wife after Margaret Carrington died. She was however at Fort Phil Kearny as the wife of Lieutenant Grummond, one of the soldiers who was killed with Fetterman. It will be interesting to read her take on the situation.

It has to be said though that, in marrying Carrington in 1871, just four years after the death of her first husband, she can’t have borne Carrington any ill-will.

After breakfast, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and that’s now ready. I then went and uploaded the utilities to the computer’s new drive. I’d forgotten about them.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then, while awaiting the taxi, I crashed out completely, hunched over the kitchen table. I was far-gone too and I had a real struggle to bring myself round when the taxi arrived.

We had to pick someone up at the hospital, and then we drove down to Avranches.

To my surprise, they put me in a room on my own today. And no sooner had I been installed when one of the doctors (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me and made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

It’s all conditional, of course. It depends on how much water they need to remove and if the machine can do it (it’s limited to 950 ml/hour) in the time allowed. Otherwise, it’ll be back to three sessions.

Today, they kept me for almost four hours and extracted every last drop in order to give me a head start and we’ll see what happens on Monday for my next visit.

There is a down-side to all of this, though. The reason why I was in a private room was that they sent the psychologist to see me. Never mind about what she wanted – she blanched when I described my week’s medical appointments to her. I think that she needs to see a psychologist herself now.

She told me to let her know if I want to see her again, but I think that my problems will just make her feel worse.

They eventually let me go and I was late arriving home, as expected. They had kept my blood pressure sheet so I told the nurse not to bother coming round this evening. He was delighted by that.

It took a while to sort myself out once I arrived home, but then I made tea. I wasn’t all that hungry so I had mashed potato, peas and a vegan sausage followed by a piece of this delicious ginger cake that I have made.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about FE Smith, Lord Birkenhead, just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … his off-the-cuff remarks were legendary.
When he was Lord Chancellor, a newly-appointed judge came to see him for some advice about sentencing in a case that he had been trying.
"What do you think I should give to a man who allows himself to be b****red?" asked the judge.
"Well, " said FE Smith. "Thirty shillings, two Pounds – whatever you happen to have on you at the time."

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Saturday 15th November 2025 – THIS NEW, REVITALISED …

… me from yesterday didn’t last very long. When I awoke this morning, I was back to the same state of utter fatigue that I was on Thursday morning.

Some of it might be due to the fact that I had another late night last night. It took longer than it should have done to finish off everything last night and by the time that I crawled into bed, it was about 23:20. That’s far later than I would like it to be.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, I awoke at 03:40 and, having gone back to sleep, was awake again an hour later. I even managed to go back to sleep after that, and there I was when the alarm went off at 06:29.

By that time, the fatigue had set in and it was a really difficult battle to rise to my feet.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash, scrub up and shave, just in case I meet the Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I loaded up the washing machine now that the water leak has been repaired. There are still some dirty clothes left, so the next time that I have a shower … "whenever that might be" – ed … I’ll change the bedding and then wash everything.

In the kitchen, I made my ginger, honey and hot lemon drink and then took my medicine.

What with how I was feeling this morning, everything took so long and Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise just after I’d settled down back in here. That suited her because she could take my blood pressure while I was in a fairly relaxed state. It’s not every day that that happens.

After she’d sorted out my feet, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast and read some more of AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE.

However, I was side-tracked quite quickly by the story of THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.

One thing that I have always noticed about these events is that whenever it’s a person of European descent, whether a soldier or a civilian, who is killed, it’s always described as a “massacre”. However, if it’s a Native American who is killed, whether a civilian or a fighter, it’s always described as a “battle”.

Things are, however, slowly changing and a much more objective point of view is being applied. But it’s still taking far too long for things to change.

When breakfast was over, I took out the washing from the machine and hung it on the clothes airer. And that’s another task that’s becoming more and more difficult. So much so that it didn’t look all that pretty when I’d finished.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with a group of soldiers last night. They had been doing their preliminary training. There was some talk at one time on this particular base about having a football team but the colonel in charge said that with the small number of mechanics and manual labourers, it’s unlikely that they would have enough people to make up a team. One of the captains had this idea that in the recruits’ cabins where they stayed while they were doing their basic training, he would pin up a notice about the formation of this football team. He couldn’t get enough volunteers.

Not that I am, of course, likely to be with a group of soldiers. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. if ever there were to be an armed conflict into which I would run the risk of being conscripted, I would head for the docks and the nearest Merchant Navy freighter.

Then the dream moved into France and there were several soldiers and an officer dug into a kind-of trench across a main road. All of a sudden, these three or four soldiers from this basic training platoon appeared and threw themselves into the trench. They said that they had holed up and tried to stop the German advance for as much as possible, and destroyed the road and some telegraph wires. They were now falling back to find the rest of their unit. So they were there in this slit trench thing across the road. Right down at the far end, they could just about make out a German tank that was appearing on the scene. They had had no orders to retreat so they stayed there, but the tank didn’t advance. Suddenly, there came a horse and a kind of waggon, a yellow metallic box wagon heading towards this slit trench from down at the other end of the road at full speed. They shook their heads and wondered what on earth was happening with this. As it approached them, they opened fire. They must have hit the driver because it careened across the road and crashed into the front of a house. It was a brief glance after that, that they realised that it was a Mennonite who had been driving it. Their response was that if Mennonites want to keep themselves out from this war, they shouldn’t be anywhere near the battlefield. Then, some orders came through for these three soldiers to go to a big office and search it for indecent books and destroy them before the Germans could capture the building. This seemed to be a totally pointless task to them because they would be there for hours. They wouldn’t know where to look and would be likely to be overwhelmed. Indecent literature was likely to be the least of their worries as far as the Germans were concerned. However, they went round and ripped out all of the plugs, but someone came along to tell them that this was causing confusion with the refrigeration service of the building. They didn’t really know how to proceed after that. If they stayed much longer, they would be bound to be caught. Destroying this indecent literature was a totally irrelevant part of any kind of warfare.

It’s not just old-order Mennonites but also Amish who still ride around in buggies, and there are plenty of those around the border between New Brunswick and Maine. It’s no surprise to see a horse and buggy trotting along the side of a busy, fast-moving highway.

The vehicle that was being pulled by the horse in this dream was what is called a “Lancaster waggon”, except that one of those has side windows and are usually always black. I have never seen another colour

The rest of the dream is, as usual, totally bizarre and totally meaningless.

I was in Chester with some people whom I used to know there. We’d been discussing dreams. We were sitting there talking, not too far away from where the canal passes through the city centre. After this talk had been going on for a moment, I left these people and walked up to stand on the banks of the canal. There were probably thirty or forty other people there watching. I closed my eyes and wished very hard that I was a bat. Sure enough, I was able to take off and fly around while all these people were looking. I flew around for quite some time. I then thought hard again and changed into an albatross, so I was flying up and down this canal as an albatross. Eventually, I came into land but I’d had a really good time as a flying animal, a bird or a flying mammal. I wondered if it was something that I would be able to do on a regular basis.

If only I could fly like a bat or an albatross on a regular basis. Wouldn’t that be something? But this dream was so real, and so comforting, that I actually looked to see if it was of any significance. but as usual, there are one hundred different interpretations. Each reference gives a different meaning.

After this, I added in the last of the little programs that I use, and then it was time to prepare for dialysis. My faithful cleaner applied my anaesthetic and then I packed my things ready

Although I was a little ahead of myself arriving at dialysis, after I had explained my woes to the nurses, they ran another complete check, including yet another electro-cardiac test. Consequently, I was hours late again in starting the session.

One of the doctors came to see me and I repeated my tale of woe, including the fact that all of these appointments are proving to be too much for me – especially the four sessions per day at the Centre de Ré-education.

He took a note of what I said, but he didn’t seem as is he intended to follow it up. I would love to be proved wrong, of course, but we shall see.

Being late starting, I was late returning, but that was just as well because I bumped into a member of the Residents’ Committee so I buttonholed her about the fibre-optic. The Committee tells us that the Batiments de France (this building is a listed building) are refusing to allow the walls to be drilled to pass the fibre-optic cable, but other listed buildings here have been drilled and cabled. As you can tell, we aren’t happy. ADSL terminates in a couple of months and then we will be stuck.

Isabelle the Nurse came along to take my blood pressure, and then I made tea. A very small plate of mashed potato, peas and vegan sausage. And I managed to eat it all.

So right now, I’m off to bed ready for my Day of Rest tomorrow. Not much of a Day of Rest because I have so much to do, as usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about flying … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of Frankie Howerd in UP THE CHASTITY BELT.
Frankie was always trying to invent a way of flying from the castle, but kept on crashing, despite his comment "for a perfect take-off, eat two groats worth of butter beans"
Chopper the Woodsman was always seeing him fail, and one day he remarked "his flies will be his undoing."

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Saturday 18th October 2025 – I WENT TO …

… bed early last night – before 23:00 in fact – for once. And I’m so glad that I did because not long after I’d gone to sleep, I had a special visitor come to see me. Had I gone to bed late, I would have missed her.

But more of that anon

Firstly, though, I did actually make it into bed at something like a respectable time. In fact, had I concentrated and been more motivated, I could have been in bed a good while earlier than that. However, as usual, I dillied and dallied etc. etc.

Once in bed, it took a while for me to go off to sleep and I don’t know why. I ought to have been completely wasted after my session at the Centre de Ré-education, but apparently not.

Eventually though, I did manage to drop off to sleep and although I awoke a couple of times during the night for no good reason, I awoke definitively at about 06:00.

As usual these days, it took a while to raise myself from the Dead and head off to the bathroom. And after the medication, I came back in here to see what had happened during the night.

And to my surprise, I’d had a special visitor. And she’d come quite early too so, as I said just now, I was glad that I was in bed early. Yes, I was with Castor (or, rather, she was with me) last night. We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR again. There was some kind of meeting taking place and I was one of the last to arrive. I had to struggle my way in to find a place to sit. There was a place right at the back next to Castor so I went to sit down on it, thinking that I could probably move to a more comfortable seat at some other time. As I went to sit down, the ship lurched and I ended up sitting down almost on top of her. I excused myself, and she had a smile at me and something of a laugh. I thought “maybe I don’t want to move now”. While this discussion was going on, the two of us and Castor’s friend, we were having something of a chat. We were talking about electricity. They were saying that they needed some more electricity. I was saying that Canada doesn’t have any more, what with Muskrat Falls and all of this taking so long. Then the discussion turned round to the forests, how Canada was destroying all of the forests for lumber. It moved round then to someone else connected with the events of the 11th September being found in New York and extradition to Canada being asked. It turned out that he’d advocated the massacre of all kinds of children and was described in the Press as a “loyalist”. We chatted about that for a while, and then Castor put her arm around me and cuddled up tightly to me so I put my arm around her too. I thought that this was really nice and comfortable.

Nice and comfortable? I bet it was! And how glad was I to see her? I thought that she’d dropped off the end of my dreaming cycle, just as The Vanilla Queen has, and Moonchild, who put in a flurry of rapid visits a year or so ago and hasn’t been seen since..

Muskrat Falls, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is a hydroelectric project in Labrador that we have visited on a couple of occasions. It’s vastly overdue, vastly over-budget and has been described as "one of the most controversial public project cases in Canadian history"

As for putting our arms around each other, well, you can’t turn back the clock, can you?

The “loyalists” by the way, are the supporters of the Crown during the American Revolution. We’re back with Colonel Carrington and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Someone else came to see me last night. It was Castor again. Just as I was stepping onto Her Majesty’s Steamship Pollard, we’d been asked for this incident to build shares and in this steam prop and everything so that if we were successful in capturing it, we could suppress it for a while, while these nasty ingredienty stuff is.

So did Castor appear again later? Not that it matters … "of course it does, really" – ed …
because I have no recollection at all about this. As for the Pollard, I’ve not been able to trace a ship of that name. The only Pollard whom I can recall was the captain of the “Essex”, the whaling ship that was sunk by a whale and the starving crew in one of the longboats killed and ate one of the crew members. That’s the inspiration behind the book MOBY DICK and also behind the song NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE by Mountain.

I was with my three friends with whom I travel frequently. We’d gone to Germany and had arranged to meet at a posh five-star hotel – restaurant type of place somewhere. When we arrived, and I was having difficulty with my crutches, we were welcomed by one of the waiters who escorted us to our seats. I had a special chef who had come to see me for my dietary requirements, and we had a lovely meal. Later on, we were actually on the stage, the four of us. We were singing folk songs, and there was quite a crowd there cheering us on, even when we were singing “The Rocky Shores of England” … "he means ROOTS" – ed …. It was all really enjoyable.

Not that there’s any chance of me singing folk songs praising England, of course. But news on the grapevine suggests that I may be having another visit in the Spring.

I’d been hired as some kind of umpire for a baseball team, which is crazy because I’ve never played baseball in my life. I had to go to Barony Park where, across the road, were some clay tennis courts. The team was practising on there. They all wandered off and I lay down on the floor for a relax for ten minutes. However, people came up and began to play tennis over the top of me. I had a baseball bat and I was holding it up, and if a ball came near me, it hit the bat and was deflected. When everyone came out, they presented me to the crowd and said that I’d hit every ball that had been thrown towards me. Wasn’t that brilliant? I replied “well, I’ve never ever played baseball in all my life before. That was the first time”. It was breakfast break at this time so we had to help ourselves to breakfast. This typical American buffet – it had cake, cream cake, pastries etc but I was simply looking for the muesli and some toast. I eventually found the muesli but I was still struggling for the toast. When I found the milk, which was over by the coffee, I had to ask the waiter if they had any plant-based milk but before he could reply, I awoke.

This is another one of those dreams that seems to be totally mysterious. The American buffet sounds quite interesting though, although there wouldn’t be much there for me to eat.

Isabelle the Nurse was late arriving, but she still found time for a little chat before departing again. I could then push on and make breakfast.

Back in here, there were the highlights of last night’s football matches in the Welsh Cup. However, the match that I particularly wanted to see wasn’t recorded, which was a shame.

After I’d seen all there was to see, I finished writing the notes for the joining track for the radio programme on which I’ve been working. That’s now ready to dictate, which I shall do at the first available opportunity.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to await the taxi. It was only a few minutes late but we had to drive out into the sticks to pick up someone else, so we were late arriving. And as usual, I was the last to be connected up.

The doctor, he who is in charge, was supposed to examine me for Tuesday but he barely stuck his head in the room. That was right at the very beginning of the session so I thought that he’d be doing his rounds later. However, I never saw him again.

Instead, I watched the live Cup Match. Bow Street, a little village team from mid-Wales, had fought their way through the preliminaries to this round and had drawn Y Fflint of the JD Cymru Premier Division.

They were well-outclassed but put up a brave fight and managed to keep the score down to 3-0, which, I suppose, is something of a moral victory.

One of the Bow Street players received the “man of the match” award, but it wasn’t the goalkeeper, Lewis James, which I thought was a travesty because he had done more than anyone else to keep his side in the game, as YOU CAN SEE.

For the rest of the session, I began to make up my shopping list, although I have no idea when I’m going to find the time to have it delivered.

The taxi was waiting for me when I was ready, but it was still late when I returned home. There was a reception committee awaiting me – several of the residents, including my cleaner, were having a chat at the door.

One of them offered to programme my timer for me, but after half an hour of trying, he was unable to programme it either. So it’s not just me who can’t make it work.

Mind you, it took so long, and with me being late to start with, that there was no chance of making a cooked tea. Instead, I made myself a few rounds of cheese on toast, something else that I haven’t eaten for years. And it was nice too.

But now I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow and a lie-in until 07:59 if I’m lucky, which I doubt very much.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Castor … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the story to one of the nurses at dialysis.
"What was the name of Castor’s sidekick in Greek mythology?" she asked.
"Pollux" I replied.
"Look!" she retorted. "If you don’t know, there’s no need to be rude about it!"

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Thursday 25th September 2025 – I AM DEFINITELY …

… not feeling myself today, which is just as well because it’s a disgusting habit.

But what I mean is that although there was an improvement this morning in how I was feeling after yesterday evening, the improvement didn’t last long and now I’m back to where I was.

One was of dealing with how things were yesterday was to try to dash through my notes and hope for an early night, but if only I had been able to manage it. As usual, having dillied and dallied and been side-tracked all the way, it was just as late as usual when I finally managed to fall into bed.

And what a nice bed it was too! Lovely brand-new sheets, quilt cover and pillow cases. I felt really in my element in there, and although it took a few minutes to fall asleep, I enjoyed every minute that it took.

Something else that I noticed was that when I went to turn over, I had the force to move my right leg without having to heave it over with my hand. It’s been an absolute age since I’ve been able to get my leg over without having to use my hand. I hope that it’s a good sign for the future.

It was another morning when I was awoken by the sound of the alarm. I’d slept right through until 06:29, and that can only be good news. Mind you, it was not 06:29 when I finally crawled out from under the covers, but that’s quite another story.

After a good wash, shave and scrub up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then went for the medication. It was rather a slow start in the dining area, and I was later back in here than I intended.

Once I’d settled down on my chair, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. Surprisingly, I had, but I can’t remember anything about it. I was dreaming about Cheshire’s ace master-spy, a woman called Sue who was a dancer and was used frequently to infiltrate into the hearts and minds of the Germans of the people who were leading the French Revolution who had landed in Britain in an attempt to overwhelm it. According to one of the words that was sung, she saved England from subjugation, or saved Cheshire from subjugation. One of the dancers with her had a job controlling the movement of German Reparation officers. This led to quite a lot of conflict between the two.

This would seem to relate to the book that I read during the odd moments when I’m waiting around for the taxi to take me to dialysis – THE SECRET HISTORY OF MI6. There is plenty of talk about spies and secret agents in there, although not so much about the dirty tricks that they performed.

The nurse came round as usual and he was still in this typical good mood that has persisted since he came back from holiday. I can see myself wishing that he would go away more often.

After he left, I made my usual breakfast and, once more, had a very leisurely time over it. I just can’t seem to motivate myself at the moment and I don’t know why.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I spent the rest of the morning researching some stuff for the radio programme that I’m preparing. This is another thing that’s taking far longer than it ought.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to await the taxi. He was early today but it counted for nothing, because with all of the roadworks that are covering the area at the moment, there were all kinds of diversions and hold-ups.

Today at dialysis, I persuaded them to increase the amount of extraction. We ended up with 700 grammes extra taken out, which is more like what I am hoping to see. It’s just as well, because even though it’s been three days since I’ve been dialysed, there was just officially 1500 grammes to remove.

There’s definitely something wrong with me just now with regard to my fluid and food intake. Over a three-day period, there’s usually twice that and more, so I’m glad that I managed to persuade them to extract 2200 grammes, to help me catch up with this new dry weight that they seem to be ignoring. But there’s still plenty more room to manoeuvre.

While I was being dialysed, one of the nurses came for a chat. They are all lovely and I love them all but the one who came to see me, if it had to pick one, would be my favourite, although that’s hardly fair on all the others.

She wanted to have a discussion about my implant, which is extremely difficult seeing that I don’t want to know about it, so it was rather a stilted conversation. We ended up talking about all kinds of other things, which was nice.

For a change, I didn’t have to wait all that long to be unplugged, and I was home at something of a more-reasonable time. I seemed to need less effort than usual to force myself over the hump that protects the building from rainwater running off the road, but that’s probably my imagination working overtime.

By now though, I was feeling the effects of everything and after my cleaner left, I crashed out on the chair for half an hour.

Tea was the left-over pasta from Tuesday, accompanied by a vegan burger, and now, feeling thoroughly lousy, I’m off to bed. I have the Centre de Réeducation tomorrow and I’m definitely not feeling at all like it.

So before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about the nurse, his holiday and my sentiments … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have vowed never to criticise anyone for their attempts to speak another language.
However, there are some occasions that are too good to miss.
In Brussels, all of the shops are doing their best to prepare adverts and publicity in English in order to woo the officials of the European Union and entice them into their establishments.
And so in a window of a Travel Agent’s in Jette where I used to live, was this lovely big sign that read, in huge bold characters, "WHY DON’T YOU GO AWAY?"

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Tuesday 23rd September 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting all alone in my nice apartment. My visitors have flown the nest this evening due to wanting to put some tarmac underneath their wheels. They have an appointment in Limoges tomorrow evening and so want to break the back of the journey this evening.

They had a lovely lie-in this morning, though. My alarm went off at 06:29 – yet another morning where I slept right through, out like a light – and as there were no signs of life coming from elsewhere, I cracked on and wrote yesterday’s blog entry.

By the time that I had finished, I heard sounds of movement so I went and made some coffee for everyone. While it was brewing, I went to the bathroom to sort myself out and then we sat around drinking coffee and chatting.

One thing that I learned was that my camp bed was not very comfortable. In fact, not at all comfortable. I shall not be proposing that to anyone in the future unless the unlucky recipient brings an air mattress.

The nurse was surprised to see me with a house full of women. Nevertheless, he sorted out my legs and gave me the first of this series of five injections that I have to have a week after the chemotherapy.

When he left, my visitors took turns under the shower, and the first one in found out all about the length of time it takes the hot water to run through from the water tank.

After they had showered, I had to give a couple of porridge-making lessons to my hungry visitors and we sat down and had breakfast.

Almost immediately afterwards, the bowls were whipped from the table and the washing-up was done before I could even blink an eye. I told my visitors that they can certainly come again.

We had another long chat afterwards, and then I mentioned the sheet of chipboard that needs to be … errr … lost. A brief flurry of text messages, and it was cut in half with my circular saw and stuffed into a car from where it will end up in Limoges at some point.

After a coffee, my guests wandered off for a walk, and I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of those dreams where something went on at one of the testing stations while we were stopped en route somewhere and I didn’t have enough room for all my things. They were on one of the carts. This led to an argument and one of the inspectors was knifed but I was convinced that it wasn’t me who did it.

This is another one of those dreams of which I remember nothing at all. I like the bit “I was convinced that it wasn’t me who did it”. As if I would need convincing.

We were discussing the treatment of captured women spies by different States of the USA. There were some States, like, say, South Carolina who would really just interrogate them and then let them go where there were other States that were farther north like New York that would take them very seriously and execute them. But that’s all that I remember of this particular dream because the batteries went flat in the middle of dictating it, and by the time that I’d wired it up again, all of the memory that I had was gone.

It makes me wonder what the rest of the dream that I had forgotten was all about. I suppose, however, that this dream relates to what I have been reading about the American Revolution.

One of the players on the opposite side was called for a foul, and the referee called him over. She began to talk to him about the incident but he took absolutely no notice at all. She began to become a little sterner with him but again, he just totally ignored it. She began to take out her notebook, which was an electronic notebook, but he just took it from her. A couple of us tried to intervene to take the notebook back but in the end, he just hung on to it. She was obviously not able to deal with him so she sent him off but he refused to leave, so she called the police. In the meantime, he took the notebook and went into the buffet. There was an oily salad in there. We heard him inside there, soaking this notebook in the oily salad and then taking it into the kitchen and boiling it into the pan of orange juice that someone had left. We all thought that this was the strangest thing that we had ever seen. We then heard a car pull up outside and the sound of tramping feet but it wasn’t the police at all but something else. However, they didn’t come in, so we were sitting there in this kind-of impasse waiting for the police to arrive.

Yesterday at dialysis, I was watching an old football match in the Cymru Alliance – I can’t remember now which – where female referee Cheryl Foster was officiating. A mass brawl broke out and in the end when things had calmed down, she sent off one of the players

When the alarm went off, I had some kind of metal plate, an oval type of metal plate with three screw holes in it. What I was trying to do was to screw it to something like a porcelain dish or porcelain plate. I’d already done it once in the past because there were three screw holes in the plate. However, it’s really complicated to screw into something solid and hard like that, so I had to find the exact three screws that I used last time, so I was searching through my box of loose screws, trying to find the exact three screws. The aim was that this plate would have this bracket on it, and the bracket would support a tripod, a small desktop tripod, but I had no idea why I wanted to do this.

There is actually a mini-tripod on my desk. It belongs to the webcam but since I moved down here, I’ve positioned the webcam elsewhere. But screwing something into a porcelain plate is certainly a novel idea.

When my visitors came back, I showed them where the bread and salad were, and they made themselves some cheese salad sandwiches for lunch. I settled for a disgusting drink.

We had another long chat, reminiscing about all kinds of old times from school. We were so engrossed that it took us all the way up to tea-time.

My faithful cleaner had dropped in earlier to give me some sunflower seeds and an aubergine that I had asked her to buy. The sunflower seeds, I put on one side for future bread-making activities but with the aubergine, I made an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit for tea, which went down very well.

Once more, the empty plates were whipped off the table and washed before I even had time to think.

Finally, my friends left me for Limoges, with a promise to come back to see me again. And I really do hope that I do. I don’t have anything like enough visits these days, although it’s certainly more than it used to be.

But before I go to bed, making a sandwich reminds me of a conversation that took place in the film HELLZAPOPPIN’.
One of the actors was talking on the ‘phone –
"That’s good – that’s bad – that’s bad – that’s good – that’s bad – that’s good – that’s good …"
"Who are you talking to?" asked his sidekick
"I’m talking to my sister" replied the first.
"But what are you doing?"
"Why, I’m helping her sort a box of strawberries!"
If you want to know where shows like Monty Python and the like obtained their ideas, have a look at HELLZAPOPPIN’.

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Thursday 18th September 2025 – I’M THOROUGHLY FED UP …

… with this dialysis nonsense and for two pins, I’d throw it all in. I’ve been trying to talk to the medical staff for weeks upon end and no-one has paid the slightest heed to what I’ve been saying. Today, it was the time for the monthly assessment of my “dry weight”, and the results are exactly as I predicted and I am rightly furious.

The doctor on duty must have realised too, because he kept well out of my way and only showed himself in our room for a brief second.

It’s the last thing that I need, on top of everything else that’s going on right now.

Last night, I mentioned going to bed early. But if only … I finished my notes early enough but I simply could find neither the energy nor the motivation to haul myself out of my chair. I sat here like a vegetable until almost midnight before I could stagger, fully clothed, the two feet from my chair to my bed.

It took an age to go off to sleep – it really did – and that’s so unusual these days. I was still wide-awake at 02:30 and well beyond that too.

Once I was asleep though, I slept right the way through to … errr … 05:20 or thereabouts. That three hours in the afternoon must have made a difference somehow. I left the bed at about 05:50 and then went off for a good wash, a shave and a scrub up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis in the afternoon, 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 yesterday afternoon too.

Yesterday’s notes are now amended to include the relevant entry, and then I turned my attention to those from the night. I had a strange dream last night. I was with my friend, and it was a question of hunting down some of his papers for some reason. It turned out that he had given them to another friend of mine to store because he had no particular way of storing his papers. He was always someone who was on the move around so he needed some kind of place to keep them. But there was again much more to this dream, but the moment that I awoke, it all evaporated yet again. But there was certainly something going on in my head about something called “The Familynappers” but I’ve no idea now why this seems to have related to anything.

This is another dream that seems to relate to nothing at all, although I wish that I knew what the missing pieces were all about. I’m missing far too many extracts these days with this disturbed sleep pattern following chemotherapy, and I’m not all that happy about it. Not at all.

Isabelle the Nurse was late this morning but she was her usual cheery self today. It seems that both she and her oppo are very happy, which is nice to see. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I hope that it keeps up.

After she left, I made some breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Our author, Colonel Carrington, is excelling himself with this book. When discussing revolutions, rebellions and insurrections in general, he criticises Shay’s Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts, saying that it "The claim that the Governor’s salary was excessive, that the State Senate was aristocratic, and that taxes were odious,". One would think that he hadn’t heard of the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.

Later on, he tells us that "The first grade is that which devolves upon distant dependencies, the assertion of Independence, when the controlling authority is unable or unwilling to grant the people their rights and proper representation; when laws are constraints without equivalents, and the subjects are, in fact, slaves". Twenty or so years previous to when he was writing his book, the US Government left John Brown’s body mouldering in the grave after the events in “Bleeding Kansas”.

Back in here, I had things to do, and then I had a very important letter to write. It’s been taxing my French and it’s not finished yet, because it’s going to end up like GUERRE ET PAIX, but for all the good it might do, it will be finished some time soon.

My cleaner came along as usual to apply my anaesthetic cream, and then she stayed talking for quite a while. The taxi was late, and with someone else to pick up too, I was quite late arriving at dialysis.

As I said earlier, it was time to assess my dry weight, which took about fifteen minutes to complete. And sure enough, it’s 2 kg less that they have set it. That means that there was 4.9 kg of water to remove.

The nurse set it at 2.9 kg, using the old dry weight, and said that she would speak to the doctor. However, he disappeared from view and that was that.

For weeks and weeks, I’ve been telling them that with my appetite reduced to next to nothing, I’m rapidly losing weight. But not only has he taken no notice whatsoever, he increased the dry weight a week or two ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and he also cut halted a session a short while ago with liquid still to be extracted.

Another thing was that on Monday I asked them, seeing as there was a margin of manoeuvre on the maximum hourly rate to be extracted, whether they could increase the limit to the maximum in order to give me a head start for chemotherapy, but they refused. "We can’t take out what isn’t in" was the reply, but the events of this afternoon has shown clearly that it was in there all the time.

It beats me why I go through all of this pain and suffering for what seems to be no good reason. But watch this space over the next few sessions when they oblige me to stay for four hours, through no fault of my own at all.

The session eventually finished, at the old dry weight with still 2 kg to go. However, to cheer me up, I had the young chatty girl taxi driver to bring me home and we had a lovely journey home, talking mainly about cats.

My faithful cleaner helped me back into the apartment and, once more, stayed chatting for a while. But almost immediately after she left, I had a ‘phone call. It was the ex-girlfriend from school. She’s planning on turning up on Monday evening to stay until Wednesday.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have very suddenly become extremely popular these days and I’ve no idea why. I’ll have to buy one of these “take-a-ticket” machines to install outside the door if it carries on like this.

Tea was a handful of pasta and an overcooked veggie thing in breadcrumbs (I still haven’t fathomed out the intricacies of this new microwave) and now, I’m really going to try to go to bed and to sleep much earlier than usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about vegetables, Starmer was in a restaurant with “a certain visitor from overseas” last night, when the waiter came over to take their order.
"What would you like, sir?" asked the waiter.
"I’ll have the steak" replied Starmer
"And what about the vegetable?" asked the waiter
"He’ll have steak too" replied Starmer.

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Wednesday 17th September 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a horrible afternoon today and I’m going to bed in a moment. Sleep is and always has been my remedy for all kinds of illnesses; aches and pains, so if this posting suddenly stops half-way through, you know what has happened.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ll pick up the threads some other time when I awaken, if I ever do, because the way things are right now, that’s not at all clear.

First of all, my apologies to Alison. Firstly, for missing her birthday yesterday, and secondly, for replying to a text message of hers at … gulp … 03:40 this morning and probably awakening her from her beauty sleep.

Yes, I was up and about at 03:40 this morning and if the truth were known, I could have been up and about a long, long time before that.

With not cooking a meal last night, eating my lunchtime sandwiches instead, I was well over an hour earlier than usual and I made good use of the time by dashing through the notes from yesterday, probably missing off a pile of important stuff that I’ll find that I need to consult in the future.

That’s one of the many purposes of this blog, by the way. I have a hopeless memory – a "brain of a duck, you know" as was once FAMOUSLY SAID ON FILM. Consequently, I have to make notes of what goes on so that I can recall them later. Nothing is more satisfying when contacting “authority” to be able to say things like "but in our conversation of 9th April 2016 you said …" and to be able to put the contemporary quote before their eyes.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office, I sprinted through my notes and everything else, and was in bed not long after 22:00, which these days is something of a record.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens next.

That’s right. There I was at 01:30, tossing and turning in my bed trying my very best to go back to sleep after a dramatic awakening, and failing dismally.

After a couple of hours, I gave it up as a totally bad job and arose from the Dead. And contrary to the expectations of other people, I did not have a wasted morning.

Apart from disturbing Alison’s sleep, there were two radio programmes which, as I mentioned the other day, needed some amendment to their text. And so I re-wrote the text and, in the absence of the howling gale, that seems to have died down now, re-dictated them (one of them twice because yet again, the first five seconds of one of the recordings had gone walkabout).

Once I was satisfied with what I had, I edited them and rebuilt the two programmes and now they are ready to go, sometime in March next year.

At that point, the alarm went off at 05:38 so I went and had a good wash and scrub up, then came back here to listen to the dictaphone. And I needn’t have bothered, because with just three or so hours of sleep, there hadn’t been much time to go anywhere during the night.

There were several other things to do, but in the end, at 06:30, I was interrupted by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse who came to sort out my legs. She was in a very lively mood this morning and so the news that I had later of an incident involving a patient whom she visits after me took me completely by surprise. Anyway, that’s another story – rather like the one that I told yesterday about the house of the Franklins in Spilsby.

No breakfast, and no medication this morning because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out at an inconvenient moment during the morning.

It was the young, chatty driver who brought me home yesterday who came for me this morning, bang on 07:00 as promised. He’d ‘phoned me a little earlier to confirm his arrival so I was ready and waiting by the door.

And that was where the first effects of yesterday’s chemotherapy hit me. It’s a very gentle, almost imperceptible slope up to the road, but I had an awful struggle going up it and I needed help. That was devastating news for me.

There was another passenger in the car with us, with an earlier appointment than mine at Rennes as I predicted, so we fought our way through the back lanes around Avranches station and the traffic queues on the rocade around Rennes to drop off our ladyfriend, and arrived at my building bang on 09:00.

Surprisingly, I was seen immediately, and by 09:15 I was coupled up and running.

It was only a short session this morning so I didn’t bother with the internet (although I found the free connection, which is good news). Instead, I read some of THE WAR IN THE AIR – the official history of the Royal Flying Corps.

It’s a fascinating book but, as you might expect, it’s full of the gung-ho jingoism that so characterised the inflated egos of the British upper classes at that moment. Reading things like "Flying Corps, when it took the field with the little British Expeditionary Force, was enabled to bear a part in saving the British army, and perhaps the civilization of free men, from the blind onrush of the German tide." makes me cringe.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the advantage of going to Rennes is that there are thirty or forty voyages to Rennes made by my taxi company every day. So when the secretary ‘phoned them to say that I was ready to leave, there was a car here in fifteen minutes with one passenger already on board and another to be picked up after me.

But it’s like being on a production line at Rennes. You’re in, you’re dealt with, and you’re straight out. No time for recovery or to calm down or anything. They had to fetch a wheelchair for me again as I was in no state to stand up, and I had to be helped into the car.

On the way home, I was feeling awful and as sleep is my usual remedy, I dozed off for half an hour.

We had the usual guided tour of half of Normandy, during which I visited a couple of places where I’d never been before and didn’t even know existed, and was back here by about 13:00, where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me into the apartment (and I needed help) where I sat down for an hour to recover.

Once I’d recovered slightly, I had a small bowl of porridge (all that I’ve eaten today – and if I’m off my food, then regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not at all well) and then went to bed where I slept for over three hours.

While I was asleep in the afternoon, I remember making something like a model lighthouse. It was made of plastic, like an Airfix model, with bits that we had to glue together and paint. It was rather complicated to do it, and we realised when we almost finished that it looked nothing like in the plan and we were doing it the wrong way round. Someone came to check on me while I was asleep in bed, and that jogged my memory so I went to have another go at making this lighthouse. I realised that in its natural position, it was pulled square but I had to tighten up the pillars, columns and safety bars which would draw it up into a hexagram – a circle, rather – and that was something that I hadn’t done at first so I set about having a go at doing that.

This evening, I’ve had a lively chat with my niece’s youngest daughter who tells me that she and her mother "are all booked in just down the road from you" so it looks as if this visit in November is really going to happen.

Alison and I had a little chat too, which was nice, and then Jackie came for a chat too. It’s been my lucky day today.

However, I really was feeling awful, and I’m not much better now so I’m off to bed in the hope that I’ll feel better in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the gung-ho jingoism of the British Empire … "well, one of us has" – ed … it has been rivalled, if not exceeded in modern times, by the manner and behaviour of many Americans.
In a small pub in a rural area in Wales, I once heard an American going on about "the miserable size of the Welsh hill farms. Why, back in Texas, I could get into my car, drive for three days, and still not reach the boundary on the other side of my land!"
"I know exactly how you feel" replied a Welsh hill farmer
"You do???" exclaimed the American, incredulously
"Ohh yes" replied the farmer. "I used to have a car like that too."

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Saturday 13th September 2025 – JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT …

… last night, I suddenly awoke, with another one of these quite dramatic awakenings.

And about five seconds after I awoke, I received a message on the telephone. It really was an astonishing coincidence, almost as if awakening five seconds before the message was in anticipation of its arrival.

It wasn’t all that much beforehand that I’d actually come to bed, after another one of the slow, depressing evenings that I seem to be having these days. And I was so tired, yet again, that I must have gone off quite rapidly to sleep. It’s a shame that I couldn’t have remained asleep, though, but then that’s what usually happens.

It took an age to go back to sleep too, but once I’d slipped into the arms of Morpheus, there I stayed until the alarm sounded. And that woke me up quite dramatically too, I can tell you.

At that moment, we were back in World War I when the Germans were storming a trench full of Greek soldiers. They had launched a few shells into a few Greek pill-boxes and stormed the trenches. There were piles of dead people around, so they went through, identified the wounded and shot them on the spot. There was one person who was a British officer leading a Greek troop. They questioned him about a few different things but as he didn’t have the correct answers to what they wanted, they shot him too. But we were working somewhere behind the lines, watching a captive balloon or Zeppelin or something that had escaped from its moorings and was flying at a very low height around the edge of the cliffs. We were worried that it would collide with the church steeple, so we were trying to work out a way, if we could, of diverting it away because if we were to fire at it, it would explode and that would make more damage. In the meantime, we had been repairing a few watches and things like that. We actually had one working, but then we decided that we weren’t happy so we dismantled it to have another attempt. At this moment, the girls came along and looked at what we were doing. They couldn’t understand why we had decided to do it a second time. I was talking to one of the guys about new technology and how powerful it was. He was saying that how he wished that he had bought a new 2GB memory stick while their prices were low, because a new 2GB one these days would cost $64. I replied that a 64GB one would only cost $2, the way that technology is going these days.

There’s a bit of everything in there. The bit about colliding with the steeple relates to a discussion that I had the other day with one of the taxi drivers, when we were watching the Nazguls flying around near the spire of the Eglise Notre Dame de Lihou. As for the rest, it seems to relate to little snippets of conversation that I’ve had now and again with different people.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes, but as you have already read them, I needn’t have bothered mentioning it.

The nurse was next, still in his cheerful mood, and then it was breakfast and a new book.

While I was reading COLONEL CARRINGTON’S TESTIMONY, I noticed that he had written several others and so I began today to read his BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that IN 2013 and 2014 I roamed up and down the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York visiting the sites of the battles of the Revolutionary War and also of the Seven Years War of 1756-1763, including the site of Fort William Henry, the fort that featured prominently in Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

One of the places that I visited in 2013 was Fort Ticonderoga, and I noticed from Carrington’s description of the siege of the fort that "The Americans neglected to fortify Sugar Loaf Hill", a prominent eminence overlooking the fort, ⁣strong>"deeming it inaccessible.".

You probably noticed just now that STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I walked quite comfortably to the top, and so did several other people. And there’s still a British cannon up there that the British Army managed to drag up the hill.

After breakfast, I came in here to begin a new radio programme, and in fact I’m currently working on two of them right now because, halfway through choosing the music for one, I realised that I’d missed one. Still, variety is the spice of life.

When my faithful cleaner came down to apply my anaesthetic cream, she brought with her my electronic drum kit. That was a one-day wonder, that was. I bought it as a challenge, something to do during lockdown, but my legs gave out before I was able to master it.

It was the boss who came to fetch me today and we had quite a quick drive down to Avranches. I was connected up quite quickly too and then I could concentrate on Y Barri v Y Bala.

Y Bala had only conceded four goals all season up to date, but Y Barri doubled that total with comparative ease and could (and should) have had a bagful more except for the inspired performance of former Salford City goalkeeper Joel Torrance.

It was nevertheless an exciting game and you can see the highlights HERE if you are of such a mind.

Although I finished my dialysis earlier than usual, I had to wait to be unplugged, and then finally the boss brought me back in the most astonishing rainstorm that was engulfing Avranches.

Ironically, it wasn’t raining at Granville when I returned. It was a nice, leisurely walk back to my apartment in the howling gale, which has now been blowing for several days.

For a change, Tea tonight was a burger with baked potato – one of those luxury burgers that are really delicious. And now, I’m off to bed in the hope of a good lie-in tomorrow. I need one after all of this.

But I forgot to mention my ‘phone message from during the night. It reads "(we) will see you Friday November 7 for a few days fly back on November 11.". This visit from Canada looks as if it may well be happening.

But seeing as we have been talking about Ticonderoga and The Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was at Ticonderoga where I told my famous story to one of the American tour guides.
Sent on a spying mission by Colonel Munro to find out about the French forces in Fort Ticonderoga, Hawkeye and Chingachgook approach the fort very carefully
"How many soldiers do you think there are in the fort?" asked Hawkeye.
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground. "About 300" he replied
"And how many cannon?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground again. "About 30"
"And how many horses?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground yet again. "About 60"
"And how many native allies?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground once more. "About 200"
"That’s incredible" said Hawkeye. "Can you tell all that by just lying down and listening to the ground?"
"Ohh no" replied Chingachgook. "If I lie down here like this and turn my head so that my ear is to the ground just like this, I can see right underneath the gates of the fort"
The response of the tour guide was "that’s incredible! I never knew that Hawkeye and Chingachgook came to Ticonderoga. I shall have to amend the tourist leaflets."
Which just goes to show, as Alfred Hitchcock and Kenneth Williams once famously said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

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Tuesday 26th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve felt as ill as I have today?

And how long is it since I’ve been to bed well before 23:00 (21:56 was when last night’s notes were published) and slept right through until the alarm sounded at 06:29?

Yes, it has been a day of all kinds of records, some of them unwelcome, and I hope that things improve quite rapidly as I can’t go on like this.

Last night, though, I was in all kinds of states. I was feeling nauseous, my head was spinning round and I was absolutely flat-out tired. I dashed through my notes and staggered through my preparations for the night, and then fell into bed.

During the night, I remember nothing at all, and no-one was more surprised than me to still be asleep when the alarm went off. It’s been an age since that has happened. It took me a while to stagger to my feet too – for two pins I’d have gone back to bed – and even longer to go to sort myself out in the bathroom.

Once I was ready, which took a lot longer than it ought, I went into the kitchen to take my morning medication. I must try to return to my old routine now that everything is calming down. I’ve forgotten the medication more times than I care to remember just recently.

There was a task that remained uncompleted from when I was taken ill at dialysis yesterday. I was in the middle of splitting a music soundtrack, and I’d only completed “less than half” of it. There’s no time like the present so I had a good go at that to finish it off.

The nurse interrupted me with his visit, and I do have to say that since he’s come back from his holiday, he’s become quite likeable as he was when I first met him. He was disappointed that the Hound of the Baskervilles has left though.

Breakfast was next, and it was nice to have an unhurried, leisurely meal looking out of the window at the World as it walked by. Much as I liked the view from upstairs, outside here on the ground floor is much more animated.

Back in here, I can’t remember what I did next. It wasn’t to go through my usual routine of seeing what had gone on during the night and transcribing the dictaphone notes, that’s for sure. It was probably something to do with trying to find some of the things that I need that have been put into boxes, there to remain, probably forever.

There were a few people online with whom I wanted to chat, so that passed some time as well.

After lunch, I had a foot-fest. There had been a whole series of matches in the J D Cymru League yesterday and I had purposefully refrained from reading about them because the live match would have been when I was on my way home, so I wanted to watch it all in one go as if it were a live game.

So this afternoon I had Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Fflint from yesterday afternoon. And having watched Llanelli throw away a 2-goal lead to go down 4-2 to Llansawel the other day, this time it was the turn of Y Fflint to throw away a 2-goal lead, to go down 3-2.

For the first half, Connah’s Quay were awful and Y Fflint made it look easy. But at half-time, the Nomads made no fewer than four substitutions, the first time that I have ever seen so many changes at half-time by one club. It obviously worked, because they stormed away throughout the second half.

There were also all of the highlights of the other matches, including Colwyn Bay’s impressive 1-1 draw against perennial champions TNS. After four matches, Caernarfon are currently leading the table, and it’s been a very long time since that has happened.

What with one thing and another, I’d almost forgotten the dictaphone notes. They were next on the list and the massive “War And Peace” from the previous night is now online. I’ve no idea what must have been going on during the other night, but there are tons of stuff, and it’s well-worth a read.

Having done that, I could then turn my attention to last night’s notes. At some point during the night I dreamed that my cleaner came down with a whole load of stuff that had been sitting around and about the apartment, and threatened me under pain of dire retribution to start to move anything around. However, I was in bed at the time and certainly didn’t feel like getting up so I didn’t say anything. I just left her to go about doing it. But after a good half-hour or so, I had a look at the time. It was 02:26 so it must have been a dream that I had had, probably because I couldn’t see any changes to any of the piles in here. So now I have to try to go back to sleep and hope that I can manage it before all my staff desert it all for the goldfields.

Firstly, I can’t remember awakening at 02:26. And then we’ve had dreams within dreams before now, and I always find them to be an interesting phenomenon. Finally, the incident about the staff deserting for the goldfields reminds me of a VERY AMUSING INCIDENT ONCE WHEN I WAS IN LABRADOR. Who will ever forget "Gold Strike at Bear Creek"?

Later on, we’d moved into some new digs. I was sitting there, comfortably thinking that when we all go out on Tuesday, I would go and buy a motorbike for myself. That way, I could travel to and from work and everywhere I want to go much more easily. Of course, my brother thought that the idea was silly. He said that it would be two weeks before I fell off it, or something like that. However, I decided that that was what I would do. In the end, I ended up having a discussion with the landlady of where we were staying. She talked about different things, and I happened to mention that I might go back on the buses. She said that that was a huge jump up from driving a car. Did I think that I’d be safe? Did I think that I wouldn’t have any problems? Etc. I told her that I used to drive for Shearings, which lit up her eyes. She said “ohh, well you’ll probably remember me then”. Just as she was about to say why, the alarm went off.

Apart from my family sticking the oar in, imagine these days still being asleep when the alarm went off. Had I been awake, I would have missed this little voyage.

All through the day, I had been feeling nauseous, my head had been spinning and by the late afternoon, my vision had become blurred and I could hardly see what I was doing. I couldn’t find the force to stand up and I wasn’t feeling at all hungry, even though I’d eaten nothing since breakfast.

However, I forced myself into the kitchen, later than usual, and made a bowl of pasta and vegetables with one of the vegan burgers that I have. I didn’t feel like eating it but if I don’t make an effort, I’m going to be seriously ill one of these days … "as if you aren’t already" – ed …

Standing up afterwards, my head was spinning around and I could barely find the energy to stay standing upright, crutches or not.

But now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, horribly late.

But seeing as we have been talking about the saloon in CARRY ON COWBOY … "well, one of us has" – ed … in the same saloon, the local preacher came in to preach to the cowboys about the evils of the demon drink.
"Would you like a whisky first?" asked the bartender.
"No evil liquor should ever touch my lips" roared the preacher. "I would rather spend the night in a brothel with a woman of ill-repute!"
At that, several cowboys dashed up to the bar and handed back their whiskies to the bartender.
"Why are you doing this?" asked the aforementioned.
"Well" replied the cowboys "we didn’t realise that we had a choice."

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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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Saturday 2nd August 2025 – TODAY’S DIALYSIS SESSION …

… was totally horrible.

Not so much the session but the aftermath. I was totally drained, totally exhausted and I felt as if the end of the World had come. When BILBO BAGGINS said "I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.", I knew exactly what he meant.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a particularly early start either. Although it was quite late by the time I finished my notes, the stats and the back-up, I slept all the way right through without moving until 06:20 – nine minutes before the alarm.

living room n°6 place d'armes granville manche normandy franceSo while you admire a couple of photos of my freshly-painted living room, once more in a colour rather brighter than that which I had chosen, and with the curtain rail over the door in the wrong place, I shall tell you about my day.

When I awoke, I really was feeling rotten but a Herculean effort saw me sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off at 06:29

But it didn’t galvanise me into action though. It classes as an early start because I was out of bed and with my feet in contact with the floor when the alarm went off, but that’s how it stayed for a good fifteen minutes.

living room kitchen n°6 place d'armes granville manche normandy franceEventually, I managed to drag myself in some kind of undignified fashion into the bathroom where I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and I also hand-washed some clothes. With not having many clothes, I try to keep on top of things when I can.

In the kitchen, I dealt with the medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Jordan Davies had left Greenock Morton last night and had signed for a football club in Wales. His arrival was heralded by the club and they made a big issue out of it with headlines in the local paper etc. However, when he was on his way to the football ground to be greeted by the chairman etc, he was involved in a car crash and was killed. That was really the end of all of that. All of the celebrations were cancelled and it ended up being something of a really damp squib of an affair.

It’s no surprise that they would have cancelled the celebrations after that. However, this dream is a combination of two different things.

Actually, Jordan Davies has left Greenock Morton and yesterday he signed for Colwyn Bay AFC in the JD Cymru League. But the part about death in transit refers to Emiliano Sala, whose aeroplane crashed as he was flying from Nantes to play for Cardiff City in 2019.

Isabelle the Nurse came in a little later to deal with my injection, the last in this series, and to sort out my legs. There are all kinds of events taking place in the town tomorrow so she told me that she has no idea what time she will arrive.

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

We’re still in Westminster, discussing inter alia the enormous list of famous and important people buried in Westminster Abbey.

But it’s John Stow’s little personal remarks that are so interesting and amusing. When he is talking about the raising of funds to rebuilt St Margaret’s Church, he tells us about King Henry III banning all trade in merchandise for fifteen days, which the citizens were obliged to redeem by paying the King two thousand pounds of silver because of the King "devising how to extort money from the citizens of London."

That’s nothing compared to his remarks concerning the revised works of Geoffrey Chaucer which were "twice increased through mine own painful labours" and "again beautified with notes by me." Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that if it weren’t for my own overwhelming modesty, I would be perfect, but not even I would write quite like that.

Still, if you have a trumpet, you may as well blow it.

As a matter of a more serious nature, he talks about the Great London Floods of 1236 and 1242. In the former flood, the Palace of Westminster was flooded and "men did row with wherries in the midst of the hall, being forced to ride to their chambers.". In the latter, "in the great hall of Westminster men took their horses because the water ran over it."

Back in here, I had some things to find to take downstairs and then I sorted out the photos from Thursday (which you have seen just now) and do it quickly too because my cleaner was coming early.

After she’d fitted my anaesthetic patches we measured all of the furniture in the living room, took one of the CD and DVD columns with us, and went downstairs with some masking tape to mark on the floor exactly where all of the furniture will go in the living room downstairs.

That’s important because the Saturday and the Monday afternoon, I’ll have dialysis and then on the Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be having chemotherapy in Paris so anyone who will be here to help me will need to know where to put everything if I’m not here.

The chief driver of the taxi company turned up to collect me, and he was early too so it’s just as well that I was ready.

We arrived at Avranches much earlier than planned, and so as usual I had to wait an age to be seen and plugged it. At least, I had good company because Alexi looked after me today.

At first, I was really drowsy, due in no small measure to the fact that my blood pressure dropped to 7.7/5.6, which is about the lowest that it has been.

Once I’d recovered, I spent most of the afternoon trying to find a series of books called “The Paston Letters” – a book containing all of the correspondence issued by the Paston family in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century.

These six volumes are extremely important because firstly, they give an eyewitness report of the Wars of the Roses, as seen by the ordinary man in the street who suffered so much, and secondly, they cover the period of the evolution of the English language from Medieval English to Early Modern English and the official codification and standardisation of the language following the invention of William Caxton’s printing press.

As usual, having arrived early, I was late being disconnected and then I had to wait ten minutes for the taxi. Even then, the driver had another passenger to drop off at Brehal up the coast and she wanted to take him first, which annoyed me greatly but there wasn’t much that I could do about it.

Consequently, I was just as late coming home as I might otherwise have been had I left here late.

Climbing the stairs in my weakened state was awful and when I made it into here I had to sit down for half an hour to recover before I could make tea.

So a baked potato, vegan salad and breadcrumbed quorn slice later, I’m off to bed, totally wasted after all of my exertions. I really need to be downstairs as quickly as possible because I can’t keep on going like this. It’s awful.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the floods … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time of the Great Flood of Crewe a while back.
When the Municipal Buildings were flooded, they decided that they would take advantage of the situation and play a game of water polo.
"Was it a success?" I asked.
"Not really" came the reply. "Most of the horses drowned."

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Friday 25th July 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was last night.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the past, me still being up and wandering about the apartment (and anywhere else) at 02:15 would be a fairly common sight, so seeing me wandering around at 02:15 this morning would have been nothing unusual – except that I went to bed at about 22:30, had been asleep, and was now wide awake, out of bed and working.

That’s something that has happened only extremely rarely in the past.

For a change, I actually made a really great effort and dashed through my notes for the day, took the stats, backed up the computer, sorted myself out in the bathroom and then climbed into bed, all by 22:30 or thereabouts.

Once more, I was asleep quite quickly too, but not for long. Round about 01:00, I sat bolt upright again, wide awake, drenched in sweat. It was unbelievable.

Nothing that I could do would make me go back to sleep. I was hot and uncomfortable and really couldn’t settle. After just over an hour of trying, I left the bed and had a wash.

The first thing that I did when I came back in here was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I didn’t expect to find anything on the dictaphone in view of the somewhat diminished time span involved, but I was surprised. There was something going on in some American magazine about people and hospitals and ill-health etc. For some reason, I’d been asked to download some kind of article and upload something else etc. They were talking about me on a radio show doing this. I had the book in front of me but I couldn’t find the article and I couldn’t see any of the addresses or anything but they were urging me on to do this and I was hunting through this book trying to find the correct page but I was getting nowhere. I know that one of the people involved in this whom I had to download or upload had zebra-striped white and black hair and I was wondering more about that. I was trying to find this book but every time I turned a page there was either nothing on it or it was one of these intercalcary sheets etc. I just wondered how on earth I was going to find this.

So we’re back thinking about hospitals again, are we? It seems to be a major preoccupation of mine right now. Having some kind of panic attack in a dream is also becoming something of a regular occurrence, and that’s quite possibly also something of some significance.

The second thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I had written just before going off to Paris. That took much longer than it should have done too, because my computer screen decided to go to sleep in mid-type and it took me a few minutes to restart it.

In the meantime, I had to stop and restart the ZOOM H8 because I didn’t know how long it would take to restart the screen and I didn’t want the recording running away with itself.

Once I’d finished that, the next task was quite surprising. I actually went rather further than Dave Crosby, because, although I didn’t have the ‘flu for Christmas, I’m definitely not feeling up to par and it was increasing my paranoia, like looking in the mirror and seeing a police car.

However, I wasn’t giving in an inch to fear and I promised myself this year that I’d do something about it, so I went on the attack.

A nice, trim and tidy me came back in here and I watched a football match, with the Skunks putting eight past Annan Athletic in Tuesday’s Scottish League Cup match.

When the alarm went off, I went to have a good wash and sort myself out, and then a leisurely stroll into the kitchen to take my medication.

After that, I didn’t have long to wait. The nurse was very early this morning and, like a fool, he asked how I was so I gave him both barrels and I bet that he regretted asking. He saw to my knee and to my legs and then cleared off rather sharpish-like so that I could make breakfast.

Not that I made it very far as my faithful cleaner came to interrupt me. I’d heard her moving around in her apartment upstairs so I knew that she was awake, so I sent her a message asking about some medication that I needed. She knew where it was and pointed me in the right direction.

Once sh’d left I could carry on making breakfast, not that I wanted much but I have to eat after all, and then read some more of MY BOOK while I ate what little there was.

Our author, John Stow, is still wandering around the pre-Great Fire churches of London, and between the two of us, we have made a rather interesting discovery.

At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the Duke of Bourbon was captured and held for ransom. Although the ransom was paid, and on a couple of occasions too, he was never released and never returned to his home.

Our author has been wandering around the old Greyfriars Church and in there is a tombstone, so he says, of "John, Duke of Bourbon and Anjou, Earl of Claremond, Montpensier and Baron Beaujeu, who was taken prisoner at Agincourt, kept prisoner eighteen years and deceased 1433."

That explains why he never returned home, but being held prisoner for eighteen years despite the payment of a couple of ransoms, that seems to be rather extreme.

Another interruption was the President of the Residents’ Committee who came to see how I was, which was very nice of her. She spent half an hour chatting, and I gave her the key to downstairs so she could go for a little inspection. She was well-impressed.

After breakfast, I sorted out some more things to go downstairs and then eventually came back in here to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated earlier.

Not that I kept going for long. I soon drifted off into sleep, sitting on my chair, and for once I wasn’t surprised or disappointed.

In fact, I fell asleep in the chair on a couple of occasions for about twenty minutes here and there. And I was having some gorgeous psychedelic dreams that faded in and out, just as I had one a long time ago when they were giving me some perfusion at one of the hospitals where I’ve been. There’s only one that I remember, and that was telling a friend of mine that I’d be down to see him at about 14:00 when I leave to go to see a girl with whom I’d been invited to stay for a while in the run-up to Christmas. He asked me her name and honestly, I couldn’t remember it, so I’ sure that he thought that I was bluffing. But after he left, I remembered that I couldn’t drive and that there was no contrôle technique on the van, so what was I going to do about this visit? And then another friend of mine came in to give me some presents that had arrived. We shook one and it rattled so we opened it, and it turned out to be a plastic box full of waffles. I can’t eat them of course so I offered them to her, and she snatched the plastic box out of my hands and made off with her booty.

But there were several like this, in such a short space of time, and they all slipped out through my fingers. It was simply impossible to try to record them.

My cleaner came round at about 14:00 to do her stuff and found me engaged in an on-line chat, with a robot from my telephone company. I need to sort out the line to the apartment downstairs for when I move. It took well over an hour to do what should have been a relatively simple task, but at least it’s going to go ahead with no complications.

And that reminds me. I have made an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is a decision that, if it turns out to be wrong, the person who made the decision is executed.

The decision is that I am slowly moving the moveable stuff downstairs and just before my next chemotherapy, which seems to be about the 19th of August, my bed and office will be going down there too, so that when I return, I won’t have to climb the stairs. The rest of the stuff can come down to join me at a later date when there are people to help.

That’s regardless of the state of the apartment, whether the work is finished or not. I’ve been speaking to the kitchen fitter and told him that as of now, the bedroom is the priority followed by the part of the bathroom that is not the shower. The shower is going to be extremely complicated.

Eventually, I finished the radio programme and now have to look for one more track to finish it off. I can do that on Saturday and Sunday, but that’s going to be complicated too.

Tea was a baked potato, small salad and falafel. All of it very small, in fact, because I’m not hungry.

Actually, I’m fed up, I’m in pain, I’m ill and I’m not looking forward to dialysis tomorrow where I expect once more to be detained for at least four hours. I really can’t take much more of this.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Jean, Duke of Bourbon and the Battle of Agincourt … "well, one of us has" – ed … as he was leaving his château, he gave the keys of his wife’s chastity belt to his oldest and most faithful servant.
"Here, take these keys" he said to the servant. "While I’m away at battle, you are the only person who I can trust with them". And he set off on his shining white charger.
He hadn’t gone half a mile before the oldest and most faithful servant caught up with him, panting and out of breath.
"My Lord, my Lord" he gasped. "You’ve given me the wrong key."

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