… known how today was going to turn out. It’s a day after dialysis, isn’t it?
So last night, having made myself ready for bed during a half-time interval, I was able to fall into bed at the final whistle of the Penybont – Santa Coloma game. I’ve no idea what time the match finished, but it was certainly quite late.
As far as I can remember, I was asleep even before my head touched the pillow and that was that until all of … errr … 01:20, when I awoke.
And that was that. Never mind how hard I tried, I was still unable to go back to sleep. So I lay there for ages, watching the dawn slowly lighten up the sky until the alarm went off as usual at 06:29.
You’ve no idea how difficult it was for me to leave the bed at that moment. And it took an absolute age for me to find the enthusiasm to stand up. At one point, I was seriously thinking about going back to bed, but I managed to fight off the temptation.
Eventually, I managed to stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out ready to face the day, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on in the hour or so that I’d been asleep.
That’s not really very helpful, is it? Forgetting most of the dream.
The competitions don’t mean anything to me but being “on the receiving end of some extremely abusive language”, although not about “something to do with one of these questions” reminds me very much of an incident almost fifty years ago in Nantwich, when my response was simply “ohh for God’s sake! Grow Up!”
Isabelle the Nurse turned up, at a much more reasonable time today. She was again in quite a chatty mood and we talked about not very much. However, she did ask me how I was and I replied “dreadful”, so she told me to rest. It was a very tempting offer, but I decided to stay up, try to stay awake and fight it out.
After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.
And his gratuitous polemic is really beginning to get on my wick. Today we have "No architecture can, as mere art, be more thoroughly worthless than such a hopeless confusion as the Roman style henceforth presented. It is simply the exceeding excellence of the two elements — the perfect loveliness of Grecian detail, corrupted as it was by its Roman imitators, and the magnificent boldness of the genuine Roman construction — that saves any of its productions from absolute hideousness … I shall only briefly allude to some of the strange and often ludicrous ways in which the two principles are sought to be combined."
It’s becoming really tiresome.
Back in here, I had things to do, like write up the notes from yesterday, and they are now on line at long last.
After a disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I turned my attention to editing the rest of the radio notes that I’d started yesterday. And not only are they now all edited, I’ve even assembled the two halves of the programme, chosen the joining track and written the notes for it.
There were several interruptions this afternoon, though. My cleaner turned up to do her stuff but she was clearly unwell and after thirty minutes, abandoned and went back upstairs to sleep. Not that I can blame her – the temperature reached 39°C outside this afternoon and 27.5°C in my room. I’ve had the fan going full-tilt all day.
As well as that, I’ve been persistently falling asleep this afternoon and that’s wasted a lot of time. That’s probably also due to the heat – either that or the after-effects of dialysis. But later on this afternoon, I had one of those high-energy drinks and for a change, it actually had some effect and I felt much better.
One thing that came to light quite unexpectedly while I was doing some research into a shipwreck was a Korean guy. Going back three or so months ago, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we had someone called Eddie Chan Fook Pong appearing in these pages. Today, it’s the turn of HUH YONG-BUM to make his debut.
Tonight’s tea was sausage chips and beans, the beans cooked with freshly ground black pepper, cheese and mushrooms. And having once again followed the recipe of my friend from Munich, the chips were absolutely delicious, as was everything else.
So now, back in here, I’m finishing off my notes and then there are a couple of other things to do, following which I’ll crawl into bed, and this time, I hope that I manage to sleep.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about foul and abusive language … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old spinster inherits a parrot that used to belong to her seafaring brother.
The only problem is that with having spent all his life at sea, his language was extremely deplorable. She consulted the vicar who suggested that she put the parrot in the freezer for an hour to cool him down.
So after about an hour, she takes the parrot out of the freezer and he’s shivering with cold.
"Jesus Christ!" he exclaims. "That was flaming cold, and I was only in there for an hour. But what I want to know is what the hell did that chicken and those two fish do?"
