Tag Archives: jo

LIVE: Saturday 3rd October 2026 – ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS AFTERNOON …

Leave a Reply

… in dialysis today. But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I’m going to do my best not to fall asleep in dialysis again so that I can keep my eye on what’s going on behind the scenes.

Another thing on which I wish that I could keep an eye on is what’s going on with my sleeping patterns. Anyone who checked my blog between about 22:00 and midnight and then went to check it later will be bound to be confused by what they read.

Round about 21:30, I fell asleep in the chair here, and when I awoke at about 22:00, I just posted on line what I’d written to date and added a “TO BE CONTINUED” sticker to it.

Before I fell into bed, though, I went for a ride on the porcelain horse, and when I came back in here, I found that I was wide awake somehow, so I finished off the blog, overwrote the “TO BE CONTINUED” sticker and posted the completed entry on line.

And then I fell into bed and went straight to sleep.

At some point during the night, I awoke again and was tossing and turning around for what seemed like an eternity, trying to go to sleep, but without any success. But I must have managed it at some point because I was dead to the World when the alarm went off at 06:29.

We had the usual struggle with ourselves to leave the bed, and then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out. While I was there, I had a good scrub up and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night.

There had been something in the news about adoptions. There was a family from Preston who had adopted a boy from a Preston children’s home, and a couple of other people who had done the same thing too. There was even someone who had taken an abandoned child from a children’s home with a view to adopting him, and escaping to Vietnam. That had me thinking about whether, as a single man, I could adopt a child too. So I went away from here and had a think about it and then went back to the office to talk to them. It was only later on that I realised that I was living in a one-bedroomed apartment, so if I did adopt a child, then where would it sleep?

There’s certainly some mileage in this dream. Some “friends of friends” have recently adopted a child from a local children’s home, and that’s what has probably inspired this dream. And then adopted child and Vietnam has a story behind it too, but it’s another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

As for adopting a child, I’m quite ready, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to adopting a cat, preferably a female cat. And it’s true that I only have a one-bedroom apartment, so adopting a child would be out of the question, even if I were not ill.

Then I was at work, and it was a Sunday morning and there was plenty of overtime to be done to clear some arrears. I went in and there were quite a few other people in as well. There was a guy sitting next to me, and suddenly, a pile of people’s files turned up on my desk, so I asked him if they were his, and he said that they were, so I put them onto his desk somewhere and began to make myself comfortable. A girl came in extremely late, and everyone cheered her, so she came out with some story about having been locked in somewhere over the weekend, and how would we have liked it? We said that, well, we were certain that we could have rolled up our sleeves, done something and swam to somewhere. I began to look at everything on my desk, and it was a complete and utter shambles, so what I had in mind was to leave quietly on Friday and not go back to the office.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that these dreams of being in work after my retirement date and threatening to walk out without notice used to be a regular occurrence, but they seem to have died off a while back. However, as I said the other day, they are slowly making a comeback.

And the untidiness of mine in the office is nothing new at all. I was always like that, wherever I was and whatever I was doing.

We’d gone skiing somewhere in one of these big resorts. The car that we used was one of these big Transcontinental Vauxhall estates. There were five of us in this car, and the amount of stuff we’d brought with us was astonishing. After we’d packed, for example, I found my old ski boots and all kinds of things like that, so when we arrived in a town near the border to be inspected by the police, we were fully loaded and it took quite a while. I found later that we’d brought all the books with us from home, all that kind of thing. We went skiing, and then we decided to put our chalet up for sale. Someone in the town responded immediately, so we had to do a lot of clearing up and tidying up before we could let him in. When we let him in, he was big and he was active, bouncing around, and we were busy trying to put our ski things away and stack these books somewhere. We ended up stacking them against the wall next to the fireplace. I found a camera that didn’t work because the batteries were flat in it, all kinds of things like that, and getting them into my bag was going to be complicated. Someone came up to my girlfriend and asked me about the car. Before we were leaving, someone else came up to us and asked about the car. My girlfriend didn’t know much about it, so I told him. He said that he was really impressed with the amount of luggage we had in there. He cancelled an order for a new car so that he could buy one of these Transcontinental Vauxhall Estates.

In case you’ve forgotten what a Transcontinental Vauxhall estate looks like, there’s one HERE. It’s the beige one, SPU903M. Strangely enough, of all the cars that I’ve ever owned, I’ve never ever had a Vauxhall. The closest I ever came to one was having a Bedford CA van for a short while.

However, in the past, we never went to any fashionable ski resort, except that I went once with an Italian girl to a ski resort in Italy. Most of the time, we went to the unfashionable ones, although when I was driving coaches and we had no work for a few months after Christmas, I’d go to ski resorts in Eastern Europe such as Romania and Bulgaria. I even took Percy Penguin with me once.

The nurse turned up as usual, and while he was dealing with my legs and feet, he gave me the same warning as my cleaner did yesterday about the festival down in the port and how it was total chaos.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, we had another little chat about geology, and then we returned to fungi, with a discussion about fairy rings. Maybe the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would have been interested in joining in the discussion. It’s a shame that the subject wasn’t “fairy boots”, otherwise it would have given me a good opportunity to drag Lee “I’m a prostitute” Pottymouth into the discussion. He’s not put in an appearance in these pages in an age.

When breakfast was finished, I had a few things to do, after which I intended to work on reformating the music that I’d downloaded the other day. However, in the end, I ended up having an on line discussion with someone about music that went on for quite a while, discussing mainly folk-rock songs.

And when the chat finished, I was so fired up that for the first time in a couple of years, I picked up the acoustic guitar and played CAREY by Joni Mitchell and MOONAGE DAYDREAM (I don’t know why) by David Bowie. I was surprised how much I’d forgotten, and also how much it hurt afterwards.

At midday, I went into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication, and then I began to make myself ready for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up too to put the anaesthetic on my arm too.

After she left, I hunched up over the table and let myself relax, with my head resting on my forearms. I was once again just about to drift off into a really nice dream when the doorbell rang. I looked at the time and it was 12:58 – I’d been away with the fairies … "although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … for just over half an hour.

There was no one else to pick up en route so we arrived at dialysis a few minutes early, despite the chaos around the port today. However, it made no difference because there was a queue of people in front of me, and it took until 14:25 to be plugged in.

Once everything was up and running, I had to wait until 15:30 for the football to kick off so I found one or two other things to do while I was waiting. However, I must have crashed out somewhere along the line because I awoke with a start at 15:27, just three minutes before kick-off.

The match that I’d chosen today was the basement clash between Rhydaman and Trefynnon. This was a real six-pointer, as both sides had yet to record a victory, and they needed to start winning soon, as the rest of the table was cutting them adrift.

As you might expect, this was another game played at a hundred miles per hour with both teams going at it hammer and tongs. And its opening was certainly dramatic – Johnny Evans missed a sitter of a free header when surely it must have been easier to score, and then straight from the goal kick, Trefynnon roared up the field and scored to go in front.

Then we had goals disallowed for offside, balls hitting the post or being cleared off the line, until Johnny Evans, in the fortieth minute, scored with a delightful lob from outside the penalty area, right over the head of the Trefynnon goalkeeper.

It went from bad to worse for Trefynnon when in the fifty-sixth minute, Rhydaman scored a second goal to take the lead. From then on, Trefynnon threw everything they had at the Rhydaman defence, but to no avail and Rhydaman took all of the points.

That was a shame because I thought that Trefynnon had the better of the play, but they are deep in it now after that.

And spare a thought for Cambrian United. For the second away match in succession, they conceded nine goals. And they are one of the better promoted teams too.

This was when I noticed something rather bizarre. When I’d begun to watch the football, there were fourteen minutes after the final whistle before the end of the session. However, despite there being over fourteen minutes of stoppage time in this game, there was still half an hour to go, and I wasn’t finished until 17:55.

From 14:25 to 17:55 is three and a half hours, not the three hours that I’m supposed to have, and when I weighed myself later, I was still four hudred grams over my dry weight. Mind you, I did notice that the chief doctor, he who doesn’t like me chatting up the nurses, was on duty again today. He spoke to several people in the ward, but kept well clear of my bed.

When I was outside, I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi but I was once more the only passenger. Nevertheless, it was 19:15 when I finally arrived home.

My cleaner was waiting for me, sitting on her mushroom outside, and she helped me into the house and gave me another disgusting drink.

After she had left, I made myself a small plate of pasta and veg tossed in olive oil, garlic, black pepper and vegan cheese. And delicious it was too, especially as it was followed by a peach yoghurt.

Back in here, I had things to do, and then write up my notes. Now when I’ve checked the stats and backed up the computer, I’ll be off to bed. It’s horrendously late tonight … "or this morning" – ed … but I don’t care. I’m aiming for a lie in tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about people sitting on mushrooms and other bizarre things … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man walked into a doctor’s surgery and began to speak to another man sitting there.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
"I have the biggest piles the World has ever seen" he replied.
"Is that why you’re sitting on that giant bean cushion?" he asked.
The man replied "look more closely."

0