Tag Archives: joan

Friday 18th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a visitor today

My tenant has finally decided to present herself to me this afternoon.
"What do you want to do about the kitchen in the apartment?" she asked.
"If you look behind you" I said "you’ll see some kitchen units in boxes. I ordered them, paid for them and had them delivered a long time ago. It’s rather late in the day to tell me about yours"

She then began a long complicated spiel about the difficulties she was having with the apartment for which she has signed.

However, I cut her rather short. "That’s not my problem" I interjected. Then I proceeded to tell her what my problem was. I explained my medical issues, in rather forthright terms and how she was contributing to them. I told her that I had proposed an exchange of apartment but she had refused.
"But I can’t walk upstairs. I have this bad back"
"Madam" I replied. "In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve just walked up 25 stairs this very minute to speak to me. Your medical problems are obviously nothing like as bad as mine and I have to do that at least three times per week on crutches"

We carried on with that kind of chat for a couple of minutes and then I interjected once more, saying "I have nothing more to add to the matter. If you have anything further to say, you must say it to the letting agent" and I escorted her to the door.

Now she can walk the 25 stairs back down again.

She’s obviously not received the letter that I sent to the letting agent this morning because I have now decided on a course of action.

Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s certainly true, especially when you have had a lot of night in which to think.

Having dashed through everything last night, I was finally in bed by not many minutes after 23:00, which made a very pleasant change. Looking forward to a good night’s sleep, I curled up under the bedclothes and made myself comfortable

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I had been up for an hour and a half. So much for my idea of a good night’s sleep. Of course, it’s dialysis night but it’s usually Saturday night / Sunday morning when I have sleeping issues. So it must be my guilty conscience preying on me.

But when you are awake at 05:05 and don’t leave the bed until 05:28 you have plenty of time, all nice and peaceful, to think of a plan.

My plan was firstly to go into the bathroom and have a good scrub up. And then into the kitchen and have my medication.

Back in here, armed with a mug of instant coffee, I sat down and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I came home from school and found my mother doing her usual things, talking, and then our father came in. He was talking about a couple of things that he was intending to do in the future. One of them was “we have to pack because we are moving”. This took everyone by surprise. He said “we’re moving to London – I have a job down there. I already have the house and it’s all ready for us to move”. “Oh God!”. My mother and I were completely taken by surprise because he’d never said anything to anyone. We hadn’t put our house up for sale and there were still lots of little tasks that needed doing. The first thought that went through my mother’s mind was “I bet he hasn’t bought a house. He’s probably rented a room somewhere for us and the next stop will be two rooms and a bathroom then some kind of council house”. My mother was very dispirited. So was I. I said “I don’t want to go”. She replied “that’s not like you. You’re always wanting to move on”. I replied “yes but I want to move on to my place on my terms, not go down to south-west London”. My mother replied “you aren’t obliged to go, are you?”. I replied “no, but I’ll have to find a job, all that kind of thing, leave school”. My mother was worried about all kinds of tasks that needed finishing off, like the garage floor, all of that, but it never seemed to change anything and we were just extremely unhappy and dispirited by it all.

That is in fact just like my family. They never ever planned anything for the future. It was always a question of carpe diem quam minimum credula postero as Horace would have said and “make it up as you go along”.
.
Another intriguing thought is “why did I say “South-West London” “? I actually lived in Wandsworth once for a couple of months, that’s true. I was so fed up listening to someone’s sad tale of “never finding work” and having an excuse for every suggestion that I made, that I took action.

What I did was to place an advert in one of these local papers in South-West London – mainly because it was the only area of London that I didn’t know very well – and within 48 hours I had a room lined up. I caught the train down and found my room, dumped my stuff and went for a walk.

Around the corner was a pizza restaurant advertising for casual kitchen staff and delivery drivers (evenings) and a few doors down was an Employment Agency with an advert in the window looking for bus drivers to drive schoolkids around mornings and evenings. So within 20 minutes of arriving at my digs I was effectively in full-time employment.

It really was that easy.

When my mother said that not wanting to go was not like me at all, she was perfectly correct. I was always the adventurous one. If I had had my way, our family would have immigrated to Australia under the “ten-pound Poms” scheme in the 1960s.

After I’d finished, I sat down and wrote out my letter to the letting agents, the one about which I talked earlier. I set out all of my medical issues and all the action that I had taken to date vis-à-vis my tenant.

And here’s the crunch. The lease will definitely finish on the due date. And if she wants to stay on afterwards, she can do so – but on hotel terms and conditions and at hotel rates too. I finished with “these terms are non-negotiable. It’s ‘take it or leave it’ and I want to hear no more of the matter. The discussion is finished”.

The way she came upstairs and went back down after having rejected my home exchange offer eighteen months ago “on health grounds” has only made me more determined.

The nurse came round to sort me out and I asked me if he knew anyone in the Mafia. He seems to know everyone else who might be disreputable. It might come down to asking “Luigi and a couple of the boys” to help me do a home removal, and we’re not talking about my apartment either.

Once he’d gone I could make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. We’re still in Kenilworth Castle having a good wander around looking at the architecture. And nothing has happened that is controversial as yet.

But seeing as we have been talking about breakfast… "well, one of us has" – ed … my hot cross buns were absolutely exquisite. Just as they ought to be, in fact. This is a real success.

Back in here, there was more discussion. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I should have had a ‘phone call from the UK last week. However, due to a family emergency it never happened.

Today though, we had a very lengthy exchange of messages, discussing the finalisation of phase one of my project and the projected start of phase two. We’ve had an estimate of sorts for the work and we discussed other work that we could also include. All we need to do now is to save up some money

Next task was to finalise my LeClerc order and send it off. They had almost everything too, and acceptable substitutes for what was missing.

We haven’t finished yet either. My niece and a couple of my little great-nieces (or great little nieces) contacted me for a chat and we had a lovely time together. Amber has just finished her exams and is quite confident that she’ll graduate in May. It’s streamed live and so she’ll send me a link.

Her High School graduation was streamed live too and I enjoyed watching it. It’s really hard to believe that in December 2003 she was such a tiny baby and I was bouncing her up and down on my knee in a car in a howling snowstorm in the Appalachians of Maritime Canada.

My first disgusting drink break, late that it was, was interrupted by the arrival of my cleaner who set about her afternoon’s task

After she left I could make a start on my Saturday At Woodstock, but not for long because my LeClerc order arrived and I had stuff to put away. With the LeClerc order came the tenant, about whom I spoke earlier, so I had her to deal with too.

Finally, I had everything put away (well, almost) and so I sat down to restart my Saturday At Woodstock.

And no sooner had I started then Rosemary rang. Just a short ‘phone call today – one hour and thirty-eight minutes. I forgot to mention earlier that I’d been speaking via text messages to Rosemary throughout the day, helping her to fix her computer at a distance.

It’s hardly a mystery that she’s having so many problems. I finally managed to receive her “SysInfo”. Her OSbuild is 5371 and mine is … errr … 5737, 360 rebuilds later, and mine’s not new. And her operating system is dated Seventh August … errr … 2020.

What I suggested to Rosemary is that she comes to help me move (if I ever do) and brings her laptop with her. I’ll fit one of my spare 250GB SSD units in it and give it a clean install from new.

What with one thing and another (and once you start, you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) it was a very late tea of salad, air-fried chips and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. All really nice, that’s for sure.

So horribly late, I’m going to bed. It’s dialysis day tomorrow. But what a day that was today. I’m glad that it was a Day of Rest. What would it have been like had I been busy? Just about everything happened today and that makes a change from the usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about Italian restaurants … "well, one of us has" – ed … a new Italian restaurant opened in Crewe and I went for a job as a delivery driver.
Nerina thought that I was crazy going for that job and that I’d never have it
However I did succeed in my application and when I saw her in the street later I gave her a wave as I drove pasta.

Wednesday 26th March 2025 – BLIMEY! THAT WAS HOT!

Now I understand why it was that a couple of years ago Noz had row after row after row of jars a well-known food manufacturer’s Vindaloo curry sauce on special offer. I bought a couple of jars and they have sat on my shelves ever since.

With too much stuffing left over from Monday and Tuesday, this evening a threw in a tin of chick peas and a jar of the Vindaloo sauce to make several portions of curry, some of which I can freeze for a later date.

But I doubt if they will freeze at all. Even in a cold state, I bet that I’ll put them in the freezer and they will melt all the ice for miles around.

It wasn’t cold in here either last night. In fact, I went to bed without the fleece. It’s possibly a sign that it’s beginning to warm up outside although I wouldn’t bet on it quite yet.

What might have helped in that respect was that it was close to 02:00 when I finally went to bed, and I was absolutely exhausted. Earlier in the evening I’d set up the computer to run an algorithm running through all of the back-up drives to identify more duplicates in respect of the batch of the old files that I found a week or two ago.

It seemed to take an age crawling through all of the disks identifying stuff and so I thought, as it became later and later, "here I am so here I stay", or "J’y suis, j’y reste" as Maréchal MacMahon once said at Malakoff.

Then, of course, the inevitable happened. At 96%, the algorithm crashed and that was that. What I call a waste of an evening, but it was inevitable.

Once in bed, there I stayed, sound asleep until the alarm went off at 07:00. And then, a very weary me took to his feet and staggered into the bathroom to sort myself out.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back at home last night. There were a lot of children there and the place was running a little wild. I was doing something with one of the small girls and she walked on the face of my youngest sister and my sister began to cry. I explained to my mother what had happened and told her that there was really nothing that anyone could have done about it – it was quite an accident and I was sure that she didn’t do it on purpose. My mother was however extremely unhappy about this and and I could see that she was waiting for the ideal moment t in which she would probably blow her top.

My mother not listening to any explanation and blowing her top was nothing new. Most people say that it’s unpredictable behaviour that makes for an uncomfortable household. That’s certainly not true. In our house it was completely predictable and we spent all of our childhood walking on eggshells. But my youngest sister has appeared quite regularly in my dreams just recently. Why can’t Castor, Zero, TOTGA or Moonchild appear as frequently?

Isabelle the Nurse and I had a long chat about the shambles that is the Town Centre right now with all of the roadworks and rebuilding. The mayor’s vanity projects are reaching new heights, so they say, but in my opinion they are plumbing new depths. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few years ago when they ripped up the old railway line down by the docks to turn the area into a car park. They just dumped a load of asphalt down and rolled it in instead of doing something really attractive. But when it comes to the view outside the Town Hall, it’s all a completely different beast.

Isabelle the Nurse thinks that I ought to run for Mayor, but I don’t even have the right to a vote here – nowhere in the World, in fact.

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

Our author has discovered that several stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … on Dartmoor align with the same stars of some of the alignments at Stonehenge do, but some 300 or 400 years later due to the precession of the stars that we mentioned yesterday. In view of the crude nature of the stones he considers that these are more primitive people than those at Stonehenge.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have discussed something along these lines before. One of our authors has pointed to the fact that invading forces in the British Isles have pushed the preceding inhabitants westward onto poorer land. The work on Stonehenge began approximately 2600BC and stopped at about 1600BC. Round about 1800BC we have the arrival of what are termed “The Wessex Culture”, described by one historian as "an intrusive ruling class who opened trading networks with France and central and northern Europe, and imported bronze tools and probably also artisans", from mainland Europe.

They certainly reached the Wessex area (hence their name) where there have been numerous discoveries of rich graves .

It doesn’t take much imagination to speculate that with their superior organisation, the people of the Wessex culture swept away the previous inhabitants who fled West, and built what they could to continue to worship what they worshipped, with whatever they could find and whatever skills that remained.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then started work. By the time that I finished, I’d sorted out all of the music, remixed it, paired and segued it and written all of the notes for the next radio programme, ready to dictate on Saturday night.

So for the rest of the week I can attack my Woodstock magnum opus and see what inroads I can make into it.

That was despite several interruptions – my cleaner arriving to do her stuff, my weekly shower, the disgusting drink break etc. But at least I’m now nice and clean, my clothes are washed and I can enjoy my night’s sleep, if I ever reach my bed.

Tea tonight was rice and veg and a naan of course, With all of the stuffing though, far too much for one meal, I threw in a tin of chick peas and a jar of the Vindaloo sauce and had it simmering away for twenty minutes in the microwave on a low heat

And by God! That’s what I call “hot” It’s no surprise that no-one in France ever bought it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I lived on my farm we used to have communal meals in our area where each one of us would take a dish. I always took a dish of pepper and lentil curry, made especially lightly. All of the British people there would be going "what the hell is this insipid rubbish, Eric?" and all of the French people would be gasping for air and throwing themselves into the nearby pond.

Right now though, I’m going to throw myself into my bed and have a sleep, later than usual of course.

But before I go, seeing as we are talking about going to bed … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was told a story about a boxer who was unable to sleep. His doctor told him to try counting sheep after he lay down and that should do the trick.
"I’ve tried that" said the boxer. <"and it’s totally useless"
"Why’s that?" asked the doctor
"Because every time I lie down i begin to count .. one .. two .. three .. four .. five .. six.. seven .. eight .. and every time I say .. nine .. I automatically leap to my feet again"

Tuesday 31st December 2024 – BY THE TIME …

… that you lot read this, the old year will have gone out and it’ll be a new year. For many people it will be a new beginning too, but for many others it will be more of the same old routine.

25 years ago today we were eagerly awaiting the Millennium. I’d given an interview on Belgian TV (in Flemish, of course) a few days earlier and on New Year’s Eve I was sitting in a bar in a motel in a small town on an island off the coast of New Jersey.

We were partying, of course. I was wearing a hat to which I had tied a helium balloon. I’d tied the hat to me all the same with just enough string so that the hat, by virtue of the balloon, was floating an inch or so above my head and it looked really cool.

The Continental USA has five time zones and so we celebrated New Year for New York, then for Chicago, then for Denver, then for San Francisco, and finally for Anchorage.

Once we had celebrated New Year in Anchorage, we all trundled off to the all-night petrol station and convenience store down the road where we bought a big tub of ice cream and with a spoon each, we tucked in. Then a couple of us walked down to the beach and waited for the dawn to break and for all of the hope that we wanted it to bring.

But look at me now, 25 years later. Never mind crossing the Atlantic, I’m struggling to cross my bedroom and my best hope for the New Year is that they can somehow resolve the issue of this painful dialysis.

How the Mighty have fallen.

So if I have any advice for anyone in this coming year it is "if you feel like doing something, do it now, right now, before it’s too late. Because you become much more ill and infirm much quicker than you think."

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I stayed up last night, loitering around for my own pleasure reading a few web pages about this and that, although not about “the other” of course. That boat sailed a long time ago.

It was 01:00 when I finally crawled into bed and then I slept the Sleep of the Dead until the alarm awoke me. I hadn’t moved at all during the night.

When I awoke though I was in the middle of an exciting dream but the moment I went to reach for the dictaphone it all evaporated, every last drop of thought and that is really a tragedy. I only hope that it didn’t involve Castor, TOTGA or Zero.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and sorted myself out, and then came back in here to wait for Isabelle the Nurse.

While I was waiting, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it from the night. I was in work again. It was one of the very last days of work before Christmas so we weren’t doing very much. We were sitting around, talking and playing some kind of game that went on round and round the building. after lunch, I was late back. There were already six or seven people in this group. Our boss was there, the big boss of the building. He told us that we may as well continue this game and he’d actually like to play it with us too, so he joined in. Just then, his ‘phone rang so he answered it. It was a woman, asking for permission to be in late tomorrow because her husband worked at Knorr and they were doing something at 09:00. He replied that that wasn’t a problem. Then what he said was that he had a whole host of adverts that he’d cut out of the papers and he was going to ring round and speak to everyone to find out who they were, what they were doing and whether we knew all about them. I had something of a thought myself because my ‘phone number was also in that lot. He made a start and I could see that he was coming closer to my number in this pile. I’d worked out what I was going to say, and that was that this was just simply a way that I could use as an aide-memoire to make sure that I’d filled in all my forms on time and sent them in, and that would be really all.

Whatever was going on in that dream, I can’t think of how it relates to anything that I might know, especially why Knorr should feature in it so prominently. But then nothing in my dreams ever makes sense – just like in real life, I suppose.

Later on, we’d been playing football in a 5-a side football tournament. We were waiting for our final matches to start. My brother told me that his match was in a couple of minutes. I said something like “so is my final match”. We went to our various respective areas of this field. I played my game and when I came back I couldn’t find my brother. I searched and searched but with no luck so in the end I went home. Being back home, first of all I was shouted at for being late and then shouted at for losing my brother but I told the story of the final games and I still don’t think that they believed me but they were becoming completely agitated. Just then we heard the front door downstairs open. We thought “is this him?” I looked out of the door and down the stairs. It was my old black cat. She sat at the bottom of the stairs miaowing for a couple of minutes. I kept on talking to her. In the end she ran up the wall and across into our room. I picked her up, stroked her and took her back into the room where my parents were. They seemed more relieved to see the cat than any news about my brother

This is what I call “unlikely”. There would be no chance whatever of my brother ever playing football. And being shouted at was nothing compared to what would have happened had I lost my brother somewhere.

It was interesting watching my old black cat climb up the wall but she is the only member of my family whom I would be pleased to see. Why the others keep on appearing so often is something that completely defeats me and I wish that they’d move out of my head and make room for some others to appear.

Isabelle was late today. First day back so I imagine that she had all of the blood tests and injections to do. But she was her usual chatty self and she complimented me on being the only person up here to have some kind of Christmas decoration visible to the public.

After she left I made breakfast, and that was when I discovered that I’d run out of bread and had forgotten to make any more yesterday evening. And so I had to have a quick breadmaking session first.

While I was waiting for the dough to rise I had breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are discussing housing, coinage and religion but it is the “religion” bit that is the most interesting, and not for the more obvious reasons either.

It’s long-been a mystery to me why so many Welsh words seem to come from the Latin, even though the words describe some vital item that surely must have existed and had a name prior to the coming of the Romans. Anyway our author tells us, in an aside, that "Celtic religion, in so far as it was descended from the religion of the undivided Aryan stock, was fundamentally one with the religions of Italy and Greece ; and we might expect that it would resemble most closely the religion of the Italians, to whose tongue Celtic was most nearly akin."

There is a variety of early Italian languages, like Etruscan and Umbrian to name but two, that preceded the Latin language. And if the root of these words in common usage was derived from words in one of these early Italian languages that later influenced the Latin language, that would explain everything.

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. The word for a snake in Welsh is neidr which sounds uncannily like “adder” and a river in Welsh is afon, pronounced “Avon”, so you can see that Modern English has been influenced by words from an ancient Celtic language. Why wouldn’t this work with any other languages?

After breakfast I carried on making the bread and by the time that I finished, I had the best loaf that I have ever made and I was really impressed with that. While it was baking I tidied up around the kitchen and regrettably, dropped and broke one of my best glass storage jars

Then I had to check the radio programme that I’ll be sending off later. And this is that mega-complicated one that took me weeks of thought and work to make. But listening to it, it really does work and there’s a pile of good stuff in it.

It features someone who was born in 1892 and probably never ever met a rock musician in his life but he’s an important personage in the story of rock music, and it’s well-worth a listen. So tune in to LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS on Friday or Saturday at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK time, 15:00 Toronto time.

There was an unexpected visit today. The woman who is President of the Residents’ Committee and who helped me so much with the purchase of the apartment downstairs came to see how I was. She stayed for an hour or so too chatting away. And she was another one who admired my Christmas lights, so I had a moan to her about the lack of festive spirit shown by everyone else.

For lunch I tried one of my new flapjack slices and this batch is the best that I have ever made too. Pushing the mixture down tightly into the baking tray with a potato masher is definitely the way to go here.

My cleaner turned up today instead of tomorrow and helped me into the shower. And once more, it really was lovely. Only five months to go until I can move downstairs and have a real shower.

While I was showering she was cleaning so there’s a nice clean apartment and a nice clean me in nice clean clothes. How long all of that will last, I really don’t know.

Football was on next – Penybont v Cardiff Metropolitan, and once again at the vital moment Penybont threw away a two-goal lead. They went from 2-0 to 2-3 against TNS a few weeks ago and tonight, they went from 2-0 to 2-2. They have now been knocked off the top of the table.

A match played in a howling gale was always going to be a lottery but the Met, playing with the wind and a 6’4″ centre-forward in the second half managed the conditions much better and had Penybont under the cosh for most of the last 45 minutes.

If Penybont have any aspirations in challenging TNS at the top, they are going to have to look at the question of concentration much more closely. They can’t let matches slip out of their grasp like this.

Tea tonight was the last of the frozen wellingtons with a big pile of veg and gravy, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. But as for the veg, the roast potatoes and roast Butternut squash went down really well.

There are some leeks left so at the weekend, it may well be leek soup for lunch. There’s some butternut squash soup in the fridge for tomorrow.

So now I’m going to loiter around for a while before going to bed. Isabelle isn’t coming so I can lie in.
"I’ll give you a ring to see how you are tomorrow morning" she said instead
"No you won’t" I replied. "I’ll be in bed"
"I’ll leave it late then" she said. "About 11:30"
"No you won’t. I’ll still be in bed then!"

Anyway, just before I go, latest news from Bridgend in that Penybont FC’s dog walking service has collapsed.
"Why is that?" I asked my informant
"They have lost all of their contracts"
"What happened?"
"Apparently no-one is letting them take their dogs for a walk, seeing as how they are totally incapable of hanging on to a lead."

Monday 7th October 2024 – MY APPLE CAKE …

… tastes absolutely delicious. I cut it up and put it in the fridge this evening and there were still some crumbs lying about so I was tempted to have a sample. And I’m glad that I did. I made a mental note to make this for pudding another time because it really was nice.

What made a big difference was to whizz up the ingredients instead of mixing them in a bowl with a spoon. Everything was properly and thoroughly mixed in, and that is definitely progress.

So what can I try to make next?

One thing that I can try to make is a concerted effort to be in bed at a reasonable time. Last night I actually managed it too, and with going to sleep fairly early I had a good sleep all the way through to … errr … 06:00

That might not seem much, but it’s a lot better than some nights have been just recently.

And then I managed to drift off back to sleep because when the alarm went off, I was miles away.

In fact there was a dream going on. I was working with a girl and she had this very irritating habit of whenever i said something she gave her agreement by using some phrase and she said it two or three times and it really got on my nerves. I wish that I could remember the phrase now but the dream had only just started when the alarm went off.

In the bathroom I had a good wash, a shave and a wash of the clothes, including the socks. And I applied plenty of deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant and you can laugh all you want to, I don’t care.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. We were all back at work and we had a military unit that had come along and been transplanted in. The General was one of these people who was a stickler for propriety. Everything had to be done absolutely perfectly so it was only natural that people began to mimic his actions, his way of saluting, his way of talking etc. It became something of a standing joke. One day he happened to come across a group of civilians, one of whom was one of his fiercest critics. After he’d talked to them for a couple of minutes he turned to that civilian and said “well, aren’t you going to salute me?”. The civilian, rising to the challenge, gave him an absolutely perfect military salute, an exact copy of what he would have done, and came out with a phrase that the General would have used, and exactly in the right accent. The General turned to the civilian and said “do you know, Mr so-and-so, that is probably the best thing that you have ever done” and walked away. Of course it became quite a subject for discussion in the office canteen about the General having seen to be the right kind of person for the people to take the mickey, and a person who would appreciate a good joke

We did have a Military Unit in the office and the General in charge was a Finnish General whose claim to fame was that he had been kidnapped by one of the groups of militia in Lebanon and held to ransom. When his chauffeur was away somewhere and my boss was in the USA I was given the task of driving him around for a week and after I finished he gave me a huge lumberjack’s axe which I have down on the farm. In his apartment just as you go in was a big stuffed brown bear in pouncing pose on its hind legs. "I shot that" he proudly announced.

But there’s a funny story related to that. There was a party at his place and people from all over Europe were there, all speaking English no matter where they came from. One woman asked him about the bear and when he said that he’d shot it, she asked what they did. He replied "we ate it". There is a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding when you are using a second language, and she went around telling the rest of the party how the General, having shot his bear, then sat down in the tundra under a tree and tucked in, presumably without cooking it.

There was then also something about me living at home and meeting up with a group of kids. There seemed to be a youngish girl who took something of a fancy to me. She would always seek me out and spend a lot of time chatting. I happened to quite like her so I used in some ways to encourage it. We ended up chatting to each other on the ‘phone quite a lot. On one particular occasion she went down to the swimming baths but I had to work until 14:00. I told her that I’d give her a ring when I’d finished to see how the water was. Round about 13:40 there was nothing else happening at all so I ‘phoned her and asked her about the water, asked her about everything and told her that I’d be down shortly. I put everything away and went to see my mother to tell her that I was going down to the swimming baths. She must have heard my conversation because she made some kind of remark. Then she brought me a cup of tea and I had the impression that it was almost as if she was preventing me from going. I wasn’t really sure why but out of politeness I sat and drank the tea. I know who this girl is too. I did actually quite like her and I’m trying to thing of her name but I just can’t

This girl is so familiar that when I saw her in my dream I didn’t mind that it was she rather than Zero who had come to see me. So I really wish that I knew who she was because I really have no idea and that is just so sad. And how familiar is it that a member of my family will try to spike my guns?

Telephones in the baths is a novel idea too. In my day it was wristwatches that caused the most problems. I flooded one or two beyond repair and so did many others. How many ‘phones would be flooded these days? I’ve not been to the swimming baths since the happy days at Commentry when I used to go every Saturday afternoon on my way home from the shops at Montluçon.

The nurse came round and we had an even quicker record time today. He’s really got the wind up about something. Maybe it’s my deodorant, I dunno.

But after he left I had breakfast and read MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright is still poking around the Iron Age Hillforts on the Shropshire-Herefordshire-Radnorshire-Montgomeryshire border

On our way round we inspected a megalith that was standing in a field near the village of Whitcott Keysett. Sad to say, it was flattened and smashed as recently as 1944. I could weep.

Back in here I attacked the next radio programme and all of the music has now been chosen, paired off and segued. Next task was to review the programme that will be broadcast on Friday and then send it off. Finally I made a start on my Welsh homework.

There was also a moment to ‘phone up the Dialysis Centre to confirm that they had my headphones. And I hadn’t, until then, realised that I was entitled to a locker in the dressing room.

All of that took me up to 12:10 when my cleaner came to fit the anaesthetic patches on my arm. We had a chat and then she departed hence and I made a start on cutting up my apple cake, but once more the taxi came early.

We had a good chat all the way down to the centre where I arrived really early so they could start quite quickly. One of the needles was fairly painful but the other, I hardly felt at all.

They had put me in a room today, presumably because I misbehaved last time, I dunno, but it did mean that I was hardly interrupted and I could crack on.

My Welsh homework was finished quite quickly and I could carry on reading Lewis Carroll’s biography.

And what do you make of this paragraph? It was written by the editor of “Aunt Judy’s Magazine” reviewing one of Carroll’s works
"Some of the touches are so exquisite, one would have thought nothing short of intercourse with fairies could have put them into your head"

Of course when we look at words like “brilliant” and “fantastic”, they have long-since lost their literal meaning and modern usage has given them a completely different meaning

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and although she gave me a wave, she kept well away from my lair. The chief of the unit came to see me and try to pitch me on this home dialysis. Instead I told him about the issues with my foot and he agreed that it’s probably a trapped nerve. He’s going to arrange a body scan and an IRM.

Eventually they unplugged me, weighed me and threw me out. Half of the weight that I had lost last time had stayed lost and today I lost another 1.7kg.

The driver who brought me home was another candidate for The Driver From Hell. As fast as it was possible to go and driving so close to the car in front that we would have all been done for if someone further in front had applied the brakes. I was glad to be home.

This evening I could only manage one step without using my hand to lift up my leg, and it was a struggle to make the last two stairs. That’s a backward step … "very good" – ed … and I’m disappointed by that.

After my cleaner had sorted me out and left, I checked the Welsh homework that I’d done and then sent it off.

Tea was as usual a stuffed pepper. And I’m going to stop buying tomatoes from LeClerc. They are going bad quicker than I can use them.

So now having finished my notes, I’m off to bed, later than I would have liked.

But seeing as we have been talking about second languages … "well, one of us is" – ed …what’s even funnier though is when people come out with something that you wouldn’t expect when they are speaking a foreign language. I have learned in many, many different languages of Europe certain phrases that would never be taught at school and many of my colleagues have learnt them in English, seeing as I was the only English-speaker in the whole of my unit.
One day I was looking for one of my Italian colleagues, and saw him down the far end of a crowded corridor.
"Domenico" I shouted. "What are you doing right now?"
"Eric" he shouted back in his lovely Italian accent "I am doing bugger all"
And there was a deathly silence in the corridor. How was I supposed to know that a committee from the British Permanent Representation, including the Ambassador, was being shown around the building?

Monday 17th June 2024 – I’M BACK …

… from Paris, and in one piece too which makes a major change.

And I’ve learned a lot too, which also makes a change, but very little of it about what is going on, for the simple reason that I’m not convinced that the hospital knows all that much about things.

Not that that’s any surprise. It’s pretty difficult when you are dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure and everything has to be done by trial and error, crossing of fingers, and hoping that something somewhere will work a miracle.

Instead though, I’ve been shown a whole new way through Paris – a way that’s almost totally devoid of traffic – and Ill remember this for if, by any luck, a miracle happens and I can come here again under my own steam. However, I am not optimistic.

Just as last night I wasn’t optimistic about having a good night’s sleep. I never seem to manage one in normal circumstances and there’s even less chance when I have a journey the next day. It’s always the case and I’ve never worked out why.

Going to bed long after midnight doesn’t help matters much, but I’m at the stage where I’m past caring. As I said yesterday, whenever that was, I’ve long-since lost all track of time here.

Whatever the contretemps was last night when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still continuing so I thought that it was probably a better idea to keep well clear rather than sticking my oar into a controversial situation … "perish the thought" – ed … and I left them to it.

For a change I was asleep quite quickly but as usual kept on awakening which put me off my stroke.

There was the 06:15 blitz through the ward and even though I had my alarm set for 07:00 I was awakened unceremoniously at 06:25. Diabetes check below the limit but I was refused my supplementary orange juice. "Your breakfast will be here in a moment".

When I protested I was told to sod off. What a way to start the day!

However, she was right. Breakfast WAS served soon. Too soon in fact because the bread hadn’t arrived and I had to have biscottes.

The taxi driver came early and I wasn’t finished in the bathroom so he had to wait. But when I emerged I was shoved into a wheelchair and pushed off, clutching my crutches and the packed lunch that the nurse handed me.

There was “some issue” about my packed lunch. When it turned up it was ham and cheese sandwiches, absolutely ideal for a vegan I don’t think. And so for the first time ever in my life I have had bread sandwiches – two slices of bread with … a slice of bread in between.

The driver has run me around before. He’s a nice enough guy and a good driver but doesn’t have much to say for himself. Nether did I today so it was a fairly quiet drive and I slept for some of the way.

Astonishingly, we weren’t held up at all anywhere and sailed all the way through. A four-hour trip took just over three hours today.

Even more surprisingly, I was seen straight away by the specialist.

The lumbar puncture and the electric shock examinations from the other week when I was here as an in-patient don’t show any significant deterioration. But they don’t show any significant improvement either, which he found disappointing.

Consequently he’s going to change my chemotherapy tablet, the one that costs a King’s ransom for some other tablet.

There’s also the suspicion – only a suspicion, mind you – that there’s something else causing this creeping paralysis. He reckons that the amount of drugs pumped into me ought to have had a reaction. Consequently he wants to carry out a Biopsy of my nervous system. This will involve the stay of a few days in September.

Well, why not? What do I have to lose? Only my appetite with the food that’s on offer there.

But seriously, if I’m going to be poked and prodded around and used as a guinea-pig, I may as well make it worth my while and go the whole hog.

There was a blood sample that needed to be taken so I staggered off there where they had several goes at finding a vein and, on staggering out, staggered right into my driver who was passing down the corridor.

"Do you want time to eat your lunch?" he asked.
"No thanks" I replied, having seen what was in my food parcel "Let’s go straight back"

So having taken a different way home, at least as far as the suburbs of Paris, we were back here at 16:15 where the nursing staff, sincerely and unprompted, expressed their dismay at my lunch. "The hospital needs to make more of an effort". Someone fetched me an apple, for which I was grateful.

It’s been confirmed that I am going home tomorrow. "You could have gone home tonight but we didn’t want you to go home to a cold apartment and have the effort of cooking for yourself after the exertion of your trip to Paris" said Emilie the cute consultant who came to see me.

And you ought to be proud of me. I actually did refrain from offering her my front-door key and telling her warm up the place and put the supper on the stove.

But she did come to see me to find out how things went and she photographed the relevant info from Paris. She wished me luck on the next stage of my adventure with my health issues and by the time our conversation finished, I wasn’t really sure who was chatting up whom.

Yes, I’d quite happily massage her clavicles any time of the day or night, whether she asks or not.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night. I’d been out entertaining our parents in the RAF station.. When they came back there were three bats entangled in the barbed wire. We tried to laugh it off but in reality what had happened was that a couple of Lancaster trainers had one into the barbed wire too. Two of our students were killed. We tried to laugh it off as some kind of nothing much or not very important but from where we were we gradually prepared ourselves for flying operations and gradually tried to keep in shape etc ready to leave and set off. But we had the funeral and then we had to check the barbed wire in the camp and the guards. The guard was shaken up but I dunno I suppose that was what happened.

That’s rather a garbled account of something that I can’t really understand. The barbed wire from last night seems to be there but I’ve no idea about the rest of it Funerals on Air Force bases were commonplace following crashes and the like when trainees were overwhelmed by the equipment and machines that they ere operating and people who witnesses these accidents went to extraordinary lengths and took extraordinary measures to put the images of what they had seen behind them..

While I was on a field exercise I came across a guy living in a hut in the mountains. He was living in deplorable circumstances but I’ve no idea why. I had him arrested and taken back to base. It turned out that he was in fact someone who had been conscripted years ago but had fled. His whole life had been living in this cabin and he had learned so much in his two years of isolation. He taught it all to us, even down to eating possum Without him, our Air Force careers would have been so much tougher because he taught us to survive, and to survive on next-to-nothing. When we were prisoners that was just how it was – survive on what you had and don’t think about anything else

That reminds me of when I lived down on the farm and at a meeting once I was chatting to two British guys who were discussing “this strange British guy who lives like a hermit up in the mountains and no-one ever sees” and it took me a full fifteen minutes to work out that they were talking about me. I’d fit the description in this dream quite happily except that I’d draw the line at eating possum of course. The “deplorable conditions” would fit nicely though.

So anyway, home tomorrow it is. At least, if I can climb the steps up to my apartment. I’m not optimistic because I’ve been practising and it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

And that bit about “dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure” brought a wry smile to my face. It reminded me of the Summer School for one of my University modules back 20-odd years ago where a group of us on a Science awareness course managed to club our heads together in the laboratory and discovered a cure for which there was no known disease.

Wednesday 29th May 2024 – IN THE MIDDLE …

… of a period where my work output has slowed down to the kind of speed that makes a crawl look rapid, today I had a day where I emulated my namesake the mathematician and did three fifth of five eights of … errr … nothing.

In fact, I probably didn’t even do three fifths of five eights of it. It’s not been a very good day for me in that respect.

And that’s a shame because for once I actually managed something like an early night. Even going to bed and sliding under the covers was easier and I could toss and turn all night to my heart’s content. For the first time in several weeks i actually felt content in bed.

For a change I slept through to the alarm and found that I could even sit upright in bed without pain. When I arose from my stinking pit I actually felt in a much better frame of mind too and it looked like being a good day

It didn’t take long for things to go south, that’s for sure. For a start that large file transfer that I’d tried to do yesterday had failed and I had to do it again later in the day.

First though I had to go through the usual morning routine and I’ll tell you for nothing that this anti-potassium stuff really does taste awful.

Next step was to have a good wash and change of clothes. My old clothes walked into the laundry basket on their own

The nurse came around later on and as well as the usual morning routine for him, he had to give me my injection and take a blood sample. Consequently I’m feeling like a dartboard again because he doesn’t have “the touch”.

And I wish that he’d stop moaning. I’m not responsible for the (lack of) light in the dining area or the diameter of my veins and there’s nothing that I can do about it.

After he left I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I dreamed once again that the alarm had gone off so I arose and left the bed. I had to tell my mother where the alarm was so that she could show my brother for the following morning. Just then the alarm went off again. I thought “well, not to worry. I can awaken him and show him where the alarm is now that the other ‘phone is ringing”. But there was no ‘phone ringing at all. There was no alarm. There was no awakening. It was 11:00 and the last 8 hours that we’d had … fell asleep here …

so we’re back on the phantom alarms again. And back with the family again too. I thought that I’d said “goodbye” to them a while back.

I was with The Saint last night in Midwest USA. Some guy had been killed and everyone was investigating his murder. The last time he was seen was with a couple of women. Slowly, these two women were denounced by the neighbours as being Amish and made some kind of living by entrapping single men into marrying one of them and presenting a baby, then hitting the men for alimony that would last for 18 years but in the meantime moving on to the next guy. So The Saint had to find these women and investigate it. Eventually he was picked up by these two women and taken back to their house. He was plied with drink and other kinds of things. It wasn’t too long before some kind of mock or sham marriage was arranged between him and the younger of these two women. It was quite clear what they had in mind which was to entrap him in a bedroom scene. This slowly developed throughout the night until in the end I awoke and missed all of the excitement.

Most un-Amish-like behaviour. I’ve encountered plenty of Amish people. There’s a large pocket of them up around where my place is in New Brunswick and “over across” in Maine. You’re in a hurry going south towards Interstate 95 and suddenly come screeching up behind a horse and buggy. It’s quite disconcerting. All oil lamps and stuff like that – the kind of technology that would even impress the people in Crewe.

The next dream also involved The Saint. The Austrian police had intercepted a drugs run of a large amount of high-quality drugs and needed to find out more. The operation was so secure that no-one knew who their contact was so they decided to infiltrate James Bond … "James Bond?" – ed … as the drugs runner and have him pick up all the information that he could while he was on his way round ready for the final arrest at the appropriate moment. Of course he agreed to this but under some very strict terms to make it look even more convincing such as the fact that he had been arrested and had been released with no charge because the police couldn’t find the drugs on him, therefore he must have had them hidden somewhere extremely secret that no-one else knew and to pick up the story from there, and this was where it all began.

Vienna was always the place for that. The “Crossroads of Europe” where east meets west, the amount of smuggling that went on there across the various borders, and not just in THE THIRD MAN either, was legendary, and probably still is. I was there with a 22-tonne lorry at Christmas 1997 and was told not to leave it parked unattended in the commercial vehicle car park or it would be in Bratislava in half an hour, with me a long way behind.

By the way, can you guess what I’m watching as I eat my evening meal?

My cleaner didn’t clean this afternoon. Instead we had a very lengthy chat about the arrangements for my visitors as I won’t be here to greet them. She knows my apartment and so do they so there shouldn’t be any issues. They can all work it out between them and it’ll probably be easier than if I tried to resolve anything.

As you might expect, I crashed out for a few hours again today. Yesterday of course I didn’t crash out at all which is a rare achievement these days. A shame that I can’t keep it going.

Tea was a left-over curry and this batch of naan bread dough is perfection itself. The naan that I made this evening was delicious, nice and light and fluffy as it’s supposed to be

So right now I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I’m backing up the computer, packing and baking bread.

But something that I wrote just now reminds me of the two guys who locked themselves out of their apartment. One of their windows was open so they borrowed a ladder and began to climb up.
"Doing this makes me feel like a fireman" said one
"Me too" replied his friend "but where would we find one at this time of night?"

Sunday 5th May 2024 – IM FED UP ….

… of these miserable days that I seem to be having right now,, like the one that I’ve had today when I’ve spent most of it asleep.

It totally beats me, whatever it is that’s switching me on and, more importantly, off like a lightbulb. I’m going through periods where I can’t stay awake no matter how hard I try. I can only think that it’s one of the pills that I’m taking and I wish I knew which one it was because I’d stop it without a moment’s hesitation.

It seems to be the same at night too though. What I’ve been doing for the last few nights is that once I actually get into bed, to run through a little scenario in my mind, and I’ve never reached the end of it, having fallen asleep somewhere along the way.

And last night was the same. I was in bed shortly after 23:00 and looking forward to a lie-in until all of 08:00 and running through my little scenario, didn’t reach the end before I must have fallen asleep.

There was something going on last night about a group of girls, maybe in a school or something. They had to dress themselves in the appropriate gear to fight off whatever it was that was coming to attack them. Some of them had just seen groups of humans coming their was. Others had seen supernatural figures. One had seen a dragon. The dispute roared on. If they wore clothes to defend themselves against the dragon they’ll be fine against any less powerful force but some of them just wanted to wear the clothes that were appropriate to fight the foe that they’d seen. They were in the middle of this huge argument when the alarm went off. Mt immediate feeling when the alarm went off was that it was too late now to change any decision that had been actually made because the moment had arrived.

It’s quite strange what goes on in my head just before the alarm goes off. There have been some really interesting things just recently that have been on the dictaphone from just before the alarm goes off and in some cases it’s a pity that the alarm disrupts them.

So when the alarm went off I fell out of bed and staggered off to the bathroom but the nurse was early today and gave me his three-minute warning before I’d finished dressing so I had to get a wiggle on and hurry up, which is quite difficult these days.

Anyway I just about managed to beat him this morning. Only just

When he came he told me that my neighbour had had another fall yesterday and that he’s worried about her. I think that all of us in the building are actually. She’s putting up a heroic fight against her illness but she really needs more help than we can give her.

After he left I had some breakfast and came back in here where I crashed out again. And for a couple of hours too. That’s really annoying as I said earlier.

Then I watched yesterday’s match between Stranraer and Stenhousemuir. Stranraer are bottom of the Scottish League 2 and Stenhousemuir are top so I imagine that everyone was surprised when Stranraer won the game 2-0.

Not that it did them any good because Clyde won too so Stranraer finished the season in bottom place and go into the relegation play-offs against East Kilbride of the Scottish Lowland League

After lunch I began to make my biscuits. I have some fresh – well, it’s not so fresh now after a couple of months in the kitchen – ginger and some coconut oil and desiccated coconut so for the next couple of weeks we’ll be having ginger and coconut biscuits.

While they were going through their preparation and standing phases I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Some of them you won’t wish to know about, especially if you’re eating your meal right now, but we had also gone to a Workingman’s Club in Crewe. We were only kinds and we weren’t sure whether we were going at first. It was all a very last-minute thing before my mother decided to take us. We had a wonderful time with all kinds of kids’ entertainments etc going on. At the end of the night I thanked my mother for taking us but wished that she’d spent more time with us because she was off with all of her friends but she insisted that she’d spent a lot of time with us although that’s not at all how it appeared to any of us at all. She was much more interested in her friends than she was in her children – that was the impression that we received and we were pretty much left alone for the entire night.

And there’s more truth in that dream than you can imagine too.

And weren’t Workingmen’s Clubs a strange phenomenon? Run by committees of elderly men who actively refused to consider anything at all except things that only they would enjoy, they drove away the youngsters in droves. When they died out, there was no-one to take their place and all of the clubs closed down

It doesn’t matter how well something is working at the moment, you have to move with the times and take on board modern ideas or else your pet project will die out with you too.

There’s a similar dispute going on in Welsh football right now. Ground improvement regulations have come into force at tier three clubs. They all now have to have covered seating accommodation, concrete walkways and so on.

Many people are upset by these regulations but the days of standing on a cinder bank in the open air in the rain are long-gone.

If I have the choice of a couple of football games to watch and it’s raining, and one ground has covered accommodation and the other doesn’t, which one will I choose? And if it’s not raining, but one ground has a pie hut and the other one doesn’t, where will I go?

The modern world is changing rapidly and we have to do the best we can to keep up with it.

There was also time to choose the music for another radio programme for which I’ll write the notes in the forthcoming week. When I’ll dictate them though is anyone’s guess. I need a quiet, late night for that but there’s no chance while the nurse is coming round every morning.

There was a vegan pizza to make too. I’d taken some of the dough out of the freezer and that was busy defrosting during the afternoon. At some point I rolled it out and assembled my pizza.

After the biscuits had been baked (and delicious they are too because I cooked the odds and ends of pastry in the air fryer and then sampled them) I baked the pizza and that was delicious too.

As a special treat for pudding, I finished off the strawberries with some more soya cream. They were really nice too.

So that’s everything for tonight, I reckon. I’ll do what I need to do to finish off and then go to bed where I’ll run through my little scenario and see how far I reach.

But the story of plays and scenarios reminds me of a story I heard about two rival actors, one of whom was appearing in a tragedy and the other in a comedy.
The one said to the other, who was appearing in the comedy "I saw your comedy last night and I’m afraid that I didn’t laugh once"
To which the other replied "well isn’t that funny? I saw that tragedy that you are in and I simply roared with laughter"

4th May 2024 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY …

.. to all of my readers. May the fourth be with you!

What I hope is that you have had a good day today. As for me, I’ve had a better day, but then again that’s not saying all that much.

After I’d finished my notes last night I had a rush around and was actually in bed by 23:03. That’s quite early for recent times but still later than I would like it to be, with an alarm call at 07:00.

Once in bed I didn’t remember anything at all – I certainly can’t remember any phantom alarm calls going off that would awaken me

When the real alarm did actually go off I was a little boy in bed with a little girl. My mother came in and said that she was glad to see me awake and glad to see me and that the two of us had got on so well together and she was going to sing a song to awaken both of us. Just at that moment BILLY COTTON roared his “wakey waaaa….key” and I didn’t find it funny in the least.

It’s very strange but the number of times something in real life has synchronised with something in a dream, such as my mother about to sing to wake me up and we have the alarm going off just at that moment. It’s not every time, of course, but it’s an unusual percentage of times that’s higher than you might think.

Anyway I wandered off for a wash and for my medication.

Having set out the room as the nurse likes it to be, he came down after seeing to my neighbour upstairs, changed the dressing on my foot and put on my puttees. And the wound on my foot is certainly looking much better than it did several weeks ago. That’s good news.

After he left I came back in here where I crashed out – the first of several times today. I’m not doing too well from that point of view.

As for my breakfast, I did manage to stay awake long enough to make and eat my cheese on toast and coffee. And the bread that I made yesterday is really good too. I was quite impressed with that lot of baking – almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin all those years ago.

Once I’d finally awoken I went for a wash and a shave and sure enough, at 14:00 I had a visitor. One of my fellow students on my Welsh course is retired and spends months driving around Europe in his caravanette. He’s turned up in Granville this morning so he came for a coffee and a chat.

And wasn’t it lovely to see him? I don’t have enough visits, which is a shame

After he left I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was with Nerina last night. She’d come back home and we were together, but it wasn’t at all what she was expecting. She realised that my routine had changed so what she decided was that some time during the following day we’d both sit down and thrash out some rules for some kind of co-existence. I was willing to listen but obviously I wasn’t going to agree to any of the rules that might change my life drastically from how it is. Nevertheless I was interested to see exactly what her proposals might be. Of course they might affect other people like the district nurse coming round but that was something that we’d have to see about and have to negotiate anyway so that we could have some kind of life in common rather than living as two individuals in the same house

The biggest change would be that I can’t walk anywhere these days. I’m stuck inside this building and not able to go out. I’m not sure what other changes there would be after 30-odd years but there would bound to be some. The fact that I don’t have to go to work and so can have a more regulated lifestyle would be a big change for a start

There was also something else going on too about living together. A young mother named Maggie had moved in with a guy called Bill in the suburbs of Glasgow because it seemed like the best opportunity she was going to find to escape the kind of squalor in which she’d been living. His lifestyle didn’t conform to what she was expecting either so it was necessary to get together and thrash out rules between him and her but she was far less optimistic that some kind of arrangement suiting both parties would be found and considered it a great challenge to try to persuade him to conform to certain ideals of communal life in the middle of all of this Glasgow gang warfare that was going on around these tenements

There are several people whom I know who can’t bear to be on their own and have to be with someone else regardless of how it turns out. For one or two of them, it’s turned out really well but for the most part it’s been something of a disaster and they just move on to the next, with predictable results.

The res of the day, when I’ve not been asleep, has been dealing with the blog entries from when I was in Canada in 2022. The photos and the corresponding text needs to be added in so I’ve been working on that.

There’s only a handful of photos left to do but they won’t be done tomorrow as I’ll be baking biscuits. I’m running right out of those at the moment. I’m just trying to think about what kind of biscuits I should make. The last lot were chocolate biscuits and the ones before that were honey biscuits.

Tea tonight was one of my breaded quorn fillets with a salad and a baked potato. Quite delicious as usual, especially the potato cooked for 5 minutes in the microwave and then 15 minutes in the air fryer.

Pudding was delicious too. Some of the strawberries that I bought the other day soaked in a vegan cream. And there are more strawberries and cream for tomorrow after the pizza.

But right now, that’s it. My eyesight has deteriorated rapidly since yesterday and I can’t really see what I’m doing.

And that’s a problem. Not like when I lived down on the farm. It was such a small village that even though I might not have had a clue what I was doing, all the neighbours knew

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

… French hospital that I can add to my ever-growing list. And remind me to cross it off my list of ones to revisit. Florence Nightingale was there and dropped her lamp on my toe.

But seriously, old and creaking though the hospital might have been, I couldn’t fault the service that I had yet again

“But I don’t want another one of these 06:30 starts again” said he, setting his alarm for 06;15 tomorrow. “I’m not as young as I was”.

Indeed I’m not. It took me over half an hour to wash and dress this morning which meant that I didn’t have time to make my sandwiches for the journey. Consequently I’ve been without food and drink all day until I returned home.

That’s actually not a bad idea either. It’s something along the principle of a long journey where “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out” at an inconvenient moment.

The taxi was late arriving so I had to ring up to chase them up. And when it arrived, what kind of state was I in to stagger to the car in my condition? This is really beyond a joke now.

But eventually we set off, with the driver telling me that she had no idea where the Hospital St Antoine was so she programmed it into her GPS.

She was … errr … past her prime, shall we say, and moaned and complained all the way to Paris about just about everything.

When we reached Paris we zigzagged up and down the streets as she kept on misreading her GPS, we almost speared another vehicle on a couple of occasions as she swerved dramatically across carriageways and nearly took out a couple of bollards as she did another handbrake turn at a missed junction.

A proper olde-worlde taxi driver she was, and I’ll tell you something for nothing, that I’d travel with her again. She made the journey quite interesting.

Finding the hospital was one thing. Finding the building that I had to visit was another. And then finding a parking space was something else quite difficult. In the end we negotiated with two ambulances and persuaded one of them to leave.

It was a desperate, agonising crawl on my crutches to the lift, to the reception and then to the waiting room. And my driver was helpfulness itself. Nothing was too much trouble for her and once she was away from the steering wheel she was actually quite a pleasant person.

We were 30 minutes late, not a problem because I telephoned them en route to say that we were “held up in traffic”. I suspected that something like this that happened.

There were quite a few people waiting but I jumped the queue and they saw to me straight away. Now I have a machine and its terminals stuck to me until tomorrow morning.

Yes, they want me to bring it back by 10:00 but they are of course joking. I’m not going back tomorrow. If it’s that important they should have given me a bed for the night.

Anyway I have the Holter Machine now, and I left the Technical Department here, the Haematology Department at Hospital Pitié Salpetrière and the taxi company fight it out between them if the hospital wants it back tomorrow.

Whatever the outcome was, the net result is that I have to be up and about to hand it to someone at my door at 06:30. And I suspect that it will be what my old boss when I was chauffeuring in Brussels would call a “Spanish 06:30”, meaning “any time they like”.

Having done all that, we set off for home. On the way back I had a message from the Hospital Pitié-Salpetrière – "Please stop taking medicament X and we’ll send you a prescription for medicament Y instead".

And I bet that After the blood test results on Wednesday There will be further changes.

We arrived back early, which was nice, and my helpful cleaner met us at the door to help me up the stairs. I’d be totally lost without her.

Once I’d settled down I made some hot chocolate and a nice baguette sandwich of lettuce, cheese and tomato which was excellent for a starving man.

And then back here I downloaded and printed the prescription for my long-suffering cleaner to take to the pharmacy tomorrow. She came down to collect it and we had a chat.

Then there was the dictaphone notes. Tons of them. I travelled miles during the night. I can’t remember much about this dream but it was one of those that rambled on. I was back at home with my family. One of my niece’s children was there. Everyone else was there. The girl was in a wheelchair because she’d had a problem and was going to the doctor’s very soon. They were going to give her a respray of her artificial suntan before she went. There were 2 other people disabled in that house and me too. I said to my mother “don’t you think that there’s something wrong somewhere with us that you have so many disabled people here all at once,”. She replied “yes you don’t usually have that many disabled people in a household do you?”.

Disabled people apart, there was a lot that was wrong about our family and household and disability wasn’t one of them.

There was then a dream about my youngest sister. A woman had decided to teach her to dance some kind dance. She held her backwards so that my sister couldn’t see what was behind her. They began this dance. There was a huge snake that lived in this room. When my youngest sister had her eyes closed and was dancing near that direction. Someone shouted “it’s OK baby. The snake (they used the snake’s name) has her jaws closed quite tight”. Obviously the inference being that this woman was going to lead my sister up towards the snake and the snake would devour her. My sister was immediately on the defensive and became much more nervous and tight in this woman’s arms than she had been before that person shouted out that comment.

And then my sister was there again later on. There was a digger there that slowly picked her up. She was dangling over different parts of the audience of the State Fair. Then she happened to fall or something fell from her hand. Instead of reaching for it this machine’s hand took her higher until she was in some kind of despairing reach of what she’d dropped. It slowly lowered her and she kept that position. The arm of the machine moved around. My sister actually soared up and went off in a very nice aeroplane. Someone standing by me tried his best but was carried away and the plane once it got going went more and more out to Haverfordwest. Before she left she gave me this little ball of dough and told me how to ply it and pull it apart … becomes very indistinct and tails off …

Not much of that latter dream makes sense but it was really difficult to decipher, especially as I began to taper off into nothingness. I wonder how it would have ended had I not done so.

Then I was back in a dream from a while ago, I think about some people investigating a murder. They were following up several clues, one of which was something that had fallen from a TGV. Anyway, a TGV was going full speed ahead when there was an enormous bang from underneath. They slowed right down and stopped. This stopped the whole TGV network. They looked underneath the line but couldn’t see anything so they walked slowly back along the track to see if they could see anything. They came to the TGV that was following them but was stopped. he said that just 20 metres back he had run over a dead cat. He was certain that it wasn’t there before when he was on the outbound trip. They began to look for this cat but couldn’t find it.

This dream moved on to someone having been killed. They’d picked up some evidence about a vehicle being seen somewhere. They made a few enquiries at an isolated farm in the vicinity. The farmer said that he knew absolutely nothing but it was the pace that his denial went that made them extremely suspicious They looked further around and came across another farmer who had a vehicle but something about this didn’t seem to fit anything. Eventually they found a third farmer who had had a Bedford CA van but had taken it to be scrapped. He was in the area at the time but had left the van unattended for a while and then gone back to it. He was sure that it had been moved. They were then convinced that they’d found the vehicle that was used so they went and bought the van and drove it back, deciding that rather than have it forensically tested they would try shock tactics and drive to the first farm in it. As soon as the farmer saw the van coming he ordered his men to open fire. A couple of them did but when he saw that it was quite pointless he put his gun to his head and shot three bullets through it, finishing himself off.

There was plenty more where that came from, but you don’t really want to read it especially if you are having supper or something.

My supper tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg – really delicious yet again. I don’t know why I complained about the taste yesterday. And with no sauce left I made my own with olive oil, wine vinegar and lemon juice with some garlic paste. Totally delicious.

And now, having already crashed out twice and an early start in the morning, I’m off to bed. Today has really exhausted me. But there’s my blood pressure, my medication and my on-line food order before I can go to sleep, not to mention my early start tomorrow.

It’s never-ending, isn’t it?

Sunday 21st January 2024 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… another one of those days where I have emulated my namesake and done three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

And that’s hardly a surprise. In between my leg and this blasted stuff to cure this excess of potassium, I’ve not been in any fit state for anything at all.

While we’re on the subject of this anti-potassium stuff … "well, one of us is" – ed … after taking the stuff last night I stayed up to see how long it would be before it overwhelmed me if I tried to fight it.

It’s as well to know these things, I suppose.

So I stayed up, and up, and up, and fought, and fought, and fought, but by 03:30 I was well and truly done and I crawled off to bed as best as I could.

It was round about 10:50 that I finally awoke, and that’s no sleep at all for a Sunday.

And I had a head like lead too. I don’t know what’s in that stuff and I really don’t think that I want to. But it really is the pits, as John McEnroe would say.

So having made it out of bed and dressed, I staggered off into the kitchen for the next batch of medication, and then back in here it took a good while for me to come back into the Land of the Living.

Once I’d gathered my wits, which, seeing as I have so few these days, takes much longer than it ought, I sat down to listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. I was living in Wistaston last night with a group of people last night and had to go into Crewe. I set off on foot and I went down to the end of our road which was a dead end, and found that the obstruction had been cleared away and we could walk through. I carried on walking and ended up in Crewe on Brookhouse Drive. I thought “this is going to be convenient if they leave this footpath open like this without the obstructions that they’d had before. I went to do my shopping and then came back and announced to everyone “do you know what they’ve done? They’ve moved the obstructions from down the road now so that we could walk through”. Someone made some kind of remark and my mother showed me an article in the newspaper about how they’d now created a road between Wistaston and Shavington. “I suppose that that’s it” she said. Reading the article I thought that it looked like it. That’s bad news because they would be building apartments or something like that alongside and there’s a little more greenery gone so I was disappointed. I mentioned it to a couple of people but they weren’t sympathetic at all. One of them was certain that apartments would be built and thought that it was a good thing. In the meantime there was some more school to attend that morning. It was Saturday morning and I had my music lessons. My mother wrote out a shopping list. I asked “do you want directions to this new street?”. “No” she replied. You’ve been there once, you’ll know it now”. She put 2 extra streets on this list and handed it to me. It was just like the usual shopping list with these 2 extra streets on it. I set out and halfway down I came to some kind of yard like a school yard. There were people playing so I went in. Somehow I ended up on my knees so I walked on them instead. When I was inside I met a guitar teacher. He had a girl whom I knew with him. She was about 10. I said “hello” to her because I knew her. I had a look around the yard and then I left. I said to her “not going to music school today, are we?”. She asked “why not?”. I explained that it would be 10:00 soon and it’s a long way to go. She said “it’s only 5 minutes and it’ll take me less time because I’m not on my knees” which I thought was rather insulting but never mind. I smiled and laughed with her. I set off on my knees on my travels down this new footpath thing. There were many people on it. I thought that it was looking like the M6 on a Friday afternoon these days.

Yes, I know. My family yet again.

Mind you, I had better luck next time. I was with my Dutch friend. She’d come to visit me in the Auvergne. We were talking about all of our friends because she was now living in a commune. She mentioned someone who had transformed a cellar there into a small apartment. It sounded really interesting so she asked me if I’d like to go. We went along and had to climb down these steps. It was really nice, what he’d done. It was very small but everything was well laid out to make the most of the space. I was quite impressed. He didn’t have very much in there so I said to him “it’s rather Mies van der Rohe, isn’t it?”. he didn’t understand the significance so I said “you know – less is more”. He said “yes, certainly”. He had a friend down there who was caulking the joint between the skirting board and the wall, doing a good job of it. It really looked quite nice. My Dutch friend and I ended up back in the main house again. I said that I’d come to see her in a couple of days. A couple of days later I set out from my house. I was nearly hit by a car reversing out of a driveway. He pulled away but I overtook him and carried on. He was behind me for a while but then disappeared. I turned up at my friend’s with an old denim jacket that I wore occasionally. I’d mentioned earlier to her about embroidering it. She’d agreed to do it so I had it with me. My friend and I ended up in bed together but it wasn’t a sexual thing, just lying there talking. She said “I can’t pay you, except maybe for an afternoon or something like that”. I said “you don’t owe me anything. There’s no need to pay me anything at all. Let’s just stay here and be comfortable

With a little voyage like that, what would you do when you had read all of the notes. I gave her a ring and said "I dreamed about you last night."
"Did you?" she asked.
"No" I replied. "You wouldn’t let me"

And Mies van der Rohe – there’s a name to conjure with. He was a director of the Bauhaus, the modernist school of architecture in Germany and after the excesses of the Victorian period of architecture, pioneered the idea of minimalism in design and construction with his famous slogan of "less is more"

The ghastly buildings of the immediate post-war period prior to the arrival of the even more horrific Brutalist movement of the 60s and 70s can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of Mies van der Rohe and his fellow crew of Bauhaus barbarians

Having finished the dictaphone notes I went off for my porridge, cheese on toast and strong, hot, black coffee. I’m back eating again after the last few days that I mentioned when my appetite went for a while.

However, having said that, I’m not sure how long I’ll continue eating because I’m in total agony every time that I try to stand up and try to move, with this perishing leg. I really have done it a major mischief but a scanner and a handful of X-rays can’t lie, I suppose.

And it’s no good if I can’t stand up because I can’t make any food to eat.

And then there’s the question of this anti-potassium stuff. This is killing me. Every time I sit down I either fall asleep or if I close my eyes I begin to hallucinate again. If I could walk I’d be forging prescriptions for this stuff and hawking it around the back streets of Granville.

It goes without saying that I’ve crashed out more than once this afternoon, and quite definitively too.

Whenever it’s been possible, I’ve been chatting to people here and there. Ingrid rang me for a chat, then Liz and a couple of my neighbours have been texting me too. I seem to be in demand these days, which is nice.

In fact I was speaking to Ingrid for so long that I forgot about my pizza in the oven. It’s not like me to forget my food, is it?

As I said yesterday, it’s the wrong flour so the pizza wasn’t the dazzling success that it might be, but it was still nice, edible and filling.

So that’s it for the day. I’m off to take my blood pressure, take that nasty horrible stuff with the rest of the medication and then go to bed. I’ve had enough for today and I’m not sorry.

Tomorrow I restart work after my Christmas break, hospitalisation, recuperation etc. But I don’t feel much like it. Not with this flaming leg and this blasted anti-potassium stuff. If I could stop those I’d probably feel a little better but if I don’t, then when I come back from Paris on Tuesday I’ll start writing out my … errr …. instructions. It’s about time.

What I hope for is that someone will give a good and loving home to STRAWBERRY MOOSE.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve travelled halfway round the World and well into the Polar regions with, quite often, only him as company. My faithful companion and I have travelled miles together and so he deserves a nice comfortable retirement somewhere where someone will look after him properly.

Wednesday 3rd January 2024 – THE NEXT POSTING …

… or the one after that, or the one after that, may well be from a hospital bed somewhere down the coast of the Baie des Granvillais – either Granville or Avranches, I dunno.

There was a blood test this morning and this evening the doctor rang me up. “There’s a desperate anomaly with your blood and you need to go to the Hospital urgences immediately”.

However as I said the other day, I’m far too busy to die right now, or
"to make my grand departure
from a world getting way too small"
as SEMISONIC would have it.

There’s a man coming here at 11:00 to talk about stairlifts and then in the afternoon I have no fewer than 4 sessions of people at the Centre de Re-education. So I can’t possibly go to the Urgences until Friday morning, I reckon.

But too right! The world is really getting way to small. I know 6 people in Greenland well enough to call them by their first name and on one Saturday night here in Granville we had 5 of them present.

And then there was the occasion when I booked a room IN A TWO-ROOM GUEST HOUSE in a tiny village down the “Forgotten Coast” of Québec and found that the other room was occupied by the notaire or lawyer from a town adjacent to where I was living in the Auvergne.

There are dozens of stories that I can tell you about things like this – amazing coincidences of meetings, including one legendary one between Nerina and me in Brussels – that prove that the world is shrinking rapidly.

Did I ever tell you the story of my mother, living in Margate, who went to Frome in Somerset to visit the people to whom she had been evacuated in 1940? There was a “mystery trip” advertised by the railway departing from Frome so on a whim they booked tickets. Anyone care to guess where they ended up?

Meanwhile, back at the ran …errr … apartment, when the alarm went off I was somewhere – I don’t know where. I’d been to a meeting with some girl. It was a kind-of political meeting but there were all kinds of people there, including some religious folk. The subject of the Conservative Party came up. Someone announced “yes we reduced the price of Covid fees and injections to £1:50 so I wrote underneath it in a space where people could see it “what? You mean that you pay for Covid tests and vaccinations in the UK?”. We proceeded onwards with this meeting. I ended up chatting to this girl afterwards because someone had said during the meeting that you could receive £1500 for a Covid test under certain circumstances if you ere disabled. I asked “how do you apply?”. She replied “don’t you remember? We did but we were 2 days late with the application”. Then I recalled that I’d made a lot of enquiries with the Government departments and even sent a large pile of correspondence to one particular Government office but I was leaving the UK to go back to France so I wondered how this was going to work because the person who would intercept all this post eventually after it had been redirected a couple of times would be my father . I’m sure that he wouldn’t know what to do with it. We ended up talking to a girl about living accommodation. She was showing me around her house. I explained that my apartment in France was just 2 streets from the sea and was probably as big as 2 rooms in her house that were joined together with â passage down the side but I was talking just about the 2 rooms and paying just £4:00 per week for it which I thought was a good deal but was fairly normal for that area in France where I was living. She was extremely impressed by the price that I paid.

But I managed to pull myself together and take my blood pressure. Then I went off for my medication, all 15 tablets of it, and managed to forget one of them

Back here I made a start on my concerts, completely forgetting that the infirmier – the nurse was coming to take a blood sample and to give me my injection

It was Isabelle today and she found a vein with the second go. Good for her.

After she had gone I carried on sorting out these concerts and chatting to Liz who put in her appearance on line.

At lunchtime I completely forgot to take my blood pressure and to compound the agony the taxi company forgot me again and I to remind them

It was electrotherapy to start with, followed by this relaxing muscle therapy, finishing up with Severine, my masseuse

Back here there was plenty of work to do like transcribing the dictaphone to find out just where I’d been during the night. I was actually with a girl from school last night. She was with a guitar. She decided that we’d break up. I was totally devastated and couldn’t believe for a moment but it was certainly the case. She’d written a song about the break-up, which wasn’t particularly helpful about the break-up. All in all I felt totally and utterly crushed by the news. I tried to convince her to stay with me but she said that she’d completely and utterly made up her mind that she wanted to do certain things but wanted to do them alone but in another 6 months if things didn’t work out how she liked, maybe she’d be back. I said that of course in 6 months time I can’t guarantee where my heart would be but she still didn’t pick up the real message that I was trying to say. This dream went on between us for a very long time as I was trying to argue with her to stay, she was trying to convince me that leaving was the best thing and it was a scene that drifted all over London including Kilburn. We were at Kilburn where we decided that it was a 20mph speed limit because of all the accidents on the road. There was a lot of unhappiness and disappointment, people protesting in the streets. I was there but I don’t know about her. There was this organisation and their members erected a kind of barricade on the railway line and the road. There were hundreds of people from the locality out there on the street. No matter what I did though, I still couldn’t persuade this girl to stay with me and I was totally distraught.

This brings back a few adolescent (and not-so-adolescent) memories, I can tell you. Young girls at school wielding guitars? Who can they possibly mean?

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing, and rice with vegetables. All very nice and there’s enough stuffing for a leftover curry, if I’m still here tomorrow evening.

“Still here tomorrow evening” sounds rather ominous, doesn’t it? But seriously, I don’t have the time to die right now. I’m far too busy for that. Here’s hoping that it’s only a minor ailment. If it’s something serious, well, there’s not much more of me that they can cut off now.

Friday 15th December 2023 – YOU HAVE PROBABLY …

… already guessed what has happened today.

At roughly about 11:40 when I was comfortably settled deep down in the Arms of Morpheus, the telephone rang.

"This is the hospital here in Paris. We’re doing our planning for next week. Can you come on Monday instead of Tuesday? You’ll still be staying for several days."
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we started off with Tuesday, and then it was already changed from Tuesday to Monday a few days ago, and then changed back again to Tuesday at a later date.
"I shall have to see what the taxi company has to say about it. I’ve messed them around enough with all of these cancellations and it is rather short notice"

And so I phoned the taxi company to chat to them about the situation. We had an “interesting and illuminating” discussion which eventually led to them agreeing to take me on Monday instead. The appointment isn’t until 13:15 which means leaving at 09:00 instead of 04:30 and hitting the rush-hour head on, so that might have helped to persuade them. And the lie-in will be useful for me too.

Having had the agreement from the taxi company I phoned back to the hospital and confirmed the situation. So that is that.

When the cleaner came round, we had a discussion about the situation, as we do.

With my usual air of optimism I added "well, it’s 16:00. Still plenty of time for a further change of plan"
"Not at this time of the afternoon. Everyone will be ready to go home" she replied.

And I must admit that I really did admire her confidence. Five minutes later the telephone rang.

This time it was the taxi company. "Would you possibly consider doubling up and sharing a taxi with someone else going to Paris on Monday, leaving at 07:00?"

So much for my lie-in then. But considering how they’ve been messed about by all of these changes to the programme, I have to show some bonne volonté I suppose. My cleaner hopes that it will be a belle blonde travelling with me, but my money is on a retired Bulgarian female weightlifter

They probably won’t say anything to the Social Security about the car-sharing and charge for two trips, but in that position I’d probably do the same too.

But anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I had a good play around on the guitar before going to bed, something that led me down another road to somewhere deep in the past.
"She moved her hips
And swayed in my direction
I thought we could make it yet
And beat the isolation
But in that gentle dark
We tore ourselves apart
Through fire and rain
Through wilderness and pain
Through the losses, through the gains
On love’s roller coaster train
I call your name"

So hauling myself out of the pit wherein lives the Black Dog, I hauled myself off to bed where I had another turbulent night. And although there was quite a lot going on, I didn’t have any special visitors.

When the alarm went off this morning I already had the bedroom light on and was just about to swing my feet out of bed, so effectively I fell short of an early start by a matter of a handful of seconds. Still, a miss is as good as a mile.

After the meds I came back in here to print off a justificatif de domicile – a certificate issued by the Electricity Board as proof of your occupation of your premises, and then transcribed the mountain of dictaphone notes. It seemed to have been “quantity” last night, not “quality”.

I started off busily organising my bread, dividing it into portion-sized helpings for the future when I awoke this morning. The ambulance had already come for me and there was something going on there too about organising a wholesale supply of food and daily helpings for different people but I wasn’t actually involved in what was going on down there. They’d just come to pick me up and at that moment I awoke.

And then I was doing my English homework at home. I had a list of words and had to find their equivalent in the second column of this list and then insert them in the correct place in the test that I was reading. It was about an American guy from the Mid-West who was finishing work and coming home. Some of the language in this text was extremely dubious so I wouldn’t read it out loud because we had a young girl staying with us. Then my father came home from work. He asked what I was doing so I explained. The girl explained a little too. My father then began to say things like “do they have an equivalent in there for ‘stripper’?” – words like that. As a matter of fact they did but I didn’t want to read them out because of the young girl. My father didn’t seem to care at all. We began to make tea. On the table, there were all kinds of stuff on this table that you wouldn’t believe. There I was with these hot dishes and there was nowhere to put them. I went to move some things out to the side but someone grabbed hold of it and began to use it. Someone else asked me if I wanted a slice of apple pie. That had been put on the floor because it was the only place to put it. This was in my opinion a completely unacceptable way that everything was just scattered about everywhere

Continuing on that dream later on, there was some of my mother’s cooking there and that was something of a mess. No matter how much I actually like hummus I decided that when my mother presented a bowl for the evening meal, I’d rather give it a miss.

My mother’s cooking was legendary, but for all the wrong reasons. When I used to go round to a friend’s house in Nantwich after school his German mother always served me up with piles of food. When I was in Munich with him last year, we talked about it and I asked him why.
"Don’t you remember?" he asked. "I stayed for tea once at your house. Only once."

To be honest, it wasn’t until I met Nerina that I began to eat well

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed it was a Monday morning and I was slowly preparing to go to work. Suddenly I looked at the time. It was 08:20. I had to rush around and find everything really as quickly as possible. I hadn’t even had a wash and probably smelt to high heaven but had to do the best that I possibly could. All the time there were the usual interruptions, people in my way, not being able to find anything. There was a discussion going on about why Manchester United hadn’t done as well as everyone had expected over the last couple of seasons so I had my three ha’pence-worth as I was going around. But I was really fighting a hopeless task and was nothing at all like ready when I realised that the bus had gone and that I’d be late for work. In a fit of exasperation etc I stormed into the kitchen, dropped my things onto the floor and said “this is it! I’ve missed the bus again! I’m not going to miss this bus again whatever happens”.

Believe it or not, I actually laughed in the middle of the dream when I dictated that. I’ve heard those promises before.

A short while later I had exactly the same dream again about preparing for work or for school. Exactly the same thought about never being late went through my head again with exactly the same response from my subconscious during the dream. I ended up storming off out of the room, bad-tempered. I spent some time doing some Welsh revision while I was waiting for the alarm to ring

While I was in Munich I’d gone to see something or other on the outskirts. When I was driving back I came to a roundabout where there was some evidence of bomb damage still – burnt-out buildings etc. I stopped and took the camera but I couldn’t find a good spec to photograph it, where I could fit everything in without the sun interrupting me. At one stage I was trying to cross the road when 3 BMC 1100s appeared one after the other and performed some kind of pirouette around me as I tried to reach the other side of the road

Finally I came across some people who had a Bristol Lodekka double-decker bus, a green one, in their barn in the centre of France. The destination blind on it read ROUTE 929 – LEEDS to OPORTO. They told me some of the story of the bus but not everything. We’d recently come to settle down there. Before leaving someone had given me a box of things with fish in it. I made a little pool for these fish but instead it turned out that they were some giant cormorant birds. They looked quite ridiculous sitting on my little pond. They, at least, one of them, could actually talk and I had some very interesting conversations with the cormorant about laying eggs and hatching, etc. But it was the bus in the neighbour’s barn that intrigued me. I’d love to know what it was doing and how it had ended up there when it should have been somewhere in Oporto

When the bus (the local one, not the 929 from Leeds to Porto) came, I clambered aboard, declining a lift from a neighbour because I have to push myself onwards on the bus whenever I can, and we set off for St Nicolas and on the way, the driver forgot to stop at the Ecole d’Hotellerie to let off the High School baking class

At St Nicolas the first stop was at the Post Office where, armed with my justificatif de domicile, I jumped through various complicated hoops in order to open a bank account.

So shortly I’ll have a bank card and actually be able to draw some cash at some point. As I have mentioned before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s not another cash point in the town accessible to me because I can’t climb back onto the bus afterwards.

It took so long that I didn’t have time for my coffee at the Carrefour but at least I have tomatoes and mushrooms and a few other things. I met the guy with whom I’d had a long chat the other day.
"A British guy who likes our bread and our coffee " he said. "That’s a rare sight"
"If I’d only wanted tea at four o’clock" I replied "I’d have stayed over there".

At the bus stop I had a long chat with a local guy also waiting for the bus, and then with a woman on the bus on her way to the doctor’s.

People are starting to notice me. I’m not sure that that’s a good sign.

Back here I had another chat with a neighbour and then climbed up the stairs to my apartment where I made my coffee and cheese on toast

Despite phone calls, the attentions of the cleaner and the occasional drift away into nothingness I finihsed off the radio notes that I’d started yesterday, and they are now ready for dictation, which I’ll do tomorrow night as usual.

Rosemary rang up too and we had another one of our lengthy chats that seem to go on for ever when we talk about almost nothing.

However, I have made an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than a few just recently, an executive decision is a decision that you make which, if it goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

And that is that I’ve decided what to have for Christmas dinner.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about making a vegan pie because I haven’t made one for ages. But this one is going to be different – I’ve ordered some puff pastry rolls.

Making pastry like that from scratch is difficult. You have to roll it out thin, coat is with oil, fold it over, roll it again, coat with oil, fold again ad infinitum. I can imagine exactly how mine would turn out.

However the LeClerc poverty-spec pastry rolls are vegan so that’s what I’ll use.

Put a cup of lentils in the slow cooker, cover with water and slowly bring to the boil.
When they begin to boil, drain them out and rinse them thoroughly, then put them back on the lowest heat with more water, plenty of herbs and spices and leave them overnight on the lowest heat
Next morning, cut up your tofu into small squares and fry with onion, garlic, mushrooms, whatever else you like and plenty of herbs and spices.
When they are nice and golden brown, tip in your lentils and stir it round, and then add a few spoons of oats to absorb the liquid and make a glutinous mass
Empty it into your pie case, add the top, brush with soya milk and bake until golden brown

As usual, any other suggestions and ideas are welcomed.

Tea tonight was salad, chips and some of those nugget things, something that went down really well.

So having finished my notes, I’ll carry on with the guitar for a while. I’ll have another go at trying to sing MOONAGE DAYDREAM while playing the bass.

At least I’m not the only one how finds it difficult. Grahame wrote that he doesn’t find it easy either. Maybe we ought to hold a “Ziggy Stardust” masterclass at some point.

But if anyone else wants to write and say “hello” or exchange ideas, there’s a link on the bottom right of the page. But if you use Gmail, I can’t reply to you.

In Google’s quest to take over the internet the company wants webmasters to embed its code into all minor domains and until I know why and what it does, I’m not putting it in mine. Consequently Google is blocking me from writing to anyone with a Gmail address.

Tomorrow I have no plans, but as usual, something will probably pop up to distract me. And then on Sunday, I’m baking bread and biscuits and a few other things besides, I reckon.

That means that I’d better remember to order some more vegan butter. I’m going through it at an alarming rate.

Monday 11th December 2023 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… showers might be back on the agenda at some point in the not-too-distant future.

The ergotherapist came around with a selection of useful gadgets and appliances for helping me and we managed to figure out something that I could adapt to help me into the bath and to stand up for a shower.

It’ll be a while until it arrives of course, because there are all kinds of hoops to jump through, and it’s a question first of awaiting her report and recommendations. That won’t be any time soon, I bet.

And then there’s also the question of whether I’ll be still here when it arrives. The way I felt today, that isn’t necessarily going to be the case.

It doesn’t seem to make any difference whether or not I go to bed early. Or whether I’m still fast asleep when the alarm goes off. Both of those situations took place through the night but the end result was still the same as usual – me flat out on my chair later on in the afternoon.

At least there was sparking water for my medication, flavoured with a dash of grape juice. And then back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at home last night. I can’t remember what I was doing but all my brothers and sisters were slowly coming home from school. We were having the usual kinds of arguments. There was a dog there too, an old dog, probably one of the collies that we used to have as kids. She was there being quite quiet. When people came to the door they’d knock and wait until someone opened it which was very difficult for me being on crutches. Every time it happened I’d go and open the door and let in another sibling until one occasion when there was a knock on the door, I went to open it and it was my mother. She was there with 2 great big dogs. They came into the kitchen and began to jump up and down at me. I don’t like dogs at the best of times but when I’m on crutches and not very steady I don’t like them jumping up at me at all. This was something that I just couldn’t accept. I became rather angry. There was some mention at some point of one of the daughters of my niece who was there. She turned up in a Volkswagen saloon. Another one of my cousins on my father’s side asked “do you have one of these now?” in some kind of derogatory tone. She replied “yes. It’s a lovely car, especially when it has some power in it”. Apparently it also doubled as an autonomous standard lamp of table lamp that could be used to throw some light on whatever it was that you were working.

And then we were in the middle of Covid, the height of it and we were going to school in California somewhere. There were no school buses running so we had to walk. It was a long walk away. We set out to walk on this long grass verge, a couple of us, and slowly began to climb this embankment which led to a road that passed over the motorway When we reached the top and looked down, it was one of these 16-lane motorways. Of all the traffic going in one direction there wasn’t a single vehicle at all. Going in the other direction were all the cars in the world, all parked nose to tail and looked as if they hadn’t moved for weeks. We couldn’t understand the folly of these people who even in the middle of a pandemic had felt it necessary to go out in their car and just sit in a traffic queue as if things were back to normal. We carried on walking and came to the school. There weren’t very many people around but there were plenty of police officers there interrogating everyone about why they’d come. To us it seemed quite obvious that we’d come in order to attend our lessons

Later on I’d gone to night school. My partner, whoever she might have been, had gone too for her lesson. In our Welsh class there were only 3 of us there and no tutor so we just chatted amongst ourselves quite vaguely for a while, talking about the history of the group, how we were learning and how I was miles off the pace. I did my best to recount a long rambling conversation about how I once went from Brussels to Austria for a pizza and came back again the same night in the Opel. Afterwards when we came out I met my partner again. I asked her if she’d done anything exciting. She replied that she’d found a body. I asked her to repeat it. It turned out that they’d had to go into a dark recess of one of the storerooms in the school to look for some ink for something. While they were rummaging around in the back corner they came across the mummified remains of a new-born baby. It was probably there 40 years. You could see from the deformed skeleton that it had had a fall. There was very little hair on it which implied that it was new-born. She was wondering about it. To me it seemed quite obvious that some girl at the school had had a child without telling anyone and concealed the birth. It wouldn’t be the first time that that had happened. Later on, for some reason when the police came round to our house to take a statement they took me with them to go back to a clothes shop near the school which they said had something to do with the crime. I went with the policeman. He had a Volvo 740 estate, one of the flat square ones. He lifted up the bonnet to look for something . I had a look underneath it and saw how simple the layout was and how much room there was. I began to regret that I hadn’t had a couple of those on the taxis.

Finally I was with a boy from my class at school last night. He wasn’t anyone special and so i’ve no idea whey he would suddenly put in an appearance. Several weeks earlier I’d been to church with Marianne, a new modern church in the south part of the city centre of Brussels. It was a place that she’s wanted to visit before she died so I’d taken her there. Later, I decided for some reason to go again. That was when I met him. We walked down a road past a big brick-built church dating from probably the late Victorian period. There were a lot of roadworks outside. I explained to him that there was a statue of Jesus inside who was preaching to the congregation over a lake. The lake was actually a river of which the exit had been blocked. It looked to me as if they were freeing the exits so that the water could flow through the church and out the other side because of so many stories of Jesus preaching by running water. he wondered if that was the church to which we should be going but I explained that it wasn’t. We carried on walking. By now I had a young girl with me instead. She was asking questions about the church so I explained things to her. We eventually arrived just as the service was about to begin. I had STRAWBERRY MOOSE with me whom I was holding. The girl as soon as she saw from the top of the bank of seats the service starting she dashed to grab a seat with a spare one next to it so that I could sit down. There were some people whom we knew who were there who had 2 small girls. Of course the 2 girls were chatting to Strawberry Moose. Most of the women and girls were in bathing costumes It was something to do with blessing the swimming or something like that. I didn’t quite understand it at the time so many of the girls and women were in swimming costumes.

When Marianne was dying I did my best to take her to places that she wanted to visit but it wasn’t easy because her illness advanced so quickly. I sat by her side for 5 months and watched her die, and it was the most horrible thing that I could ever imagine. She was quite religious and her response to anything was “my Saviour will call me when he’s ready”. I’m not going to put anyone at all through that kind of torture, and the medical staff where I’m being treated know what to and when to do it.

It reminds me of a story about Sidney Smith, a Home Office pathologist who was giving a talk on this subject.
"If ever I begin to lose my faculties, my coherence and my dignity" he said "I’ve told my wife that she must “have an accident” while cleaning the shotgun"
"Blimey!" shouted a voice from the back of the hall. "She’s leaving it rather late, isn’t she?"

After my morning coffee and fruit bun I began the process of tidying up. There’s not much that I can do and it takes me forever to do it but I have to show willing.

It’s not as if I mind people seeing for themselves that I’m struggling to manage, especially someone whose job it it, but even I have my pride and my limits. However, as was said in Proverbs Chapter 16 Verse 18, "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall"

When the ergotherapist came round we ran through my routine about cooking, eating, working and all of that kind of thing and she didn’t have too many suggestions in that respect. It was the bathroom that drew most of her attention and we spent a lot of time in there working out a few things.

She did ask me if I wanted a raised seat in the WC and that is probably the most humiliating incident yet with this illness.

One thing that she wanted to do was to watch me make a pot of coffee, but I suspect that that didn’t have very much to do ergotherapy. She declined my biscuits though.

After she left I came in here I had a phone all to make to one of my neighbours, and then I crashed out definitively for quite some time. So much so that when I finally did awaken I felt absolutely dreadful. But once I’d finally come back round into the Land of the Living, I paired off the music for the next radio programme.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg, just as nice as usual, and there’s plenty of stuffing left over for the next couple of days

Tomorrow I have the doctor coming around, the Welsh lesson (the last of the year) and then the Centre de Re-education in the afternoon. And right now, I have never ever felt less like it. I hope that I have a good sleep tonight.

It’s one of those things for which I have sore misgivings, and even worse, I have no ointment to rub on them.

Thursday 7th December 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… telephone call this afternoon.

"Mr Hall. Your appointment on 19th December is cancelled"
"And why is that?"
"We want you to come on Monday 18th December instead. And bring your jammies because you’ll be staying for a few days".

The appointment on the 19th was with the Cardiac Unit but this stay is with the Haematology Department. So things are definitely pushing along from that point of view. They did say “the beginning of the New Year” but events are unfolding quicker that I expected.

Getting out of bed wasn’t unfolding as quickly as it has done just now. It took me about 20 minutes to raise myself from the Dead this morning. But even so, I was still sitting at my desk working at 06:20, 40 minutes before the alarm went off

After I’d had my medication I came back here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I awoke with a really bad attack of cramp in the middle of a dream about events taking place in a village and so forgot most of this dream. It concerned certain goings-on in the village and in some localities. Some localities were only known by their informal name and there were many other names for some of these places so if someone had a secret about one of these places and it was known by its proper name no-one would ever find it. This was a question of these secrets that needed to be discovered. There was one thing that was very interesting. It was something concerning a girl’s bikini. I noticed in a house as I was passing through it doing something or other, that on top of a shelf in the sewing room was one of these mannequins that is used for adjusting clothes. There was a girl’s bikini on there. I was wondering whether this was in fact that particular girl’s bikini. Of course the easiest way to hide something is to hide it in plain sight and not draw anyone’s attention to it.

And then there was a plan to build new railway headquarters in Crewe. I was asked if I would like to supervise the overall control of the project. With nothing better to do I agreed and called for all the paperwork. I received a large box with almost nothing in it, no plans, no nothing. When I asked for it I was told that it was all arranged by photographs. That was the modern way of doing things these days. I thought that it was one of the most crazy things I’d ever heard. It’s quite simply not possible. And they hadn’t even sent the photographs in this box. A couple of days later someone from the Home Office came to see me and began to talk about the project. he asked how much they’d agreed to pay me. I said “they haven’t agreed anything”. He was surprised and said “you ought to be paid”. I answered “I thought that that was your job to pay me. These instructions came down from your department that I was to oversee it. I wasn’t told to contact the project managers for payment. The instructions came from the Home Office so I imagined they they would pick up the bill”. I told him about the complete and utter miserable state of affairs of this big box with almost nothing in it.

At another moment there had been a huge issue about some kind of property boundaries in the centre of a small town somewhere. I had a total feeling that it was all wrong. After a huge, lengthy investigation and battle I finally discovered that I was perfectly correct and that land that had been in dispute in the town centre was actually mine and I could move into it. It made me extremely happy because first of all I could park my car somewhere. I went for a walk after this with a girl friend of mine to celebrate. We came round a corner and in a yard was an axle that I recognised immediately as off a BMC half-ton van. I looked up and they had one attached to a crane that they were just going to winch off somewhere. I went to have a word with the guys to tell them that I’d been looking for one of these for years. Why hadn’t he told me anything about it? Of course, I had had BILL BADGER for a great length of time and travelled miles with him. The discussion then came round to a BMC FG pickup with a damaged cab and we talked about that. I explained that there was nothing wrong with it and the cab can be replaced on these anyway. We began to talk about Bill Badger again and those kinds of days back them.

I had that half-ton van for several years and went miles in it. But one of the rear leaf springs broke and being a very obsolete vehicle I couldn’t find another one. I had car springs on it for a while but the slightest load sagged the rear right down and after an uncomfortable moment with some of Cheshire Constabulary’s finest I decided that it was time to move it on.

When I awoke I was in bed but the cleaner had just come into the apartment bringing me a big mug of really hot coffee. I told her to put it on the kitchen worktop, wait a couple of minutes and I’ll be ready. I’ll come in and drink it. Then I awoke with cramp again.

Later on I had been at work all day. In my spare time I’d been doing something else. When I’d finished I’d gone to my University night classes and didn’t return home until 23:30. There was some bricklaying that needed doing so I began to sort out a few bricks prepare some stuff to mix some cement. My mother who was sitting around with her feet up and the other kids who were just sitting there playing around all said “you aren’t going to start work now, are you?”. I replied “this job has to be done. All you lot have been doing is sitting around here all day doing nothing”. My mother said something about the kids being delicate or something. I replied that they were all just bone-idle and that she was the woman who had made them. Whatever it is that her kids have turned out to be is a reflection on her more than anything else.

Actually, my University experience was nothing like that. It was usually a ‘phone call at 03:30 “My Hall, we have to go to Dusseldorf (or Bielefeld, or Berlin, or Den Haag or somewhere else like that)’
“Very good, Sir Brian. I’ll be round in half an hour”
And then into the boot went a flask of coffee, a pile of sandwiches and my course books. And while he was entertaining visiting dignitaries, putting the World to rights and dining on lavish slap-up dinners I was curled up on the back seat of the car on a draughty corner of a freezing military air base with a sandwich and a mug of coffee poring over a course book

When I was trying to do my degree it was one of the most crucial times in Western History in modern time and I had the misfortune to be associated with someone rather pivotal. We didn’t have a break for 18 months.

It meant that I wasn’t able to complete any of the practical work. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall that I had taken a week’s holiday to go and do some water sampling of a river. I’d hardly put on my wellingtons before a group of people flew a few aeroplanes into a couple of buildings, all leave was cancelled and we were recalled to work.

That didn’t just put paid to the practical work for that part of the course, it put paid to the exam too.

A couple of people have suggested that I ought to write a book about that period of my life. But it’s one of those situations where if the first impression isn’t published posthumously, the second impression certainly would be

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed there was also something somewhere about me being in Canada with my niece’s husband (but it wasn’t him). I was making a pot of tea and when I was rinsing the teapot in the sink it fell apart in my hands.

Next stop was the radio programme. I’ve chosen all of the music, some of which was complicated, and then I paired it off and wrote notes for some of it

There was an interruption – yet another phone call. This time it was the ergotherapist. She’s going to come to visit me here on Monday afternoon, inspect my apartment and suggest ways in which my life could be improved.

After a good wash and scrub up the car came for me and we went down to the Centre de Re-education.

And how the mighty have fallen! If it was depressing yesterday being taught how to go to bed and how to get up, today was even worse. Can you really imagine that it’s necessary for someone at my kind of age to need lessons on how to put on my socks?

The ergotherapist had noticed something with one of the muscles in my left thigh and she had a word with Severine, who spent our session working on that muscle to try to free it off. Not that it worked very much.

There are three lifts in the Centre de Re-education and two of them were broken down. As a result it was chaos trying to leave the building. In the end I climbed up the stairs and by the time that I was halfway up, that was me done for the rest of the day

Back here I bumped into my cleaner as I entered the building and she helped me up the stairs into my apartment.

The doctor rang me too. He’s already sent off the demand for the taxi to Paris but I wasn’t going to tell him to cancel it – at least, not until I have something in writing from the hospital.

But I’d told him that I was running low on medication when I’d written to him so he’s going to come to see me on Tuesday to check me over before he issues a new prescription.

And then I came in here and crashed out.

Tea tonight was something from the European Vegan Burger Mountain, with pasta and veg, and now that I’ve finished my notes I’m knocking off. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … all of this remedial treatment is al l very well but if the journey is killing me off it’s all pointless.

So right now I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow if the weather is better, and that’ll wear me out as well.

This weekend I’d better tidy up the apartment ready for all these visits next week. I seem to be in demand right now. It’s not usually like this, is it?

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 – AND THERE I WAS …

… sitting on a chair outside the doctor’s office and she asked me to come in – and I couldn’t stand up.

She had to help me up out of my chair and the two of us nearly went AOT onto the floor. What kind of state am I in?

However, it’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good and every cloud has a silver lining. After our struggle outside her office door she agreed to extend my stay at the Centre de Re-education until the end of January instead of the end of December.

Leaving the bed this morning wasn’t actually a struggle this morning. I had half a leg out of the bed when the alarm went off and I’m not sure why that might have been because I had another late night – having a bash about on the acoustic guitar before going to bed.

After the medication and checking the mails I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. In between everything else that was going on last night I was working on a website. I’d taken plenty ot photos of different railway installations and was making some kind of geographical record. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working properly and nothing seemed to be going right with it. As well as that I kept on being interrupted by all kinds of different things with my family. Eventually I found out the reason why it wasn’t working. In the past I minimised the images so that they’d fit down the column of a page with the text on the other part of the page. You clicked on the image to see a full-size reproduction. For some reason I was just including the full-size images directly onto this web page and it was distorting absolutely everything. There were some really nice photos in there including some of the electrification work of lines in the spine of England. Then my mother called me for something. After a couple of minutes I went to see. I saw on the table a great big parcel wrapped in brown paper addressed to our family in Canada, seeing my mother’s writing. She also gave me a parcel. Apparently it was my birthday but I’d forgotten. I unwrapped it and inside the parcel was a camera exactly the same type as one that I had already. I couldn’t understand why it was that she’d given me this as a birthday present.

I was also at some point in the proceedings last night clutching a hoe in my hand rather like a Roman centurion. Don’t ask me why because I awoke wide-awake at that particular point. Everything that I was dreaming just disappeared completely out of my mind.

later on during the night I was back in Crewe. I had to go back to our old family home in Davenport Avenue. When I arrived the whole site had been cleared and they were making preparations to build a huge housing estate on the site of several of the houses and the old petrol station and tyre depot that was at the back of it. I didn’t recognise anything. It had just so completely changed. In the end I went to Shavington to a house where a schoolfriend of mine lived at one time. That had all changed too and I couldn’t remember anything. In the end I found the house where it might possibly have been and talked to the neighbours. They told me about all the changes. They agreed that this was the house that I’d thought was the old house of my friend even though it was now submerged in the middle of other housing. There was still a tiny plot of land there that had not been built on, belonging to a guy called Bob Hope who I imagined to be my schoolfriend’s father although that wasn’t his name. In the end there were about 10 of us sitting around there chatting and reminiscing about things that had taken place in the area in the 1950s and 1960s when we were living in Shavington. It was really most unsettling and uncomfortable to see how everything had changed and how everything in Crewe where we lived had been swept away and was a demolition site.

And finally I met a girl somewhere during the evening – a big girl which is of course quite unlike me. We got on really well with each other. In the end we went back to her house and stayed the night together. Next morning we awoke. There was no alarm. I couldn’t understand why. We got up and I wanted to take a photo of the two of us together with me holding this girl off the ground in my arms. It was rather complicated with her being on the large side. Then we found that not one single telephone that we had between us had any charge left in it. Then the subject of breakfast came up. It turned out that she would go to eat breakfast at a local café. She set off first while I did a few things to prepare everything. I found half a bread roll on a table at a café just round the corner from where she lived. I thought that it must be for me. She wasn’t there so I picked up the bread roll and walked around the next corner. She was there with 3 or 4 other people at a table. There were all kinds of breakfast things laid out on this table. She was chatting to these people as if she knew them. I went and sat down but no-one said a word to me. I was there with this half a bread roll. I felt rather guilty that I was going to be eating a bread roll brought from some other establishment with the jam that this proprietor had provided and presumably not paying anything for breakfast. It didn’t seem right to me at all.

After a brief … errr … relax I carried on with the notes for the radio programme and they are now complete. I’ll dictate them later on before I go to bed. And then I paired off the music for the next one and I’ll start to write the notes for that one when I’ve finished making the current one.

The one after that should be quite interesting, but I’ll tell you more about that in due course.

While I was doing that I had a listen to the one that will be broadcast this weekend to make sure that it’s all correct. And then I could send it off to be added into the radio’s playlist.

After a good wash the car came to pick me up to take me down the hill into town and my appointments. I mentioned the doctor just now, and then I went off to Severine for some physiotherapy. Whatever it is that she’s doing, it seems to be doing some kind of good because coming up the stairs back here was easier than it was the other day.

After my hot chocolate and chocolate biscuits I came back in here where I went away with the fairies for over an hour and it really was a very deep sleep too. I was with Christian and we were talking about rock groups who were lost in the High Arctic. There was a map that someone had found that listed the routes of several rock groups who had disappeared and so we went to look but we had a lot of difficult trying to unfold the map. There were several tracks in all kinds of places, each one in a different colour showing the supposed routes and one on or two of the islands there were legends such as “no information”. But we had a real struggle to open this map correctly.

There was also time to carry on with the tidying of the shelves. And I came across two boxes of breadcrumbs and a small Christmas pudding that I must have bought when I was living in Leuven. But nevertheless I’m still going to have a go at making my own, starting over the weekend.

And while we’re on the subject of Christmas baking … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a chat on line with Liz about marzipan. It’s not available for delivery from LeClerc so I’ll have to see if I can find it in Carrefour on Friday. If not, I’ll have to order it on-line from an internet vendor. After all, you can’t have a Christmas cake without marzipan.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with the last of my naan bread dough. I’ll have to make some more but the soya yoghurt has disappeared off the menu on the LeClerc delivery site. That’s something that I’ll have to check at Carrefour on Friday.

So now I’ve finished my notes I’ll have my hot drink and dictate my notes before I go to bed. Tomorrow I have the engineer coming and I also have to ring up about Caliburn’s Controle Technique too. It expired a long time ago now.

Not that I imagine that I’ll be using Caliburn again. I don’t think that even Severine’s magic touch can restore enough power to my right leg to work the brake. But I have to do something about it. I can’t leave things like this.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: joan

Friday 18th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

Wednesday 26th March 2025 – BLIMEY! THAT WAS HOT!

Tuesday 31st December 2024 – BY THE TIME …

Monday 7th October 2024 – MY APPLE CAKE …

Monday 17th June 2024 – I’M BACK …

Wednesday 29th May 2024 – IN THE MIDDLE …

Sunday 5th May 2024 – IM FED UP ….

4th May 2024 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY …

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

Sunday 21st January 2024 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Wednesday 3rd January 2024 – THE NEXT POSTING …

Friday 15th December 2023 – YOU HAVE PROBABLY …

Monday 11th December 2023 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

Thursday 7th December 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 – AND THERE I WAS …

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