Tag Archives: joanie_malcolm

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"

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Sunday 23rd March 2025 – MY ORANGE, GINGER …

… and coconut cake is absolutely delicious, if it tastes anything like the mix that I sampled and the crumbs that broke off when I brought it out of the oven. The proof of the pudding is indeed in the eating and I’ll have to wait a couple of days before I start on it, so I’ll tell you more in a few days time.

So last night, after I’d finished my notes, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written during the week and then went to bed. It was only a few minutes after midnight too so with my Sunday morning lie-in until 08:00, I was looking forward to a decent sleep.

To be on the safe side, I’d found an old fleece jumper in the chest of drawers so in desperation I put that on before going to bed. And while I may well have awoken in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons, cold wasn’t one of them. For once just recently, I was quite comfortable in that respect.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that might incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. However, wherever I was and whatever I was doing evaporated completely from my mind and that was that.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night.

Not that I advanced very far because the nurse came round to sort me out. He had a lot to say for himself this morning but nothing of any importance, so I could crack on and make my breakfast, including some home-made orange juice and home-made apple and kiwi purée with home-made bread out of the toaster and porridge.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK and, unfortunately, Sir Norman Lockyer is tying himself up in knots.

Having criticised the builders of these stone monuments on the grounds of their uncivilised nature, to day he tells us that, according to Caesar "that in the schools of the Druids the subjects taught included the movements of the stars, the size of the earth, and the nature of things … Studies of such a character seem quite consistent with, and to demand, a long antecedent period of civilisation.".

He also talks about the stories that the Greek, Hecataeus, told of the Hyperboreans – "so called because they live beyond the point from which the North wind blows". That’s interesting to me at least because the early Polar explorers were convinced, for some reason, that there was a warm sea beyond the ice belt, a delusion that led so many of them to their deaths. I always wondered why it would be possible to believe such a thing but if the myth of the Hyperboreans really was believed, (and Hecataeus was convinced they and the Greeks had been in contact and that the Hyperboreans were "in general very friendly to the Greeks.’") that would explain everything.

There was a bap to make this morning so that I could have my cheese on toast for lunch. I made the mix rather wetter than in the past to see what happens and it was rather difficult to knead. But once it was made I left it to fester for a while.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night. There was something about my youngest sister last night – I can’t remember exactly what it was but I wanted her to do something or to go somewhere and pick up something where I was. It took her a while to turn up and I can’t really remember any more about it because it’s another one of these dreams that evaporated away.

Just as well really. I don’t want my family loitering around my bedside during the night, that’s for sure

Later on, I started work being an Accompanier … "you mean ‘escort’" – ed … on a school bus in New Brunswick. I had to go to the local small town pick-up point to run a check on all of the pupils there. There were probably fifty children waiting there. Each of them wore a badge with their names, and several of them had changed their names and put “Bigfoot” there instead. After I’d reviewed all of the names I asked “how many Bigfoots have we here?”. Someone replied “well, there are five “. I replied “well, it’s New Brunswick, isn’t it? That will explain it”. Everyone burst out laughing.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you could put everyone in New Brunswick, and in particular, Carleton County where my place is, into Tennessee and no-one, neither the New Brunswickers or the Tennesseans, would notice the difference. Much as I love that area of North America, western New Brunswick, Maine, Vermont, it is like going back seventy years in time. That’s probably why I like it.

Next, there was football. And I despair of Stranraer FC. Having played like a championship side last week and blown away so convincingly the leaders of their division, and away from home too, this weekend they were at home to the bottom club, played one of the worst games that I have ever seen them play, and lost 1-0.

These Jekyll-and-Hyde performances have to stop if they want to be serious about keeping their place in the league. Last season they had a lucky escape from demotion out of the League, and they haven’t really improved all that much.

And while we’re on the subject of demotion and relegation … "well, one of us is" – ed … the weekend’s results in the JD Cymru League mean that Aberstwyth are relegated, as predicted at the start of the season, and Y Fflint just need one point to be assured of staying up – and with three matches to go.

With Aberystwyth’s relegation, it means that Y Drenewydd are the only club to have been in the league for every year that it has been in existence, and they are looking by no means safe quite yet.

Next task was the radio. Last night I’d dictated the notes for eleventh track of a radio programme and so I edited them and joined everything up together. The whole lot over-ran by seven seconds but I always dictate stuff that can be edited out without disrupting the sense and the rhythm and that was soon accomplished.

Lunch was next and I do have to say that my bap was absolute perfection today, the best that I have ever made. I’m certain that my water measurer is inaccurate and that’s been the root of all of my problems. The air fryer baked it really well and made some lovely cheese on toast, even if it is vegan cheese.

This afternoon I attacked the next programme. Last night I’d dictated the notes for ten tracks and so I edited it all down and assembled it. Later on, I chose the eleventh track and wrote the notes for it ready for dictation next weekend.

After the disgusting drink break I set about making my cake.

It’s a standard oil cake of

  • one cup of flour
  • one cup of sugar
  • half a cup of hot water
  • half a cup of oil (I use 50% vegetable oil and 50% coconut oil)
  • half a teaspoon of baking powder
  • half a teaspoon of salt
  • one teaspoon of vanilla essence

to that I added

  • a couple of inches of ginger paste (Heaven only knows where my fresh ginger has gone
  • a teaspoon of ground ginger
  • a teaspoon of mixed spice
  • some desiccated coconut
  • an extra half-cup of flour
  • all of the orange pulp from which I had extracted the juice yesterday
  • some whizzed-up almonds and Brazil nuts

All of the dry stuff was whizzed up in my whizzer, then all of the wet stuff was added in and whizzed into the mix, and it was all then poured out into a lined cake tray and baked for 35 minutes at 180°C

While that was going on, the pizza dough that i’d taken from the freezer was defrosting. I made the pizza while the cake was baking and then popped it into the hot oven when the cake was done.

The pizza was perfection too, especially as I had remembered everything this week, for a change.

Now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think

But while we are talking about Bigfoot "well, one of us is" one of my friends in Crewe contacted me the other day and told me that there was a big, hairy monster running around Crewe scaring everyone.
"Crewe’s equivalent of Bigfoot, I suppose?" I asked
"Very probably" he replied "but here, he’s called ‘Big Thirty point Four-Eight Centimetres’"

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Saturday 1st March 2025 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS.

And a happy St David’s Day to those of you who don’t celebrate it. And my leek soup was delicious. Even better – there’s enough left for lunch tomorrow.

That is of course, always assuming that I’m here to eat it because a few more nights like last night and a few more days like today and I won’t be.

As I expected, last night was another late night. I didn’t hang around at all though so I’ve no idea why I couldn’t have been in bed at a reasonable time.

Once in bed though, I couldn’t sleep. I had a pain in the neck (and I’m not talking about a partner here) that was absolutely agonising and try as I might, I couldn’t make myself comfortable. What with all of the music drifting up from the ball in the town centre and the revellers making their way back to the millions of motorhomes parked all around here, I lay awake for hours and I’m not joking either.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep though and once more it was a very weary, bleary-eyed me who struggled to his feet.

After a wash, I set the washing machine off. And how many times is this now that I’ve had dirty clothes left over after I’ve filled the machine? Either I need a bigger machine or else I need to use the machine more frequently.

Next, it was into the kitchen for the medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here, I was surprised to find some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I seriously thought that I hadn’t been asleep long enough. I’d been out on a night off and had gone to the pub to sit and have a quiet drink. Then I thought that it was becoming late so I’d better set out and head for home. I began to jog and when I reached my house, I carried on running but suddenly realised that I was supposed to be going home, not for a run as I used to do at night, so I turned round and went back to the house but suddenly found myself running again. I had to stop and go back another time. When I reached the house I put my hand on the door to open it and a dog began to bark. Someone said “it’s Eric”. They came to meet me and said “a girl has been to see you” and mentioned her name. I thought that I recognised the name from somewhere as if it was someone whom I knew in Stockport but I suddenly realised that it was a girl with whom I’d worked once. Whatever does she want? “Well, she’s left her business card”. I went in and saw on the table a business card so I picked it up. It wasn’t hers though, but for a guy called Tim Edmonds who works for the Government. “Who’s Tim Edmonds? What does he want?”. My youngest sister asked me “is your car OK?”. I replied “yes. Shouldn’t it have been?”. She looked at her husband and said “I’m just making sure that he has some windows in his car” so that there had obviously been something about windows in cars between the two of them.

When I was taxi-driving when I lived in Winsford I often used to go for a run when I came home at some kind of silly hour in the early morning. I really enjoyed it and it was a really good way for me to relax and unwind. I lost the habit after that when I moved to Crewe but I started running again when I moved to Belgium. After I taught Roxanne to ride a bike she used to chase me through the local park. There’s also a story about my youngest sister, her husband and a window too but that’s yet another story that the World isn’t quite ready to hear.

Isabelle breezed in, hours late because of Carnaval. Today is the defilé des enfants – the Children’s Procession when all the kids dress up as their favourite characters and walk into town accompanied by the brass bands, and they have begun to close all of the streets even at this time of the morning. That’s actually my favourite part of the long weekend and a few years ago I hit the streets with my recording gear and interviewed some of the kids to make a radio programme

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are talking about Burpham Camp in Sussex. And having disputed at great length (as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) the opinion that some of these hilltop camps are “Danish camps” because the Danes wouldn’t build impressive fortifications, he tells us, about Burpham Camp, that "it is safe to suppose that it is not a British work. For reasons as obvious it is not Roman. It has no known characteristics of Saxon work, and had it been such, the church would certainly have been within the vallum. It must therefore be either Danish or Norman. To Norman work it has no resemblance, and the conclusion is that it is Danish.".

So having insisted "that it is not a British work" and "has no known characteristics of Saxon work", according to archaeological excavations undertaken on behalf of the National Heritage List, "the Iron Age promontory fort at Burpham is an example of an inland fort where the natural defensive qualities of the land were utilised and the site was reoccupied as a burh in the Anglo-Saxon period. ".

After breakfast I had bread to make for tea tonight – just a couple of rolls – and then I went to sit down for half an hour for a rest with a mug of coffee.

When my cleaner came in, she found me hard at work. Not only had I prepared all of the veg for my soup, I actually had it all in the pot simmering away and the bread was in the air fryer cooking. Today we gave the anaesthetic cream a try-out and after she left, I carried on with my soup.

The taxi was driven today by my favourite taxi driver but she was late. And then we had to go to pick up someone else but because the roads were all closed because of the defilé we had to go miles and miles out of our way.

It took an age to sort out the other passenger and then we had to go almost to Bréhal before we could pick up the road to Avranches, a detour of about a dozen miles.

As you might expect, I was last to arrive and was even later because there were two emergencies admitted. My appointment is in principle at 13:30, and I wasn’t seen to until 14:45.

By that time the anaesthetic had long-since worn off so I knew all about the connection. And Julie the Cook tried to do it all on her own and failed, and I was in total and utter agony and despair throughout the entire session.

However, I did manage to watch the football. The result was predictable, with TNS, eight points clear at the top defeating Aberystwyth, eight points adrift at the foot of the bale, winning the League Cup.

What wasn’t predictable was the heavy weather that TNS made of it and while Aberystwyth never looked like threatening the TNS goal, a 1-0 win isn’t a safe win by any means. All I can say though is that if Aberystwyth had played with the same fire and spirit throughout the season that they showed today, they wouldn’t be in anything like as much trouble as they are.

What with one thing and another it was 19:45 when I returned home. While all of the police had ringed the town with roadblocks to hunt down drunken drivers, a bunch of drunken teenagers were misbehaving in the street blocking all of the traffic and needed quite a lot of persuasion to move.

When I finally returned home I finished off making the soup and have somehow ended up with two litres of it. That will keep me going for a while, I reckon.

Tomorrow I’ll be bread-making, a complete loaf this time, and flapjack-making. As for the radio programme, Grahame and I have been chatting on the internet exchanging ideas and I’ve decided to make three programmes for my “taste of Woodstock” – one of the Friday to be broadcast on the Friday, one of Saturday and the third of the Sunday, to be broadcast similarly, mutatis mutandis. So tonight and tomorrow I won’t be radioing.

But talking of Carnaval and dressing up, I told my taxi driver to be careful on the way home. "There are several elephants in the town and at Carnaval they disguise themselves by dressing up in black suits and black glasses and pretend that they are the Blues Brothers"
"That’s nonsense" she replied. "I’ve lived in this area 30 years and I’ve never seen tham"
"There you are then" I said. "It shows you just how good their disguise really is"

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Saturday 4th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE AND A …

… half painful hours of agony today in the Dialysis Centre. There’s definitely something wrong somewhere with it being as painful as it is. That’s just not normal.

Still, I’ll find out on Monday for sure when I go for an X-ray. At least the taxi is confirmed for Monday morning, which is good news

So, hoping not to fall asleep in mid-notes as I did last night, I suppose that I had better make a start on writing about my day. Or, rather, my night, because once more I wasn’t in bed at anything like a reasonable hour.

Once I’d finished my notes I loitered around for a while, having found a few interesting websites to read in order to keep myself out of any mischief, and it was once more about 01:30 when I finally crept into bed. Sound asleep quite quickly, there I stayed until the alarm went off at 08:00.

But not asleep. This blasted stabbing pain in the foot has started up again and won’t leave me alone.

It was a struggle to rise up from the bed this morning, and even more of a struggle to make it to the bathroom. I had a good wash and then washed my clothes and hung them up to dry.

Next task was to write out the Mince Pie recipe for Isabelle the Nurse.

I’m not sure why because it’s one of the easiest recipes around here – cut out some circles of flaky pastry dough to fit in your tart mould, half-fill them with bottled mincemeat, and then cut out more smaller circles of pastry to go on top of the pastry and mincemeat in the mould. Prick a hole in them to let the steam out, and bake at 180°C until brown on top.

Nothing can be easier.

Of course, you can tidy them up as you like by brushing the tops with milk to brown them, sprinkling icing sugar over them etc, but all of that is up to you. I grease my mould with margarine so the pies come out easier too.

When she came she was late again and once more, in quite a rush. The bad news is that she can’t come here at 10:00 on Monday to fix my patches. My cleaner is at work so that rules her out so I’ve no idea what I’m going to do now.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and then carried on reading MY BOOK

Caesar has come ashore, been involved in another pitched battle or two, reached the Thames and forded it to the other side, having given battle to the native British yet again, and then mysteriously returned to the coast.

It’s true that a storm has devastated his fleet and according to HIS MEMOIRS he returned to attend to the affair.

It’s important that it’s all repaired of course, but he doesn’t need to be there to do it. It’s far more important that he subdues the Britons before the winter storms come roaring down the Channel.

One thing that has struck me about this is that he seems to be really concerned about the winds and seems to be able to forecast their arrival with some ease. Was the climate so different and the storms so much more regular 2,000 years ago? Storms can be predicted and planned for in many regions of the World, but was the English Channel like that back in Caesar’s day?

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was with my youngest sister and one or two other people. We’d been doing something like fighting dragons. On our way back we came to some kind of takeaway food place. The other girl who was with me, she said that she had bought something for another person because instead of it being €2:85 it was only €2:10 but now she was short of money. I said “I suppose that you want me to buy you the food in here, do you?”. She replied, “no, my order is for me and my sister” so I went in and ordered for me and said that my sister will want the soup, the magnificent soup. She said that she wanted something else too. When they worked out the bill it came to €15:30. My sister actually had that money in her hand because she knew exactly how much it would cost. She handed it over to them – 2 notes of €5:00 and 3 notes of €1:00

How I wish that I could buy something at €15:30 with just €13:00. Maybe I ought to bury my differences with that part of the family, seeing that they insist on disturbing my sleep like this, and send her to do my shopping for me if she can produce this kind of results. However, fighting dragons is a strange thing to be doing during the night.

My cleaner showed up to fit my patches and then once she’d finished we had a good chat until my taxi came – a chat mainly about cats.

It was the guy who seems to be involved somehow in the running of the business who came to pick me up. It was just me in the car so I expected to have a good chat all the way down but for some reason he was quite quiet. I tried on a couple of occasions to entice him into talking, but to no avail.

At the Dialysis Centre there were only five of us, but with two nurses we were seen quite quickly. And painfully, as I have said.

The worst thing about it is that they wanted to run an electrical test to see how much water was in my body. They have to plug some electrodes into patches that they stick on my hands and feet.

“But I have elastic compression socks on” I said

“Ohh” replied the nurse. “If we had realised, we would have told you not to wear them today” So I could have had a good lie-in without the nurse.

With a pain from the dialysis in my arm and this intermittent pain in my foot, I was left pretty much alone. The doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) was on the prowl around the ward but he kept well-clear of my bed. Too afraid of receiving an earful, I shouldn’t wonder.

To pass the time I was reading – firstly a pile of reports about the latest archaeological investigations of Norse sites in North America and First-Nation sites where Norse artefacts have been discovered.

It’s no wonder that there have been so many different claims for the site of “Vinland”, given the widespread discovery of artefacts. One or two have even been unearthed on the western side of Hudson’s Bay.

In fact the more that I read, the more mileage there is in James Enterline’s claim that the original sighting of land in North America was in Ungava Bay but the subsequent voyages recorded in the sagas missed Ungava Bay and sailed into Hudson’s Bay.

Most people though are sticking to L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS on the grounds that “only one settlement is noted in the Sagas, and one settlement has been found”.

However, “absence of evidence” and “evidence of absence” are not the same thing at all, and in any case, the Sagas note a few other camps that the Norse created.

The final thing that I read was a report into salmon-fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador, commissioned in 1909, talking about the history of salmon-fishing in each river from the earliest recorded date. It’s interesting, like all of these books, to see how prolific these rivers used to be, and just how the netting and over-fishing destroyed a whole breeding environment.

To return, I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi to turn up. It was the same driver who brought me and once more, he was very quiet. He certainly seemed totally distracted today, as if he had a lot on his mind and that’s not normal.

We’d come home in a rainstorm and it was even worse back here. But I made it up the stairs to the lift with my cleaner in attendance. The broken handrail has fallen off completely now and it’s dangerous so I’m having to by-pass it.

Back in the warmth I made my tea – baked potato with vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Thoroughly delicious

So I’ll loiter around for a while and then go to bed. Tomorrow I have bread to make and soup to drink for lunch but that’s about it. Nothing really in the way of culinary activity. But it’s my last day of my holidays because I’m starting work again on Monday as much as I can with all of these hospital appointments.

On the way back in the taxi we were listening to the news, and there was a report of a girl who had been arrested for trying to open the door of an aeroplane.
My driver was listening intently so I told him "on the PA announcement on the ‘plane, they tell you that if you are sitting next to an emergency door you should make sure that you are able to open it, so when I was sitting next to one once in Canada, I went to make sure"
"And what happened?" he asked
"The flight crew went berserk" I replied. "We were at 37,000 feet at the time."

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Sunday 22nd December 2024 – I SOMETIMES WONDER …

… where I’d be now if I head my head switched on all the time, instead of just occasionally in the odd, rare flashing moments of inspiration.

But when it does happen, it reminds me of Kenneth Williams who once famously said "sometimes I’m taken aback by my own brilliance".

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for a number of weeks now I’ve been having a really hard time in the kitchen, as standing on my feet for several hours is killing me completely.

So this morning, as Isabelle the nurse was oiling my legs and fitting my compression socks and I had my leg resting on the stool for the electronic drum kit, I suddenly thought “stool”.

For weeks now I’ve wanted one of these screw stools, where the seat is adjustable for height, so I could sit in the kitchen at the right height when I’m working and just swivel round to reach for what I needed. And there this morning, I thought “drum stool”.

Sure enough, when I had a look at my stool I found that the seat was adjustable for height. Not as much as I would like, but it made a real difference. For much of the day I’ve been working in the kitchen and being quite comfortable about it, because I’ve been sitting down and that makes quite a difference.

But returning to last night, after I’d finished my notes and everything that I had to do, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written last week and then went to bed. it was 23:40 which meant that although it was later than my ideal time of 23:00, the alarm was set for 08:00 so I was due for a decent, long sleep.

Or so I thought.

It might have been that I was asleep quite quickly, but it didn’t stay like that. It was another night of fitful sleep, tossing and turning and drenched in sweat like a few nights have been after the dialysis.. By 07:40 I decided to call it a day and when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and about

Isabelle the nurse was early to day. There are no blood tests to perform as the laboratory is closed on Sundays. She did what we had to and we talked about the storm, the train cancellations and the cancellation of the Christmas parade.

The storm – yes. It’s a permanent fixture now. We have another one blowing like a hurricane. All trains along the coastal line between Caen, Granville and Rennes are cancelled and as I said just now, the Christmas parade is cancelled too.

After she left I made breakfast and then read MY NEW BOOK.

We’re discussing Palaeolithic, Stone Age Britain at the moment and in particular, the religious element.

The author, Thomas Rice Holmes, is struck with the idea that the Ancient Briton worshipped his weapons and prayed to his God to bless them. However, I have another theory.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m a great believer in the existence of the sixth sense. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few months ago we discussed how it was possible to stare at someone from a window, and after a while they would suddenly turn round and look up at you. Did anyone try it?

So what I’m thinking about this devotion or prayer is that it isn’t devotion or prayer at all. It’s ancient, prehistoric man concentrating hard on his weapon and transferring some of his mysticism and will to it so that when he would throw it, it would travel straight and true in accordance with its owner’s wishes.

Of course, that’s not so far removed from praying, but I think that it’s important to identify it correctly. But what do I know anyway?

There’s an interesting quote in the book that certainly struck a chord with me. He quotes an unknown author who once said "as I moved from place to place, I somehow seemed to know less and less, and I cannot say what would have been the result" That is something to which I can really relate.

But while we’re on the subject of Thomas Rice Holmes … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a look on the internet to see what was known about him. I mentioned the other day his love of polemic and light-hearted “frank exchanges of views”, and someone called Bill Thayer, a commentator on ancient texts, notes that amongst Rice Holmes and his contemporaries, there was "a flurry of argument and counter-argument"

It looks as if I’m going to be in for a bumpy ride.

After reading my book, I started work, armed with my revolving stool.

First thing was to make some dough. If I’m having soup at lunchtime, I’m having fresh bread so I want to make a bap. One thing about the air fryer is that you can cook small amounts of bread so 100 grams of flour made a lovely bread mix, which I left to fester.

And then, people, I marzipanned my Christmas cake. The marzipan rolled out nicely and with some of the jam that my friends in Macon gave me last time I was there, it stuck a treat to the Christmas cake. Then the cake went back into the fridge to cool down

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Someone came round to the house for a taxi. While he was waiting for a taxi to pull up, he began to nibble away at all my cheese on the kitchen worktop. After a couple of minutes I told him that if he doesn’t stop I’m going to charge him for it. He carried on nibbling so I had a look at the shopping list and said “right, that’s £1:60 for the cheese”. He replied “oh no, it’s £0:60”. I insisted on £1:60 and if he didn’t like it he could clear off. He cleared off, uttering all kinds of threats like dancing up and down on the vehicles, making a noise, slitting the tyres etc. I told him that anyone who does anything to any of my vehicles would need a very good doctor. Then he left. When I came back in the girl on the radio said “you’d better go to see your brother in law. His car’s on fire”. Just then a car pulled up. Two passengers, a very young girl and a woman alighted and so did my youngest sister’s husband. I had a look underneath it. It looked clean and tidy, and I couldn’t see anything. A asked “are you sure that this car has caught fire?”. He replied “the little girl is”. I replied “I can’t see anything at all under here that shows any sign of flames”.

The one thing that I miss since I’ve been on this vegan diet is the cheese. I used to love cheese and I could eat tons of it. But not any more, unfortunately. Vegan cheese is a very poor substitute. It’s just over 32 years – October 1992 in fact – since my pancreas gave out. And all the meat in my freezer that I had to give away that night when I came home from the doctor’s!

At the hospital they had given me four options –
1) – transplant. But the transplant was in its infancy and the success rate wasn’t assured.
2) – injections every day. But then I’d lose my professional driving licences
3) – die
4) – try to control it by diet, eliminating all animal fats

So while I went onto this extreme diet overnight, I thought that I may as well go the whole hog too so apart from that evening up on that mountain in Bulgaria with Percy Penguin and a host of other skiers lost in the fog in 1994, not a drop of alcohol has crossed my lips.

And it worked too. I lost 10kg almost immediately and in Brussels a couple of months later I started running again. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was still running up until just two or three years ago.

Later on, I had to go to see a psychiatrist or psychologist or someone or other so I took myself off to his premises. It turned out to be a shop somewhere in the Ardennes and he was the shopkeeper. He was busy serving people so I sat myself down in the corner, took up my laptop and began to work. After a while he finished serving his customers and came over. I put everything away. He asked “you aren’t working today are you?”. I explained that I was always working. He was astonished by that. He said “we aren’t all that enthusiastic about work here in the Ardennes”. I replied “I can see that, looking at some of these dusty shops that need a good clean”. He smiled and just then another customer came in and was waiting to be served. I told him that he had a customer. He replied “so what?”. I asked “aren’t you going to serve her?”. He grudgingly picked himself up and wandered off over there and I took out my laptop again anfd began to work.

Having done that, this dream restarted when he came back and sat down on the bench by me. I said “I hear that you have been having trouble to pee”. I wondered how he’d heard that. I hadn’t said anything to him about that up until that moment just then.

Anyone who wants to go to see a psychiatrist needs his head examined. Quite But here’s another dream into which I stepped back later. What can’t I do that whenever Zero, Castor or TOTGA come around? I can’t imagine wanting to do that with a psychiatrist. I must need my head examining.

And that reminds me – the trick cyclist from the hospital hasn’t been to see me for ages. Has she forgotten me too?

Finally, I was at school and had been into town for lunch. I’d ended up in a big shoe shop, toy shop, department store. The queues were enormous and I had to fight my way around. There were people queueing on the stairs and I had a great deal of difficulty trying to go down them. People were going down either side of these people queueing on the stairs, making things even more difficult. Eventually I could extract myself and head back to school. I heard a voice behind me say “oh there’s someone else late for school. Let’s run and see if we can beat him and he’ll be last”. I made it back to school first and the teacher was already in my classroom teaching so I slunk in and sat at my seat, late again. He was already talking to the kids about the “Dirty Harry”, or was it “The Godfather” films, asking how long this series continued. Someone said “fifteen years” but he replied that in fact it was thirty years, which surprised everyone. Then we began to discuss the plot for another film. I began to dream about Eastwood who had been on a mission somewhere and had met a lonely girl in a bar. He’d spent the evening with her and then gone his separate ways. Next morning he’d looked for her name in the ‘phone book, went to a florist’s and ordered some flowers and sent them to her. Then, as arranged, went round to see her in the afternoon. He had a gold-coloured sports car in which he took off from the side of the kerb on the wrong side of the road and had to weave in through the traffic to do a U-turn and then headed off. He reached the address where there were a few people wandering around. Some woman came up to him and said something about him being in his work clothes. He asked “how do you know?”. She replied “you’ve changed since you were here last night”. He asked the people what was going on. Someone said “it’s a woman”. he worked out that it was the woman whom he’d come to see. “She’d committed suicide last night just after you had gone”. It turned out that she had a gunshot wound in the neck from previously. When he’d given her a playful karate chop he’d missed that gunshot wound by millimetres. He was wondering what on earth had happened that had made her want to commit suicide because she was certainly the kind who was depressed, being lonely in a bar but he thought that his presence would have cheered her up a little

It’s been a long time since I’ve had an epic dream like that. It’s one of these major ones that keep on going and going and it’s a shame that there was no nice young female involved with me appearing in that dream, as there sometimes is. It’s interesting though that there’s a “dream within a dream”. We’ve had a few of those where we’ve managed to move up a level. Not quite the 25th level, about which Dennis Wheatley used to brag, but a step up all the same

And here I am, scriptwriting in the night too. Is there no end to my nocturnal talents?

Back in the kitchen, I made my broccoli stalk soup, remembering to put the little pasta elbows in today. My bread went up like a lift, the best that I’ve ever made, and the soup was totally delicious with a tub of soya yoghurt tipped into it. What a nice lunch that was!

Then it was mince pie time. I have two rolls of puff pastry but I only used one. That made the bases and tops for five pies which is a nice number over Christmas. And in my silicon pie mould, five pies used half a jar of mincemeat. At this rate there will be enough mincemeat in stock for five more years

Football was next, Stranraer against Stirling Albion, who had a friend of mine in goal. And I have never seen so many open goals missed by Stranraer or saved by David Gaston. Some phrase concerning stringed musical instruments and the nether regions of certain ruminant animals sprung to my mind as I watched Stranraer miss open goal after open goal.

They finally managed to score right at the end of the game, only for Stirling to roar upfield and score an equaliser with probably their only shot of the game.

There won’t be another game like that ever again.

Making dough was next. I’ve run out for the pizza and that’s a calamity so I made a 500 gram mix, put two lumps in the freezer and the third lump I used as tonight’s meal.

Next was icing the Christmas cake. And despite it being cold, the icing kept on sliding down the side and I had to keep on spreading it back up. But that icing knife that I bought from Noz is a great tool to have. It made the job much easier than it might have been

While I was assembling the pizza I had the oven on, baking the mince pies. Now they are done and they look delicious. My pizza was delicious too.

You might think that after all of that, with the pudding that’s in the freezer, I’m ready for Christmas. But that’s not so. While I was working this afternoon I kept on thinking, as I was talking to Rosemary (I managed that too) “thers’s something else that I’ve forgotten”.

And now I know what it is. I forgot the hash browns.

So that will be the job tomorrow before I go to the Dialysis Clinic.

As well as all of that and chatting to Rosemary, I’ve been working on some of the radio notes too, and I’m exhausted which is no surprise.

In a few minutes, I’ll be off to bed. And then it’ll start all over again tomorrow. It’s relentless

But while we’re on the subject of football, dreams and psychiatrists … "well, one of us is" – ed … I once went to see a psychiatrist (well, I actually went more than once, but that’s another story)
"Doctor doctor" I said "I’m having these terrible dreams. I’ve seen all these ants playing football in the Ants World Cup. We’ve had a round of thirty-two, then a round of sixteen, then a round of eight, then a round of four. It’s driving me out of my mind, doctor. Please help me"
"Well, never mind" said the doctor. "Take this prescription to the chemist, have it made up and take two of the tablets tonight. I promise you – you’ll sleep like a baby and you won’t have any dreams at all"
"Ohh – I can’t do that tonight doctor" I said
"Why not?"
"Well, they are playing in the final tonight and I don’t want to miss that!"

0

Saturday 16th November 2024 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if it’s not one thing, it’s another with this dialysis.

Today the machine wasn’t working correctly and the poor nurses were so fed up of running to it every five minutes when the alarm went off that in the end they went to see the doctor who told them that I may as well be thrown out. They can’t change the machine because each machine has to be configured specially for each patient and to reconfigure a machine that’s not in use takes far too long.

So at least I had an early return home today after all of this.

It’s about the only thing that was early today (apart from the taxi, about which we’ll talk in due course) and last night. It ended up being another late night but I’m now past caring about what time I go to bed. I’ll just go to bed when I feel like it and if necessary, sleep during the dialysis.

But when I finally did go to bed, I was asleep quickly enough and had another Sleep of the Dead all the way through. When the alarm went off, I was at a rock festival, part of the organisation. I’d just introduced Steve Marriott to the crowd. England had just played Germany in a football match in a European Cup competition and had won so there was a whole host of repartee from Marriott and from the audience like “well it’s only fair that we keep on playing them until they finally manage to win”, lots of things like that which were extremely interesting. But the microphone cord for Steve Marriot had become stuck somewhere and I had quite a job to free it off and pull enough cable through so that he could finally put it on its stand and begin to perform. There was also something else about a song – had a song ever been played, or something like that. It turned out that each time they’d go to play it on a concert, the concert would over-run so they would have to cut short their set in order to fit into the time scale and that one always seemed to be the song that would go. So there was some dispute or discussion about whether it had ever been played, and what would be the situation if some other group decided that they would like to play it. Would Steve Marriott still be obliged to consider it in his set or would he be obliged to drop it and pick another one?

What a bizarre dream. There’s a little something of just about everything in there and none of it makes any sense or has any significance.

Rising from the bed I staggered off into the kitchen to make some dough for some bread as I’m going to be running out today. It went together quite nicely too for a change just recently. I’ve not been too happy with my bread-making technique this last couple of weeks.

And then into the bathroom where I washed not only me but also some of my clothes. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have to keep on top of the laundry here as best as I can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. There was something going on in a small field. There were groups of us sitting around there watching it. For some particular reason we stood up and then we all settled down again. My youngest sister was there too, and that’s twice in the last few nights that she’s made an appearance so what’s happening here?

As well as that, there was more too, but you don’t want to know about that, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

The nurse came at a time more like his usual arrival, and for a change he refrained from making any comment that would irritate me. In fact he was quite pleasant and the closest that he has been to normal for quite some considerable time. He asked if I was going to watch the rugby later.

Me? Rugby? I come from North Wales.

After he left, I gave the dough its second kneading, made breakfast and carried on reading my book.

And poor Samuel Hearne. After the massacre of the Inuit at Bloody Falls that so affected and upset him, his account of his journey to the coastline of the Arctic Ocean bears no resemblance to that reported by Franklin in 1821 and Richardson in 1848.

In fact Richardson, in his own memoirs writes "it is not very probable that he could have induced the Indians, over whom he had little influence, to accompany him on his survey, after they had completed the massacre which was the object of their long and laborious journey ; nor, had he gone actually to the mouth of the river"

It would seem that Hearne, obviously totally dismayed at his own inability to convince his guides to press on to the coast and ashamed to admit it to his superiors of the Hudson’s Bay Company, wrote a description of how he imagined it to be in the belief that no other European would ever be able to follow in his footsteps.

But there is something in the book that I’m reading that has rung a very large bell with me, and quite surprisingly and unexpectedly too.

The copy of Hearne’s book that I’m reading is a version dated 1910 and contains editorial comments made by someone who at the time was associated with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The editor tell us "Since this Journal was written, the Northern Indians, by annually visiting their Southern friends, the Athapuscow Indians, have contracted the small-pox, which has carried off nine-tenths of them … but having been totally neglected for several years, they have now sunk into their original barbarism and extreme indigence ; and a war has ensued between the two tribes, for the sake of a few remnants of iron-work which was left among them ; and the Dog-ribbed Indians were so numerous, and so successful, as to destroy almost the whole race of the Copper Indians."

An Arctic explorer by the name of Vilhjalmar Stefansson is described by the Canadian historian Pierre Berton as"the most controversial of that singular breed of venturers who set out to unlock the secrets of the frozen World" – although how anyone can say that of Stefansson when there are people such as Cook and Peary in that group I really don’t know.

And Stefansson’s place is not due to any fraud or intrigue like the two more famous candidates for that title. He is notorious for the famous story of the “blond Eskimoes”.

In 1910 Stefansson was wandering about on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and came across a group of Inuit who had paler faces and some of whom had brownish hair. On his return to civilisation he foolishly told a newspaper reporter of what he had found, embellished with a few bells and whistles, and a few days later, blasted across the front page of the Seattle Times was "Explorer discovers lost tribe of whites"

The newspaper reporter admitted later that he had used his “ingenuity and imagination” to flesh out the story, but by then, the damage had been done.

Worse still, when Stefansson returned to the Arctic a few years later with a party of Scientists sponsored by the Canadian Government, no trace of those Inuit was ever found and he was denounced as a charlatan hungry for attention from the media.

But I reckon that the comment by the editor of Hearne’s book explains exactly why no trace of his Inuit would have been found.

The bread baked itself quite well in the air fryer while all of this was going on. And I’ve found the secret – which is to bake it for fifteen minutes, take the bread out and turn it over and the put it back in for another seven and a half. Then I have a lovely loaf that isn’t burnt.

Back in here, I had things to do and was so engrossed that I didn’t realise that my faithful cleaner had arrived to put my anaesthetic patches onto my arm.

The taxi came early too, and it was the new girl who doesn’t know her way around. I had to show her the way to the other passenger who sometimes comes with me and then we had a nice, pleasant drive down to Avranches.

We were early arriving so we had to wait, but if I’m going to be plugged into a machine for three and a half hours there’s always something that I can be doing to pass the time while I’m awaiting.

When I emerged everyone else had already gone in so I followed them into the ward where I was quickly plugged in.

No orange juice for me so, for the first time in I don’t know how many weeks, I had another one of those cataleptic fits that I used to have. I heard everything that went on but for an hour I was totally unable to do anything at all.

Once the coffee and orange juice came round to restore me to the Land of the Living, I revised my Welsh and then carried on reading Cartier’s account of his voyage as edited by Richard Hakluyt.

Cartier is intent upon visiting the First-Nation settlement of Hochelaga but the King, Donnacona, is intent on preventing him at all costs. Donnacona’s attitude and opinions have hardened quite considerably since Cartier kidnapped his sons the previous year.

Pretty soon the St Lawrence will ice up and Cartier will be obliged to stay there over the winter. It will be interesting to see the interaction between the First-Nation people and the Europeans when the latter find themselves at the mercy of the former in an inhospitable and unfamiliar land in some very unwelcome temperatures.

Remember that as yet, no European has any conception at all as to what a Montréal (because that’s where Hochelaga is) winter is really like. Montréal is situated at 45°N, roughly the same as Bordeaux and Turin and winters like in those two cities will be what Cartier and his men expect.

Meanwhile, all is not well with the dialysis machine. Every five minutes the alarm goes off and poor Julie the Cook has to run to see what’s the matter. She resets it and five minutes later it whistles again.

Eventually, she’s had enough, and who can blame her? She goes to see Emilie the Cute Consultant (who has been keeping her distance from me) who tells her to switch off the machine and send me home. We’ll try again on Monday.

The taxi arrives just as I leave the building and we have a very interesting and conversational drive home

My faithful cleaner is at her post as I arrive, and she’s astonished by my early return. And once more she watches as I stride out up the twenty-five steps to my apartment.

There’s football tonight. Rhydaman of the Second Tier, having already knocked out a Premier League club, Aberystwyth Town, in the previous round, are taking on Hwlffordd in the Welsh Cup. And they are at home too

There’s a huge gulf in class between the Second Tier and the Premier League, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … but what Rhydaman managed to do was to drag their opponents down to their level.

Hwlffordd are third in the table but on this showing, they are a long way short of any kind of serious quality that will enable them to challenge for honours. They took the lead halfway through the first half more by luck than any skill, but Rhydaman managed to equalise near the end.

Try as they might, Hwlffordd couldn’t find the killer touch

The game went down to penalties and it was a very dismal 10-9 win to Hwlffordd. And I for one am hoping that we’ll see much more quality from someone in the next round.

Tea was the last burger on a bap for now, with baked potato and salad followed by chocolate cake and strawberry soya dessert. Next week I’ll be back on the breaded quorn fillets as I’ve now run out of baps.

But my chocolate cake is really nice, especially with the bits of real chocolate whisked into it.

So I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed ready for the morning.

But I’m still having a smile at a story that one of the nurses told me this afternoon.
Normandy is of course a centre for apple-growing and cider production and many of the local farms combine the two. And the nurse told me the story of a local farmer who had fallen into his cider fermentation vat
"He was in there struggling for several hours before the fire brigade managed to pull him out"
"That’s terrible news" I exclaimed. "What took them so long to pull him out?"
"Apparently he wouldn’t let go of the side of the vat" she said.

0

Thursday 14th November 2024 – SO HERE I AM …

… back from the Dialysis Clinic, still in one piece. But not without them trying their best though. I’m really not too sure how long I can keep it up (as the Bishop once famously said to the actress).

And while we’re on the subject of things being up … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was up quite late again last night. However that was a personal choice of mine and nothing to do with any work or other obligation so I’m not complaining.

But once in bed, when I finally made it, I slept the sleep of the Dead and remember absolutely nothing at all.

When the alarm went off I was off on my travels somewhere but it evaporated immediately which was a shame. It must have been exciting, and there’s not enough excitement in my life these days. It’s a pity that every last memory of whatever it was simply disappeared.

The bathroom was first, and I managed to stagger in there before the final alarm of the morning. I had a good wash and scrub up, and even a shave. I know that Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, but that’s no reason not to make an effort.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. I was with my youngest sister. We’d gone to a walled city, something like Chester or something like that but in actual fact it was a port on the south coast. We were going to see a ferry – the one that goes from Sheerness to Vilssingen but it had been doing something else on the high seas somewhere and had changed its name. We were discussing the ship. When we arrived at the outskirts of this town I made the remark that I’d only ever been here once before but didn’t have a camera with me. You could see across the bay in the cliffs all these houses that had been carved out of the cliffs. Once I’d passed underneath the entrance gate to the city and began to climb the hilltop towards the city centre, I stopped to take a photograph of it but the camera on my ‘phone wasn’t working properly. It was having difficulty taking the photo. A couple of guys came over and began to chat. They were really getting on my nerves – one of them saying “I know a good place where you can photograph”. Anyway, right in the end I told him to clear off while I tried to take this photograph. I had to go back down towards the gate again but still this photograph wouldn’t turn out. Then I joined my youngest sister again who had been for a run. She told me that you could run in this city as long as you obeyed various rules like in which order you can run, the distance that you are running, which lane you should be in etc. It sounded really complicated to me but when she set off I joined her and we were only losing 2-1 for quite some time before we were overtaken again by events but I thought that we put up a really magnificent performance …fell asleep here … so we had a good run in this city. My sister set off and ran down the hill so I ran after her. Instead of keeping to the footpath she ran right back through the road in the city gates and underneath the walls into the town. I was surprised that that was allowed but she insisted that it was perfectly safe to run through on the road instead of on the pavement and so underneath the city gates rather than through the pedestrian exit. She began to explain all the lanes, their order and what they meant, where you should be, who you may overtake and in which lane

Not that I’m ever likely to be going anywhere with my youngest sister, and she is even less likely to want to go running. But I’ve had a couple of dreams about being in Chester or somewhere like it just recently so am I becoming all nostalgic? I lived there between 1972 and 1974 in my late teens and I do have to say that it was amongst the happiest times of my life. What wouldn’t I give to return to that joyous, carefree period surrounded by good friends and a healthy ambience? And a camera not working? That was a recurring dream at one point, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Later on I found myself another girlfriend. She’s someone whom I know and I wish that I knew who it was. We hadn’t been officially boyfriend/girlfriend but we spent a lot of time in each other’s company and I really looked forward to seeing her. She became ill, and had to have a lot of people looking after her which cut down quite considerably the time that we spent together. She slowly began to go out again. I met her once at some kind of concert where she was with some friends. I went over to say “hello” to her, and the first thing that she did was to give me £15:00 because she owed me £15:00 and I’d completely forgotten about it. I made a remark about her being a little better so would she like to come and have a chat with me. She said “no” which really disappointed me. She replied that things had changed. “I’ve been ill” she replied “and you’re no longer going to like me”. I told her that I’d always like her regardless of anything. She replied “you can’t trust me really, can you?” which was a reference to my own insecurity more than anything else. I was going to reply but at that point the dream faded away. Either that or I did.

That’s another thing, isn’t it? Me finding myself a girlfriend. In fact there’s something connecting this to real life too. I had a girlfriend at school and we drifted apart. A a couple of years later I was at the Teacher Training College in Crewe watching a rock group when I noticed, among the people in the crowd, the aforementioned. I went over for a chat and one thing led to another, and once you start you’d be surprised at how many other things there are. So our couple reignited but when she left school and went to University at Bangor it fizzled out again after a while.

The nurse was, for a change, late today. He asked about my plans for moving apartment and then proceeded to try to teach me to suck eggs, as if I’m senile or something. I wish that he would stop patronising me like this. It’s really getting on my wick.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. Samuel Hearne is now well on his way to the Coppermine River. He’s making some very pertinent observations about the life and habits of the First-Nation people out in the Barren Grounds of Canada – that area of peri-Arctic tundra situated above the tree line. He describes the philosophy of the First-Nation people as “every man for himself” and “the survival of the fittest” and describes how a stronger man taking away even a weaker man’s wife seems to be an everyday occurrence. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the Barren Grounds is one of the most remote, isolated and cruellest places on earth. If Jacques Cartier had called Labrador "the Land God Gave To Cain", whatever would he have said if he had made it to here? I was in Yellowknife in 2018, AS REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH WILL RECALL and while that’s not exactly in the Barren Grounds, it was still dismal enough from a natural history point of view.

Back in here I had a few things to do and hadn’t even started work when my faithful cleaner came to fit my patches. After she’d done it she took away with her all of the medication that I no longer use. She’s going to sort it and make a list to see whether any of her other clients can make use of it, to save throwing it away.

The taxi came early and it was one of my regular drivers but she was quite quiet. But didn’t she drive us down to Avranches at a hell of a rate? I’ve no idea what might be the matter with her.

There were quite a few patients here today and as a result, even though I was early, I was the last to be seen, as you might expect. I’m convinced that they do it deliberately, wait until the anaesthetic effect of the patches has worn off.

The first needle though was painless. Totally painless. However, the second needle made up for that. I knew all about that one and so, I suspect, do those people walking past outside.

My glucose limit was right down in the basement but no-one brought me an orange juice. Consequently I slipped into a diabetic coma until one of the Auxiliaries brought me a juice with my coffee. And then I revised my Welsh, listened to some music and read more of Hakluyt’s translation of Jacques Cartier’s voyages.

Here, Cartier sets the scene for all further problems between the French and the First-Nation people by kidnapping the sons of the chief of the local tribe in order to take them back to Europe. And then on his return, on his second voyage, he befriends the wrong tribe, hence leading to 250 years of conflict between the French, the Dutch, the English, the Iroquois and the Huron, along with various other Europeans and First-Nation groups.

Last to be connected, I was last, and by a long way too, to be disconnected. My cleaner had sent me a frantic message wondering where I was.

In the meantime though a doctor came to see me. We had the usual banal questions but said nothing about my scan last week so I asked him. He went away to have a look and came back to say that I had a slipped disc. And then wandered away before I had chance to ask him what their plans were about it.

That rang a bell with me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying in the past that there’s one of the doctors here at this hospital who has all the air of wishing that he was driving a taxi or serving in a restaurant, anywhere but working in a hospital. It looks as if he’s been pencilled in to deal with me

It was another speedy drive back home with a driver who was listening to the news all the way back. And then my helpful cleaner watched as I managed once more to climb the twenty-five steps up to here totally unaided.

Tea was steamed veg with falafel in a vegan cheese sauce followed by chocolate cake in a soya pistachio cream. And it tasted wonderful too. I really must stop eating so well.

But now I have some more things to do before going to bed. And tomorrow, I’m not (planning on) going anywhere so I can take my time.

What I shall do is to read some more of Samuel Hearne’s adventures in search of the Coppermine River.
The next chapter, written by Samuel Hearne is "Some Observations On The Sex Life and Practices Of The Athabasca and Chipewyan First-Nation People"
And the following chapter, written by the Athabasca and Chipewyan First-Nation People is entitled "Some Observations on the Sex Life and Practices of Mr Samuel Hearne"

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Monday 28th October 2024 – I’M FED UP …

… of this blasted dialysis and the pain that it’s causing me. Everything that could go wrong at the Clinic did go wrong today and during my three and a half hours coupled up to the machine I was wracked with non-stop pain.

What made it worse was that of the three teams there, it was the team that I consider to be the best that was there on duty this afternoon.

There’s going to have to be some dramatic improvement in the way that things work in there because if it carries on like this, I shan’t consider the 18 hours per week that I waste going to the Clinic to be worth the effort.

It’s all very well saying that they are doing their best to keep me alive, which I’m sure they are, but if I have to spend the rest of my life in pain like this three times per week, then I’d rather not bother.

One consolation though was that I was in bed before 23:00 last night, which was really nice. In fact, it was a good half-hour before and that was something for which I’d been longing.

However, I failed to make the most of it. There I was, wide-awake at 06:00 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, even applying a liberal helping of deodorant. I know that Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, but that’s no reason not to make an effort. I even changed my clothes.

Back in here I had a bash at transcribing the dictaphone notes. This was another one of these chaotic houses with lots of things happening and lots of people living there, all their lives intertwined etc. People kept on changing beds and bedrooms for some reason or other. I know that a couple of girls changed their bedding and ended up in a bed where I had slept. I pretended to forget that it was a bed where I was no longer sleeping, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, but I’m not!. Next morning there were the usual things that needed doing but I was quite looking forward to the evening because I hoped that the beds would be like they were last night and I could carry on. I had a whole variety of tasks that I needed to perform. Round about mid-afternoon I decided that I’d sit down and put my feet up for five minutes because I was tired after having had very little sleep the previous night. I sat down and put up my feet, and the next thing that I remember, it was bright sunlight and there were a lot of people about. I looked at my watch and it was 07:35. It must have been the following morning and I’d slept. I went in and everyone was having breakfast. I thought “I’ve missed my chance again, haven’t I?”. While I was wandering around looking for people I ended up in some woman’s room. She was sitting there. She’d had an accident, her glasses were broken and roughly where her glasses were broken there was a huge scar in her head. She looked quite a mess. I told her what had happened but of course I left out the part about in bed, just the part about me falling asleep. She thought that it was quite funny and told one or two other people. It was really quite funny too, especially the way that it stopped me doing what I was hoping to do.

Actually, it wasn’t all that funny. For once in my life I managed to Get The Girl … "not ‘arf ‘e did!" – ed … and then miss out on the second occasion due to crashing out. It really is unbelievable although regular readers of this rubbish will recall the unbelievable part of it being that I actually had some good luck for a change. Quite usually the second part of that affair is par for the course where I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But chaos? It sounds just like home.

And then the vogue of child painting was starting to come into effect, people having their children painted by well-known artists. Where we were living there was the occasional quest, seeing as my wife could do painting and I could write verses etc. Then of course we began to receive real-life commissions. One of them was this small child aged about three. I sat him down and tried to make him calm etc but it was clear that mathematics was just not his thing. He yowled and yowled all through this ceremony and made a right mess of this photo because there was never ever a correct moment to take it

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … although I’m asleep when I’m dreaming and dictating, I usually have some kind of vague recollection that is triggered when I’m typing out the notes. But for this dream, I have no recollection at all. Not a single bit. I’ve no idea at all what to make of this.

Finally, another dream in the long-running saga of new houses. I finally moved into my new house and was slowly settling in. I’d had a look at the one that I’d had in Winsford and they were in a terrible state so I had a look at the windows of mine and they could do with some attention if not replacing so I took out the two at the back of the house, the dining room and the rear bedroom. I began to clean up the one in the dining room and made a pretty nice job of it. I fitted it back in ready to paint but I noticed that now the sun had gone in and there were really heavy storm clouds. It was starting to rain so I took the ladder to go to fit the window back in the bedroom but the rain beat me. We had this torrential rain but I continued, trying to make this ladder work against the rear of the house but I was having so much trouble because I can’t do with ladders very well. The rain went and the rain stopped so in the end I tried to go round to the front of the house but I couldn’t work out how to get there. I tried a couple of ways but there was no obvious way to go round to the front.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve had several dreams about new houses, in one of which I had actually bought two new houses and couldn’t make up my mind in which one to live. But it did remind me of my house in Winsford and while I was at the Dialysis Clinic I came over all nostalgic about my little house. I wonder how my life and my future would have panned out had I not moved to Gainsborough Road in Crewe and stayed in Winsford.

But that’s not all, although you wouldn’t thank me for posting anything else, especially if you are eating your meal right now. As Thomas Allen Reed once said, "It was fortunate for my reputation that it never afterwards saw the light"

Isabelle the nurse came round and she collided with my cleaner, and they both came in together to assail me. My cleaner wanted my health card for the chemist and the nurse wanted to deal with my legs. They both did what they needed to do in here and left together.

After they had gone I had breakfast and read my book. We’ve now finished the speeches and we are having a lecture on geology. And I have to say that if anyone wants to take up the study of geology, they’ll do much worse than read this lecture because it’s fascinating.

In fact it’s the first geology lecture that I have ever seen where mathematical calculations are well to the fore, but if you don’t want to carry out the calculations you’ll have just as much interest looking at the diagrams.

Back in here I spent some time going through my live concerts and dating them as best as I can, and then I made a start on my Welsh homework. Even though there’s no lesson tomorrow (half-term) I want to crack on.

My cleaner came early to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s just as well because the taxi was early once more.

And here hangs a tale, because it was a driver who has taken me before. She’s usually quite chatty but today she hardly said a word and was rather snappy when she did. She had one of those auras that I could sense before she even said anything, and it wasn’t a good sensation at all.

At the Dialysis Clinic the nurse connected me up painlessly, but the machine didn’t work and nothing that she tried would make it.

With the aid of the portable x-ray machine they worked out that the needles hadn’t gone into the tube in my arm so they took them out and tried again. By this time though the anaesthetic had worn off.

Eventually they had a good contact but the machine still wouldn’t fire up. They eventually managed it but only if the pipes were in a certain position so they taped them in that position to my arm. At one stage I had five nurses and three nursing assistants standing round my bed and it’s a shame that I was in no condition to enjoy it.

That’s all very well, but you try lying like that for three and a half hours without moving your arm even half an inch. Eventually, they were so fed up of coming to deal with the plaintive wails of the machine every time I winced with pain that they rigged up a cradle with some kevlar padding.

Then I had no choice but not to move my arm

When I could I read through my Welsh and then finished off my “Curious Church Customs”. I’ll have to find a new book to read, something like HORRID CRIMES OF BYGONE CHESHIRE to see if any of my relatives are in it, and not as victims either.

The trick cyclist came by. She asked me if I was OK and when I replied that I was, she cleared off elsewhere and left me alone, which suited me fine.

With all of the excitement everything was running late, and when they came to unplug me, the compression on my arm failed again and once more the place was like a slaughterhouse

It’s no surprise that I was glad to see the back of the place and climb into the taxi to bring me home. It was another new driver and I ended up having to give directions after she took a wrong turn

My faithful cleaner was at her post again to help me out of the car but I managed the first flight of all thirteen steps without using my hand to lift my leg. If I can do that for a whole week I’m going to try the second flight up to my front door

And she had some news for me. One of the medicaments that I need is on special order and the chemist has had to send away for a box. So what’s the betting that that will be changed in a few days?

In the absence of a pepper, I made an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit for tea. I had one helping with pasta and veg, and there are three more that are destined for the freezer

The apple-cake has almost all gone now, so I might persevere with a cake in the air fryer. The chocolate cake which I cooked and which is almost all gone now, ended up being something of a success despite the misgivings that I had at the start.

So now I’m going to be brave and go to bed, even though my arm is quite painful. I’ve warned my cleaner to take her ‘phone to bed and expect a phone call because I’m not convinced at all about how this compression is going to work. I don’t suppose that I shall have a wink of sleep.

But there’s a guy who comes to the Dialysis Clinic in an ambulance because he has lost both his legs.
He was looking on with interest at this pantomime this afternoon and eventually we struck up a conversation
"have you been coming to the Dialysis Clinic for a long time?" I asked him
"Ohh no" he replied. "I lost my legs during the War."

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Friday 11th October 2024 – IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN

It was 03:05 when I awoke this morning. It makes a total mockery of trying to be in bed before 23:00. There have been nights – days, in fact, when I’ve not even been in bed by 03:05 so I may as well not bother if it’s going to carry on like this.

And yes, I did make it into bed before 23:00 last night. Not by much, it has to be said, but by enough to make it worth noting. And while it might have taken me a little longer that it has done of late to go off to sleep, that wasn’t too much of a problem either.

So there I was at 03:05, wide awake and transpiring, trying desperately to go back to sleep without any success so in the end, at about 4:20 I gave it up as a bad job and went to make the dough for the bread.

For a change, I tried a mixture of plain flour and bread flour to see if there’s a problem with my bread flour, but it’s not that because although it rose, it didn’t rise up by enough to make any difference to the usual.

One mug of instant coffee later, I came back in here and decided to catch up with some personal stuff. I’ve buckets of stuff that’s been hanging around waiting for me to do something with it, and so with this unexpected couple of hours I made a start. And made quite a bit of progress too.

First of all though, I had a listen to the dictaphone and found to my surprise that there was something on there. I was playing in a rock group and we were round at Gainsborough Road preparing everything ready to go out. We had three vans, two long-wheelbase Ford Transits and my old small Ford Transit. We’d loaded everything up and were sitting around waiting, then my partner motioned towards us and said “it’s time to go”. She took one sticker for her van and another sticker for the other big van. I asked “what about a sticker for mine?”. She replied “no”. I asked “why not?” but she didn’t answer. We had something of a back-and-to for a while and I asked her about it again. I asked “so why aren’t you giving me a sticker? Are you ashamed of the van or something?”. She replied “that van’s not having a sticker and that’s an end to the argument”. We continued to argue about it and I expressed myself in a rather extreme fashion. My sister said to me “you shouldn’t speak to your partner like this”. I replied “you need to open your eyes and see what’s going on here”. My partner left the room to make herself ready. I knew that she was waiting at the door listening as an argument then started up between my sister and me. I turned round knowing that she was listening, turned to my sister and said “it’s not going to take very much more of this and I’ll be out of the door of this place”

it goes without saying that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having noticed that even though my partner has adopted a totally intransigent and unreasonable attitude, my family is blaming me for what happened. That, I’m afraid was just par for the course and after I was 18 and had finished my studies, I was “out of the door of this place”. I had a lot of sympathy for my friend’s daughter Tina who told me once "I’m fed up. Every time I do something wrong my brother tells my mom and I get yelled at. But every time he does something wrong I tell my mom and she yells at me for not watching him". Had she not been 3,000 miles away I could have hugged her because I’ve been there and done that. Oh! The angst of being 11 years old! But mine lasted for years. I don’t have one single pleasant memory of my childhood.

Having made enormous strides (which means something completely different in Australia) in what I was doing, I finished off and went to give the dough its second going-over. As I said just now, it had risen, but not as much as I would have liked it to have done

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub up and then went into the kitchen to put the oven on … "clothes would have been better" – ed … While I was waiting for it to warm up I came across one of these half-cooked vacuum-packed baguettes that I’d bought a while ago and needed using so when the oven was ready and the bread went in, I bunged that in too and went back into my office to do some more work.

Isabelle the nurse was off on her high horse today. I’m supposed to tell her not to come on Monday because the Dialysis Centre wants to inspect my legs to find out why they aren’t healing.

But I’m not standing around all morning with no socks and no plasters and going down to Avranches and the Dialysis Centre like that, oh no, according to Isabelle the nurse and she’ll tell ’em too. On Monday I’ll have my plasters and socks put on in the morning by her and like it.

And as for having the dialysis at home, certainly not under any circumstances and she doesn’t care if it is Emilie the Cute Consultant who wants me to. She’ll ring them up and tell them that too!

So if it isn’t all over between Emilie The Cute Consultant and me already, it looks as if it will be by the time that I arrive there on Monday afternoon. I shall have to chat up Elise the Dishy Doctor at the Centre Normandie instead.

While I was eating my breakfast I was reading MY BOOK. We’ve left Yorkshire and are back on the South Coast at Bramber Castle.

Having been sure that the Iron-Age hill forts on the Welsh border were actually Saxon strongholds, he’s now convinced that Bramber Castle is a prehistoric site. However subsequent archaeological excavations have found nothing earlier than Norman on the site.

Still, for an untrained amateur archaeologist, some of his opinions have sometimes been dramatically borne out by the facts.

Next stop was to prepare an order for LeClerc. There’s plenty of stuff here so I can cut back on the order, but there are still some essentials that need buying.

That took longer than it ought too for all kinds of reasons, not the least being that I need to bring the order up to €50:00 so that they will deliver it. In the end it reached €53:00 or thereabouts.

Lunch was a cheese and tomato butty on some of the baguette that I baked this morning and it was nice, followed by some of the fruit. I’ve been told to cut down on the fruit that I eat which is disappointing so bananas are regrettably off the menu from now on.

This afternoon while the cleaner was here I finished off the radio notes and I do have to say that I’m quite pleased with what I’ve written. For once, it all hangs together. It’s not as disjointed as it usually is.

Not that I’m complaining about my previous programmes though, but trying to be erudite and preparing a work of literature in a foreign language is not that easy.

It wasn’t too bad when Liz and I were running Radio Anglais down in the Auvergne because that was in English, but this here is … errr … challenging. How on earth Rhys is managing with his “Rutube” channel in Russian is mind-boggling.

After my cleaner left and LeClerc had delivered the supplies, I tried a little experiment.

My friend Ann tells me that she’s not used her big oven since she bought an air fryer. I have a few of these spring-loaded cake tins of various sizes, one of which fits in my air fryer, so seeing as I am now forbidden chocolate, I resolved to make a chocolate cake in the air fryer and “yah booh sucks” to the dietician.

First lesson is that one cup of measured for the oil cake produces too much so I need a smaller cup

Second lesson is that in its airproof and windproof drawer it goes up like a lift and is the softest cake that I have ever made.

Third lesson is that it needs the temperature turned down and cooked much longer (like 70 minutes) before it’s done

Fourth lesson is that even with a piece of baking paper over the top (thanks for the tip, John), it still burns the top, but that can be cut off and sampled so it’s not the end of the world.

And so the conclusion is that it produced the best cake that I have ever made, but the procedure is much more complicated so we’ll call it a draw. Further experiments are called for

Having stuffed myself with offcuts of chocolate cake I wasn’t in the mood for much tea. Just a small salad, a few chips and a few of these micro-mini vegan nuggets that were on special offer. No pudding though – we’ll call the chocolate cake offcuts the pudding.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve not been the remotest bit tired today despite the lack of sleep so I’m hoping for a good sleep tonight.

But talking about Tina … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the time that her class at school in Florida went to see THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT.
Having an English father and spending all of her summer holidays in Winsford, she has a complete understanding of British slang and a British sense of humour. So when the film was shown, she was rolling around the aisles in laughter and her classmates were looking at her, totally bewildered.
Marianne and I actually went to see it in Brussels where it was shown in English. And you could tell who were the native English-speakers in the audience because we were roaring with laughter while the Belgians were looking on, completely disorientated.
But that leads us onto that famous discussion between Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock and "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners".

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Tuesday 1st October 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning I was on my way back to sit in my office after having done everything that I needed to do this morning.

It seems to be the case that after a session at the Dialysis Clinic I awaken early, and a couple of times it’s been a complete awakening. And so it was this morning. Despite trying my best to go back to sleep I ended up tossing and turning around to no good purpose and in the end gave it up as a bad job.

It wasn’t as if it was an early night either. Once more I struggled to be in bed at a realistic time and failed miserably. After I’d done everything that I needed to do, I had some purchase to make on line and the web site froze. I had to wait until the confirmation of purchase e-mail came through before I could switch off the computer.

That seemed to take for ever and at one stage I rather lost interest but eventually it all worked out, I switched everything off and went to bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, as seems to be the case these days, and I only awoke once or twice during the night before the major awakening at about 06:00, and that was that.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And I was surprised that there was so much. A new King was appearing on the TV at some kind of church service. For some reason there were a few of us watching it. At a certain moment, as they were playing a very poignant song someone gave him a flower so he walked up to the plaque in the floor where his wife and child were buried, put the rose on top of the plaque and then lit a candle. Of course the cameras immediately panned to his new wife to see what she made of the situation. This was something that was extremely interesting, not just with me actually watching some kind of Royal ceremony. There was a lot of dispute amongst us watching it as to what was the actual significance of what he did. We all had our own, different opinions of it.

As if I’d ever be watching a TV programme, never mind one with some royalty on it. Whatever relevance Royalty might have had in this modern World was totally abolished by Lizzie’s failure to stand up to the crooked politicians who lied to her and who were wrecking the UK.

A little later we were just moving into a new house and were organising ourselves in there, and I decided that I’d go to have a bath. I went upstairs and someone had just had a bath and had left the water in. Whoever it was had cut their hair in it. I wasn’t too impressed so I drained out the water, cleaned the bath and began to fill it. It started off with the water out of one of the tanks which was already hot. I ran that into the bath until it began to go cold and then I switched over to the electrically heated tank and began to fill the bath again. At that point my sister and her friend came along, my little sister. They came along for a chat and both climbed into the bath. I asked them how the water was. They replied that it was nice so we began to talk about something that I’d read. There was an article in there that was talking about ten-score houses in this village I asked my little sister “how many are there in a score?”. She replied “twenty” so I replied “yes. So why didn’t they just say 200 houses? As they were messing about in the bath I happened to notice one of the cars. There was a kind of radiator attached underneath the rear that vented out near where the tow-bar was. I’d just put my hand down there and it was wet. I had a look and saw a big stream of water coming out from the radiator. I told my sister to go to tell her mother to make sure that someone had a look at it before someone went somewhere in the car next morning.

Presumably the first tank was a solar water tank. Some of my experiments with solar-heated water were really good and I had quite a few showers, totally unaided by any water other than what the sun had headed. And some of them I even had to cool down once I had my solar shower unit installed outside. What’s more, the idea that I can remember what a score is while I’m asleep is quite impressive.

And finally I was back at that local coach company in Crewe again, the one that features regularly in my nocturnal travels. They had just bought a big, massive double-decker for long-distance work. It had been off on its first trip. It had come back into the yard and they were checking it over. The passengers hadn’t been very kind to it and it needed a good clean. The driver was also saying that there was a whine coming from the engine. My first thought was that it was the turbo but the driver wasn’t convinced so we had the engine running but couldn’t hear any unusual noise. The boss tried to go into the engine bay. It was a sealed-in bay so he thought “how on earth do you escape from here if there’s a problem?” He was telling us that the propshaft actually stretches out down to the front past the gear lever. We were looking at the signwriting on it. Whoever it was who had written the loads of text on the side had obviously had some kind of bee in his bonnet. It turned out that the engine was not an original MAN engine, which would be totally bullet-proof but a licensed version built by a company called TMS. They were supposed to be extremely fragile so we were very disappointed. We asked why the company had sold it . He told us that they were planning to update and buy a whole new fleet but to date he’d only seen one of them. We talked about other buses. He looked at me and said “your coach is due for a change isn’t it?”. I replied that I was quite happy driving the old Ford around as long as I’m not going anywhere far in it. You can go into much tighter places with a Ford than you can with something modern. So he told us about the time that he went to Olympia. There were all these brand-new expensive coaches there and they all looked sideways at him when he turned up in the Ford. There was an old guy who used to hang around there and he was telling us stories of his travels and how he once saved the life of a traveller in Africa. We all asked how so he said that he told him not to drink the water. I asked where he came from. Was it Connemara? He looked at me strangely so I asked him two or three times. He replied “Warwick” which I found extremely hard to believe but anyway that was what he said

They did actually own one of these big coaches but they didn’t really have the work for it. It was more of a vanity thing, I suspect. They would have been better off buying another heavyweight 53-seater standard coach. Those double-deckers are specialist machines, expensive, thirsty, and need to be kept working. You can’t use them on a lot of jobs either.

And telling jokes in my dreams now? Do my nocturnal talents ever end? How I wish that I was able to do all of this during my waking hours and turn them into some kind of remunerative activity. The one thing that I always lacked in my life was a practical person who could help me make my ideas work. We could have ruled the World.

There was quite a bit of stuff that I needed to do to which I attended, and was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse.

It’s the boss for the next seven days so we have to be on our best behaviour. I mentioned that Emile the Cute Consultant is talking about Home Dialysis but he didn’t pick up on the suggestion. So I’ll wait until Isabelle is back and talk to her.

After he left I made breakfast and read my book. Today we’ve explored the sunken remains of a Roman pottery factory in the marshes at the mouth of the River Medway and then we moved downriver to inspect the Megalithic Menhirs of Kit’s Coty House.

One thing about his voyages is that I’m visiting (by proxy) places that I never even knew existed.

Another thing is that he casually mentions that he went to help his friend so he borrowed a spade and unearthed a few items. Then you read something much more modern and the investigations of his friends are described as “major investigations”.

In fact, when you see some of these modern reports that criticise severely the shoddy nature of those early investigations, it’s quite clear from his notes that they were never intended to be anything else.

Back in here I had my Welsh lesson to attend. And surprisingly, it was one of the best lessons that I have had for quite some considerable time. It beats me what’s happening there but I really seem to have finally got to grips with this lesson today.

My cleaner came in and brought me the post. And now, starting on 2nd December, the Centre de Re-education wants to offer me 28 sessions as before. Only problem is that I can’t go to the appointment because it clashes with my dialysis. I shall have to see about that.

It’s astonishing though that I’m now being double-booked for medical appointments. There’s the 30 physiotherapy sessions to fit in too, as well as a possible summons to Paris.

But I’m amazed at what is being offered to me, all free and for nothing, in order to keep my alive. I honestly can’t believe it. It’s as if I owe them money and they are keeping me alive until I pay it off.

One of the things that I was doing this morning was to look for a free video-editing course at either OpenLearn or Oxford University but I shall have to put that on hold for now, I reckon.

After lunch I set about the radio programme and despite all of the interruptions that I had I managed to pair off and segue the tracks that I have chosen and even write some of the notes. I can finish off the rest tomorrow

Tea was a delicious taco roll, but I have noticed that the microwave is less powerful than my old one. But it’s only until I move next year so as long as it keeps on going I’ll be able to manage.

So now I’m off to bed ready for the morning and the possibility of a shower. We decided at lunchtime that we’d have another go tomorrow. I mustn’t forget to ring the Water Board and tell them that it’s on its way.

But the story of all these medical appointments reminds me of the man who went to the doctor’s with this really bad attack of wind that was producing the most appalling, pungent output from the rear.
He’d only been in there five minutes before the doctor went out of the room. When he came back he was carrying a pole with a brass hook on the end.
"Good god!" exclaimed the man. "You’re not going to use that on me, are you?"
"Of course not" said the doctor. "I’m going to open the windows!"

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Wednesday 21st August 2024 – "ONCE YOU START …"

"… the dialysis procedure, all your problems will be over."

Yes, and we’ve all heard things like that before, haven’t we? If something like that could really solve all my problems I’d have done it a long, long time ago. Long before this.

In actual fact, it might solve one or two but I’m not expecting a Damascene conversion where I pick up my bed and walk. That’s being rather optimistic. But what we have learned from all of this is that it appears that dialysis is very much on the agenda.

Well know more after the 28th of August. That’s when everything is being inspected. They’ll make a decision very shortly afterwards. So if you see me leaping around like a two-year old, you’ll know that it’s done the business.

But for the moment let us return from our flights of fantasy back into the Real World.

After I’d finished my notes I wandered into the bathroom and there I put my puttees in the bowl to soak. The other pair I rolled up and put them ready for use in the morning.

Eventually I managed to make my way into bed, hours later than intended, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Something else awoke me at some point but I’m not sure what and I’m not sure when. This “not wearing a watch” is embarrassing but I’m scratching myself to death when I do.

The alarm summoned me to my feet at the usual time of 07:00 and I headed to the bathroom for a good wash and scrub down followed by a change of clothing. You never know – I might get to see Emilie The Cute Consultant this evening.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This is another dream that involves some kind of panic attack. It was at one of these fairground places and there was a lot going on that didn’t seem to work correctly. There was a human cannonball who was fired from a cannon but the cannonball wouldn’t fire. It just rolled out of the bottom of the gun. It rolled over to by I think my youngest sister’s husband so what they had was this guy and this girl who had to climb inside the cylindrical thing where my brother in law was sitting. He was going to do something with the cannonball and they were going to intercept it but it was a terribly confined small space and I was there expecting some kind of panic or riot as the people concerned were unable to effectively escape from this claustrophobic environment. Luckily it passed off without any major incident. I certainly didn’t want to have to do it again with anyone and go through what was potentially a panic-stricken routine to extract them from this cylindrical tube thing while someone does something silly with a cannonball which seemed to be totally superfluous and ridiculous to me but that’s how it was

It goes without saying that I’ve no idea what’s going on there with that. The last thing that you’d expect to dream about is a human cannonball

A bunch of white track suits with a slogan on them were found to be mistyped. The slogan was wrong when I examined them as such and were counterfeit. They were able to test that by using a blob of chewing gum on the dragon’s head that was part of the label. There was a special technique for testing whether they were correct or not, in using chewing gum. This test failed so all the track suits were seized and were donated to refugees who were held in one of these detention centres

That sounds much more plausible. Forged sports equipment is quite a racket and I’m sure that we’ve all heard stories of famous mistypes in counterfeit sports goods. Without them there wouldn’t be famous sporting quotes like
"She was only the football supporter’s daughter
But she liked her ‘Uddersfield and her Arsenal"

When the nurse came, she moaned about my puttees losing their elasticity and asked me to arrange for a new pair. And on top of that there’s another issue. She has an electronic key to enter the building. She had it from my neighbour who has now moved into a Home and so wants her electronic key back

This will upset the nurses as the will then have to ring to be let into the building. And it would upset me because a couple of times now the nurses have intervened in my health issues when I’ve been unable to respond.

Consequently giving them unfettered access to the building is essential from my point of view and from theirs. Could I oblige?

So after she left and I’d had breakfast I put wheels in motion and made a phone call or two

Once more the Welsh lesson passed off well but I was still glad that it was over. In the pauses I’d chosen the missing track and written the notes ready for dictation so that’s that all done now.

The taxi came early for me so I was in a hurry to prepare but I ended up having everything to hand, for the first time ever, and we were there in plenty of time.

It wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant which was a shame, but her sidekick. And he tells me that he’s become a faithful listener of my radio shows. That means I have an audience of at least one.

We ran through everything and he told me that his Social Services department is on the trail of this Clinic in Avranches. He’ll let me know how it pans out.

Apparently my doctor had written a new prescription for me on 13th August. Where it’s gone, I don’t know but he printed it off, all … gulp … 19 items of it. And he added on an additional prescription for some new puttees, which will please the nurse.

He thinks that this dialysis will solve all of my problems, but he doesn’t even know what problems I have so he’s a very brave man

Back here my cleaner, who had been tidying the apartment, was waiting for me and she helped me upstairs where we sorted out the paperwork. We’ll check the medication on Friday and order some more.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread, cooked to perfection. But that’s the last of that batch of naan dough. I’ll have to make some more.

Now I’m off to bed. I have the heart specialist tomorrow morning so will he find a heart? Or am I turning into a politician? Watch this space.

But talking of human cannonballs, we had Gandey’s Circus who used to winter at Arclid near Sandbach. I had a friend who worked in the Crewe Employment Exchange who told me "Gandey’s are looking for a human cannonball. Do you fancy the job?"
"I thought that they already had one" I replied. "What happened to him?"
"Apparently he was fired last week" she replied.

0

Friday 19th July 2024 – "SMILE!" THEY SAID.

"things could be worse!"

And so I smiled. And sure enough, things were worse.

It’s difficult to believe just how things are unravelling here right at the moment. Getting ready for bed last night after finishing my notes, I fell over.

It was another one of these “falling over backwards” things like I had in the kitchen the other day. This time though it was in the bedroom.

What is hard to believe and it’s true all the same, that despite all of the rubbish, mess, guitars and everything that clutter up this place, I actually hit the ground on my back without hitting anything on the way down. And the chances of that happening must have been extremely remote, to say the least.

It took me about half an hour to make it to my feet. Some kind of weird gyration from a sitting position into being able to crawl onto the bed with the aid of a well-stuffed suitcase as some kind of half-way step

But what a state to get into. I had visions of pulling the quilt down and sleeping on top of the carpet until Isabelle the nurse would rescue me in the morning.

However I struggled back upright, finished what I had to do and then rather happily crawled into bed with a sigh of relief.

After all of the exertions I was totally surprised to be wide awake at about 06:15 and I was actually up and about before the alarm went off

This morning I had a good wash and scrub up as well as a shave and change of clothes if I’m going out. And then waiting for Isabelle the nurse, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my taxis last night. We had a town, we had a plot of land so we decided that we’d set up something there and run the taxis from it. I had a nice little garage and a couple of cars but while I was talking about setting up everything I awoke in the middle of it and lost all of the momentum in the dream that I was having which was a shame

Not really a shame. I might have enjoyed running a taxi business 40 years ago but the gloss soon wore off and I wouldn’t go back to doing it again, not even during a dream, thank you very much.

And then I was expecting to slip into the estate of a relative of mine who was dying. What was important about this was that there had been another relative who had died under mysterious circumstances abroad and his body had been in a deep-freeze for years while people argued about where he was to go and what he was to do etc. I suspected that the British Coroner was unwilling to accept the body because he’d have to perform a post-mortem on it. There had been this huge campaign for years to bring this person’s body and that of several other people in similar circumstances, to bring them home and lay them to rest. The first thing that I did when I inherited the estate was to contact some firm of undertakers and make arrangements for this body to be brought back to the UK. I was expecting to be besieged by the Press and by news reporters but no-one actually came to visit me last night about this. The only person who set foot on my premises was my brother and I didn’t really know what he wanted. It was certainly nothing to do with this particular thing but after all the fuss and bother that had been made when the relative who died had refused to repatriate the relative from abroad, the fact that I issued repatriation instructions immediately that I took over the estate and that passed unnoticed, it was totally bizarre.

My greatest wish is that no-one repatriates me to the UK. I own a burial plot in the cemetery at Ixelles in Brussels where Marianne is interred but I don’t want to go there either. I want to be put in a natural cemetery and a tree planted on top of me. That’s how I shall live for ever – being absorbed into the roots of a tree that will grow and grow.

Finally I was living at home and wanted a bath so I stuck my head in the bathroom. My little sister was in the bath and my two younger brothers were drying themselves so I thought “never mind – I’ll have a bath again”. I went off to do something or other. On the way back I heard some noise in the bathroom so I went to see. Now my sister had left the bath so I thought “ahh, here’s a bath full of water free”. My brother said “the shower by the way is totally useless but the bath is wonderful” so I thought “I’m really looking forward to getting into the bath at last and having a good wash. I certainly need one”.

Ahhh the good old days – all in the bath, oldest first while the water is hotter. If we are lucky there might be a bit of hot water left in the baby burco water boiler – careful not to scald yourself when you pour it into the bucket and tip it into the bath.

All the smaller kids in the bath together. “ohh look, a bubble-bath” – yes, it was baked beans on toast for tea

Apart from the fact that I don’t have two brothers, anyone who goes on about “the good old days” will receive a smack in the mouth. There was nothing whatever that was good about them.

Isabelle was late coming. There’s all kinds of chaos going on all over the place this morning apparently. She didn’t wait around long because she was in a hurry so she cleared off quickly and I had a rather late breakfast.

The taxi was late coming too. All of their computing system and radio control has broken down and they are driving around with pencil and notepad with a list of jobs. Just like back in the 1960s before radio control in fact. Nothing seems to be working this morning.

They were all working at the Nephrology Clinic – at least, the people who saw me were. Unfortunately Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there to soothe my fevered brow but her sidekick was and I told him my tale of woe about being held to ransom at the clinic down the road.

He had the decency to be upset and apologetic, but I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to set even one foot ever again in that maudit établissement

And it turned out that while Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there, she’d been talking about me to the others and some of my little secrets are now in the public domain.

Still, there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s NOT being talked about. It’s nice to know that Emilie the Cute Consultant thinks that I’m worth talking about.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … Nephrology Clinic, the consultant there admired the work that my cleaner and Isabelle the nurse had done. He considered that I’m lucky in having such good and attentive people around me.

There’s localised swelling but the wound itself is healing, it’s not septic and he’s pleased with the progress.

He can’t explain the panic the other night because there were no obvious signs. If we hadn’t imagined it, which I assured him that we hadn’t, he reckoned that my little team of helpers had resolved everything on the spot in the nick of time.

While I was waiting for my taxi back his secretary went off in search of an orange juice. And just as she came back with apple juice, the taxi arrived.

On getting in I texted my cleaner to say that we were on our way back, only for him to announce that we had other pick-ups.

So eventually with a full car of passengers we headed back to Granville. The driver asked if he could practise his English on the way home so we had a very interesting chat on the way home

Back here I had a salad for lunch and then came in here where I promptly crashed out. And how. I was dead to the World. I hadn’t even noticed that my cleaner had been and gone.

Rosemary rang me for a chat and it must have been a very strange chat at first as I struggled to awaken.

After she’d finished I had my hot chocolate and then made a loaf of bread. While that was proofing i made some naan dough

And then I could finally have the leftover curry that I should have had on Wednesday.

Tomorrow I have lots of work to to, catching up with radio stuff. I should have finished off that radio programme today but what with one thing and another I didn’t.

So don’t forget, Saturday night, my Hawkfest at LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK Time, 15:00 Toronto time.

But thinking of all of the kids in the bath together reminds me of the noble Lord being attended to at his bath by his manservant, Wibble.
Suddenly the noble Lord breaks wind in the water. And the manservant dashes off and comes back with a hot water bottle.
"Why have you brought that?" asked the noble Lord
"You asked for it, My Lord" said Wibble
"I asked for it?"
"Yes, my Lord" replied Wibble. "I heard you clearly. You said ‘what about a water bottle, Wibble’ "

0

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 – I HAVE GONE …

… would you believe, for a whole day without falling asleep even once. And when was the last time that that happened?

It has to be said that I did waver for about 10 minutes round about 17:45 but Rosemary sending me a few text messages soon snapped me out of it.

The interesting thing will be to see how I manage tomorrow. Is this just a flash in the pan? Or is it a renaissance? My money is of course on the former because as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, nothing is so bad that it cannot deteriorate any further, but you never know.

That was the last thing that I was imagining when I finally crawled into bed last night, later than I would have liked it to be but earlier than some just recently.

It was another turbulent night too. I don’t think that I had all that much sleep. But I was definitely asleep when the alarm went off. No phantom alarms during the night – at least, not that I recall.

There was the usual morning routine with the nurse helping me put on my new slippers, and then I had a leisurely few hours while I slowly came round into the Land of the Living.

After my coffee and fruit bun I had things to do. I’m going for a check-up in Paris on 10th June and I needed a bon de transport – a transport voucher – as my journey is more than 150 km

You’ve no idea how many times and how many different numbers I had to dial in order to find the Secretariat of the doctor. In the end I managed to contact them and they’ll send me one.

Next step was the taxi company to book the car to take me. As the journey is over 150 kms I need “prior authorisation” from the Social Security. No problem there because it seems that the doctor has asked for – and been given – “prior authorisation” for 15 trips. And so I invited the receptionist out to hit the high spots with me one night.

Next task was to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There were six of us living in a house all together. We had a few things to do, one of which was to play in some kind of cup final. The following day the film that had been taken of the match was shown to us. We could see the penalty shootout at the end where we’d scored penalties. They wanted us to do this again and then go to see a famous footballer to talk to him about the match. This meant leaving the bed and dressing. Someone had brought everything into the room for us to make our own sandwiches to eat on the trip. I was going to make a sort of burger, I suppose, with a burger and crudities on top but while I was cutting the cabbage or cauliflower or something like that, the cabbage or cauliflower fell onto the floor. No-one knew where it was. I couldn’t see it. In the end after several minutes someone pointed it out to me. By this time my quilt had fallen off the bed and had landed on top of it. I thought to myself that I would never ever have this sandwich like this. In the end I abandoned the attempt for the moment and chose other crudités to go on the pile. Then we slowly began to set off. I had the preferential place on the transport but I couldn’t think why because my goal to me was no more different than anyone else’s goal during this match

Later on I had a similar type of dream. A girl I knew in Brussels was there with me. We ended up driving to some kind of city and we were discussing a few things that had taken place over the last couple of days. I jokingly said to her “if you aren’t very careful I’ll be offering you a job”. Her eyes lit up at that and she wanted to know more about what I meant. Of course I meant it in fun but for some reason or other I felt like sharing my life with someone and she was there. We had a chat. It turned out that she wasn’t really all that interested. She asked what was involved so I talked about my future plans for next holiday, which was to go on a driving tour of places in Italy. She didn’t fancy that. She wanted to go to Borth in mid-Wales. I asked why and she replied that it’s handy for the airport if she wants to go somewhere else. I made a joke about “was it you, that person on the bicycle”? There had been some talk about a person on a bicycle. She was rather offended by that. She reminded me of a holiday that she’d done on a motor cycle previously. I explained that a motor cycle is far easier than going on a bike in any case. The discussion continued as we climbed into my car, the red Cortina. There was a guy loitering around. He had a really strange beard. I asked him if he wanted a lift. He replied “yes” but didn’t climb into the car as if he was waiting for someone else. I pulled forward out of the parking spot but he just shook his head then and walked away so I drove off and continued my discussion with the girl.

She was a strange girl too. Assistant to the Editor of the Brussels edition of “Time” magazine, she did have a short fuse if you touched one of her sacred cows. And she came to stay with me – for 12 months too – in 2003 while her apartment was rented out when she was short of money. And I never saw her again after she left

And so that dream continued. We walked mile after mile after mile all the way through South Cheshire, through Crewe. I was there with my youngest sister, leading her on trying to encourage her but with her little legs, it must have been a nightmare this trip. We just kept on going. Nothing distracted us all the way up Edleston Road past all of these cheap shops selling sweets and things, through a kind of market hall at the top and out onto Nantwich Road. We carried on walking towards Nantwich for whatever reason – I had no idea at all. Poor little sister. She must have been in hell trying to walk this journey with us with her small legs.

Why I said “so that dream continued” I have no idea. There’s probably something missing somewhere that I didn’t record and that’s a shame, especially if it includes Zero, Castor or TOTGA. They didn’t make it last night but it’s nice to see a couple of other people whom I know.

While the cleaner was here I finished off the radio notes for the programme on which I’ve been working, and I made a start on choosing the music for the next one. We have to push on.

Tea tonight was another delicious leftover curry with naan bread. That’s the last of the naan bread dough so I’ll have to make some more on Sunday along with the pizza dough and the biscuits. I’m running short of those.

But that’s for Sunday. Now I’m off to bed.

But the gist of Rosemary’s discussion was the UK General Election which will take place on 4th July and which will figure in these pages in fuller detail over the next few weeks when a whole variety of MPs will be preparing to head for the hills with their ill-gotten gains from the Covid scandal.

But that’s nothing to laugh at. A Chinese guy was taunting me about the state of the UK. I told him "at least the UK can change its Government every five years. When was the last time you had an election?"
"Just before blekfast" he retorted.

0

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?

0

Monday 23rd October 2023- I MADE IT …

… in Paris, and I have to say that if I in a cowslip’s bell were to lie I’d probably be more comfortable because there’s no heat in the room.

There was no heat in my apartment this morning either – I’ve not switched it on as yet – but with solid granite walls 1m20 thick, it’s not as important as it would be in some of this jerry-built modern stuff.

And as usual, even though I’d set the alarm for 05:20, I was up and about by 05:00. I always have a bad night when I have to be up early and last night was no exception. I hardly slept at all.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone however. I was in the witness box in Court for some reason, and the subject of Percy Penguin came up. I found it very hard to convince everyone that it was just something to relax and to sit there in the quiet, the reason why I wanted to see Percy Penguin. I had to do everything that I possibly could to try to avoid being rearrested or imprisoned etc while at the same time being frank and open to the Judge. I wasn’t sure how to go about doing it.

Later on we’d been to Nantwich shopping and decided that for once in our lives we’d take a taxi home. Someone in a Ford Cortina estate came to pick us up so we piled in. When we reached where Smiths was in Nantwich by the church the driver stopped to fuel up. Two shots rang out. We don’t know where the first one went but the second one went through the roof of the taxi and hit my mother in the head. The ricochet hit my youngest sister. Immediately, a crowd gathered. I was absolutely appalled so I left the car and shouted at the people “for God’s sake have some dignity and let my mother die in peace”. When the ambulance arrived I took my sister out of the car and tried to clean the blood off her etc. She was crying and really upset. I felt absolutely helpless because I hadn’t any idea at all what to do or what I was going to do.

When I awoke I had another one of those thirsts that you could photograph. I ended up drinking two large mugs of my patent blackcurrant, honey and lemon drink. You can tell that we are approaching winter if I’m back on that.

Next task was to make some sandwiches and to finish the packing. I had planned to have a shower but I didn’t fancy trying to climb in and out of the bath while I’m trying to keep to a tight schedule.

Instead, I had a good strip-down wash and was ready when the car came for me.

On the face of it, it was a good idea to have a car to take me to Paris, because I really couldn’t do it on the train. Not at all. Whether it will be a good idea if I have to end up paying for it is another thing entirely

But the downside was that the car was a SEAT and it had done my back in before we even reached Caen.

The journey went quite well with just one or two hold-ups, and we stopped for 15 minutes for a coffee and pit stop

At the hospital I was shown to my room without even having to check in. And then we had the usual pantomime about trying to fit a catheter in my arm. 2 nurses had a total of 5 goes and it’s still not done.

Next task was to be shoved through one of these Stargate time tunnel things. I had to walk much of the way there and back, which upset me, and then they had to have three goes at passing me though the machine as apparently I was moving my head too much.

Back here again and another nurse had 3 goes at my arm before she could finally take a blood sample.

A couple of doctors have been to see me and discuss my treatment plan, and they have confirmed that my health is deteriorating. They don’t think that I could withstand another series of perfusions and in fact they suspect that that’s why the hospital in Leuven has stopped doing them and has been relying on Aranesp injections

The food is rubbish as usual so my neighbour, who is in Paris this week and popped her head in to see me, says that she will bring me some bananas

So now that everything is finished and the computer is backed up with the latest copies of the files, I’m going to bed. I’m tired after my exertions today and I’ve already crashed out twice, but it’s more to do with the fact that it’s the only way that I can think of right now to keep warm.

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