Tag Archives: judy collins

Thursday 17th April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I went for a listen.

Mind you, I’m not surprised. If you don’t go to bed until 01:30 and wake up at 06:00 you don’t have much time for travelling about

If I had put my mind to it, I could have been in bed much earlier but as usual I hung about for a while and when a Judy Collins concert came round on the playlist, I decided to stay up and listen to it. These days she’s not the same as she was 5o years ago but what she’s lost in her vocal power she’s more than made up for with her ad-libbing in her concert.

She has a very pleasant stage act these days and I have to make the most of it.

In bed, I took a while to go off to sleep and had something of a mobile night where I was tossing and turning, not being able to settle, and as it became light I gave up the struggle. I didn’t leave the bed until the alarm went off because I turned the heating off on Wednesday and hadn’t switched it back on again.

When the alarm went off I put my sooty foot out of bed and braved the cold as I dashed into the bathroom for a wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

And then back into the bathroom because I’d forgotten to have a shave and I was looking like the Wild Man of Borneo – not a good image if Emilie the Cute Consultant is going to be there this afternoon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone, which didn’t take very long at all, and then carried on with some personal stuff for a while.

The nurse was late today and didn’t have too much to say for himself. He was soon gone and I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our whistle-stop tour is continuing and we have arrived at Kenilworth Castle. Pages and pages of tour-guide information but nothing whatever about the military aspect of the place, and nothing at all that would excite comment. Oh! For the controversy that someone like T RICE HOLMES could bring to this kind of discussion.

Back in here I sorted out a plan for a couple of radio programmes in March next year (I really am that far ahead).

To my surprise, I found that for one of the dates I have a concert in my little … "not so little" – ed … stock that we recorded on a weekend in Den Haag years and years ago – and it’s NOT Golden Earring or Alquin either

It’s almost one hour and twenty minutes long so I reformatted and remixed it for the radio and then had a listen to it. It didn’t take long to make a list of the tracks that I want to use and it will make a nice concert of just the right length.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and after she left I went to have my disgusting drink but the taxi arrived before I’d even had time to wet my mouth.

We were the usual two passengers for dialysis with the driver and although we arrived early, there was quite a crowd already waiting so I was one of the last to be connected. And as I suspected, I had to stay here for four hours.

Although Julie the Cook wasn’t dealing with me, she came for a chat, and although Emilie the Cute Consultant was there, she sent an oppo to see me. There’s a problem about my calcium medication and I needed a substitute so he wrote out a different prescription.

Apart from that I was left pretty much to my own devices all afternoon and spent it making out my LeClerc order for tomorrow. When my nurse came to unplug me she fitted these new braces on my shoes to support my feet. Apparently Emilie the Cute Consultant is worried that I no longer have any force in my ankles

The driver who brought me home was quite chatty. He’s taken me to Paris a couple of times and he’s also a big football fan so we had a lot in common.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched as I climbed the stairs. She thinks that these braces are helping me up the stairs, which is a good thing.

Tea tonight was a stir-fry with a pile of the mushrooms that I have left that I forgot to put in the lasagna last night. I really don’t know where my brain has gone. But my chocolate cake is delicious.

So tonight I won’t be as late as last night. There’s a concert currently playing, involving John Cipollina, whom I met when he played with “Man”, and Nick Gravenites, Mike Bloomfield’s favourite singer who fronted “The Electric Flag” for a while. So when it finished I’ll think about going to bed. It won’t be as late as last night, but I bet that it won’t be early.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Judy Collins… "well, one of us has" – ed … she told several interesting stories during her act.
She told of Mae West who met a friend who was wearing a fur coat.
"My dear" said Mae West "Wherever did you get that fur coat?"
"I spent the night with a man who gave me ten thousand dollars" replied the friend
A few weeks later the two met again, but this time it was Mae West wearing the fur coat
"My dear" said the friend. "Did you spend the night with a man who gave you ten thousand dollars?"
"Well, no dear" replied Mae West. "I spent the night with ten thousand men and they each gave me a dollar!"

Tuesday 2nd January 2024 – I DON’T KNOW …

… which one it is, but one of these new medicaments is having a strange effect on me.

It’s as if I’m drunk. My head is all light and airy and my co-ordination is gone. It’s quite a strange feeling really

There’s one of the ones that I take in the evening that is giving me these wonderful nocturnal voyages and whatever it is I’m not going to stop that one and miss out on a night of fun with Castor, Zero and TOTGA but the one that’s giving me this strange feeling, I’ll have to see about that.

When I was at the Centre de Re-education I mentioned it there to a couple of people and presumably it will pass to whichever doctor takes over my case now that Dr Sigaud has left.

There’s also the question of the Christmas pudding, as I mentioned the other day. Following my post the other day I had several suggestions as to what to do with it, some of which were physically impossible and that tells me more about my friends than it does about my pudding.

But I liked Sean’s suggestion best. “Why don’t you just eat it?” but he and a couple of other people suggested that I wrap it well and freeze it so, having had an extra helping this evening so it’s now down to half its size, I’ll probably try that. But the pudding was a perfect success and I was so pleased with it.

So this morning I was up as soon as the alarm went off, and I took my blood pressure. And something extremely embarrassing happened this morning. And I’m not going to say what happened so don’t bother to ask.

After the medication I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I was in North America last night. I’d talked to my father that I was needing a new van. He said that he knew someone so I left it at that. I was upstairs with a friend of mine who was rather shy and timid and wouldn’t do anything unless he was pushed into it. He and I had a little chat. I understood that there was a girlfriend in the building in one of the floors below. We had to wait until these dancers either stopped or created a gap in their formation so that we could nip through. He went off to look at the girl. I went to the window to look at what was going on because my Canadian relative was running a garage and had all kinds of things in, like snowmobiles etc. He was expecting to buy a vehicle on a trailer – it might have been a small tractor or something similar, I can’t remember, so he was busy making room in his drive. But there were all vehicles parked outside. Suddenly someone nudged me and pointed to a queue of cars that were now being parked outside our house and next door’s house. At the end of the queue was a yellow transit series 1 so wondered if that was what my father meant. The driver exited and began to check the wheels and tyres, hitting them with a hammer etc. I was wondering about that. Then he must have come into the building because someone shouted that he was there. I quickly grabbed a few friends and made some chips. We had some cod in batter so we had cod and chips arranged and helping with this guy. We went down and met my friend and he joined us. I told him to go to telephone someone because we had a meeting arranged for this afternoon and it looked as if I was going to be unable to do it. He said “right-ho” and shot off. I thought “that’s not like him at all”. Anyway he reached the ground floor and we went over to the dance hall and began to talk to this guy. We were surrounded by a couple of young girls who were doing some dancing there. I was talking to the guy about the van. He gave me a price, which sounded quite realistic but I didn’t realise that this was his private vehicle which he only used in the winter for shovelling snow, and with a backplate on it, for towing other vehicles so I could understand the low mileage but I was worried about the treatment it had had as a towing vehicle and I wasn’t so sure about it now.

There was some dispute about the FA Cup. In the end the FA decided that they’d replay the previous round with all the clubs concerned still in it but they would give some kind of points adjustment from now on. Teams that were supposed to be really good would be given no points deduction and the lesser teams could be given as many as 12 on some kind of sliding scale. They decided that they’d play the previous round’s matches on this basis. The team for whom I played had a “minus 2” by the side of it. We went out to a game nut although we won it, it wasn’t enough to overcome the points deficit that they had. So I went back to work. People saw me come in and immediately asked about the result. I told them, and 1 or 2 people thought that it was funny as you might expect and 1 or 2 people were really seriously concerned

While I was transcribing I noticed that yesterday I was in Flagstaff, Arizona, and people were telling everyone else to be very careful about the town.

They aren’t joking either. John Bourke, the aide-de-camp of General Crook, was stationed there for a while as Crook and his army campaigned against the native Americans.

In his wonderful book ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK he describes several events and notes that "Man’s inhumanity to man is an awful thing".

It’s in Flagstaff that I had ONE OF THE STRANGEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE, so strange and bizarre that I didn’t realise what was going on at the time. But I worked out what was going on quite quickly later on.

Anyway, this morning I came across a recording that I’d missed – a live football match featuring Caernarfon v Colwyn Bay. Of course, with no longer using social networks I don’t receive the updates and announcements that I used to.

But anyway, after years in the wilderness Colwyn Bay were unstoppable in the Cymru North division and were promoted to the Welsh Premier League this season.

However, as clubs like y FFlint, Airbus UK Broughton, Afan Lido and several others have found recently, the gulf between the second tier and the first tier is enormous, and Colwyn Bay, despite having made a few intelligent signings, are finding it tough going.

Caernarfon are renowned for having the best midfield in Wales and despite losing Noah Edwards and Rob Hughes in the summer, their replacements are even better

The defence has been rather fragile but the signing of Ben Maher and putting him alongside Dion Donohoe in the centre of defence has made them a much more formidable proposition.

Thy had no attack whatsoever last season but Jack Clarke from Chester and Adam Davies from Airbus UK Broughton, the power up front is impressive.

However there’s an injury and suspension crisis at the club right now and neither Donohoe and Maher were on the field.

The crisis has hit the goalkeepers too and between the posts was youth team keeper 16 year-old Hari Thomas. And when they have a “save on the Month” programme I’ll let you see the save that he made from Colwyn Bay midfielder Tom McCready. And if you can’t wait until the end of the month, go to 00:01:23:00 of THIS LINK.

Despite the injury and suspension problems there was really only one team in it but they made hard work of a 2-1 victory. I can’t understand why, with the signings that Caernarfon have made in the close season, why they are only 6th in the table. They should be doing much better than that.

After that, for the rest of the day while I’ve been here I’ve been dealing with the concerts that I’ve been sent from Shrewsbury, including one by Judy “I’ve Looked At Clouds” Collins – 82 years old and still able to rock a large crowd. Would you believe it?

Yes,
"So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way"

Except that it wasn’t clouds that got in my way

And
"Oh, but now old friends they’re acting strange
They shake their heads and say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day"

they are sentiments with which I can relate too.

However
"But now it’s just another show
And you leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away"

Doesn’t that bring back a few memories and regrets?

At midday I had a good wash and at 13:00 the taxi came for me to go to the Centre de Re-education. Two sessions today, one with the ergotherapist and the other with Severine on the couch.

While I was at it, I mentioned this problem with one of the medicaments and hopefully they’ll report it

There was some stuffing left over as well as the Christmas pudding, so I had a stuffed pepper today using the stuffing instead of the bulghour or quinoa that I usually use.

And do you know what? It actually worked and was delicious. Plenty left over for a taco roll tomorrow and a leftover curry on Thursday. I’m really doing well with my meals.

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I’m at the Centre de Re-education almost all afternoon and there’s plenty of paperwork to do in the morning. I’ll be a busy bee for the next few days.

At least if keeps me out of mischief, so the story goes, But I can get into mischief regardless of any constraints. There has been years of experience.