Tag Archives: les guis

Sunday 29th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy yet again today, and in the kitchen is a pile of food, all busy cooling down.

However, it’s not without its downside. I have been on my feet since 10:30 this morning and I’m totally wasted. In both my knees I have a pain that I can’t describe and I’m in agony.

As well as all of that, when the Sunday alarm went off at 08:00 this morning I was already up and about, and that’s despite the very late night … "or early morning" – ed … that I’d had.

It was approaching 02:00 when I crawled into bed last night. After I’d finished writing my notes and doing my backing-up, I stayed up for quite some time looking for stuff on the internet and reading a few various website. I wasn’t in any hurry.

But once in bed I stayed in bed, fast asleep until something dramatic awoke me at 07:05. No idea what it was, but I do recall that I have awoken dramatically before at that time. There’s something in the area happening that’s disturbing me.

So having awoken at that unearthly time I gave up trying to sleep at about 07:40 and headed to the bathroom for a wash and scrub up.

Next port of call was the kitchen to take my medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. I’m dictating into my hand again. I was down in Virlet last night at one of the big ruined houses on the land that I own. I was thinking of doing something on one of the plots there with one of the ruins so I went down to look. There were enough ruins there and enough plots of land so if necessary I could submit a planning application for each one and that way, see what happens and how things develop. Virlet in the dream was nothing like my place at all. It was like a place that we have visited before with a much more traditionally-rural area with fewer hedges, more-open fields and a kind-of metal fence with plenty of tracks criss-crossing the area. These ruins were behind my house but raised up slightly so that they overlooked it.

This is a place that we’ve visited before during the night. But a long time ago, I think. But for a fleeting minute it did remind me of the place where we squatted near Audlem that winter 1977/78. Or was it 1976/77? But in any case, going from living in a squat and in the back of a van, within two years I was living in a brand new two-bed semi in Winsford.

Later on, I was with my girlfriend last night. She was a small, dark-haired girl. We were wandering around somewhere near a hotel and we suddenly realised that my brother and his girlfriend were there. We decided to go along and pay them a visit. When we arrived, my brother was on the ‘phone. He’d advertised a couple of his things for sale and was talking to someone as if someone had rung up to enquire about one of them. Whilst he was speaking on the ‘phone I went to tickle him. That interrupted his flow and he was not impressed. His girlfriend was there, a tall willowy girl. My girlfriend went in the meantime to look at his books. She found a book that she didn’t like for various reasons and boohed at it. The two of us were on our way into town for a wander round, go for a meal, look at the shops. We mentioned it to my brother, and he and his girlfriend agreed to come. We left his hotel room and walked down the corridor. My girlfriend suddenly said “I’ve left my pen on your leather chair”. We agreed to come back for it later. When we reached the door (we were on about the fifth floor) we had to wait for the lift, or go down the steps. Of course I had to use the lift because I couldn’t walk very well. My girlfriend looked out of this door and just jumped all the way down to the ground floor. We thought that she was crazy. The other two dashed down the steps after her. What I did was to position myself on the edge of one of the stairs and push myself. After a couple of minutes I had enough momentum and could slide all the way down. There were all these football supporters on the steps and they all cleared off out of the way as I shot past. When I reached the bottom, some of them came over. They expressed their admiration of what I’d done. To me, it was no big deal. It was just a case of finding the correct position, but they were really impressed by me coming down all those flights of stairs by just sitting on the edge of a stair and sliding down. In the end the manager of one of the teams came over and told me that he would like to meet me in the boardroom on one occasion in the near future. I asked myself “what on earth have I started now?”.

This is obviously a dream because I cannot imagine any circumstance in real life that would make me want to visit my brother. And also I can’t imagine any circumstance in real life during which I would have a girlfriend either, but that’s another story.

Girlfriends going berserk wouldn’t be a surprise either – there were a couple of those, and “what on earth have I started now?” – there have been quite a few moments where I have said that to myself.

The nurse was late today – he’d had a lie-in. And we had the usual banal questions before he cleared off and I could bet on with things. I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are discussing the Hallstatt community in Austria. This existed for about 800 years, from 1200BC to 400BC and is classed as one of the first of the modern civilisations, with a modern industrialised community.

It centres around an important salt mine and several settlements around there were continuously occupied over this period, and so it’s been possible for archaeologists to observe quite closely the transformation from the end of the Stone Age all the way through to the modern Iron Age.

It’s a fascinating subject, and I was lost for hours amongst the pages of various websites that I’d found where this civilisation was discussed.

Interestingly though, the site ended in disorder. We are told that "there was widespread disruption throughout the western Hallstatt zone" and that "many Hallstatt graves were robbed, probably at this time"

As to what happened round about that time,."the apparently largely peaceful and prosperous life of Hallstatt D culture was disrupted, perhaps even collapsed, right at the end of the period. There has been much speculation as to the causes of this, which remain uncertain. Large settlements such as Heuneburg and the Burgstallkogel were destroyed or abandoned, rich tumulus burials ended, and old ones were looted. There was probably a significant movement of population westwards"

There has also been a discussion about a Carthaginian named Himilco.

The story of the navigation of Pytheas around the British Isles and Iceland in about 325BC is well-known, but 200 years earlier, Himilco set sail from somewhere in modern Portugal to the British Isles to bring back the tin that could be found there, according to rumour.

And there’s no doubt that he succeeded too because his reports were found to be quite accurate. However he didn’t return because the journey completely frightened him. Instead, the tin from Cornwall was shipped across to France and came to the Mediterranean by land and river.

First task this morning was to make a bread roll. And then some soup using most of the butternut that is left. That was lunch, and I do have to say that butternut squash soup is delicious, especially with fresh bread warm from the air fryer. Even better, there’s some left over and that will do for New Year.

This afternoon I’ve been making chocolate, ginger, coconut and orange cake and another large helping of flapjack. It took ages but mixing the stuff in the food processor is definitely the way to go. That was a good purchase, even though it was expensive.

Some pizza dough from the freezer was defrosting through the afternoon too, and I made a really nice pizza for tea. My cooking is definitely improving, but I wish that I had a decent oven.

As for “licking the bowl”, what can I say? It was every kid’s ambition to do that whenever mummy was baking (except in our house of course) and I can understand why. This afternoon I enjoyed cleaning the cooking utensils by using my tongue and it’s surely the best part of the cooking.

So right now there’s plenty of flapjack for lunch and chocolate cake for dessert for the next couple of weeks.

Something interesting that I noticed was that my bit of ginger root has started to grow. I’ll have to find some soil in which to plant it, to see what happens

Right now though I’m going to finish my notes and then I have things to do, so it will be another late night.

But seeing as we’re talking about cooking… "well, one of us is" – ed … I remember one of my siblings ask my mother "mummy, mummy, may I lick the bowl?"
"No you can’t" replied our mother. "You flush it like everyone else"

Thursday 24th October 2024 – THEY BROUGHT ME …

… home in an ambulance this evening.

Don’t ask me why, because I didn’t ask for it and I certainly didn’t want it. But nevertheless, there I was, strapped into a stretcher in the back.

My faithful cleaner thinks that it’s because none of the female drivers wants to bring me home on her own but I dunno. I’ve clearly upset someone somewhere if the only way that they are going to transport me is strapped down in the back of an ambulance

Actually, last night I might have been strapped down in bed because I certainly didn’t move at all, at least, not that I remember.

To cap it all, I was even in bed before 23:00. Not by very much, it has to be said, but enough to make it worth recording all the same. For some reason or other it didn’t take as long as it usually does to finish everything off. And there I was, tucked up nicely in bed.

Once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking either. I was out like a light quite quickly and there I stayed until 07:00 when the alarm went off, and when was the last time that that happened?

When the alarm went off I had some kind of nurse living with me who was trying to organise me about going out because Tuesday afternoon I had to go to the bank and Wednesday afternoon I had to go somewhere. That involved a lot of organisation with the buses, all of that kind of thing. She was busy trying to make all of the necessary arrangements for me to go to do these tasks on the bus without having to use an ambulance or a taxi.

The only person who might do that would be Percy Penguin. She’s quite used to dealing with the elderly, the infirm and those people who might not have both paddles in the water but I think that even she would draw the line at sorting me out.

So at the sound of the alarm I hauled myself out of bed and made my way into the bathroom for a good scrub up and to prepare myself in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there at the Dialysis Centre this afternoon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were going on a coach trip somewhere. There was a big group of us on board this coach. I was on my own so I sat in a seat and everyone left me alone which was very nice. The coach stopped for a toilet break halfway along the route so I set up a coffee machine. With the cups that I had I started a little coffee production line. A girl came to help me and the two of us managed to keep it going with coffee. The driver said that he and the other two members of his staff had their own cups but I had to use the cups that I could find, which were not very good. Nevertheless, people drank it. There was one moment when I had to go to make some more coffee and I had to go to the end of the line where the machine was. I didn’t have the coffee so I shouted to the girl to bring the coffee back down quick but then found that I actually had the coffee in my hand. There was that particular moment but that’s all that I remember about this dream

Wouldn’t it be nice to find out how to keep 53 people happy with one coffee machine. I suppose that it’s the 21st Century equivalent of “five loaves, two fishes and a pot of tea for five thousand, please”.

There was an earlier dream about someone in the theatrical business who had a small, domineering personality. He had a lot of affairs with different women. He was at one time with a Japanese or Korean girl who was a member of a dancing troupe but he abandoned her for another woman. The newspapers said something like “he’ll certainly notice the difference with this large, overbearing Spanish woman compared to the girl he had previously who had barely entered puberty” that sort of thing but I can’t remember very much about that dream either except nothing really.

That was rather a strange thing to dream, and I can’t think of where it might have any relevance in anything particular.

In that last dream I did absolutely everything towards this play, writing and directing etc. The only thing was when it came to the orchestra, conducting the orchestra I had to step aside and let someone else do that because of some kind of agreement with the particular Trade Union that covers the engagement of musicians in their practical sphere.

And the same with this. A few more things to add to my nocturnal talents. If only I had someone who could organise and motivate me to do these things for real.

Hurricane Isabelle blew in a little later. She didn’t have time to give me my ‘flu jab. It’s booked in for Saturday when she has no blood tests to do. It’s no surprise really that she’s snowed under with requests for blood tests right now. She has “the touch” whereas her oppo doesn’t and people are beginning to realise it.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. Our Naturalists are busy roaming about the estate of the President examining his trees, of which there are many historic ones.

But it’s a shame what subsequently happened to his estate. His family fell on hard times and it was sold, eventually becoming a hospital. It was used for severe cases during World War II and then abandoned, the house being blown up by the Royal Engineers in a training exercise in 1959

Back in here I spent the morning tracking down the dates of more concerts and, as usual, SETLIST.FM came up trumps yet again and helped me identify a dozen or so

My cleaner turned up at lunchtime and helped me fix the patches on my arm, and then the taxi came early for me. It’s a good job that I was ready.

We drove all the way to Avranches and at the roundabout the driver turned right towards the town rather than to the left to the hospital.

He quickly realised his error and performed a U-turn and a voice in the back said "did you forget something?". We’d gone all that way with a passenger in the back and I had never noticed at all.

With being early this afternoon I was first in at the clinic, thus first to be dealt with, which made a nice change.

A doctor came to see me, but only for two minutes and she didn’t seem to be too interested. And apart from the coffee, that was that. I read my Welsh notes, listened to music and finished off by carrying on with my “Curious Church Customs”.

They unplugged me quite early and I was free to go. That was when we had the pantomime about me trying unsuccessfully to climb into the ambulance.

After several attempts they gave up and brought out the stretcher.

We drove back in perfect silence to here where my faithful cleaner was waiting, and she watched as I made it up all thirteen of the first flight of stairs. That was really impressive, considering how much difficulty I had had with the ambulance.

Tea tonight was different. There had been a can of beansprouts festering on the shelves since it was triumphantly carried off the Ark by Noah, and so I made myself a spicy stir-fry. In fact, everything will be spicy now that I have a jar of chilis.

It was hot, and delicious, especially followed by apple cake and caramel-flavoured soya cream.

So now I’m off to bed for a nice early night, as it looks as if I’m going to have a visit tomorrow.

But while we’re on the subject of Noah … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of the teacher in Primary School discussing certain Biblical events with the children.
She asked them "do you know who Noah’s wife was?" and one boy at the back of class raised his hand
"Please, Miss" said the boy "I do!"
"So who was it, little Johnny?" she asked
And the boy replied "please Miss, wasn’t it Joan of Arc?"

Sunday 29th September 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was exceptional

Fresh dough that rose like a lift, that lovely cheese that my cleaner found for me, and the pièce de résistance, which is not a French virgin, Rhys, it was the home-made tomato sauce.

When I put the new tomatoes away on Friday I noticed two tomatoes left over that were looking distinctly the worse for wear. Ordinarily they would have been filed under CS but I decided to try an experiment.

Being now a member of “LIDL on-line” (God help me) I can now access their recipes. And they have about 300 vegan recipes, one of which I noticed was for tomato sauce.

So as I wound up everything last night by dictating the radio notes that I’d written, I resolved to make use of the two tomatoes, to see what I could do. And then I went to bed.

It was rather later than I would have liked it to be, but once more I didn’t stay awake for long. I was soon away with the fairies and there I stayed for a few hours.

At one point in the morning I awoke in a cold sweat thinking that it was Christmas Day. I’ve no idea why I did that. It was probably with having talked about Christmas previously but it was a very strange thing to happen. It really was quite a panic-stricken situation for a few seconds.

And then about half an hour later I dreamed that the cleaner had come in and shouted my name. Of course, that’s highly unlikely but even so, I’m really degenerating into a bad state. I’m not yet at the stage of locking the bedroom door but I shall have to take precautions. There are a few dreams that you would like to come true, but that’s not one of them.

When the alarm went off I was feeling terrible and it was quite a struggle to haul myself to my feet. Added to that the fact that it’s freezing. The weather has suddenly turned to winter almost overnight and it’s officially “jumper on” weather as far as I’m concerned. It won’t be long before it’s “big coat” weather, followed by “hat and gloves” weather.

Not that I felt like it but I had a good wash again this morning. With perspiring as I do in bed and a nurse that comes in the morning I can’t lounge around like I used to and go for several weeks in an unkempt fashion.

Back in here I hardly had the computer switched on when the nurse arrived. She chatted away as she fixed my legs and showed me some photos of her holiday in Brittany just now.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. My author, Thomas Wright, has now moved on from Dover.

If you were to read the WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR PORTUS LEMANIS situated on a cliff overlooking a drained arm of the sea that now forms part of Romney Marsh, you’ll notice that it’s not very useful for its architecture and remains.

It nots that “The site is still relatively unknown: the only major archaeological excavations were carried out by Roach Smith in 1850 and 1852”. And here I am, reading a book that tells me about the time when Thomas Wright was there with Charles Roach Smith helping out and doing part of the excavations.

His report is probably the clearest and most useful source of information about the fort and yet none of it is included in the Wikipedia entry.

By the way, regular readers of this rubbish may recall me having made certain “disparaging” remarks about Wikipedia. Don’t misunderstand me – it’s a great source to go to when you are starting your research and want to establish the background, but look at the entry and at the bottom you’ll see “References”, “sources” and “External Links”. They are the places to go to if you want to follow it up

Many of the older books are available on-line for download free and for nothing with such sites as the Gutenberg Project, my own favourite, ARCHIVE.ORG or the Google book-scanning project, and then you can check the sources used by the author of these books to find out where he had his information, if it isn’t first-hand knowledge.

And then work backwards from there, and so on. And so, like Nansen said, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on"

Back in my little office here I attacked the dictaphone to hear what I was doing during the night. My friends from the Wirral were coming round to Shavington. We had some kind of thing going on. It was quite early in the morning and I was out doing something when I saw them. So I drove like a maniac, overtook them dangerously so they flashed and blew their horns because they didn’t recognise the car, and then took the short cut home so that I was actually opening the gates to the drive when they turned up There was a friend with them, another girl, so the three of them were busy unloading things like bottles of cider, gallons of oil, things like that that they’d bought from the UK for me and I was stocking them somewhere. They had all kinds of exciting stuff. When my friend pulled into the driveway I told him to park down at the far end of the driveway as father would be home and he’d want to park in here too. They’d brought a crate with them too. One of the girls, I think that it was my friend’s wife, said “we’ve brought our furbabies with us too”. There were two cats in there. I thought that I hoped that they’d get on well with my two cats. We were busy unloading this thing when there were people round there interviewing everyone because we were going to do something to do with renewable energy, that sort of thing, and this was something quite novel for back in those days for a newspaper report or two. But it all felt so unreal and uneasy. I wasn’t really comfortable or at my ease doing this but I’d no idea why.

In fact, going back all those years, my friend’s wife, when she was a student did bring a friend with her a couple of times when she and my friend came to visit. But young, naïve, stupid me had absolutely no idea that she was trying to match us together until much later. And that’s not the first time that a similar thing has happened. I wondered why a friend in Chester used to bring his sister with him all the time when he came round to my bedsit. I really was that thick

But as for renewable energy, I was way ahead of my time. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had solar panels and wind turbines on my farm as long ago as 1998. No mains electricity at all. And when I lived down there full-time from 2006 to 2015 there was still no mains electricity. It was all solar or wind.

No running water either. The mains water didn’t arrive in the hamlet until 1977 and my house had been abandoned before then so it missed out. Putting my Degree to work, I built a rainwater harvesting system with home-made water filters using volcanic ash – puzzolane – and sand. Where we lived, there was never any shortage of volcanic ash, that’s for sure.

Later on there were several cases concerning Immigration up before the Bench at the Old Bailey. The defendants were being assisted by a young Afro-type of guy who was doing the translations for them. Whether or not they were all speaking the same language he was doing it for all four or five of them. The barrister was a young Ethiopian or someone like that, a previous refugee who’d come across. He was a pupil in Chambers somewhere. At one particular hearing the Judge was unable to attend so it was the Recorder who took over the chair. There was a submission being made by the defence for an adjournment. The Recorder was actually one of the Seniors of the same Bench as the junior Immigrant barrister. What he was saying was absolutely awful about “how this case, if he loses it, is going to set back his career etc”. The guy asked “how could I do the best to advance my career?”. The Senior guy was really sneering at him with some quite offensive comments that some might have considered to be racist, especially in today’s climate in the UK. As a spectator I was horrified by what was coming out of the Bench. There was absolutely no place for any of this . It was completely out of order, completely irrelevant and completely offensive.

There have been some horrible scenes that I have witnessed in a Court at times, but I’m more impressed about what I can remember about the judiciary when I’m fast asleep. Nothing of what I have typed is different from that which I dictated, except maybe changing the odd “that” for “which” or “who”.

At some point during the night I had a feeling (but I didn’t record it) that I was telling a joke to a publican. It took him several minutes but eventually he “got it”. And I wish that I could remember what the joke was now. But it’s not the first time that I haven’t recorded something that I was convinced had occurred. There was even something once involving Castor. I wonder what else I might have missed.

And then I watched Stranraer lose to Stirling Albion. This was by far and away the worst game that I have ever witnessed. Stranraer lost 2-0 and they were lucky to get nil, that’s for sure. Bottom of the table again, and even so early in the season, they need to find some magic from somewhere, and quickly.

After lunch I did some tidying up in the kitchen, putting stuff away and so on, and then I had some personal stuff that needed my attention.

Once that was out of the way there was the radio programme. And in a wild fit of enthusiasm I bashed through the notes and actually finished it right off. What helped was that adding in the additional track and writing the notes and adding them in led to an overrun of just one third of a second. And it can’t be any better than that.

Following that, I made some pizza dough because I have now officially run out. I thought that I’d found some in the freezer but it turned out to be the leftover hash browns.

This batch of dough didn’t rise as well as some of the previous lots but it had a good consistency. I split it into three lots and put two in the freezer. The third, I rolled out onto the tray and left it to rise.

Wile it was rising, I –

chopped up half a small onion and a garlic clove really finely
poured a little olive oil into a saucepan
added the onion and garlic
followed by the two really soft tomatoes
A pinch of salt,
a dash of ground black pepper
some oregano, basil and marjoram to taste
Bring it to the boil and let it simmer, stirring constantly, until it reaches the consistency you want

That went on the pizza base, and then I piled on everything else and baked it. And wasn’t it just exquisite? I shall have to make that tomato sauce again without doubt

So right now, late again, I’m going to bed.

But the idea of taking precautions reminded me about the guy with twelve children whose wife was being interviewed by the Social Services. "Every Sunday afternoon after lunch" she said "my husband takes me into the bedroom and … errr … well, you know …"
"Every Sunday afternoon?" asked the Social Services person
"Ohh yes, every Sunday" she affirmed
"Do you take precautions?" asked the Social Services person again
"My husband does" said the woman
"What does he use?" asked the Social Services person once more
"A screwdriver"
"A screwdriver?"
"Yes " replied the woman. "He takes the handle off the outside of the door so none of the other kids can come in."

Monday 9th September 2024 – HERE WE GO AGAIN

Up to our ears in paperwork.

The paperwork has been on hold for several weeks while I’ve had other things to do but circumstances dictated that I had a look at it today

And you’ll be amazed how, in this world of digitalisation and computerisation, I can find so much paperwork that needs to be sorted and filed. And once I think that I’ve reached the end, I come across another bundle.

One of the things that I thought that retirement would bring me would have been an end to all of this. But what with hospital issues, old-age pensions, mobility issues, there seems to be more than there was when I was healthy.

That’s easily measured by just looking at the thickness of each year’s paperwork. What I have here only starts at 2016 but the early years seem to be positively bulimic compared to the mountain of paperwork for this year so far. And at this rate, I’ll be sorting paperwork in my sleep.

And last night I could have done that because it ended up being another late night. One of my groundhoppers had gone over to Dublin to watch Ireland v England so I ended up staying up to watch the carnage.

Once in bed I went to sleep quite quickly as you might expect after all that, and slept a deep, uninterrupted sleep for all of four or five hours.

Nevertheless I was flat out when the alarm went off at 07:00 and it was something of a struggle to haul myself up out of bed when the alarm went off.

However I was soon in the bathroom organising myself ready for the day. It’s Isabelle the nurse for the next 8 days so I need to look my best of course.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We also (also?) discussed the idea that someone might be mad and create all kinds of problems for the Earth by detonating nuclear missiles and so on. The guy to whom I was talking was more interested in the idea of there being huge excesses rather than there being actual catastrophes, him threatening everyone with an unexploded bomb, the rocks crushing away before his bones beneath his palace etc. I replied “don’t worry, people will just think that you’re mad”. “How would that be better?”. I said “well, throughout the whole of the Kingdom they asked, and good questions too”.

That all sounds quite gruesome. I’ve no idea at all what I was on about here

Meanwhile in football it was 3-1 or 3-2, I can’t remember. They won 3-1 and the result never really looked in doubt. The victorious team played really well and managed to contain the (…fell asleep here …)

I can’t believe that I fell asleep mid-sentence but I suppose that it might happen now and again.

Someone else was messing me around for some reason or other about a payment. I’d paid it somewhat under pressure and done some research when I returned home. I found that I wasn’t liable to make this payment so I excluded it as from … and that caused a lot of complications about this. In the end I phoned my mother and told her that I was taking two days from work. One day we were travelling on the (…fell asleep here …)

Here, I dreamed that someone took the dictaphone from me and put it on the bedside cupboard. But it was a dream because when the alarm went off I’d lost the dictaphone down the bed somewhere somehow, it was still recording and had been for almost 2.5 hours. My beautiful rhythmic breathing and so on.

When the alarm went off there was a plot to kill a German General who used to nip through the British front line in his car on his way to his own troops. Whenever he did that he was heavily armed and fought off any attempt to attack him. The British used to play a lot of music really loudly, drums and everything, to awaken everyone to the fact that he was coming that way in the hope that someone could stop him. I’d proposed mining the road and having a detonator somewhere where someone could just press a button and blow up a crater with him in it but for some reason no-one had ever thought of that. One day we were driving a couple of Army lorries along that road. All of a sudden there was just total mayhem, lorries overturning and swerving out of control. At first we thought that we’d hit a mine but we hadn’t – there was no noise of any explosion so it couldn’t have been that. While all of this chaos was going on, one of the lorries having to perform some violent manoeuvres burst a front tyre and overturned. In the middle of all this carnage a black Ford Thames van with German number-plates on it disappeared into the distance. Speculation was that this van had been driving recklessly, overtaking a couple of lorries, and had carried out some manoeuvre that had caused one of the lorries to swerve and that had caused a pile-up of vehicles behind it so everyone seemed to think that this German Ford was responsible for this chaos but no-one could ever catch it. I tried to send a message to the border so that they could hold him at the border as he tries to go through but there was no way of contacting anyone at the site of the accident.

The van was actually a Ford Thames 400E, the predecessor to the Transit and the competitor to the Bedford CA but for some reason I described it as a 117E. Anyway it was a model that was mainly built for the British and Commonwealth market although some left-hand drive versions were built by Ford of Denmark so finding a left-hand drive German-registered example would be a rare bird indeed. But during the days of the “Red Ball Express”, the shuttle service of war goods from the ports to the Front Line, the haste and indiscipline was such that there were hundreds of accidents and many a French farmer, garagiste or haulier acquired an “Army Surplus” lorry or Jeep that had some kind of accident damage and which had been simply left by the roadside.

Later on Hurricane Isabelle blew through the apartment. She’s convinced that I’m being dialysed on Tuesday and wants to know why I haven’t had this prescription – the one that I don’t have – made out

If I don’t have it I can’t do anything, but this was what started me off on this paperchase today.

But not until after breakfast. And especially until I have had a coffee.

During breakfast I read some more of my ROMANS IN BRITAIN and today he mentioned the fort on the River Tweed at Newstead.

Newstead, probably the most important and substantial Roman town north of Hadrian’s Wall, has been excavated a couple of times. The most famous time was by James Curle in 1905 and he prepared a report that ran to 235 pages and a lovely list of books that contributed to his opus. And as it happens, his report is AVAILABLE ON-LINE for downloading, to add to the huge pile of books that I need to read.

It was situated on the banks of the River Tweed and was the junction presumably of the road north from Londinium and Eboracum and where the roads branched off to each end of the Antonine Wall across the isthmus between the Forth and Clyde. When the Antonine Wall was abandoned in AD184 and the Romans retreated to Hadrian’s Wall that ran between the Solway and the Tyne, it’s likely that Newstead was abandoned too. The amount of artefacts excavated at Newstead is astonishing and seems to suggest that the abandonment and subsequent flight was so panic-stricken that they could only take away what they could carry in their arms and left the rest behind. It really must have been something, this flight, and it’s a shame that whoever it was who was responsible for it could leave no written record. I would have loved to have read it.

And believe me, I shall be sifting through his list of books that the author read to see what I can find to add to my downloaded library of books to read

As for the site itself, which was discovered when the railway bridge just down the road was built across the Tweed, it’s nothing like as clear from the air as the site at Caersws is, sue, I imagine, to the constant ploughing of the site.

There was some football on the internet next. This rage for televising your home games seems now to have percolated into Wales and Newport City in the Second Division were broadcasting their match against Llanelli.

Newport picked up a couple of good players in the transfer window and they are mounting a challenge for the title. I hadn’t seen them before so I wanted to watch the game. And I quite enjoyed it too.

But it’s sad that I can only live the life of a groundhopper these days thanks to someone else’s GoPro.

The next task was to have a play around with that site where I have to send my medical expenses claims.

After much binding in the marsh I seem to have made it see a kind of sense and managed by chocolate time to upload all the receipts that I could find.

My cleaner came by with more supplies and the day’s post. We had a chat about this and that (I’m keeping well clear of chatting about “the other”) without solving any real problems and then I came in here to attack the paperwork.

Almost straight away I found two more receipts but I suppose that it’s like that. But now anyway I have about 5 different piles of paper that need either merging together or putting in the medical folder for the next batch of medical claims.

But where’s it all going to end?

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta. A lovely meal, especially when followed by home-made apple crumble

So now I’m going to have another 20 minutes filing and then go to bed

But it’s a mystery where things go to in this place. I’ve lost yet another clip for these puttees and I’ve not been anywhere for it to disappear to.

And did I really have this prescription? Or is the doctor imagining it?
It could be that, I suppose. I was told that he was the doctor on duty when they were filming the remake of “The Invisible Man”
After an accident on the set he went to see the doctor and the receptionist announced him
"I’m busy right now" said the doctor. "Tell him that I can’t see him at the moment"

Saturday 23rd March 2023 – A FEW MONTHS AGO …

… I bought a cheap hamburger press, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It was rather like an old flat iron made of plastic, with all kinds of sizes that fit inside each other like a Russian doll

It was rather cheap, both in price and quality, so I didn’t think that it would be all that much good. However I have to say that despite all that, I really am impressed with it. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin, and that will stir a few memories from times long-gone.

Actually my friend in Munich sent me ages ago a packet of dried stuff that he’d found in a vegan shop down there and posted it to me. So today I added water and mixed it, left it alone to do its thing and then out came the hamburger press

It actually made a nice, professional job of the rehydrated stuff and I now have four big, really solid burgers and as I said just now, I’m almost as impressed with them as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

“Whatever happened to that?” I asked myself. The last time that I saw it, it was being used as a brazier to burn a pile of weeds down the garden when I used to have my raised beds and vegetable plots. It’s probably now thoroughly and completely overwhelmed with weeds and been pulled into the soil.

It’s 10 years ago since I last planted any veg down on the farm. I had quite a lot of stuff there that year too. The following year I cracked on with the bedroom all the way through the spring and summer ad finished it – and actually moved in.

But we all know what happened in the autumn that year, don’t we?

It was almost 10 years that I lived full-time down on the farm and despite the primitive conditions I really enjoyed it. I keep on thinking – and hoping – that I’ll go back to live down there once more but I doubt that I’ll ever see it again.

For a start, I can no longer drive, and that’s always going to be a serious consideration. And then regular readers of this rubbish will recall the photos of when I was last there and it was overwhelmed by brambles. I no longer have the energy to fight my way to the front door.

Last time it took three of us – Rosemary, Ingrid and Yours Truly – a whole afternoon to reach the front door, and the time before that it was with Terry and he had brought his industrial-scale equipment to clear the path.

Still, as Dan Quayle once famously said, "It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back"

So I shall go past into the back and say that for a change I was in something of a hurry to go to bed last night. I didn’t hang about at all.

It was another good sleep as well and I was fighting fit (well, sort-of) when the alarm aronsed me from my slumbers.

First thing was, as usual, to check the blood pressure. 15.1/9.0 this morning, up from 14.5/9.3 last night. So something must have annoyed me last night. And if you want to know what it was, you’ll have to read on.

After the medication I came back in here, but not for long. The nurse, having been late yesterday, was early today. Today’s moan was that the plastic bag I’d put out for him wasn’t big enough and that I need to wash my puttees. I wonder what tomorrow’s will be

The bread for my cheese on toast was delicious. I had a really nice breakfast later this morning. And then I had a pleasant relax and watched a film.

Another film that has come out of copyright is HELLZAPOPPIN’ so I spent a very pleasant 85 minutes watching it, and it was nice to relax for a change.

It’s not a film to everyone’s taste because it’s partly a musical and "YOU’RE NOT GOING INTO THE SONG WHILE I’M HERE" but where its interest lies is that if ever you want to know where all of the humourists of the 1960s and early 70s like Monty Python and Marty Feldman obtained their ideas, it’s all here, everything and much more besides, and it was done in 1941.

As far as comedy and humour goes, it was light years ahead of its time and will still run the course today.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We’d all gone out as a family together. We all had lifts with various different people so we were all spread out amongst the cars etc. A guy in a mobile home, the type that’s a shell that fits onto the back of your vehicle, took a fancy to one of my sisters. He persuaded her to travel with him. They disappeared but the rest of us kept going in a kind of convoy. We ended up stopping for the night somewhere at the side of a river. Just then this guy appeared with his camper. He wound down his window and said that he was terribly sorry but something had happened to our sister – some other people had come along, taken her, kidnapped her and carried her off. My mother said “I bet that she’s in the back of your camper”, just strode over there and wrenched open the door. My sister was in there on the bed lying down. She began to tell her tale of woe about everything that had happened to her, with my mother and brother becoming more and more angry as the story unfolded about this kidnap.

So there you are – that’s the reason that my blood pressure was up. I had the family round last night. I don’t ask them to come to visit me during the night but they always seem to, far too often for my liking. Why can’t I have Zero, TOTGA and Castor round as often as them?

But kidnapping my family members one by one sounds like a good idea. But you can all think of an idea for the ransom note – "pay us £5,000 or we’ll send them back".

That reminds me of the time when I fuelled up in Stoke on Trent only to find that I’d left my wallet behind at home. I had to leave my friend at the petrol station as hostage while I went to his house to fetch some money

When I told his wife what was the problem she told me not to bother going back, and to leave him there for good

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed we had a taxi job to do, to drive someone up to Newcastle upon Tyne for a meeting and then take them on to Edinburgh later. There was only one daytime driver and me about. The receptionist left a note for the daytime driver “be in the office 04:40 ready for a long trip”. I thought that long trips and office workers all on account etc don’t pay very much in tips if anything so I’d go to do that and let the driver carry on doing normal jobs. The only car we had was an old two-door Japanese thing from the late 1960s or early 1970s. It made something of a racket but I’d been out a few times in it and it seemed to do the job. A good long run like that would probably do it good. Of course Edinburgh – I had my niece in Edinburgh so I could go to see her. I tried to contact her but there was no luck. I thought “should I just turn up at the University there and speak to her?”. I thought that that’s probably not a good idea. But I was impressed that we had this job, going all that way but I was really disappointed that we didn’t have a better car available other than this old Japanese thing.

And that was an age-old problem too. We’d occasionally have some really high-quality work to do but never seemed to have a decent car available to do it, and when we did have a really decent car we’d never have the work. At times I despaired.

This afternoon I went a food-making.

Firstly, as I said, my friend in Munich had sent me some burger mix so I added the water, stirred it all in and then left it to fester for 20 minutes as according to the instructions

There was a box of do-it-yourself falafel powder on the shelves as I discovered when I did some tidying up a few weeks ago. So I added some water to that and left that to fester as per the instructions.

While that was doing its stuff the first lot was ready so with the hamburger press I made four really good and solid burger-types of things. They are busy freezing even as we speak.

As for the falafel, I divided that up into little balls and they are busy freezing too, along with a couple of balls that I made from the left-over stuff from the first mix.

But I’m pleased with this hamburger press as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … It’s really simple and cheap but it made some really solid burgers and it gives me much more confidence about making more burgers from ad-hoc ingredients.

Finally there was the home-made mayonnaise. And once again, that seemed to work in spades. I made it rather more liquidy than before so we’ll see how that works out. It ended up making quite a lot more than I can use in its shelf-life, so I’ve sealed to top on the jars quite tightly.

Yes, having learned my lesson, I’ve put the mayonnaise in a better container or two.

Then we had the football – Y Bala V Connah’s Quay Nomads in one if the Welsh Cup semi-finals, played at Llandudno’s picturesque ground. And it was actually being broadcast on foreign carriers too after the disappointments of the last few games.

The first 75 minutes of the match were nothing to write home about, but it’s really hard to play creative football in a tornado.

However both sides made a couple of substitutions with 15 minutes to go and that kickstarted the game dramatically. Those last 15 minutes wee much more like the football we’d expect to see and Aron Williams scored a late winner to push the Nomads into the finals.

But spare a thought for Josh Ukek of Y Bala, who will probably go down in the record books as being on the field for the shortest period of time ever.

He came on as a substitute for Bala late in the game but almost immediately Kieran Smith, a central defender, was sent off for two bookings. Now a central defender down, Colin Caton, the Bala manager, now wanted to send on a central defender off the bench to shore up the defence.

And Ukek, who had only just come onto the field, was the man who was withdrawn to make way.

Tea was as usual a salad, baked potato and breaded quorn fillet. I know that it all seems to be the same, but I happen to like it so I don’t care.

And now rather late this evening, I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm in the morning for the nurse is coming (so I’ve washed my puttees already) so I’ll feel like death for the rest of the day. Today, I actually fell asleep for five minutes during the football.

But before I go, that story about tightly closing the lid on the mayonnaise jar did remind me of the guy who rang up his doctor
"You know those pills that you gave me to give me strength?"
"Yes" said the doctor. "How are they going?"
"I don’t know" replied the man. "I can’t get the top off the bottle".

Friday 22nd March 2024 – I’M NOT HAVING …

… much luck with my footfest this weekend. Cymru’s Under-21 match against Lithuania isn’t being streamed on a foreign carrier either tonight.

It’s just my luck, after last night’s stunning victory of the senior team against Finland following on from Cymru’s “C” team against England on Wednesday night. I was really looking forward to some football tonight. Watching Stranraer slump to a controversial 2-1 defeat to Elgin City on the swamp that is Stair Park was hardly any compensation

It’s been a really long time since I was at Stair Park – almost 50 years in fact. I was coming off the ferry from one of my trips to Northern Ireland when I saw crowds (well, perhaps not “crowds”) of people heading all in one direction, all wearing blue and white scarves. So I had to follow them to see what was going on, as if I didn’t know.

It’s so long ago now that I can’t remember who they were playing. Probably someone like Arbroath or Montrose or something. And as I don’t have my photos here from that period, I can’t even tell you the colours. But one thing that I can tell you is that the ground hasn’t changed one iota in that time. It still looks the same as it did back then.

Mind you, that’s a relief. The Taylor Report swept away many traditional football grounds and with football attendances in Scotland being what they are, we were left with far too many of these modern, soulless one-sided wonders with “room to build the other three sides when attendances improve”.

Yes, quite.

The problem in Scottish football can be summed up in two words, “Celtic” and “Rangers”.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall that I stood outside Albion Rovers’ ground in Coatbridge where the average attendance was about 300 watching busload after busload of people wearing green and white or blue and white scarves all heading into Glasgow.

And then I was at Broadwood in Cumbernauld once watching a game between Glasgow Rangers reserves v Celtic reserves, both teams full of players that would have been a boon and an asset to any other club in Scotland. Rangers and Celtic had signed them not because they needed them but because they didn’t want any other club to have them and become a competitive threat.

And absolutely nothing whatever has changed, except that Albion Rovers have been relegated from the Scottish pyramid into the Lowland League. But as former Spurs manager Terry Venables once famously said, "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

However, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night was another one of those nights where I couldn’t tear myself out of my chair and into bed. It was something like 01:30 when I finally moved a muscle and set about doing my nightly chores. I’ve absolutely no idea what’s happening to me right now about this.

Anyway it was another really deep sleep like last night where I can’t remember a single thing until the alarm went off

When it awoke me I really was dead to the world and I had quite a battle to raise myself from the dead. They talk about “the quick and the dead” in Biblical terms but there was nothing whatever quick about it.

First thing was to check the blood pressure. 15.9/100, pretty similar to last night’s 16.0/10.1, taken when I was feeling rather stressed out trying to exert myself to go to bed. So what was winding me up during the night?

Anyway I wandered off into the kitchen to sort out the medication. I’m beginning to run low on certain things again – just supplies of a few of the tablets for a couple of weeks. I need to keep an eye on everything to make sure that I don’t run out.

Next task was to make the bread. And I put a lot of thought and effort into this lot and tried my best to knead it correctly, which is not easy.

After that I went for a good wash, scrub up and shave and all of that kind of thing, as well as washing to shorts that I’ve started to wear in bed. But I didn’t get as far as I would have liked because for once in his life the nurse was here early.

When he came in, he saw the bread buns slowly rising, said “oh look, bread!” and poked one, which promptly sank

He eventually managed to find a vein and extract some blood. And I’ve had the results already. The red blood count is slowly rising, which is no surprise given the amount of stuff they are injecting into me every Wednesday, but so is the carcinogenic protein. It should be between 59 and 104 and it’s increased from 267 to 275.

So if the red blood cells are increasing, what is the protein attacking? The answer is that it’s now attacking the platelets. They should be between 140 and 380 and they have decreased from 108 to 92. That would seem to indicate that the cancer is now moving into my bone marrow.

So what’s the next move going to be? Someone will tell me something in due course, I imagine.

Having switched off the heating in the apartment, I checked the bread again and it had risen really well and for once I was impressed, especially as I’m making hot cross buns on Sunday and I need some confidence and encouragement.

The bread baked perfectly too, lovely and soft. It made some really nice cheese on toast and there is bread for the next couple of days too

Later on today I went to pay the Property Taxes on my place in Canada. I tried for an age unsuccessfully to log into my bank account, only to discover that I was trying to access Scotia Bank Trinidad and Tobago rather than Scotia Bank Canada.

Once I’d found the correct bank, everything went really smoothly. I do like how easy it is to make payments and so on in the Canadian banking system

It’s not so easy making payments on-line in France to the French Government.

The French Government has at long last started a system of on-line payments where you can pay your bills via internet rather than sending a cheque. I went to set it up for me this afternoon, but it’s not easy.

The logical way to organise payments is to index everything by reference to a person’s identity card number, so you can log in, see your account, see what’s owing and pay it off all at once with just one payment.

Instead, everything is indexed by invoice number, so if you have more than one bill to pay, as I did, you have to log in more than once, entering all of your details, including card details, more than once, and it takes an age.

What makes life even more complicated is that it asks you to enter certain details from the invoices into certain boxes on the computer screen, and the names don’t correspond. You have to use some intuitive guesswork to figure it all out.

But what am I going to do about my place in Canada?

it was an inspired decision to buy it because all you need when dealing with Canadian administration is a Property Tax Assessment. I could open bank accounts, buy pick-ups, obtain insurance, have mobile phones, all of that, simply on production of a Property Tax Assessment and it eased my passage (if you’ll pardon the expression) around Canada.

But I’m never going to use it now and it’s just going to sit there with the apples falling off the trees year after year until the cows come home unless my niece goes up there to pick them up.

But while we’re talking about Canada … "well, one of us is" – ed … I wonder how Strider is getting on with his new owners. We travelled miles together, him, me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE. I hope that they are looking afer him.

And that reminds me – I told my niece to dispose of most of the stuff that was in there – tools, camping gear, expedition equipment and so on – but there was a Fender bass and amp in there that I used that I wanted her to keep for me. I need to think of a way of bringing them over here.

The cleaner came round this afternoon for her Friday cleaning spot, bringing my mushrooms and tomatoes with her. I retreated into my bedroom while she was here but I actually had a fall while I was in the bathroom. Luckily the chair was in my way and I fell onto that, otherwise it could have been nasty

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, surprisingly. I had several Ford Corsairs in my drive last night. One of them was driven away and I can’t remember where it went. Someone else borrowed a set of my number-plates but hadn’t brought them back and I was becoming rather concerned about that. Anyway there was some more car-swapping that needed to be done. I had to bring another Ford Cortina into my drive. That was parked in Gainsborough Road so I had to go down there to it, start it and bring it back. That was a Safari Beige colour but I was thinking that if I were to paint it blue I could put on the number-plates that this guy had borrowed because they belonged to a blue estate. I could make a set of plates but what would be the position if someone saw both vehicles, mine and the one on which presumably the guy had put the plates, and noticed that there were two vehicles with the same set of plates? What would my neighbours say if I were to turn up with yet another car after I’d just had one taken away somewhere? I got into the Cortina Estate. The clutch was right down on the floor and it was difficult to start. I thought that I better hadn’t leave vehicles lying around for so long without actually starting them up otherwise I’m just going to make myself a lot of problems

This is something of a recurring dream, isn’t it, having Cortinas scattered all around the town. It’s just like in real life when I actually did, including a beige Cortina estate and a blue one too.

But swapping over number plates from one car to another? And VIN plates too? I look back on those years with amazement and wonder how on earth I managed to keep clear of some serious trouble. Six months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure would have been nothing. I had to stop and leave the country because those years were catching up on me rather rapidly

My excuse was though that when you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to realise that you are really trying to drain the swamp. Taking drastic and rapid steps to solve short-term issues can lead to some really long-term problems further down the line.

It’s a surprise though having Ford Corsairs around the place for a change. I didn’t think that it would be too long though before a Cortina or two appeared.

So this afternoon I’ve chosen some more music for another radio programme and began to pair it off before tea but I ran out of time, mainly due to going away with the fairies for an hour or so. And miles away too, it has to be said.

But tea was lovely – the last Kale and Quinoa burger from Noz, and I’ll have to find a way of making those because they were nice, especially in breadcrumbs.

Last of the home-made mayonnaise too, although it might not have been had I used a more convenient container. Still, you live and learn.

However, the mayonnaise was an unqualified success. It was too thick and I’d used too much garlic, but those are minor problems. The principle was perfect and tomorrow, I’ll make some more, having learned from my first batch.

So what with that and making hot cross buns on Sunday it looks as if I’m going to be in for a busy weekend. And it’ll do me good right now because I seem to be doing too much of nothing right now.

So what else can I make while I’m at it? I shall have to pick Liz’s brains, and I’ll welcome any suggestions from anyone else too

But before I go, the story of my mayonnaise in the wrong bottle reminds me of that aerosol that came onto the market in the 70s. The publicity for it went something like "enough paint to cover 70 square metres of panelling"
And someone wrote underneath the advert "and enough propellant to get just about a quarter of it out of the can"

Monday 18th March 2024 – I’M SUPPOSED TO …

… be going to Paris tomorrow for a visit to the opthalmologists’s at the hospital.

When I was at the hospital just now I mentioned that this blurred vision that I’m having right now is interrupting just about everything that I do.

It’s not just blurred vision either but for objects close too, I’m actually seeing double. Double just about everything, except my bank account, that is. You try watching a football match on the internet when you see it like that.

At least that explains why there are so many tpying errors and faults in the speling. I’m not able to poof-read what I type because I can’t see it.

However, there is absolutely no chance whatever of me being anywhere near Paris tomorrow. For a start, I need a bon de transport for the trip, which they never sent, and then the trip needs to be approved by the Social Services.

And then I need to book a car to take me, always assuming that there’s one available at short notice and always assuming that the trip is approved.

Approval won’t be for a couple of weeks, so that immediately rules out any possibility whatever of going tomorrow.

How I found out was by reading my text messages this afternoon. No-one called me or spoke to me. The message just appeared and I didn’t notice it until it was far too late to ring up to cancel it

It goes without saying that I’m impressed, as I always am, with the speed of reaction of the French Health Service, but I can see that I’m going to have to train the hospital much better than this. At Castle Anthrax, for example, we finally managed, after much trying, to synchronise the appointments so that they all took place while I was there at Haematology. I need to do the same here.

In theory, seeing as I’m going on a day visit and carrying no luggage, I could attempt the train and have help to see me to and from a taxi in Paris but firstly, I need at least 24 hours notice to apply for the service. Secondly, with these puttees on my feet I can’t wear my shoes and thirdly, I have a Welsh class tomorrow.

In other words, it’s a total non-starter.

There will probably be a rude message for me later on tomorrow, rather like the time that I was late for work.
"You should have been here at 09:00" shouted the boss
"Why?" I asked. "What happened?"
After a few weeks he called me into his office.
"You are coming into the office later and later" he said
"I do actually make up for it" I said
"How’s that?" he asked
"Well look how early I leave for home!"

But problems with my vision will probably explain why I’m having trouble finding my bed.

Last night was another 02:30 switching off of the computer. I was actually really tired but far too tired to stir my stumps and rise up from my chair. It’s been a few times that that’s happened and I really don’t know what to do about it.

What I probably need to do is to force myself and make an effort, but that’s easier said than done. I have said before that I have so many things to do but keep on forgetting to do them. Actually, the problem is that I have so many things to do but can’t find the effort or the motivation.

It’s not just my dreams that are going through my death-throes, it’s me, I reckon, and I’m taking my dreams with me as I go.

When the alarm went off you can’t imagine (well, actually I suppose that you can) the struggle that I had to leave the bed. I managed to beat the second alarm but it was just like the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo and "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life".

First things first, and I did manage to remember the blood pressure – 14.8/8.2 this morning, down from 15.8/10.0 when I’d checked it before going to bed.

After the medication I went into the bathroom and had a really good wash and scrub up in the hope that it might awaken me but it didn’t seem to work. I was in no fit state to do anything.

When the nurse came to see me, I got my own back. Taking off my puttees last night I lost one of the clips, so when she came in this morning I said "You’re going to have a go at me again today"
"I didn’t have a go at you yesterday" she said
"Yes you did" I insisted. "But anyway, taking of my puttees last night I lost one of the clips"
And she was quite nice about it.

But I certainly saw a side of her yesterday that I had never suspected.

But she’s off now for a rest and it will be her sidekick for a week starting tomorrow. He’s the one who can’t ever find a vein in my arm for his blood sample so on Wednesday we’ll probably have a “discussion” about that too.

After she left I came back in here but really I was in no fit state to do any work. In fact I missed my morning coffee and lunchtime fruit because I couldn’t find the enthusiasm to leave my chair.

It was late afternoon when I finally moved and went for some hot chocolate – the first food or hot drink that I’d had all day.

My cleaner came in the stuff that had finally arrived at the pharmacy, and we had a chat. I gave her a shopping list of things that I need from LeClerc tomorrow that they won’t deliver, and she photographed a couple of bottles and jars as an aide-memoire

An energy drink later on did something for me, and I transcribed the dictaphone notes, such as there were from such a sad night. The tenant of one of my apartments wanted my friend to meet two new sub-locataires but she didn’t have the slightest bit of interest whatever in seeing them and felt that the management of the property in their respect should fall on the guy who’s leasing it rather than whoever was the principal leaseholder . She didn’t have the slightest wish whatever to become involved in his sub-letting.

Although I dictated that it was my apartment, it actually belongs to the friend who was included in the dream. She owns a couple of apartments and is actually, even as we speak, having issues with one of her tenants and the management company involved that are on the verge of escalating.

But the whole letting industry in the UK is all descending into total chaos anyway. A property that was completely rewired five years previously failed its electrical certificate at next renewal.
"Why was that? What was wrong with it after five years?"
"Well, nothing actually, but standards have now changed and what was good enough five years ago is no longer adequate"
"So you’d better have someone fix it for me"
"We would have already done it, but we can’t find any tradesmen to do it."
Conversations like that actually do take place.

There was time to finish off the radio programme that I started yesterday (apart from dictating and editing the notes that I wrote for the final track) before going for my stuffed pepper. Quite delicious again. The couscous instead of the quinoa or bulghour works really well.

Plenty of stuffing left for my taco roll tomorrow and there will probably be some for the basis of a leftover curry too on Wednesday.

But that’s Wednesday. Right now I’m going to make a huge effort and go to bed. Walter Reisch said "tired minds don’t plan well. Sleep first, plan later" and he’s not wrong. The way that I feel, I couldn’t even plan a whatsit in a wherever right now.

It’s more a case of Maccbeth and "to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day" and as everyone knows, after my experiences in the High Arctic, I’LL GIVE ALL MY TOMORROWS FOR A SINGLE YESTERDAY

Sunday 25th February 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… lovely chat with Ingrid this afternoon. Another one of our multilingual ones and which ended up as a Rosemaryesque conversation of 1 hour and 15 minutes. It’s nice to be popular.

It’s also nice to have had a really good night’s sleep too.

After the dictating the usual load of rubbish that passes for radio programme notes these days, I was in bed for 01:30. And then waking up ay 09:25 without having felt a thing, and then not leaving the bed until 11:30 What is there that is any better than that at my advanced age?

First thing that I did was to look at my foot. I had to take off my elasticated stocking on the right foot last night as it was irritating the foot.

A closer examination this morning reveals that the fabric of the sock has rubbed it raw for some reason and it’s inflamed. The skin is flaking around the wound too so a day or so in the fresh air followed by a disinfected cloth covering will do it good.

It’s a good job that I have some surgical tissues and alcohol disinfectant. They should help it heal and in the meantime I’ll show it to the doctor at the Centre de Re-education when I go there in 10 days.

Next step was to check my blood pressure. This morning it was 17.4/10.1 which compares with last night’s 17.7/10.5. So what excited me during the night? it certainly wasn’t TOTGA, Castor or Zero.

After the medication I came back in here to find out what had happened during the night. And it was rather disappointing, if not depressing. I’d been in a van with someone and we’d been driving somewhere. We had to stop because the person with me wanted a cup of coffee. We had a rope with us and I wanted to tie it up to something so that it would stay in the van. The only thing that I could find was the handgrip over the door. I tied the rope there with a kind of knot and went out to have my coffee. For some reason the rope wouldn’t stay tied. tt managed to untie itself and at that moment I actually awoke. That rope wasn’t right for some reason.

That’s not exactly what I call an exciting dream. The way things are in my life right now he only excitement that I have is what goes on during the night.

And not just with TOTGA, Zero or Castor either. While of course I’m delighted if one of them comes along with me on a travel, that’s really the icing on the cake. Having adventures, voyages and bizarre encounters is what my dreams should be all about regardless of who (with the exception of my family of course) comes with me.

Boring, sad and uneventful encounters have no place to play in my life, especially during the hours of darkness.

Instead I went for lunch – cheese on toast and porridge with strong black coffee to fire up the imagination.. And there are no complaints about my bread. It’s not perfection – in fact, it’s a long way from it, but it’s better than a couple of weeks ago.

Back in here, rather later than usual, I made a start on the radio programme whose notes needed editing. And while I was … errr … elsewhere during a little break, Ingrid phoned me.

after I’d washed my hands I phoned her back and we had our lengthy chat. Her elderly cat, who was 20 years old, has died, so she told me. And that’s sad news. Mind you, 20 years s a good age for a cat, especially around the Auvergne with so many predators

She’s talking about coming up to see me, which will be lovely. In fact there are a couple of people in the Auvergne who have been talking about coming up here. Not just to see me of course, but to have a little holiday break, and Ingrid is talking about hitching a ride with them.

If they do all come up here, it’ll make a nice break for them and a welcome distraction for me. Up here locked in my little room while my leg is healed and the lift is being repaired is doing me no good.

They say that the lift might be fixed by Friday in which case I can go to the shops on the bus.

The lifts here only go to the half-landings which is a shame. They don’t actually go to the floors where the front door is or the apartments are.

That’s something that sounds very strange but this is a 17th Century building built before lifts of course, and as it’s a registered historic building we can’t knock it about how we like

Before Ingrid phoned I was planning on making some biscuits as I’d run out but it was too late now. Instead I went and rolled out the pizza dough that had been defrosting since I took it from the freezer after lunch.

Yes, Ingrid on the phone or not, nothing will stop the relentless march of the Sunday pizza.

So now that my notes are written, I’ll have a think about finishing off the assembly of the radio programme and then choose the final track and write the notes for it. I’m not sure if I’m up to dictating them but we’ll see. Ralph Marston said "Rest when you’re weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work" but if I were to do that, I would never ever restart.

With this new medication, I’ve noticed several side-effects kicking in. I’m having difficulty with my eyes (hence the typos), I’m all confused (you should see the mess that I’ve made of this radio programme) and I’m just so tired – all the time too.

There was an interesting paragraph in the Woolhope Naturalists (not “Naturists”) Club’s 1867 Annual Report which said that "the history of a people, for the most part, is but the detail of the trials and calamities that have occurred to them", and that is something with which I can personally relate.

Sunday 22nd October 2023 – I WASN’T ACTUALLY …

… far wrong with what I said yesterday. Much of the morning was taken up with a very lengthy exchange of correspondence with someone about a task that needs to be undertaken in the near future.

It’s a task that might involve me spending a lot of money, but it’s not something that I can do myself and the sooner it’s done the better. And in view of the travelling involved that I won’t have to do, I will probably end up saving money in the long run too.

And so it’s very important that the issue is very clear and unequivocal – hence the lengthy discussion.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I dictated the notes for the final radio programme in this backlog, had a listen to them, binned them and then started again.

As a result, I was in bed later than I intended.

Nevertheless, by 09:30 I was up and about and sorting out issues here and there. And then I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of race going on last night. It involved me dressing up in some kind of clothing as if for Halloween… "it’s called drag racing" – ed. I was being chased down some stairs by a little girl. When I reached the bottom, I’d run round the corner and then back up the stairs, reach the top, run around the corner and then back down again and so on. I was in front of the girl and she raced after me. This went on for a couple of minutes when suddenly she stopped running. I hadn’t noticed until I suddenly appeared on the landing at the same moment that she was there. That was the end of the game. I was convinced that she had cheated. It was really quite an uncomfortable moment. The conversation carried on about something else. It ended up being some kind of prize-giving for novels. Some guy had written a novel that was quite in-depth technically and longer and even changed into fifth gear but the one that won was another that was not so complicated and only had four gears. This was something else that caused a great deal of controversy during the night about why the winner was not so technically advanced as the one that came second.

There was also another kind of fancy-dress competition. It involved dressing up in clothes that we already had and then some kind of parade around where they would choose the winner. For some reason or other, even though I had a complicated outfit that it took a while to fit into and looked really good it didn’t come as high as another dressing-up outfit that wasn’t as good as mine and had been done much quicker. Of course, as you can imagine, I was extremely disappointed that my work wasn’t worth any more than the teacher had given me.

later on I was on Crewe railway station waiting for my train, an old 2-coach multiple unit. Someone was complaining about something and I couldn’t understand it at first. It suddenly clicked for me that there had been a change of the time of the train. The usual train that we caught to go to work was leaving 5 minutes earlier. I had to scramble around the station and onto the correct platform. Instead of going to sit in my usual place on the train I sat right at the front. When I boarded the train there it was actually quite crowded and there were very few seats left. One seat was next to some kind of woman whom I recognised so I went to sit there. I was hemmed in by this woman and three other people. They were all speaking Welsh and began to talk in Welsh. They were actually doing their Welsh homework ready for the lesson. Much as I didn’t like at all where I was sitting, I reckoned that a presence like this, doing the same kind of course that I was and willing to discuss it like this, these people have to be worth knowing. Maybe I ought to do my best to catch this train again.

And then I’d been doing something down in south-west England. On my way round I’d passed a small fishing village in a little cove on the border between Devon and Cornwall. Checking my plans for the return, I saw that I’d have to wait for a day or two before coming back but there was a bus that left that village that would bring me home. I thought that it sounded like a really good plan. I made arrangements to book myself on this coach back. I went to hire a car for the weekend, which seemed to work fine with no problems. I went to pick it up. On the way out I talked to the guy in the movement control at the door, saying “I now have this car for 48 hours. See you when I return”. He replied “no – you had this car booked for yesterday and today”. I replied “that can’t possibly be the case – I’ve only just booked it”. This led to quite an argument. In the end he agreed that I could leave with the car. I wasn’t happy about leaving because I had the idea in my mind that once my back was turned he’d forget about altering the booking and I’d end up having to pay a hefty excess charge for not bringing the vehicle back during the day on the Sunday

Finally, I’d gone to Algeciras for something and was standing on a high cliff. I could see all down the African coast in the mist. I could see the mountains of Africa in the distance and all the boats coming through the Straits of Gibraltar. There was one of these high-speed catamaran ferries coming up. We reckoned that it had come from Morocco heading into port. There were loads of ships too. The people with me decided to walk back into town but I was so mesmerised by what I’d seen that I just stayed there and watched the view.

And so compared to last night it was quite quiet.

After that I’ve been sending off requests for brochures. We’re talking about a chairlift in this building to go up the stairs to where the lift begins and my cleaner had collected a few adverts from various companies. My task was to arrange for some brochures to be delivered.

Later on after lunch I attacked the radio notes and eventually ended up with a completed radio programme. That’s taken me up to 10th May next year and now I can crack on with some more.

You’re probably wondering why I’m so far ahead with the programmes. The answer is that I’m never sure when I’m no longer going to be able to prepare any more, for obvious reasons.

And then of course, we could always have a repeat of last year when I spent 13 weeks in hospital without any possibility of preparing any more while I’m away.

On the subject of hospital, I packed my bags for tomorrow morning and wrote a few letters. Finally, I backed up the computer onto the portable USB stick that I take with me on my travels

Tea was another delicious pizza, and now I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow morning I have to be up at 05:20 at the latest and I’m not looking forward to that. And then I’ll be having a week of being torn apart.

As for when I’ll be back, I have no idea. I have been told to “set aside a week” but that could be anything from “back home the same night” to another three-month stay.

But I shall just be glad of a rest. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 – WELCOME HOME

This morning I went round to my house in Virlet. And I’m not going to say too much about it because it was so depressing.

You’ll be able to see what I mean by looking at this photograph. There was no way of getting even close to the house because of all the weeds and brambles.

The last time that I was there two years ago I was able to fight my way into the place with the aid of a heavy-duty brush-cutter but I’m in no fit condition to even attempt that these days.

And in any case I don’t have a brush-cutter. So that ruled that out. But it was such a disappointment.

And for a change, until I saw my house I was feeling fighting-fit. I’d eventually gone off to sleep despite all of the celestial artillery and wasn’t that a real racket? It was the loudest storm that I’ve lived through for quite a while.

As far as I knew I slept right the way through until about 06:45 and stayed in bed until 07:30. The morning cup of tea was rather later than usual.

After breakfast we set off. The house of a friend of Rosemary had been badly bashed about in a hailstorm and some temporary repairs had been effected. The insurance company needed to know that it was properly tarpaulined and as the owner is away right now, Rosemary was charged with the task of going and taking some photos.

It was after that that we went to inspect my pile.

Back here we had a coffee and I had another session with Miss Ukraine and her animal encyclopedia. Considering that she doesn’t speak English or French and I don’t speak Ukrainian (just a dozen or so words of Russian) we had an extremely dynamic chat that went on for ages and she guessed my favourite animal – turning straight away to the page with Polar Bears on it.

Yes, I seem to be flavour of the month right now and I’m not sure why. Rosemary seems to think that I’m the only person who ever listens to kids properly when they talk and that’s the nicest compliment someone has paid me for quite a while.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I think that kids get a pretty raw deal out of life. No-one ever seems to take any time with them or have any interest in them and what they have to say.

After lunch Rosemary had to go for a doctor’s appointment so I stayed behind and listened to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. We were camping, my brother and I. There was a river that was full of rocks. I made a kind of improvised ram out of an old railway carriage bogie and dropped it in the water on top of these rocks with the aim that the water would carry it down, clear some of these rocks and make the water run quicker. It jammed up under a bridge so I had to get there and free it off. That took quite a while. I set it off again and it hadn’t gone more than 20 yards when it became stuck in the bank of the river. This caused a big rock fall into the river and blocked the river. I thought that what I’d been doing so far hadn’t been a very great success. I had to make tea and we were camping. We had a couple of tents and there was a caravan oven there. There was a shop-bought pizza and I had to make another one. The first thing that I nearly did was to fall into the river. My brother came to see what was going on and gave me a few lectures about everything. Then I started to unwrap the shop-bought pizza ready to put in the oven. That could be cooking while I was making mine. But I didn’t have any ingredients to hand so I was debating with myself how I was going to make this pizza when I hadn’t any ingredients and no facilities like a table or anything to make the pizza on.

And later we’d been in a kind of museum or exhibition or something like that and were on our way out. I’d gone and picked up 2 packets of crisps but I couldn’t work out where to pay for them. I was halfway through walking out of the building before I realised that this wasn’t right so I went to put back these 2 packets of crisps and walked out down these steps. There were hundreds of coaches in this car park and thousands of people milling around. Eventually I worked my way round to where I thought our coach was parked but there was a coach there and they were shepherding a load of prisoners of war off it and marching them off. We were told to wait so we waited for a while but no-one came so in the end we set off towards our coach. This guy with a wooden leg came back and asked what we were doing. We replied that we were going to the coach. He told us we should have waited but we answered that we’d waited for long enough. He made us all sit down in the middle of the street and he asked “where’s this opium?”. We asked “what opium?” and he started playing silly games with us. He said that he was going to make us march all the way back again which we refused to do. We were sitting there in the middle of the road and he was becoming quite aggressive but we were having none of it. There was a party of girls sitting close by. One of them was one with whom I’d wandered around this museum. She shouted over to me that she had taken £1100 out of her bank account, given £310 to someone for something but couldn’t remember what this other £800 was for. Did I know? Could I remember? I remembered vaguely something but this wasn’t the time or place to mention it so I told her that I’d see her later. She replied “if there is a later” because this situation was slowly starting to escalate.

This afternoon I’ve had to help Mr Ukrainian dismantle the interior of his car. I the storm last night he had about 3 inches of water in it. We ended up taking out all of the seats and carpets and putting them somewhere to dry, and then using cloths to take out the water

Tea tonight was the leftover vegetable curry from last night and it was just as nice as yesterday.

So that was that. Rosemary and I were on our own for the evening so we didn’t stay out long. Right now I’m finishing my notes and then I’m off to bed. An early night and more pleasant dreams, I hope.

But who was the girl who I’d been with at that museum? I wish I knew. And I’m sure that you do too.

Thursday 14th October 2021 – IT’S BEEN ONE …

…of those days when very little seemed to go right today.

Such things as having yet another bad night’s sleep, awakening bolt-upright for no good reason at 06:00 exactly, that sort of thing.

And despite having turned on the heating in the room last night, it was flaming cold as well.

The way that I leapt out of bed was hardly “with alacrity” this morning. I waited around for a few minutes for the room to stop spinning before I left my stinking pit.

After the medication I checked my mails and messages, had my breakfast and then went for a shower. And despite having turned up the heating to “full”, it was still cold and I didn’t enjoy the shower at all.

There had been a couple of voyages on the dictaphone during the night too. I was out looking at property or trying to find somewhere last night for me and my cars but there was nothing suitable. Nowhere had any land – anything with any land was immediately bought, demolished and built on and you couldn’t find a thing. The Estate Agent wasn’t very helpful either. He was telling me that that was what happens and the only thing to do was to keep on looking, put my name of a few properties and see what happens. He asked me the usual questions – what kind of place did I want? Did it need to be improved? And so on. He asked how many cars I had and he nearly died when I said “12”.

There was also something about our friend in Virlet last night, whoever “our friend in Virlet” might be. It was going dark and I was working round the side of the barn when someone came round and they weren’t expecting to see me. They were totally surprised that I was there. They asked where was the handle – the broken handle out of the fork that I had taken out yesterday that I’d put down somewhere? I replied “I gave the fork and the handle back to you. Where did you put it?”. He couldn’t remember where and that was all that I remember.

Having made my sandwiches I headed off through town towards the hospital, taking a few photos on the way.

Some of the photos didn’t turn out, for a reason that I haven’t understood.

But of the ones that did, this is a shop and restaurant in the Tiensestraat that sells hand-crafted meatballs. And I’m not sure exactly how much demand there might be for hand-crafted meatballs but they have been here for a while so they must be doing some good somehow.

The shop is called “Balls and Glory” but if you ask me, there isn’t much glory in making hand-crafted meatballs. To me, it sounds like it’s all … well, quite.

A little further on down the road is another shop with a bizarre name.

Olleke Bolleke is a sweet shop that sells by the 100 grammes these gelatine-laden sweets that are bad for the teeth. I first encountered one of these shops in Brugge in the 1970s and the chain seems to be going from strength to strength.

As it happens, I’ve never actually been in one but I don’t think that there’s very much olleke being sold in there . It’s probably all … well, quite.

There wasn’t all that much happening in the town centre today. The exhibition for the cycle race has been cleared away and there’s nothing much as yet been put in its place.

The exhibition has even gone from the site of the Sint Pieter’s Hospital.

The marquee or pergola or whatever it is is looking very sad right now with nothing going on. Just a pile of benches and a few tables that aren’t serving any useful purpose.

But imagine that in the UK. You would have to chain the furniture down to the floor and even so, it would still go missing. Life is so much calmer here in Europe.

But the palm trees will need to go missing soon because it won’t be long before we start to have the frosts and I can’t see them doing very well over the winter if they are left out there.

Further along the Brusselsestraat work is continuing apace.

Not on the old medieval tower though, that’s still covered in scaffolding and roofing sheets to protect it from damage while the demolition continues.

But you can tell by the rest of the machinery that they are still in there demolishing that other building. I’d have shown you how that was proceeding, except that the photo didn’t turn out.

Several others didn’t turn out either, as I discovered later, and I’ve no idea why.

usually I leave the photos of the building work in the kapucijnenvoer until on the way home but as I’m not coming straight home this evening, I went that way towards the hospital.

The building that backs onto the Zongang is coming on in leaps and bounds which is quite a surprise for Belgium and it can’t be long now before they think about finding some occupants for it.

It’s rather tough though for the occupants of that nice little house in the Zongang who now have this new building blocking out all their light.

There’s another building site in the Kapucijnenvoer as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but the photo of that was one that didn’t turn out.

The climb up the hill to the hospital was a little better than it had been last time. I managed to push 50 yards on the distance that I made last time before I needed to stop for breath.

At the hospital I had a CT scan of my chest – and then I had to wait. “I’m sorry that you had to wait so long” said the nurse. “I had to send for a doctor to look at the images”. I don’t like the sound of that very much.

After a wait around I had to go for another test to measure the capacity of my lungs – breathing in and out of a long tube.

Finally I could go round to the Oncology department for my usual treatment. I arrived there at 13:40 for my treatment that was timed for 14:00, and I was finally seen at 14:45. I’ve no idea what was happening today that was making them run so late.

It was 17.30 before the doctor came to see me too but at least this time it was a doctor who was very concerned and very interested – not like the one that I had a couple of times ago.

My blood count has seen a dramatic rise – to 9.7 and I’ve no idea why. He went through my other results too and explained them to me. Apparently there wasn’t much out of order with my breathing and my lungs in the way in which they are functioning.

As a result he’s going to try to make an appointment with a cardiologist for me who will hopefully probe my case a little further. I didn’t tell him that my doctor at home is also on the case. 2 opinions are better than one.

This all finished by me being hours late for everything so I waited at the hospital for Alison to come there and pick me up. We went round to her house, having to go back to the hospital to pick up the medication that I had forgotten.

Alison had bought some vegan sausages so while I cooked them, she went to the fritkot for some chips. And it was a lovely tea too.

Afterwards we had a lengthy chat until I began to go to sleep so she kindly ran me home. Now I’m off to bed for a good lie in. No alarm in the morning – I’m going to sleep until I wake up

Tuesday 20th October 2020 – AFTER ALL …

… of the exertions over the last few days I failed miserably this morning.

Never mind the third alarm – it was 07:20 when I left the bed – more than an hour of the day wasted.

And when I listened to the dictaphone I recoiled somewhat too. All of these notes to transcribe. I was running the taxis and there was Doreen, Nerina and mme running the taxis on Saturday night. A job came in to go somewhere way up north and I Do mean way up north. In the end they decided that I should go, and go on a motorbike and that some other driver should come in. I went on my motorbike all the way up to the far north of Scotland to drop off this package and came all the way back. By now it was starting to get light next morning. I’d arranged to pick up Percy Penguin up after work so I guessed that she would still be asleep in her shop. I tried to ring her but my mobile phone wouldn’t work so I just went on round there anyway and she let me in. By now she had transformed into an old black woman who was going to come home with me to the taxi office. She had a couple of big bags of shopping and it ended up with me having to carry them. I was pretty much weighed down. When I got home Doreen was still there. She said that she was glad that she sent me on the motorbike because they’d been really busy throughout the night and had a really good night working non-stop. I had a quick glance through the sheets and saw that there was some ROF work there. I thought “did we have a contract with ROF these days? We used to”. She said “oh no, that’s some tuition that Nerina and I have been doing. We’ve been teaching some people from there”. Later on I was walking home through the streets of Brussels. There was a motorbike shop. It was pretty late at night/early in the morning type of going home but this place was open so I went in. I had a little sit on a Honda 50, a play-around and it transformed itself into a big motorbike. We ended up a group of us talking about motorbikes. Someone prepared some kind of soup and someone drank it. But someone warned “no, no, don’t drink that soup” but she drank it and transformed into soe kind of evil persona. We had to be very careful about what we’d do. But then a couple there said to another woman “come on, we have to go down to the Isle of Thanet to do something”. So they took her away. When she came back she was about 12 feet tall and her upper part was like a metal rod with a metallic design like a hollow shield for a head and also quite evil. It turned out that almost every one of these people had been transformed into some kind of evil thing through a drink or through a soup. So I started throwing the soup on the floor and drinks on the floor to break the bottles so they wouldn’t have to drink it but these people were laughing saying “Oh God it’s far too late now. You’re all going to be absorbed”. It led to a bit of a chase around this place. There was something too about a cake in an oven. I was eating a cake, the type of fruit loaf bread that I make. Meantime I was putting something else in the oven. People were wondering about that and having a laugh but someone else said “Eric? Ohh yes he really does bake and his baking is really quite good” which shut a few people up. But this battle thing with these weird people carried on until in the end there was only me and I couldn’t find anyone else who was sane. It was going to be a really stressful kind of situation. It’s no wonder that I awoke in a feverish sweat yet again.

But there was much more to it but I can’t remember any more now. And after all of that it’s probably just as well.

It left little time for any revision of my Welsh and as a result the lesson was something of a disaster. And I wasn’t the only one either. We were given part of a sample test paper for our exam and we all made a right mess of it. Mind you, we went 1 hour 50 minutes before we stopped for a break and my head had long-since turned to jelly by then.

Mind you, that’s not a surprise. There’s something – and someone – on my mind today. And it brings back memories of three late night evenings in, of all places, on the deck of a ship in the High Arctic where I changed the habits of a lifetime.

As Kris Kristofferson once wrote, “I’ll give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday”. And I will too!

But enough of my being all maudlin now of all moments. I won’t get anywhere dwelling on the past like this.

At lunch I finished off the last of the bread and the last of the hummus so it looks as it it’s going to be another food-making day too tomorrow morning. One thing that has also finished a long while ago is the ginger and lemon drink. That’ll have to be something else on the list too.

This afternoon I’ve had an exciting task.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I bought a new computer in something of a hurry in North Dakota last August when the little travelling Acer gave up the ghost. It was a sale item from Walmart heavily reduced but it came with Walmart’s splash screen and everything else on it that annoyed me but which I didn’t have the time right them to fix.

As I went along, I patched it here and there but it still wasn’t satisfactory so being fed up and having nothing better to do I did a “system restore” to “factory settings” and that involved deleting everything off the hard drive and starting again to reinstall everything.

And when I say “reinstall”, I say that advisedly because after about 6 hours of work it’s done about 88% of the operating system, never mind anything else.

In the middle of all of this, while the computer was festering away, I went out for my afternoon walk.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago in the Place du parvis Notre Dame we saw them set up a series of scaffolding in order to repair a roof on a house there. Today, they are attacking the side of the house that’s in the Rue St Jean.

And they aren’t using any scaffolding either apparently down the side of the house. All of the material seems to be being lifted up by the big machine there and that’s going to cause a few problems if something big comes down there.

Wednesday and Thursday we’ve been promised storm-force winds here (as seems to be usual these days). I don’t fancy being up there on a roof when they are lashing about. And I don’t fancy walking underneath where the guys are working either when there’s a wind blowing all of their stuff away.

There were crowds of people wandering around today taking in the air and I ended up chatting to one of my neighbours at the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord.

After he had gone I had a look down onto the beach to see what was going on. The peche à pied is still in full swing as far as the tourists go. There were several more out there in amongst the rocks scavenging for what they could find.

As well as that, we had people milling around, walking their dogs, playing sports or even just taking in the air. After all, although the weather was cold and windy, it wasn’t unpleasant.

The crowd had thinned out by the time that I reached the Square Maurice Marland so I had a good run across to the other side to rack up a bonus run.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday the harbour was empty – of water and of boats. Today though we have the water back, and also the boats. Marité has returned and is moored in her little corner again.

So I carried on along the walls and as there was no-one in the street I ran on home again. I may as well clock up some extra metres on my way around when I can.

Back here I carried on with the laptop and then had a break when Rosemary rang me up. While I was in the Auvergne in July I had set “certain steps” in motion and, much to my surprise, they had actually come to fruition . That means some more outlay and I have to do it because it involves several other people.

Tea tonight was veggie balls with steamed veg and vegan cheese sauce – thoroughly delicious. And the other half of my apple turnover was even better. It’s the best one that I have ever made and I’m really impressed with that.

My walk this evening was something of a surprise.

Well, not my walk, but my run. I was feeling much more like it tonight, much looser, and I ran on past my mark on my first leg with some comparative ease. Down to the clifftop and there was a trawler way out to sea with its bright lights blazing. Too good an opportunity to miss even though it won’t come out well.

It’s probably 5 miles out to sea as well so all in ill it’s not bad at all seeing as it was the f1.8 50mm lens. I’ll settle for that.

No-one around at all, except for a couple of kids on the car park so I could do my third leg in peace.

At the viewpoint over the harbour where I stop to recover my breath, I could see all of the activity going on at the Fish Processing Plant. The fishing boats are starting to come back into harbour and there were already two of them down there unloading, with a couple more on the way.

One had carried on into the harbour but I missed her. Presumably she’s going to unload at the other side. But never mind. This one has come out OK so I’m not disappointed.

If I turn my head to the right I can also see into the Chantier Navale.

And here we have a change of occupant yet again. The new little boat that arrived a couple of days ago has now gone but we have been joined instead by a large yacht that bears a striking similarity at this angle to Spirit of Conrad, the boat on which we went down the coast a few months ago.

Of course in this light, it’s not possible to say with any certainty. I’ll have to wait until it’s light and have another look.

And so I ran on the rest of the way home, doing it in two legs as usual but even did an additional lap of honour round the building to push up the total even more.

Now that my notes are written and I’m off to bed. But before I do, just a quick “hi” to someone who made a dramatic reappearance this morning. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can organise myself, whenever that might be.

Wednesday 12th August 2020 – ANOTHER SWELTERING DAY …

… in the middle of this heatwave in Southern Germany. And I have surrendered to it all by buying a desktop fan to go with the USB fan that I bought for Caliburn yesterday (did I mention that?).

This morning, it was again 28°C early on and the news that there had been a cloudburst and that my home town back in the UK was 12 inches under water and they were all complaining now about too much rain didn’t really abate my humour all that much.

But anyway, I digress.

This morning I was awake quite early yet again and spent some time bringing the paperwork up to date and listening to the dictaphone.

Back in England everyone was worried that the amount of viruses was rising and yet people still weren’t taking things seriously, still not taking their masks seriously. We were walking between a couple of towns on a nice shady road near a river. We could see people disobeying the mask instructions all that kind of thing. We were convinced that they won’t last very long at all if they kep on going like this. There was a lot more to it than this but I don’t remember it now.

Later, it was time to disembark from the ship which was in fact an aeroplane so we all have to get ourselves ready and we all walked off down the gangplank a few of us together laughing and joking a little bit. One of the guys with whom I worked at the EU, he was coming on behind us and about to get into this queue with us. A couple of us said “we really don’t want to be in the queue with him”. Castor and Pollux were there too, and it’s nice to see them back with me again on my travels. They had changed into some nice clothes – I remember Pollux in a nice little top and a dark blue skirt. They just walked through Customs and walked away and didn’t look back, which left me feeling extremely disappointed.

When Hans came in we had a coffee and a good chat and organised a pile of stuff that needed organising.

Going to the bank to pay in his shop takings was next and then we went for breakfast at the bakery across the road. it was crowded with people and we had to sit inside for a change.

Gathering up the camera (but forgetting a bottle of water) we walked off out of town towards Garching in the sweltering heat.

A couple of kilometres outside the town on the left-hand side across the motorway is a nature reserve, the Echinger Lohe. It’s actually a piece of primeval woodland that was set aside in 1978 totally unmanaged as a natural forest reserve – some kind of experiment to see how a natural wood would have behaved before human intervention.

And what with all of the urban expansion in the vicinity of Munich that’s a feat in itself

Scrambling through the wire fence via a suitable opening we went inside.

It’s totally fascinating to see how it’s turned out. Nature is certainly doing a fine job here in this magnificent example of a climax forest. And all of the rotting tree trunks and branches that are passing through the “interesting shape” stage and disintegrating into powder and slowly regenerating the soil.

This is just as nature would have done several thousand years ago. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

We pushed our way deeper into the forest. It seemed to be the sensible thing to do in view of the heat.

One thing that impressed me about the place was how silent everywhere was. It was very broody and mysterious in there. Had a pile of Hurons leapt out from behind the trees, bow in hand, to overwhelm us I wouldn’t have been in the least surprised.

And although we didn’t see any large mammals, there is PLENTY OF EVIDENCE OF THEIR PRESENCE.

When I say that the forest is totally unmanaged, that’s not to say that there hasn’t been any human intervention.

These stranee, crude constructions are apparently hides for cameras. Some University or something is carrying out some kind of survey on activity that takes place in the forest.

Of course they aren’t going to park themselves up in full view of the wildlife, but all the same I can’t say that I’m very impressed with disturbing nature like this. Surely they couls have brought in some artificial hides that would have done the trick and which they could have taken away later on, leaving very little trace.

There is plenty to see in this particular corner of Eching and so we left the cover and shade of the forest to go to see it.

One of the things to see, which might not appeal to everyone, is what is going on in the air. We are right in the flight path for the descent to Munich Airport which is about 5 or so miles and even with the grounding of many flights due to the effects of the pandemic, there is still the odd one passing overhead.

At first I didn’t recognise the livery of this plane, but having photographed and enlarged it, I can see that it’s one of the planes that fly for the big holiday company TUI.

Out here beyond the forest there’s a huge natural, unspoilt heathland, the Garchinger Heide too.

It’s a haven of wildlife that you wouldn’t usually find so close to a major city and large transportation hub. The wooden thing that you can see that looks like the handle of a spade is actually a perch for the various birds of prey and the like that are around here.

218 different varieties of natural plants have been recorded here, of which about 50 are on Germany’s “red list” of plants subject to Conservation rules, type that would be difficult to find anywhere. This is good news because the flowers attract butterflies, of which a couple of visitors are quite rare types, and also bees.

And we are very lucky to have it too because in the late 19th Century during the grand expansion of Germany’s economy there were proposals to transform the heath into farmland.

However due to the energetic efforts of Franz Vollmann, the “Saviour of the Garchinger Heide“, 23 hectares of unspoilt land were bought by the Bavarian Botanical Society between 1907 and 1904 and in 1942 it became an official nature reserve. A monument was erected on the site in honour of Vollman.

Unfortunately much of the heath was badly damaged in early 1945 when prisoners from the Dachau Concentration were instructed to turn it into an emergency airstrip. Some work was begun and you can still see some of the damage that they did.

Eching is apparently an ancient Celtic town and there’s what is, I suppose, a Celtic cemetery here – a part of the heathland where there were plenty of small barrows. We went over there to have a look at them

Some other work that was undertaken here was the excavation of the barrows, so I was told, apparently in the search for various artefacts and grave goods. The excavations were carried out all that well and now there isn’t very much left now, but the outlines of the barrows are still visible.

There are several pools here that were formerly the site of gravel extraction and now abandoned to nature and the surroundings overgrown by vegetation.

Our route to the cemetery took us past a small one that was very quiet and secluded, and here we surprised a bunch of nudists. However I do have to say that if I had a body like any of those, I wouldn’t be exhibiting it anywhere in public like they were.

On our way back home we stopped for a drink at the football ground, and then we picked up Caliburn and went to track down a battery for Hans’s jeep. No-one had one in stock so we ended up having to order one.

But at one place that we visited I bought my desktop fan. this heat really is killing me right now.

While we were in the van we decided to push on for an afternoon out in the nearby town of Freising, the region’s capital.

We found a car park just outside the city centre and Hans led me through a maze of alleyways and narrow streets. This one is called the Mittlerergraben and it’s a typical example of the little streets around the northern part of the town.

In fact, much of Germany looks like this, and while some property is quite clearly modern, it’s very difficult to tell with others which is contemporary and which is new to replace war-damaged property.

, so we went for a walk around while Hans pointed out a few of the local sights. The cathedral was up the top of a huge set of steps so in this heat we ruled that out. We went for a cold drink instead.

From where I was standing to take the previous photo there’s a little Gasse, an alley that leads down into the main shopping street. These alleys are another feature of medieval German cities – in fact most medieval cities. As you know, Granville, where I live is littered with them.

In the background are the towers of the cathedral and to the left just down there is the Bayerische Hof, an upmarket hotel that has rooms at prices that the likes of you and I can only dream about.

That column is actually at the entrance to the hotel car park and I bet that more than just a couple of people have had fun trying to put their car into there.

We walked down the alleyway into the main shopping street and the first thing that I did was to disappear up another Gasse

The town is littered with these little alleys and this one is certainly one of the prettiest. It’s called the Hummelgasse and leads on down to the river at the bottom of the hill.

We weren’t going that way though. We were heading down the main street and so I had to come back. But not before I became all nostagic about the yellow walls on this house here. It reminds me too much of MY HOME BACK IN THE AUVERGNE.

So back in the centre of Freising, in the Unterer Hauptstrasse.

It’s not very often that a town site changes position throughout history so it’s very likely that where we are walking now is the same street that people were walking down 1500 or so years ago. The first recorded mention of the village of Freising was as long ago as 555AD – it was certainly in existence before that date

And it may well be even much older than that because it’s known that there was a Roman Road in the immediate vicinity along the banks of the River Isar and this would have been a likely situation for some kind of regional settlement.

You can see what I mean from this photo just here taken in the Heilinggeiststrasse – The Street of the Holy Ghost.

Where that tower is in the background is on an eminence overlooking the river and that would be the ideal situation for some kind of fortified site keeping an eye on the traffic passing up and down the river valley either by the road or the river.

The building on the left is the Church of the Holy Ghost with its associated Hospital complex. The hospital dates back to 1374 when a local dignitary left in his Will his entire estate to the benefit of building some accommodation for the poor, the sick and the needy.

We eschewed the possibility of climbing up to the cathedral and the other official buildings on the eminence. I’m not too good, hans has a bad leg and it was far too hot for a scramble.

Instead we threaded our way through the maze of back streets into the Fischergasse. There’s a little stream here that runs eventually into the Isar. The stream has been canalised and the banks reinforced and it makes quite a pleasant walkway back to town.

There was a café down here too and so we took the opportunity to sit down and have a nice cold drink. We needed it in this weather.

Heading back into the centre of town we came across some road works that caught our eye.

According to Hans, there’s “District Heating” in the town – a communal heating system of hot water that’s pumped around the town. it looks as if the system is receiving some attention. Here are some of the water pipes, covered in insulation.

It’s interesting to speculate as to why they have put that big U-bend in the pipework I can’t see any logical explanation for that

One thing about these early medieval cities is that it doesn’t matter how old a building is, it’s likely that the underground works are even older.

Consequently, when I saw some renovation being undertaken in the groundwork of a building in the main street I dived in there with the camera. Unfortunately this cellar is the exception that proves the rule. It’s nothing like as old as I was expecting.

We walked on through the town for a while and Hans showed me a bar that he had at one stage been thinking about taking on, but city parking regulations scuppered that.

And so we walked back to the car park and Caliburn

Out on the edge of the town is the site of a factory, the Schluter Tractor Company, where they made tractors until 1993.

The factory has now been transformed into a shopping centre where there is a display of photos of all of the products that the company manufactured. We went for a look around to see them, and discovered that there was even a restored tractor on display here as a centre-piece.

While we were here we went for a look around at the rest of the shops on the factory site but there was nothing of any interest so we went back to Caliburn and made our way back to Eching.

Back here, we parked up Caliburn and walked back to the football club where I had a delicious Thai curry with rice. And then back to the Bier Keller for a drink and a chat and to listen to some music.

Now I have my fan, and I feel so much better. I’m not going to say that it’s nice and cool of course, but it’s a lot better than it has been and i’m hoping for a comfortable sleep tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll be hitting the road.

Sunday 26th July 2020 – IT’S SUNDAY …

… so today was something of a lie-in. Plenty of time to go off on my travels during the night, and I took full advantage. I started off somewhere, I dunno if I was on board ship again. I can’t remember a lot of what was going on but I remember having to go somewhere. I was driving a car and I came across that girl with very blonde, very curly hair who was walking a dog, a girl who I knew to be a friend of a girl I knew. I crept up behind her in the car and went to blow the horn but it didn’t work. In the end I blew it a second time – it worked and she fell down on the floor. I went to open the window to say something to her but the window wouldn’t open so she couldn’t see who it was. There was something else that led from there with a couple of girls. They put a ladder up to climb to this basket because there was something that they could see there. These girls were very very interested in this. When they came back down again they were ever so disappointed because all that it had been had been some kind of bolt on the masthead that had broken off. But there were all kinds of things invloved in this – school dinners, bus rides going on with the THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR, zodiacs, this kind of thing and I can hardly remember any of it now.

Later on I was being chased around by all these fascists and a really aggressive woman who was going to make mincemeat out of me. She had the law on her side but we kept on being ahead of them kept on making more remarks and so on. It turned out that we were in Shavington in Edwards Avenue looking up at Edwards Close. That wasn’t how it used to be – there were only two or three houses at the side of it and then a road that went through. We were saying that I bet she knows where she is going for she’s here for the very first time to do something with Mick Matthews who was a member of the British Union of Fascists. Someone else siad “that’s alright. We have nothing to worry about. She can fetch the police because we are all under 12. We can’t be prosecuted and we can’t be found guilty of anything”. She was chasing us all round this situation with her friends and we were doing everything we could to keep one step ahead of her. There was one point where we were invited to a royal banquet. We got there and we had to do this procession round. There was this woman who had also been invited and sitting at a table. We weren’t sure whether she recognised us, whether the scowl that she gave us was just the usual scowl or meant that she recognised us. We noticed that there were two places set for us but we decided that we weren’t going to sit there and we’d get something to eat from somewhere else.

There was something else involving the President of the USA and I can’t remember what that was now.

Sometime later on I was driving a lorry somewhere with a trailer on the back. The trailer was just clipping the lamp-posts, all that kind of thing. I was sure that I was too far over the nearside and on one occasion I’d hit a car that was waiting at a road junction but I didn’t feel a bang so I carried on driving. It turned out that we were at Shearings waiting for a couple of coaches to come in. They were running hours late and we wondered why they hadn’t rung up to say how late they were but of course that would have made them even later. I had to check a coach over but they asked me how much water it had taken. I said “about half” although it was a lot more empty than that – it had taken a lot more than just half the amount. Then I head a voice calling. It sounded as if one coach was on its way in. I wondered who it was but it turned out that it was Rosemary calling offering me a cup of tea.

Yes, a cup of tea brought to me in bed and that’s all very pleasant. I could quite get used to this, but not really at 07:20 or thereabouts on a Sunday morning.

09:20 was when I finally arose, and so I organised a few things here, helped Rosemary set up her television, uploaded the July 2019 photos of Iceland and Greenland to Rosemary’s laptop and then collected my things together.

We drove to La Peize in Rosemary’s car. We ended up at Clotilde’s, who I haven’t seen for a good few years. Christiane was there too and I haven’t seen her for even longer. Clotilde had prepared a nice lunch for us all that was very nice.

After lunch we had a walk round the village and ended up at the Puits Michelin, the old coal mine on the edge of the town.

We’ve been here before, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall, many years ago, and there’s quite a story behind this coal mine. For this, we have to turn the clock back to the end of the 19th Century.

Coal had been discovered near St Eloy-les-Mines (which wasn’t “les mines” then of course) back in medieval times but commercial exploitation began in the early part of the 18th Century, with a mine reported as being in existence by 1741. In the latter part of the 19th Century deep mines began to be sunk. Little by little, the valley of the River Bouble was explored and further pits were sunk.

Eventually they reached the village of Gouttières.

The railway was expanded down to here and a huge marshalling yard was built for the coal that was expected to be transported from the area. Several more pits were sunk and then they found a beautiful thick part of the seam on the edge of La Peize.

This led to the creation of the Puits Michelin here with its substantial structures and the huge area set aside for an enormous slag heap and spoil tip.

There are two stories about the subselquent events that occurred leading to the abandonment of the mine.

Here, we’re actually at the border of four different communes and the story that’s often bandied around in the area is the communes could not reach an agreement as to how the rights, the obligations and, more importantly, the taxes would be apportioned between them.

But knowing a little about life in the Auvergne, having lived there for long enough, I consider that to be an unlikely tale. Around here, money certainly talks and I’m certain that a large organisation like Michelin would have been able to overwhelm a few local concillors by waving a handful of used fivers around at various commune treasuries.

However, a good while ago I was having a scratch around in the vicinity and I came across the coal seam where it came out on the surface. So I’m much more inclined to believe that the seam, despite being so thick where the mine was sunk, simply petered out a short distance further on where geological inclination brought it to the surface.

The mine closed down after a mere 5 years and it’s significant that none of the other pits in the area survived all that much longer
.

The four of uscarried on along oour route past Arno’s and round by the carrière de la Peize where a lot of the stones for the substantial builtings in the are was quarried..

After we left we went Clotilde’s back to my house and collected a few things that I had forgotten and which I needed. I spent 25 minutes looking for A BOOK that I needed but couldn’t find. And after I had given up I put my hand straight onto it by accident.

Having also collected a few other things that would come in handy back at Granville we then drove to the camp site at Les Ancizes.

Ingrid was there already so I treated her and Rosemary to a meal with thanks for all the help that they had given me over the last few days. It was nice to be together for a quiet social occasion after all of the hard work that we had done.

Now I’m back at Rosemary’s and I’m off to bed already. I want an early night as I have a heavy day in front of me tomorrow. There’s a lot to do and I don’t think, the way things are going, that I have a lot of time in which to do it.

Saturday 25th July 2020 – I’M WHACKED PART III

We’ve been hard at it again today.

And still suffering the effects of yesterday because no matter what, I still couldn’t rouse myself out for the third alarm. 06:40 it was when I finally crawled out of bed.

There was the usual cup of tea brought to me, and then I carried on with paperwork and the like.

There was a group of us last night in a hotel, a conference or something like that. I ended up sharing a table with someone who resembled a girl from the radio. It seemed that at every meal I was sitting next to her which pleased me enormously of course. This slowly developed over the period that we were there. We were all on our own in a group, a lot of us, talking about spices and herbs. She had a huge collection of spices that she bought and she told us where to go to get them. She said that anyone who would like to could buy her a spice as a memento. I was immediately keen to go along and do this. In the end I found where she indicated the spice shop was but is was a 2nd hand record shop. I was looking in there at the records and found loads of obscure American records of the type that I’ve been recording of my own collection but this isn’t really getting my thing advanced. At some point I’d been talking to a couple of guys. This girl and another girl had said that they had been friends for 22 years and they can’t possibly have been work colleagues for 22 years because they weren’t much older than that so we were wondering if they had been friends or something. I made some kind of remark “it doesn’t matter if they are 22 years old I could still keep up”. I was with her friend at one particular point when a Ford Cortina Estate mark III gold came by, covered in patches of underseal and rust preventer, that kind of thing. I told her that I had a vehicle like that. She expressed surprise but wasn’t very interested. That reminded me that somewhere along the line I was with Nerina at one point talking about getting a new car for the taxis but for our own private vehicle would we be tempted to get something decent that we could use for a taxi if necessary and was that really a good idea. I thought that I’d like my taxi business to be bigger but only in a bigger town where there is room and scope without treading on people’s toes. But back to this story with the girl from the radio – I remember that they went off on an expedition somewhere leaving some of us behind. I was left behind and feeling very disappointed about this.

At another point in the night there was a question about scaffolding – being on scaffolding and what happens if a pole breaks or someone cuts one while you are on it. Terry told me about a system that he had where there was always a couple of wires to attach the scaffolding to various points somewhere so that if it did break the wires would snag somewhere and at least give some kind of temporary support while you scrambled down.

This yacht thing – there was more to it than that, including me buying a yacht for some reason. And I would love to know what “this yacht thing” was all about and what did I forget to record during the night.

After breakfast we collected our wits and the like and then headed off to Ingrid’s with the trailer. I managed to reverse that all the way down the drive at Daniel’s and drop it off there although the socket would benefit from a pile of easing oil.

Ingrid was pleased to see us and we had a long chat – to such an extent that Ingrid made lunch for us. We were there for quite a while.

Later on we went to Les Guis. I found a few things that we needed either for Rosemary’s house or for the barn and did a little more clearing.

One thing that I did was to place the pane of glass in the frame above the door in the bathroom. I bought that just before I was taken ill and I’d never had the chance to fit it. Rodents had been getting into the shower room and I wanted to keep them out.

That was actually the first constructive thing that I’d done down there. The ret of the time I’ve spent either clearing up or weeding. Having inspected the hole in the attic I injected a pile of expanding foam into it to block it up and I’ll see tomorrow if that has done the trick.

With the van all loaded up we went round to say goodbye to my neighbours but they were busy so we didn’t spend any time there.

Back here we crashed out for an hour or so and then I unloaded Caliburn.

After tea I had a look at a chair that needed fixing. I managed some of it with the aid of an electric drill that had a jammed trigger which was something of a complication, but the project failed because the sunken nut that I had found was too large for the hole. That’s a job for a wood file in due course.

Having had a shower and a clothes washing session, I’m now off to bed. Sunday tomorrow so a lie-in. And I’ve earned that too after this week’s efforts.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: les guis

Sunday 29th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Thursday 24th October 2024 – THEY BROUGHT ME …

Sunday 29th September 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

Monday 9th September 2024 – HERE WE GO AGAIN

Saturday 23rd March 2023 – A FEW MONTHS AGO …

Friday 22nd March 2024 – I’M NOT HAVING …

Monday 18th March 2024 – I’M SUPPOSED TO …

Sunday 25th February 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

Sunday 22nd October 2023 – I WASN’T ACTUALLY …

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 – WELCOME HOME

Thursday 14th October 2021 – IT’S BEEN ONE …

Tuesday 20th October 2020 – AFTER ALL …

Wednesday 12th August 2020 – ANOTHER SWELTERING DAY …

Sunday 26th July 2020 – IT’S SUNDAY …

Saturday 25th July 2020 – I’M WHACKED PART III

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