Tag Archives: ley lines

Tuesday 29th October 2024 – I HAVE LOST …

… a sock somewhere in this apartment. And with only 40m² in which to lose it, that’s some going.

Last night I took them off and stuck them over the back of my office chair ready for the morning, and when I went to pick them up, there was one on the floor and the other was nowhere to be found.

This is the kind of thing that you would immediately blame on the cat, but that’s rather difficult to do when I don’t have a cat, and we all know that there’s a sock goblin who lives in every washing machine, goblin up the socks but again that’s not likely to be the case seeing as my socks were nowhere near the washing machine.

But it’s not anywhere to be found, this missing sock. I have turned the place upside down to try to find it but it seems to have made good its escape and that would seem to be that.

It was just before going to bed that I took them off. That was rather later than I planned after everything that I had to do, and it annoyed me that I was so late yet again

Once I was in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly but awoke shortly afterwards and then spent a couple of hours tossing and turning before going back to sleep – something of a variation on the usual post-dialysis procedure.

This morning I didn’t need the alarm to awaken. In fact, when I looked at my watch to see what time it was, it was actually 06:59 – one minute before the alarm was due to go off. It goes without saying that I didn’t beat it to my feet this morning.

Gathering up my clothes to take into the bathroom, that was when I noticed the absence of a sock. “Never mind” I mused. “There’s a clean pair hanging from the octopus in the bathroom. I’ll find the missing sock in due course”. That was famous last words, wasn’t it?

While I was washing, I realised that despite what I said last night, I wasn’t all that disturbed by the events in the Dialysis Clinic and I’d survived the night without any serious issues. Live to fight another day, I reckon.

Back in here I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone note to find out where I’d been during the night. There I was having some kind of dream about being in bed, connecting up to dialysis machines, all that kind of thing. I was really surprised to find myself on the right side of the bed when I briefly awoke instead of on the left side where I’d just been in that dream. I didn’t remember too much of this but I suddenly awoke and was freezing cold again

That sounds as if it was exciting, dreaming about the Dialysis Clinic. Maybe it did affect me more than I thought just now. And if I’m dreaming that I’m cold, that’s worrying because in order to cover up my arms and not tear the plasters off by mistake, I’d gone to bed with a jumper on.

And then I was in Crewe and had to go to the centre of Brussels to see the doctor or to give him a form or ask him for something. I set off on foot but went a strange way and ended up going down Earle Street. I thought “I don’t have all that much time if I have to be there”. I had a think and thought that it takes me 30 or 40 minutes going this way then I have to cut through all the side streets and alleys etc. All in all it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes and it’s complicated but if I just went straight into the centre of Brussels down the Boulevard and around the Ring it would only take me an hour and fifteen minutes going that way. I set off clutching my form and a few other things, still trying to work out the times. I went past Zero’s house. Usually I’d be going in there, having a coffee, staying for a chat and generally making myself unwelcome but today I was in a rush so I just went to say hello as I was passing. We ended up having a good talk about T.Rex. I’d given Zero’s father a single or two in the past but suddenly he began to search among his CDs and then went through a box, a tin that looked as if it was a tin that contained CDs. He was obviously looking for a CD but in the end couldn’t find it. I said “don’t worry. It’ll do, whatever it is, another time”. Then of course I had to go but for some reason I couldn’t tear myself away but time was drawing on. I’d miss my slot at the doctor’s to hand over this form if I didn’t get a move on very quickly.

If I’m planning on walking from Crewe to Brussels in one hour and fifteen minutes I ought to be competing in the Olympics. Strangely though, if I walked to work from where I lived with Laurence and Roxanne and went through the alleys of Schaerbeek it did take one hour and fifteen minutes. But when I lived out on the edge of the city in Expo it was more usual for me to talk down the Boulevard to the city centre then around the Inner Ring and down the Rue de la Loi. That was, until I went to work out at the sub-office when it was back to the alleys of Schaerbeek again.

It’s not unreasonable to expect me to find it difficult to tear myself away from Zero’s house. Imagine being there and she being elsewhere. It’s a few times that that has happened and it’s rather depressing to think that I’ve missed her like that.

Later on, a friend of mine contacted me to ask if I wanted to buy ten American school buses. “Not particularly” I thought but then again I thought that it depends for how much they are on sale. Something like that could be extremely interesting so I resolved to make further enquiries. The first thing that I did was to check his bank account, making sure that the numbers that he quoted me came out as being to him so I knew that at least that part of the deal was going to be OK. This all happened while I was at work. I had two enormous files on my desk full of work that I was trying to resolve for a couple of people. It was really complicated and I was having to think about this. I had a young girl assistant who kept coming and going, taking one of the files to do some of the work that I’d pointed out. All of this was going on, there was one thing and then the other. Then the ‘phone rang. It was a voice saying “hello Eric. Se we’re off to Chicago at the end of the month”. I asked “are we?” and they replied “ohh are you going too?”. I didn’t have the first clue who it was but this conversation went on for quite a long time until suddenly he said something, then I realised that he was a guy whom I’d met in a pub while we’d been watching an American Football game. We ended up talking about the Superbowl – it would have been nice as an event but not the complete Carnival the way that it was shown on TV, how there had been so much controversy about the way that it had been shown that they were no longer showing it. The guy was really sad because he had a friend who was a lottery expert. They’d all won the lottery so this was why they were going but now with no American Football there was no longer a lottery. This conversation went on for hours like this guy was my best friend and I’d only met him just that once. We talked about the USA, we talked about Scotland, how they were OK to visit but only in small doses. I had to say that I was just totally bewildered about all of this, why I’d suddenly seemed to become this guy’s very best friend.

Just recently I’ve had to verify a bank account in some kind of similar circumstances, but not in connection with buying American school buses. One of my friends actually does own a retired school bus, don’t you, Rhys, and I’ve slept in it too when I was in South Carolina. But there have been several occasions when I’ve had long and complicated and quite often personal conversations with people either on the ‘phone or in real life and I’ve ended up wondering “who the hell was that?” because I didn’t recognise them or their voice at all.

Isabelle the nurse came round and she tried her best to motivate me and lift up my spirits. That’s not an easy thing to do when I’m down in the dumps but I was grateful for her kind words.

After she left I made breakfast and finished off my book. The geology lecture was very interesting and the book concluded with a list of walks where we could see the different strata. There were eight walks in all and if I were in the UK and in better health I’d go out and do them. But they aren’t for the faint-hearted. The author tells us "much time is taken up in surveying the country and hammering the rocks, and that a twelve miles’ walk as estimated by the map is a good day’s work for the hardiest geologist"

How many people these days would be prepared to have a twelve-mile walk? Add to that the fact that these walks start and finish at local rural railway stations, most of which fell victim to the Beeching Axe in the mid-60s and so you’d have even farther to walk these days.

The next book is going to be EARLY BRITISH TRACKWAYS by our old friend Alfred Watkins who we have met before.

He was at one time President of the Woolhope Naturalists and his book is a summary and enlargement of the talk that he gave to the Society in 1921.

This book is important because it was while researching it that he developed his theory of ley lines, a theory that led to his book THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK that we read and discussed a couple of months ago and which created such a stir when people began to realise the significance of the subject that he was discussing.

His theory was that many prehistoric and not so prehistoric man-made geographical features and many natural geographical features lay along straight lines that stretched for miles across the country and even across the sea to mainland Europe, and he was probing for a reason why this would be so. He reckoned that there were so many of them that it was hardly a coincidence.

His theories were given a new lease of life by new-age people in the 1960s and 1970s and pushed way beyond any boundary that Watkins ever imagined. However his theories have been rubbished by modern researchers who have pointed out that you could draw the same straight lines through the position of such objects as telephone boxes

However, that’s not as strange as you might imagine. Watkins comments that his “ley lines” passed through such places as road junctions, many of which are situated at the crossing of ancient prehistoric trackways that might have been incorporated into the modern road network. And they passed through many churches too, which are quite often (more often than many people will admit) situated on ancient, prehistoric sacred sites. And where would you expect to find a telephone box? At a road junction or outside a church of course, which might correspond with the position of one of Watkins’ points on a ley line.

So whether or not you believe in whatever Watkins was trying to prove, his books make a very interesting and absorbing read.

Back in here I didn’t do much at first. It’s half-term so there’s no Welsh class so I just relaxed for a couple of hours and made the most of it.

Then, before lunch, I attacked the Welsh homework that I had planned to do today. That’s half of it done and I’ll do the other half at the weekend.

After lunch I made a start on another radio programme.

This one is also a special occasion and finding the music wasn’t easy. But I managed to track down everything that, although it’s not exactly what I wanted, will still make a good, relevant programme. And I began to write the text for it.

There are eleven tracks, which run to about one hour and twenty-eight minutes. Then there’s the text to go with it. So for one hour’s worth of programme there will have to be some serious editing.

So which tracks to leave out? The answer is to write and dictate the notes for all of them, see what I have and then see where I end up. It’s a shame though to leave some of them out because there’s some good stuff in there.

There was a break for hot chocolate and the last of the chocolate cake. Tomorrow I’ll be back on the crackers and hummus while I think of my next move.

With no stuffing, my tea tonight was rather different. It was still a taco roll but there had been a tin of refried beans that must, I reckon, have been lying around here since the building was built in 1668. So it was refried beans and salad on my taco roll tonight, cooked lightly in the microwave.

Refried beans reminds me of my trip TO SANTA FE IN 2002 when I drove all around the town looking for refried beans and eventually tracked down some spicy chili beans.

There’s not much of my apple cake left. Just enough for tomorrow so I may well on Thursday have a bash at a rice pudding and see how that works out. I may as well experiment with the air fryer and see what I can do

But not now as I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow.

But talking of telephone boxes … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of a discussion that I had a while back.
With the rise of mobile ‘phones and the loss of all of these telephone boxes all over the country, where do superheroes go when they want to put their underpants on outside their trousers?
When we all lived in the Auvergne I had to plead with the mayor of Virlet to keep the one in our village so if anyone asked for my urgent help, I could dash into the telephone box and put my underpants on outside my trousers and then dash off to their aid.
But while we were discussing telephone boxes one of my friends mentioned that she’d seen my brother with his underpants on outside his trousers once
"Is he a superhero too?" she asked
"Not at all" I replied
"So why does he do it?"
"He does it" I said "because he’s two sandwiches short of a picnic"

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Saturday 24th August 2024 – I HAVE EMULATED …

… my namesake the mathematician today and ended up doing three fifths of five eighths of … errrr … nothing.

Yes, it’s about time that I had a day off after everything that I’ve been doing just recently. And how much I enjoyed it too.

So much so that I actually sorted out a few squares of chocolate from the supply and treated myself. God alone knows what this would make my potassium count, but who cares?

After last night’s efforts and not going to bed and letting it all hang out after midnight, it’s nice to have a little treat like that. I certainly deserved it. Watching the football and writing my notes last night was exhausting work.

By the time that I’d done everything that I needed to do it was a long time after my preferred bedtime when I crawled under the sheets. And with just a handful of hours before the alarm it was just as well that I was asleep more-or-less instantly.

There was the odd bit of awakening during the night but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was fast asleep under the covers.

So when the alarm went off I switched it off and made my way into the bathroom.

First task was to deal with this little sample that the nurse wanted. And in my befuddled state at 07:00 in the morning I was confused and wrote tomorrow’s date on the side of the container. That will confuse them down at the laboratory.

Then I had a good scrub up and washed my shorts. That’s my usual Saturday morning task, to make sure that they are clean for the forthcoming week. It’s a pain only having the one pair.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of show on the television about some folk musicians. They were all sitting together playing some music. One of them had his bass guitar and played a few bass runs for one song and they were really impressive so we stopped the programme at that point ad went back to begin to talk about this guys bass playing, which was something that we didn’t really know. He told us a little story, and told us about these bass runs. One of the other people there joined in so I said “I’ll go and fetch my bass and we can have three of us together playing it. Someone else there had a recorder so they joined in. One of the bassists with the recorder couldn’t get the recorder in tune as if there was something blocking one of the reeds. No matter how he blew he just had a strange noise out of his flute or recorder, whatever it was. In the end we had to stop the programme again while he had to dismantle his instrument. It was really interesting because I would have given everything to have been on that programme as a bassist instead of as a simple interviewer but it just wasn’t to be. It wasn’t to be my day to get me on there. Everyone seemed to be far more interested in the story that these people had to tell than any story that I could add into it. And quite right too. It was why they were there – to entertain and to tell their stories. I have plenty of other opportunities to tell mine.

That’s a story that has an all-too-familiar ring about it. I always seem to miss out on an opportunity as there will always be “another time” which as we all know, is something that never comes around

This was a dream in an Immigration Centre where a young guy was coming into Wales to play football for one of the teams. He’d lived in Wales before, for four years and had played as a Junior and as a full adult in various teams before being transferred out of the country playing abroad but was now coming back. At first the Immigration officials were very unsympathetic but he overheard a discussion between someone else and the Immigration about a large group of people, one of whom was an undesirable, but that person was arguing so hard to let him in that it was embarrassing. This was what galvanised the boy into thinking maybe he ought to persevere with this officer about trying to come into Wales because it seemed to be that his case was much more solid than this other person’s yet so much interest was being taken in it. That encouraged him to press on wit his application rather than give up as he might have done before.

There are more than a few stories about things like this in British football where because of the strict Immigration laws, imaginative solutions have to be applied to some footballers coming from outside the EU, such as loaning them to clubs in Belgium where the Immigration laws are much more relaxed, until they have enough “European” time.

There was a charge for misconduct brought about against one of the leading clubs in the league. They had produced something like a 20-point plan showing why another club was in breach of all kinds of various regulations. At the Court hearing the offended club stood up and made the argument that apart from the title, everything else in this document was based on pure speculation. At that point I stood up and accused their solicitor of gaslighting because I’d produced some evidence about a Court case that had taken place and will take place in the future. That was included in this document so I knew for a fact that those allegations were perfectly true so I was perfectly convinced that the solicitor for this football team was trying to gaslight the meeting so I stood up and made my objection known. This went down extremely unwell and managed to rob me of a position at the summit of the football league for three or four days

This has a ring of truth about it. I used to write for an on-line Sports magazine called, would you believe, “Shitesports”. This was almost 25 years ago when I ran a spoof news column about fictitious events in Welsh football, but the chairman of one of the biggest clubs in Wales took it seriously and made several remarks that were considered to be totally out-of-place in the factual World, based on some things that I’d written in my column.

Isabelle the nurse came round later and we had a chat as she took my blood sample and then sorted out my legs. She was impressed that I’d done what she asked and done it so quickly too. She’s not used to this.

And then all of the supplies are fully stocked up. That took her by surprise too.

After she left I made breakfast and had a very slow start to the day, reading an ancient book on ley lines and the like. The author is of the opinion that ancient roads and trackways honeycomb the country and any like drawn between two ancient monuments will pass through dozens of churches, ponds and other sighting marks.

His theories have been rubbished – someone saying that you could do the same this with telephone boxes for example, but on the other hand, aren’t telephone boxes usually sited at crossroads, at monuments and outside churches?

The author is probably wide of the mark when he suggests that every case of a straight line can be laid at the door of a Neolithic ley-man, but I bet that there’s more truth in his assumptions than his critics allow.

This afternoon I had to mooch around for a while and then make an important ‘phone call.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning that I’m on the verge of spending a lot of money on a project in the UK. Wheels are now in motion and staff has been engaged, and I had a very long chat with my “colleague” to receive his report and set out a plan of action.

One thing that I have learned is that specialist tasks call for specialist help and trying to do tasks like this yourself end up costing you much more money than you will save.

If you have access to professionals, then make use of these opportunities and don’t worry about the cost as they will save you money in the long run.

The costs of me travelling back and forth to the UK, even if I could, would be more than whatever I would have to pay a professional consultant to act on my behalf and deal with matters by Zoom.

But more of this anon.

By now it was tea-time and I’d had no food since breakfast so I was good and ready. I’d promised myself sausage, beans and chips and that was exactly what I had, and it was delicious.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no-one makes baked beans like the British, not even the “British Recipe” beans in Maritime Canada, and I’ll be devastated when my little stock here runs out.

So now I’m going to dictate some radio notes and then go to bed.

But the guy with whom I was talking was one of the ones with whom I spent that glorious “Summer of ’76” camped out at that old sand quarry near Congleton. Part of the bank had collapsed so there was like a beach that went down into the lagoon and that was where we all hung out.
One of the girls was swimming in the water and shouted to him "why don’t you come and swim with us?"
"I can’t come in like this" he said
"Like what?" she asked
"Like this" he replied, opening his dressing gown to reveal that he wasn’t wearing his swimming trunks underneath.
He was a big boy too and sunk her at a distance of 25 yards. But later that night, apparently she crept into his tent for a closer inspection

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Sunday 29th October 2023 – NOT ONCE, NOT TWICE …

… but three times I’ve gone to walk out of the kitchen without my crutches.

Not that I got very far of course, but the fact that I actually found myself doing it must mean that I’m feeling that there’s a sign of improvement, whether there’s a real improvement or not.

Last night in bed was a real improvement. Or, at least, it would have been but no fewer than three people pinged me at some point during the morning while I was asleep.

And it must have been early too because I was actually up and about this morning at 08:50. That’s taking into account the changing of the hour too They must have been busy out at Stonehenge last night moving all those stones around.

After the medication I checked the mails and messages, replied to a few of them and then checked the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. A friend of mine had been having problems at home and had been sent home for a few weeks. I’d driven him. After I’d left him I was wandering around somewhere. I bumped into a woman and we began to chat. She mentioned that her son too was having problems. They considered that he was spending far too much time at his music than at his studies and that the past couple of weeks his group had played 7 gigs. Basically she said that the members of the group were pretty broke and needed the money. I replied “we could all do with that. I’d play 7 gigs in a fortnight if I were to have the chance”. She said something like “do you think you would?”. I replied “I’m no better than many and probably as bad as most”.

And then it was a Thursday. There was just one more day of work before the office closed for the summer. The boss had already been in to me to give me a couple of questions that needed asking. One was “was our employee on long-term sick leave likely to come tomorrow?” and “would a certain rock group be playing? Would anyone else be playing?. There were several others. I had that much on my plate that at the moment I hadn’t actually asked the question. 10 minutes before it was time to go home he came along and interrupted me again, asking me the same questions. I replied that at the moment I hadn’t found out. He asked me what I thought. I replied that what I thought was pretty much irrelevant. He said “the important thing to know is whether this girl is going to come in and whether this rock group is going to be playing”. I replied “you asked me that a little earlier but I haven’t actually done it yet. There’s still 10 minutes before we go home and if you continue asking me these kinds of questions and keep interrupting what I’m doing while I’m working we’ll never find the answer because I’ll be going home without the task being done.

Nerina came home from work later and said that she’d had a puncture in her car. It entered into my head but for some reason, like many other things, it was pushed to the back. Next morning when we were both going to work, for some reason we went in one of the Cortinas. We had an argument on the way. I was trying to read a letter and she was hovering over me with a jug of water. I snapped at her and she asked why. I said “it’s important, this letter, and you’re spilling water on it”. As usual it led to a dispute. We arrived at work and were sitting in the foyer going through all of the correspondence we’d had that morning. I suddenly realised that I should have been at my desk a long time before this. As we packed up our stuff ready to go to our respective offices she said “at least you have something that I would like to have and you’re lucky to have it” etc. I asked what it was and she replied “you have 4 good tyres on your car”. I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t changed the tyre over on her car. I asked “why didn’t you remind me?”. She made some remark like she was always having to remind me to do things. I explained that I had so much going on that it was very difficult. “You need to sit on top of me to make me do these things at the moment rather than just tell me and let it drift away”. But things never worked out how they were supposed to work out.

Actually, that’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. I had a bad car accident late one night while I was taxi-driving and the bracket that holds the seat belt to the central pillar of the car was driven into the back of my skull. Even now, I still have the depressed fracture and it plays havoc with my memory. It must have been wild back in 1987.

“I can’t remember who I was with now” I dictated, which somehow seemed quite apposite considering that we’ve just been talking about my fractured skull. But whoever it was, it might have been Laurence or it might have been Cécile but could equally have been anyone else. We were living in a typical chaotic, untidy apartment. Something had happened about our old family home. I had the keys to it. A tenant who was in there moved out so we went down to see it. First of all there was an issue that the Post Office was no longer delivering. An old man in the neighbourhood was trying to arrange for all post to be delivered to him so that he could set himself up as a postman. We went into the house and met the landlord. There were quite a few things in the house that I didn’t recognise eg. there was a parlophone door-entry type phone on the wall by the chimney. I said “that’s new, isn’t it?”. One of the women said “it’s nothing to do with the landlord. That was something private that the occupier put in. We had a lengthy discussion about the house with the landlord and a few of the neighbours who were inside. At the same time we’d actually bought a house or apartment and we were going to have to move. It was something like the 28th of May we’d have to hand in our notice within a couple of days before the end of the month or we’d be stuck in our rented apartment for another month. But up to that date my partner (whoever it was) and I had never spent even one moment discussing our plans about moving. I had a feeling that this was something else that was all going to end in total chaos.

Later on I ended up having a video chat with someone. We’d already had a lengthy text chat but then it evolved into a video chat. And this new camera that I bought a few weeks ago really is good. I’m very happy with that.

And a chat that I had yesterday with someone whose interactions with me usually take place in the hours of darkness when I’m asleep also picked up during the day too.

There was no more pizza dough left so I made another batch of that this afternoon. Two lots ended up in the freezer and a third ended up on a pizza tray. What with having to order my flour on-line now, I can’t obtain the flour that I like and have to make do with what I can get.

Nevertheless, the dough, even if it was rather more sticky than usual, did work out very well and made a really nice pizza.

For the last few weeks I’ve been reading a book THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK by Alfred Watkins. He was the man who laid down the theory of ley lines in the 1920s which since then has been brought into disrepute by the antics of various Esoteric Movements.

Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating account of all kinds of ancient and medieval mounds, ruins and trackways along the border between England and Wales, even if you don’t accept the ley lines theory.

As well as that though, it’s now brought me into an even more interesting one, EARTHWORKS OF ENGLAND and while I’ve not yet read it, I’m quite looking forward to settling down with a nice mug of hot chocolate in a quiet corner with some home-made biscuits and the book.

So tomorrow I have to arrange for Caliburn to go for his Controle Technique and then start to organise myself ready for this series of Re-education courses starting on Tuesday for 20 days.

That sounds exciting, and it can’t make things any worse than they are now.

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