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Friday 15th May 2026 – WE ARE NOT …

… alone!!

Currently asleep on my comfortable sofa in the living room is my friend from Munich, and on the rug by his side is the Hound of the Baskervilles, both of them snoring away quite happily.

Yes, at lunchtime, I received a message – “arriving at about 16:00”. I thought to myself “blimmin’ ‘eck – I’d better get a move on!”.

It made me wish that I’d got a move on last night, really. As usual, after having no tea yet again, I came in here to type up my notes, and as usual, things seemed to take much longer than they ought to have done. However, it was about 21:50 when I finally managed to slide into bed.

During the night, I awoke once or twice, one of which was about 01:00 once more, although this time there was no hailstorm or anything going on that might have woken me. The second time, and I have no idea what time it was, I had to leave the bed to go and walk the parapet. However, quite luckily, I managed to fall asleep both times fairly rapidly.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, we had the usual struggle to my feet, which seemed to take hours, and then I went off to organise myself in the bathroom and then take my medication. The LeClerc order the other day had included some liquorice and mint tea, which, I’m told, will ease my throat somewhat, so I used that to wash down the pills and tablets. We’ll see if it works.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was with a couple of friends last night. They were settling down in their new house and we were discussing cars. They had bought a brand new – one of these Chinese electric cars and they were astonished at all of the restrictions on it. It said that they couldn’t sell it in the Dordogne, all kinds of things like that. We supposed that it was due to something with people buying cars on finance and then disappearing. We ended up talking about cars in the auctions, about cars that had been dropped and been banged, etc. and were going at full price. They then mentioned a Ford Escort that had been some old woman’s car. It was a bit scabby and rough around the edges but it was otherwise in very good condition but no-one seemed to be interested in it. The husband then showed me a piece of paper about the insurance on his old FIAT, about all of the declarations that he had to sign when he came to sell it. This dream went on for ages but I can’t remember any more about it, except that this incident in the Dordogne, there was a clause in their insurance that said that although they can’t sell the car in the Dordogne, they could take it to this woman’s office at 16:00 and she would buy it from them.

When I had my taxis, I had both kinds of cars – former reps’ cars with high mileage and little old ladies’ cars with almost nothing on the clock. Surprisingly, the reps’ cars were so much better and worked a lot harder than the other, having been used to a hard life and plenty of work.

But if this Escort were merely scabby around the edges, it should have tidied up quite nicely, so I’m surprised that, even in the dream, no-one seemed to be interested in it.

But back in this dream the time was about 01:15 and it seemed that I had been awake ever since I’d gone to bed. I was walking around on a cold wood floor so in the end, I went to put on my socks. However, it was extremely complicated with them being these compression socks and I had to try three or four times before I was able to put them on.

Every now and again, I have to fit my own socks when I have an early start, and with them being these compression socks, it really is awkward. However, walking around on a cold wood floor in the bedroom feels really nice to me – it’s the cold tiles everywhere else in this apartment that annoys me. That’s the only thing that I don’t like about my apartment. I would really have liked to have had a wooden floor, but you can’t have everything.

One thing about this dream that I forgot was that when they went to insure the car, the girl couldn’t see the car listed in her manual, but when my friend’s wife looked, it was there, as clear as daylight.

It’s no surprise though. If you asked me to name the top five Chinese cars on the market these days, I wouldn’t have a clue.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, and we talked about the Hound of the Baskervilles as she sorted out my legs and feet. I told her not to fight with my cleaner over him – they can take turns to stroke him.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT.

At long last, we’re getting down to the excavations at Reculver. However, not his excavations but excavations that took place earlier in the nineteenth century by other people. One day, soon I hope, we’ll start on his work and see what he found.

Back in here, I finished off the notes for the radio programme that I’d started yesterday, and then I had a huge surprise.

A few years ago … "2017 to be precise" – ed … I hired a boat and went UP LABRADOR’S NORTHERN COAST to what I consider to be the Furdustrandir or “Wonderstrand” … "or Wunderstrand" – ed … the magnificent stretch of white sand that the Norse explorers saw when they touched land after sailing from Greenland.

Also there are the scanty, rotting remains of North River, a settlement that was abandoned during the clearances of the 1950s when everyone from these isolated spots was removed to towns like Cartwright and a few others farther south. North River is famous, or infamous, because of a child’s grave in the cemetery. A Finnish anthropologist called Viano Tanner explored these settlements in 1937-39 and noted the grave of a child “killed by dogs”. Everyone disputed that this gravestone exists and claimed that no such event ever happened, so I wanted to see for myself. And it is there!

But while I was there, I photographed a few other gravestones.

Someone wrote to me in astonishment, saying that one of the graves was that of her grandfather, and what did I know about him. So I spent all morning researching all of the papers that I have on Labrador, and in the end, I sent her what I could find, which actually was quite a lot.

At that point, I decided that I’d better go and make bread, but my cleaner arrived to do her stuff, so I had to settle for a disgusting drink and my midday (hours late) medication.

Once she’d left, I began the process of making bread rolls and a loaf, but my friend and the Hound of the Baskervilles turned up while I had my hands full of dough.

It’s lovely to see him again. We first met on our first day at grammar school back in September 1965 and, like me, he’s a big music fan. When I was able to do so, I went down to Munich on many occasions to visit him, but these days, people have to come to see me here, and it’s nice when they do.

While I was making bread, we talked about old times and people whom we knew at school who are now pushing up the daisies somewhere, and once the bread was left to rise, I blanched some broccoli and made a broccoli stalk soup with pasta for tea.

To my surprise, I found myself eating some soup and bread – the first evening meal that I’ve had for months. However, my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I ended up being a miserable failure towards the end.

By the time that we’d finished and I’d washed up everything … "where did this energy come from?" – ed … it was after 23:00 so we decided that it was bedtime. And when was the last time that I was up and about at this time of night? Obviously, having people here is doing me good.

Anyway, I sorted myself out in the bathroom and then came in here to sleep. Crawling into my nice comfortable bed is really wonderful at any time. I threw the quilt over my head and that was that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about snoring … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time when I was driving for Shearings on a coach tour somewhere and one of the passengers, a youngish female, asked me "if I fall asleep and begin to snore, will you wake me up?"
"Certainly" I replied. "Shall I shake you, or give you a nudge?"

Saturday 2nd May 2026 – SO HERE I AM …

… again, late as usual after another evening of football, and surprisingly, I’m not all that tired. Hardly surprising seeing that I seem to have spent most of the morning asleep.

Last night was a better night too. Although I started rather late in writing my notes, by the time that I’d finished and done whatever else I needed to do before going to bed, it was about 21:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

As usual, it took longer than it used to for me to fall asleep, and that’s all that I remember until I awoke some time later. The reason for that was that I had to go to walk the parapet yet again, so I checked the time for once as it looked as if day was dawning.

Sure enough, it was 05:46, which meant that for the first time since I don’t know when, I’d managed eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Back in here, I suppose that I could have dictated a few radio notes, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … how is it possible to dictate anything when I’m coughing like I am? One of these days, I’ll post the *.mp3 of some dictaphone notes so that you can hear for yourself just what’s happening.

Instead, I went back to bed and waited for the alarm to go off. And when it did, it took me a good while to leave the bed yet again.

In the bathroom, I sorted myself out and had a good scrub-up, and I also changed some clothes and had a handwashing session. Consequently, I was late in the kitchen but, nevertheless, I made my hot drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

For some reason, I’d moved apartment and was busy sorting out all of my things as to what goes where. The apartment that I’d bought was nothing like as nice as mine, but never mind. There was a kind of built-in chest in the living room, so I’d laughed and joked about it being a good place to hide the bodies and that had led to a local policewoman coming around. She wanted to inspect the box so I had to open it for her. It was rather a complicated affair with a long bar and two padlocks on it, but I opened it, and there was nothing in it, so she was satisfied and eventually left. Then I began to go to look at the bathroom because I hadn’t actually seen the bathroom beforehand. I turned on the light, and I was rather disappointed because it was one of these 1960s or early 1970s bathrooms with light blue tiles, very cheap fittings, etc. There was a shower there that was rather small. One thing about the shower was that there was a heavy padlock on it and I hadn’t been left the keys for this so I thought that I’d either have to contact the previous owner or else remove the whole bar and staple. I couldn’t understand why there was a padlock on the shower, particularly on the outside, because that was where it was pretty much useless from anyone who was taking a shower at that time.

What a strange dream this was. The bathroom reminds me of the one in Reyers, although there was a bath there rather than a shower. There is also no reason for me to want to move apartment, although when I was looking for a place to live in Brussels in 1999/2000, I saw more than enough. However, I wasn’t usually quick enough, and that’s how I ended up with Expo.

The padlock on the shower is interesting, though. What would a padlock on the outside of a shower be doing there?

Isabelle the Nurse turned up rather later than usual, having started her round at 06:00 with a series of blood samples to take. I’ve seen her working at 19:00 in the evening too so no wonder she only works one week on and one week off.

We had a little chat about nothing much and then she left. I could crack on with making breakfast and reading some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’re discussing Anglo-Saxon interments and the grave goods that were found in their graves. And like most historians and archaeologists of his generation, he’s mistaking British pre-Roman burial barrows as being Anglo-Saxon, and consequently confusing the origins of the artefacts found therein.

After breakfast, I fell asleep at the table for fifteen minutes and then, back in here, I fell asleep on my chair for almost the rest of Saturday morning.

Once I awoke and came back round into the Land of the Living, I began to work on the radio programme. I managed to pair and segue the tracks, and then I began to write the notes.

There was an interruption in the middle where I went to make my taco roll with this pepper pâté and salad, with some of Liz’s salad dressing, and it was completely delicious. Then I had some croissants to make ready for the next few Sundays, seeing as I ran out last Sunday. They are now all prepared, ready for baking tomorrow morning.

Back in here, I plodded on with the radio notes wearily and bravely, with no ambition at all, but nevertheless, they were finished by the time the football began. That was a triumph of mind over matter to complete that, but at least it means that I can have a day off tomorrow, apart from Welsh homework and bread-baking.

The football was the deciding match to see who would earn the fourth European place for this summer. Penybont, who have slipped down the table since the last time they played as if they were enjoying it, beating Caernarfon in the autumn in a monsoon, and Hwlffordd, who, after a dismal start to the season, have played so much better ever since.

But Hwlffordd couldn’t seem to string two passes together today, and their wafer-thin squad meant that they had to play with a back three of two midgets and an attacking midfielder, and they paid the penalty. Penybont had seemed to find all of their old enthusiasm and were much better with their use of the ball. In the end, they ran out as deserved 2-0 winners.

So now, I’m off to bed, looking forward to a long sleep and a nice lie-in, if I have the chance.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about coughing … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once went to the doctor’s with a cough like mine.
The doctor examined him and said "I’m sorry, but you don’t have very long to live"
"How long, doctor?" he asked.
"Ten" replied the doctor.
"Ten what?"
"Nine."

Friday 1st May 2026 – HAPPY LABOUR DAY …

… everyone, to those who celebrate it and also to those who don’t, because today, AS THE BEE-GEES WILL REMIND US, is the First of May.

And today has also been a somewhat better day for me too, which is also good news, although it does have to be said that days couldn’t have been much worse just recently.

Last night, after sorting myself out after dialysis, I came in here and attacked the notes. And, would you believe, it wasn’t long after 20:00 that I’d actually finished. I must have been in bed by 20:45 – it was still light outside anyway.

As usual, it took longer than it used to for me to go off to sleep, but once I’d gone, I’d gone completely. I awoke once during the night due to another bad coughing fit, but I must have gone back to sleep at some point because when the alarm went off, it awoke me.

And also as usual, it took me quite a while to summon up the courage and energy to leave the bed, and then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out. Once I’d finished in there, I went into the kitchen to make my hot drink with which to take my medicine.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

We were three British prisoners of war who had been on a transfer from one prison to another but had managed to escape. We ended up in some big town in Germany so we wandered around for quite a while while we tried to make up our minds. There was one person who tried to talk about beaches to someone. We were having to make plans, but we weren’t sure what plans, because we had absolutely nothing on us. We were wandering around this market and trying to keep people away from us. One of us managed to steal a packet of money that was lying around in an empty room. We carried on walking, but then another one of us managed to acquire a baguette. We then came in to where the fair proper was. Someone asked us if we’d light his lantern or whatever so we did that. Then we began to make plans about what we were going to do and how we need to do it.

This is another dream that doesn’t seem to relate to anything in particular, although the park with its forested bit and the town centre with its fair are places that we have visited before on our nocturnal rambles, albeit a good while ago.

Isabelle the Nurse came in as usual, and we had a good chat about this and that as she sorted out my legs and feet. Once she’s gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we are discussing the arrival of the Saxons, but that’s not something about which I know very much. And neither does anyone else because there are no contemporary written documents for this period. People like Gildas and Bede, from whom most of our current knowledge is taken, were writing one or two centuries after the events and from a very jaundiced point of view.

However, our author seems to think, as is the current way of thinking, that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes merged in with the native British people, but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I remain totally unconvinced. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is full of battle after battle, massacre after massacre and slaughter after slaughter, and as we have seen during our travels through the late Roman-early Mediaeval period, the number of trades and skills that disappeared completely at this time points to some kind of ethnic cleansing of the native population. As I said just now – “no contemporary written documents for this period”.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I finished off the radio notes for the programme on which I’d been working.

After a little rest, I eventually began to research the next radio programme. That also involved some considerable searching for some music that I wanted and took an age. I wasn’t very motivated about it and by the time that I knocked off, I’d chosen all of the music, reformatted, re-edited and remixed it. Tomorrow, I’ll push on and see how far I can get.

There was an interesting break in mid-afternoon, though. I found a recipe for a salad dressing that Liz had sent me years ago. Today, I decided to make it, and it really is delicious. I actually had all of the ingredients on hand, which makes a change. When it was ready, I made myself another taco roll of salad with a red and green pepper pâté as a base and then put some of the dressing on it. That was really delicious too.

But I was also looking at my shopping list today, which indicates that there’s some kind of rekindling of my appetite somewhere, and that’s good news.

But right now, though, I’m off to bed hoping for another good night like last night and also hoping that this slow improvement will continue.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about prisoners … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met a man who had been in prison. He told me that he had been imprisoned for something that he hadn’t done.
"What was that?" I asked him
"I hadn’t wiped my fingerprints off the knife."

Wednesday 29th April 2026 – SO RIGHT NOW …

… even though it’s not quite 19:30, I’m starting to write my notes ready … "he hopes" – ed … for an early night.

After last night’s slightly better … "and only slightly, too" – ed … night, I’m determined to try to push on and try to capitalise on any sign of slight improvement.

Last night, there didn’t seem to be much sign of improvement. It ended up being later than I imagined and had in fact gone past 21:30 when I finally snuggled down into my nice, clean bed and although it took, once more, longer than usual to drop off, I was well out of it.

At one point I did actually wake up, thanks to another coughing fit. Whatever time it was, I have no idea because I didn’t bother to look. I went to walk the parapet, coughing continually as I went, and back in bed afterwards, the coughing fit continued and increased in intensity so that, once more, I was violently sick.

Eventually, though, I fell into that one position where I don’t seem to cough and went off quite quickly to sleep. And I remember nothing more until the alarm went off at 06:29. That was what I meant about the “improvement”.

In the bedroom, I sorted myself out and then went into the kitchen, where I made my hot drink to wash down the medication. Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was at a party somewhere. It was one of these things where there had been a festival and campsite, and everyone was in a barn having something of a good time. However, I decided to go for a walk and found myself in the nearest town. I went into the bar there to have a coffee but although the bar was busy, it seemed that the guy who was behind the bar was just sitting there doing nothing. I had to shout at him three times, but he still didn’t give me a coffee. In the end, one of the waiters who had been serving in the room came behind the bar and he served me with a coffee. He told me the price, but I only had a €50:00 note so that became rather complicated. But I was chatting to someone at the bar there, and rather later, we went for another walk around the town. By now, it was somewhere in Russia, I reckoned. As we walked, looking through everywhere, we came across a garage. The garage had several cars in there, including a green MkIII Cortina, P-registered, and they were all right-hand drive. I asked the guy with me why the garage had all of these British cars and not any European ones, say, from Germany that were left-hand drive but he didn’t really know the answer. In the end, I walked back to the barn. It was not far short of midnight. Everyone was still having a good time so I just walked in, chatted to a few people and just reintegrated myself back into the party.

This was an enormous barn, with loads of people in it, but it would be just like me to opt out of a party and go for a walk around the nearby town. Meeting strangers in bars is, however, most unlike me. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not like me to be sociable.

Finding Ford Cortinas in Moscow would be unlikely, although Nerina and I almost managed to take a Mk IV Cortina estate into the USSR, but that’s yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

However, there is an actual story about something like that. Did you ever wonder why you never saw many second-hand Ladas on sale at the Lada garages in the UK back in the early nineties? When Percy Penguin and I were skiing in Bulgaria in the early nineties, we saw several right-hand drive Ladas with Bulgarian plates. It turned out that Lada could obtain a better price for a second-hand Lada back in Eastern Europe so those that their garages were buying back were simply shipped out there.

Later on, I was moving a load of things down to Virlet and began to stack them in the barn. There weren’t all that many things, mostly large objects, so I just packed them in any old how and just left them there. Later, I had to take some more things down, and when I arrived in Virlet, I remembered how I had stacked it the last time and there was no real room for these things now so I had to think about totally rearranging everything that was in the barn so that I could find room to fit these in. However, I thought that this was going to take me a very, very long time, particularly with the things that I had thrown in and were blocking the steps up and over, this kind of thing.

We seem to be spending a lot of time in Virlet just recently. And describing the state of the barn as “utter chaos” is not too far wide of the mark. Not that the house is much better.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual this morning and although she chatted a lot, she didn’t really say anything. After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’re discussing the Roman system of governance, and it seems that reality might be beginning to hit home with our author.

We mentioned a few days ago about his putting all his trust in the “works of Richard of Cirencester”, unmasked as a fake at least one hundred and sixty years ago. Today, in this chapter, we are starting to see hiù quoting more and more from the “Notitia Imperii” of the late fifth century instead of the aforementioned.

And tucked away in a little paragraph a few pages in, we find him making a mention of the “single and dubious authority of Richard of Cirencester”. So, after all of the research that he’s carried on to arrive so far into the book, he’s now becoming less and less convinced of the authority of Richard’s book.

Something else that is quite interesting too is that he’s uncovered a few memorial tables where some of the names, usually of disgraced Roman emperors, have been chiselled away. He asks "How often have we, in modern times, seen a name cast out with loathing, which yesterday received the incense of a world’s flattery?". So nothing seems to have changed, even in our modern World where statues are being continually toppled.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I had a little “relax” before starting work, but I didn’t start for long as Liz messaged me for a chat. We ended up having a Rosemaryesque chat that went on for ever. Not, of course, that I’m complaining because it’s really nice to talk to friends.

After that, my Welsh group and I had a delightful chat for half an hour as one of our members produced the photos of her new baby, born a few days ago. We all gushed and cooed as you might expect, but we have to show our respects to the new arrival.

Not to be outdone, Rosemary called me too, and we just had a very brief chat today, only one hour and forty-eight minutes. There are a lot of issues going on right now round by where she lives.

At some point during the afternoon, I tried a new departure. When I went for my disgusting drink break and early afternoon break, I made myself a taco roll with cheese and salad. I hadn’t forgotten about the cheese sandwich issue from yesterday evening, so I thought that I’d give things a little try, to see if I could keep at least some food down. We’ll see how it goes.

After all of that, I finally managed to start the radio programme, and I’ve chosen all of the music, tracked down what I needed … "and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been, either" – ed … reformatted, re-edited and remixed it. I’ll have to see how far I can go with everything else tomorrow morning before dialysis.

But right now, I’m off to bed in the hope of having another improved sleep tonight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the USSR … "well, one of us has" – ed … while I was walking around Moscow with this guy from the bar, I asked him "why is it that Soviet policemen always go round in threes?"
"That’s easy" he replied. "The first one can read, the second one can write, and the third one is there to keep an eye on the bourgeois intellectuals."

Tuesday 17th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… twenty-four hours I have had. It has been without doubt one of the worst twenty-four hours of my life, and I don’t ever want to go through another period quite like it ever again, although I know that I probably shall.

You might think that it all started very well, with actually being in bed … "for once" – ed … at 21:48, and that won’t ever happen again unless I’m ill, but what happened is that I was in such misery with the constant coughing fits and the electric shocks running though the sole of my right foot that I scrambled through everything as quickly as I possibly could.

Once in bed, though, it was a constant battle all the way through the night of falling asleep and then being awoken by either a coughing fit or a stabbing pain. It was absolutely awful.

When the alarm went off, I’d already been awake for about fifteen minutes, but even so, I was in no state to haul myself out of bed, so tired was I. I missed the second alarm and in the end, it was rather late when I finally managed to crawl into the bathroom.

After a wash, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and all the time I was thinking “I wonder how long before I find myself back in bed again” – that is, if the coughing and the pain in the foot would let me.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there.

One of the Greek islands is in danger of being overrun by the Turks, but the Greeks were trying to make some kind of heroic defence out of it. They had a leader who was in charge of their army on his visit to Kyiv in 1903, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by him, every 25th December, I think. He was the person who wore a stained tattoo and was danger, so he had quite a cult following. One day, while there were the two operations going on, the Turks were searching for him, he came to stay at my lodgings in Canterbury for … fell asleep here …

Going back to the dream about the Greek hero, when they were hot on his pursuit, they were marvelling at how small the windows were in his house etc., because it showed that he wasn’t very big himself, yet he managed to lead the Greeks on all kinds of standard adventures in the fourteenth century against the Ottomans, all kinds of hit-and-run adventures until the latter part of the thirteenth century and his name of Letterman or whatever it was, was quite clearly due to his ability in handling his fleet of boats

The Greeks kept up a resistance until the 1450s, when they were finally all overwhelmed by the Ottomans. The Ottomans made some kind of saint out of it, but the Greeks wanted to convert a cave into somewhere holy, called the Twelve something-or-other, but the Ottomans turned down their request to make monuments to any of their soldiers.

These first three need no explanation. They clearly relate to the book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller that I’ve been reading quite recently. It’s obviously getting to me, all of this.

There was some strange dream about someone who had bought a Volkswagen LT flatbed, and on top of the flatbed he’d put a wooden pickup body. There was some complication about the insurance, so he went off to his insurance broker and his broker rang up their office. The guy who was answering was totally surprised and wondered why he hadn’t taken off the flatbed and bolted the pickup body straight to the chassis. That would have been a much easier way of going about it. But he recommended that the guy take the vehicle to a vehicle inspection site, and if they pass it as safe, then there would be no problems with it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I worked for two years in an insurance company in Chester after leaving school. I worked in the section dealing with commercial garage insurance, and so I’m quite used to dealing with strange quotations for unusual vehicles and equipment. However, I can’t recall anything like this.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual after her week’s break, and I’m afraid that I horrified her by talking about suicide. I was serious too, but that was the state in which I was this morning – in total and complete agony – and I couldn’t see a solution. You’ve no idea of the amount of pain in which I was and the discomfort with not having had a decent sleep.

She urged me to talk to them at Avranches and to insist that they do something. I’ve tried all of that, of course, and so I don’t think that doing it again will help all that much, but we can try, I suppose.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the events on the island of Lesbos, and I do have to say that these Lesbians seem to be everywhere. But Lesbos is another one of these islands where the constant bickering between the Genoese, the Venetians and every other occidental power leave the door wide-open for the Turks to creep in.

Back in here, I had things to do. And then I was able to carry on with the radio programme that I’d started over the weekend. Trying to assemble a concert out of a recording on a fire-damaged and smoke-covered tape is not an easy task, especially when there are holes in it everywhere, but I’ve done the best that I can.

The quality is quite poor, and ordinarily I wouldn’t broadcast anything as bad as this, but its value is in its rarity. It’s never been played on air before, and it’s a recording of a landmark event that led to a very famous rock song being written about it, so it’s worth listening to just for that.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff, and she shooed me under the shower as usual. And for the first time in a long, long while, I actually felt like a human being afterwards.

After the shower, we had a good chat, as we sometimes do. The good news is that there are some expensive kitchen knives on offer in the local supermarket, with a massive reduction if you have so many vouchers. My kitchen knives are rubbish after nine years of constant use so I need to replace them, and my cleaner has a whole raft of vouchers that she isn’t going to use.

So next time she passes the supermarket … I just hope that they have some left.

After she left, I finished off that radio programme and the notes, which are now ready for dictation. And then, dear reader, I had a little … errr … relax.

While I’d been asleep during the late afternoon, my assistant and I had detained someone for questioning about a pretty innocuous incident, and we’d brought him to my office. I’d asked him several quite simple questions, but to my surprise, he’d refused to answer, even after I’d asked him several times. Consequently, after an hour or so, and as I had better things to do, I decided to leave him. My assistant had plenty of paperwork to do, mostly about other matters, so I left her in my office to supervise him, although not to talk to him, as she did her paperwork. Every now and again, I’d go back into my office for different reasons and also to check up on whether he was willing to answer, but he wasn’t so I ignored him each time. When it came round to 16:00, I typed out a formal order of detention, which was crazy when you consider what a simple matter it was, and took it into my office, where I pinned it up on the wall. I’d explained previously to my assistant to let me know when she wanted to leave to go home so that we could take our interviewee down to the cells for the night. However, she showed no signs of wanting to leave, looking for all kinds of jobs to do, even checking that the recycling system for the bins was working efficiently. Eventually, it came up to my usual time for going home, my assistant still showed no sign of wanting to leave, and so I was obliged to stay on.

This is yet another dream that relates to absolutely nothing at all. I wonder what was going through my head while I was dreaming this.

For almost two hours, I was away with the fairies … "although not in any way that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … but when I awoke, I was feeling so much better, which was good news.

Before tea, there was enough time to choose some music, from which I’ll select several for the following radio programme. I edited and remixed it all and even chose four of the tracks to include, which I paired and segued. I’ll do the rest tomorrow and write all the notes.

And no Welsh class today? No, our teacher has gone to a funeral.

Tea tonight was a lasagna from out of the freezer with vegetables in a cheese sauce, followed by another slice of my vegan cheesecake. And I didn’t enjoy the lasagna as much as I was hoping to. I think that my taste buds are changing yet again.

So right now, I’m off to bed, with a busy day ahead of me. I hope that I can have a good night’s sleep tonight, because I need it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling like a human being … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember fifty or so years ago when I played in a rock band and we were performing in a pub in Runcorn.
The guitarist – singer whom we had began to sing "Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child …"
And a voice from out in front shouted "well, you’re not going to find a motherless child in here tonight, dear!"

Wednesday 4th March 2026 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… excitement, it’s been a much more calm day today and I haven’t really done all that much.

Up to now, though, I have managed not to fall asleep … "although the night is young" – ed … and that’s already an achievement.

Especially when it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed. But once in bed, apart from waking up briefly on a couple of occasions, I managed to sleep through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

When the alarm went off, my wife (who wasn’t Nerina), my brother and I were going to the FA Cup Final. For some reason, the FA Cup Final was being held in a provincial stadium, not in London. We had tickets for rows M4, 5 and 6. As we arrived at the stadium, my brother suddenly realised that he didn’t have his ticket with him and it was too late now to go back home so he joined the queue anyway. There were Morecambe and Wise there, and it seemed that Eric Morecambe had left his ticket behind too but he was going to try to blag his way through the gates, so my brother decided that he’d try too. We joined the queue for one of the gates and fought our way down to the front eventually and were let through but there was no sign of my brother. So when we came to find the seats, I found M94, so I imagined that we wanted the other side of the stadium, but it seemed that M94 was an addition to the row and was placed before M1, so our seats were just there where we were standing, so we settled down and waited to see whether my brother would come along and join in. Then, we had to leave the stadium afterwards. We found our car, and my wife was driving so I let her drive. We had some people to see on the outside of Birmingham so we went down a road. My wife was frustrated because the traffic was moving really slowly. She thought that it was a cyclist holding everything up and she was urging the other motorists to pass the cyclist, but then it turned out that a little further ahead, there was a train driving down the road, an old steam train pulling so many goods wagons. Eventually, we caught up with it, but she decided that she was going to stop and have a break so we pulled into the side of the road. We had a baby with us, and the baby belonged to a member of her family although it wasn’t hers, and she looked after the baby for a while. Eventually, we found ourselves in a house, along with our possessions and this baby. She was still looking after this baby, but upstairs, there was a very small child. The very small child was quite talkative even though it was only a few months old. It was asking about this baby, then it began to accuse whoever was looking after it that my wife was doing things to harm this baby, which the other one thought belonged to it. Of course it didn’t, and this all became confusing. We began to think of how we could possibly defuse this situation but we didn’t think that it was going to be easy because there is no reasoning with small children at all.

Now THAT was what I call a strange dream.

The stadium reminds me of a time when a friend and I went to Caen to see Granville’s cup tie with Olympic Marseille just before I fell ill, although there was no third person with us.

And what with babies on the scene, talking babies, goods trains running down the streets and all of that, I’ve no idea what must have been going on that had provoked all of that. And who was my wife if it wasn’t Nerina?

As well as all of that, as for my brother getting lost, well, he can do that as much as he likes, and in more ways than just one too.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub-up and then went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I began to write up the missing notes from the previous evening but I didn’t manage to go all that far as Isabelle the Nurse turned up.

She was in a good mood, and we had quite a chat as she sorted my feet, and then she cleared off. I went to make my breakfast and to read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve been reading about the series of invasions of Greece, from the Bulgars in the north, the Venetians and Lombards from the west and the pirates of North Africa from the south, who all ravaged the country for a couple of hundred years round about the turn of the first millennium.

But now, the dark clouds are gathering, and so is the Fourth Crusade, ready to set off from Italy on its way to the Holy Land. Unfortunately for Greece and the Byzantine Empire, most of the Crusaders took rather too much of a fancy to the wealth of the various Greek and Byzantine cities and the Crusade escalated out of control, as we shall see over the next day or two.

Back in here, I finished off my notes, backed up the computer and took the statistics that I should have done last night. And then, I was free to listen to the dictaphone to see what else was on there.

I was living down in the centre of France again and was going through my correspondence about the late arrivals of my taxis and the problems with medical care. I seem to have sent one hundred letters to different people but no one has ever replied to me. On one occasion, I’d even been picked up, and we had to go many miles more to a railway station where the one train per week that came to the station, which was the TGV that came from Dublin, had a passenger to drop off on us. I remember having a cup of tea there and they poured it, and the first half of the cup was pure water. It wasn’t until well after that that the tea began to come through in the water. At some point, I was actually in one of the hospitals and I came across Nerina’s doctor, the doctor who had sorted out her appendix. I explained to him that she was on home leave at the moment and was feeling so much better for being at home, so I wondered if it might be possible for her to be discharged into my care and to stay at home for her recovery rather than the hospital.

She wouldn’t have had much of a respite with me. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m useless with all affairs of a medical nature. I had to go to see her in hospital once, and I lasted less than ten minutes.

And while it’s true that the taxi times are all up the spout some times, I don’t keep records and I don’t complain. After all, as I’m terminally ill, it’s all free to me and I don’t intend to bite the hand that feeds it. But TGVs from Dublin to the South of France are an interesting concept too.

After that, there were a few more things to do and then I began to mess around with some more artificial intelligence stuff. I began to work on a few programs with which I’d experimented last time, and I noticed that a few of the more undesirable features have been tightened up, which is good news.

However, I managed to find a few rat runs into a couple of the programs and what was interesting was that they seemed to employ an artificial intelligence probe detector that did really well to close up one rat run while I was still exploring it. Maybe a few more sites of this nature ought to adopt this probing detector and close a few more that are known to exist while they are at it.

But at least, things seem to be tightening up a little in this respect, which is good news.

After a disgusting drink break, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I had been working, and now they are all complete and ready for dictating.

Tea tonight was a slice of vegan pie with vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, followed by an apricot half and home-made ice cream. The ice cream had set far too hard so I had it out for half an hour and then mashed it vigorously with a fork before putting it back into the freezer. I hope that that works.

Anyway, I’ll find that out tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night before dialysis tomorrow, although I doubt whether it will be as good as I would like.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Lombards … "well, one of us has" – ed … a friend of mine and I were discussing those acronyms that people used forty years ago to describe social groups of people.
"What was a Yuppie?" she asked.
"A Young, Upwardly-Mobile Professional Person."
"And a Dinky?"
"Dual Income, No Kids Yet."
"And a Lombard?" she asked
"I’ve no idea about that" I replied. "Was there anything?"
"Ohh yes" she replied. "A Lombard was ‘Loads Of Money But A Right D**khead’!"

Sunday 1st March 2026 – DYDD GWYL DEWI …

… hapus iawn, pawb!

Did you all enjoy your leek soup? And did you arrange your daffodils neatly in your living room? And did you give your pet dragon a little treat? As long as you did all of that, you aren’t likely to receive a visit from an angry druid today.

As for me, I’m afraid that I didn’t. Sunday here is pizza day, and as well as that, I can’t go out hunting for daffodils, although Rosemary did send me some virtual daffodils via an internet chat program.

Instead, I’ve had something of a lazy day, and you’ll be surprised at just how productive I have been, because I know that I am.

Last night wasn’t as I had planned it either. It ended up being horribly late, just after midnight, when I stopped letting it all hang out and went to bed instead. And instead of the decent sleep and long lie-in that I wanted, it was one of those mobile nights where I was tossing and turning, half awake and half asleep, without actually going into a really deep sleep.

When the nurse put in an appearance, I was actually awake, and so I pretended to be asleep so that I didn’t have to leave my comfortable bed. He sorted out my legs and feet and then disappeared. I curled up under the bedclothes and tried my best to go to sleep, but with no luck at all.

Eventually, round about 09:15, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead. I gathered up my clothes from the chair and, throwing my slippers in the general direction of the bathroom, I scored a beautiful hole in one, right into the toilet bowl. What a way to start the day!

In the kitchen, I forgot my medication, but I had a lovely breakfast of porridge, hot coffee and two of my homemade croissants. That’s a really nice way to start the day, especially when you take your time and don’t go into your office to start work until 10:45. I wish that every day could be like this.

What took me so long was that I was engrossed in my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the complicated relationship between Thebes, Athens and Sparta, a relationship that sporadically erupted into warfare, with any two pitted against the third. It’s helping me brush up on my classics from when I studied Latin at grammar school, and it’s amazing just how much of the old classical stories have been proved by modern archaeology to be true.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was living in some kind of communal living thing. There were lots of different people there doing lots of different things. There should have been a meeting late one night before going to bed, but it turned out that the guy on whose behalf the meeting was being held had simply gone ahead and applied the texture mix to his skin, which meant that he’d be busy recovering or whatever, changing or something, and so the meeting was cancelled. That was extremely disappointing, so I gathered up a couple of things from the radio, some old English-language programmes that I’d done years ago and went to see the girl in the next room who worked for the local radio. She thanked me for coming but said that they were doing things in a different way these days and didn’t need the programmes that I had. However, there would be plenty of opportunity to do stuff in the future. She was thinking of having some kind of doll or something and she would want me to write the speech for it. I took my things to go back to my room, but on the way back, I heard that there had been some kind of announcement that Jim Dale, one of the CARRY ON stars, had been seen hiding in a tree near the old airfield up near Wardle – it was described as “Stoke Bank” in this news report. He’d been repeating one of his “Carry On” speeches from out of this tree and it had made the local news in all the papers.

Whatever the significance of the first part of this dream might be, I have no idea. As for the second part, I have a whole stock of English language radio programmes that Liz and I prepared when we were running “Radio Anglais”, programmes that were broadcast on French local radio. A short while ago, a radio station in Nantwich was calling for radio presenters and programmes, so I sent them one or two as tasters, to see whether they might be interested in a programme from me every now and again. It goes without saying that they never replied.

There is a “Stoke Bank” along the A51 a couple of miles from the old Wardle Airfield, which was my home … "the airfield, not Stoke Bank#34; – ed … for a short while when I was a baby. But there aren’t any trees there in which Jim Dale could loiter, whether or not he might be repeating a “Carry On” speech.

And I did once live in some kind of commune. But not for long, though. Firstly, I’m not a sociable animal, and secondly, most people in that place preferred to live off the backs of other, hard-working people. In the end, I preferred to live in my van.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase.

There had been a couple of girls who had come over for an environmental conference. I’d been chatting to one and I was getting on extremely well with her. For some reason, my brother ended up with their contact details, but I didn’t. On the Sunday, we had various things to do, like we had to pack our place up as we were moving house that weekend. We were busy organising everything, and there was this beautiful cupboard that I’d had my eye on for ages with several drawers in it. It just looked like a huge bass speaker. The price on it was something like £275.00, which I thought was too much. Someone whom we knew came along and asked about it. The woman said “if you take it now, you can have it for £180.00. He paid her cash on the spot, and I felt really annoyed because I would have had it for £180.00 any day of the week. I told her to wait a minute because it had some of my paperwork in it. I had to go through and find somewhere to put this paperwork. I asked someone if they had a sack, and my mother made some kind of comment about that, but I wasn’t in the mood to joke. In the end, someone found a large paper sack and I began to put my things into it. One thing that I’d noticed was that a plot of land on which I’d had my eye too, which was formerly a garage in Audlem, had come back onto the market. The announcement from the paper was that there was a confusion about the closing date of the auction. Of course, I was far too busy to concentrate on this and we were still putting away our things. I came across a press cutting that showed that this conference to which we’d been was going on today, and there was a chance to meet all the contributors. That really annoyed me because I could have gone along and seen that girl again. Then my brother came up with some kind of story about how his car, with a trailer on it, had an electrical fault and he’d had to manually flash the rear lights to make some kind of brake lights every time he stopped. I was still in no mood for any kind of joke

This is quite a regular theme, isn’t it? Here I am, just about to Get The Girl, and a member of my family comes along and throws a spanner into the works.

The chest of drawers sounds interesting, and had I been healthy, I would have gone all-out to make one. And moving house, cars with electrical faults and looking for plots of land were habitual themes in real life back in the day.

There was also something about a Grand Prix around by Monte Carlo, the Monaco Grand Prix, twisting and turning through the streets with all of these cars taking part. We were watching it from a distance, and suddenly, after about half of the cars had gone past, there was complete silence and nothing. Then, all of the Grand Prix drivers who hadn’t gone through in their cars, they came through, and they were running. Apparently, there had been a major accident somewhere and they couldn’t proceed any further with their cars – this major accident behind the leading group so they couldn’t proceed with their cars, so they were going to run the rest of the course.

Before I went to bed last night, I was reading a news article about Cadillac’s entry into the Formula One circuit, but that their engine is not considered to be as reliable as it needs to be. Running the course on foot would be a novel way to proceed, though.

There was some kind of dream going on about a football competition. One of the teams had been relegated. There was something about a particular match and it involved my vegan ice cream somewhere, but I really can’t remember any more about it because I awoke as it was under way and it all evaporated … "the dream, not the ice cream" – ed …

Llanelli has just been relegated from the JD Cymru League, and lest night, we were watching the Welsh League Cup Final, complete with its very emotional ending, followed by vegan ice cream for dessert.

Seeing as we have been talking about the Welsh League Cup Final … "well, one of us has" – ed … this is the LINK TO THE HIGHLIGHTS. This is the LINK TO THE FULL MATCH. If you have the time, it’s well-worth it from a footballing point of view. The highlights don’t really show anything like a fair representative proportion of the game.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes, there was yet more football. Morton were comfortably beaten by Airdrie after going down to nine men, and then Stranraer’s long unbeaten run came to an end as they were beaten at home by Elgin City.

After a disgusting drink break, with some of the medication that I’d forgotten, I had a pile of *.html coding to edit.

First thing though was to upload my graphics program onto this laptop. That’s easier said than done because there is no DVD drive on it. I had to rummage around deep in the bowels of the box where all of the redundant hard drives are hiding, and there it was, right at the bottom. And to my surprise, the USB cable and power pack were with it. Usually, knowing me, I would have expected them to have been scattered to the four winds a long time ago.

The next step was to open the drive. With not having been opened for years, the springs had seized. Luckily, there’s an escape hole, and a straightened paper clip fitted in quite nicely to lever down the internal catch.

Having uploaded the program, I could then go ahead and prepare some graphic images. And then I had to hunt down a few web links to tie to the images, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been.

The next task was to edit the *.html coding to include the images and their links, and I was dismayed at how much *.html coding I’ve forgotten. Turn the clock back thirty years, and I was writing web pages by hand in “Notetab” and even teaching basic web design to a couple of interested people, but I couldn’t do it now.

There was an hour to spare, so I made a start on the Welsh homework. I’ve done about two-thirds of it, and as it doesn’t have to be done for two weeks, I’m glad that I’m well in advance because I can have a relax at some point.

At 16:30 I knocked off to go a-baking. A loaf of bread and a vegan pizza were today’s output. The bread rose like a lift and looks excellent, and the pizza was absolutely delicious, with half left over for tomorrow.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … and to reflect on what a busy day I’ve had, considering that Sunday is supposed to be a Day of Rest.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Monaco Grand Prix … "well, one of us has" – ed … Percy Penguin once told me that she’d like to go there to watch the Formula One race.
However, I told her "we don’t have the money to go to watch the Formula One race in Monaco. And in any case, it’s pronounced Gron’ Pree."

Tuesday 24th February 2026 – ♬ HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO …

… me ♬

Yes, another year older and deeper in debt, right enough. And don’t ask me how old I am because at my age, you don’t count the number of years that you’ve had – you count the number of years you have left. And in my case, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not all that many. In fact, if I see this one out, I shall be setting a new record.

So in preparation for my birthday, I tried my best … "and failed miserably" – ed … to rush ahead with what I needed to do. However, it was still late by the time that I finished, but not as late as some have been. I was in bed by 23:00, which is not bad going these days, although I wish that it could be better.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. But as seems to be par for the course following a session of dialysis, I was awake quite early. 03:50 as it happens.

And for the first time in a while, I managed to go back to sleep again – until all of 05:00. And after that, I just lay there trying unsuccessfully to doze off again. But when the time came round to about 06:15, I slid out from under the bedclothes and put my feet on the floor.

When the alarm went off, my feet were still on the floor and so that counts as an early start, even if I hadn’t been able to do anything in the way of work.

It was a struggle to stand up and go to the bathroom, but I did manage it in the end, and then I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I found that I’d already received a few birthday messages, which I then read, with a great big thank you to those of you who had written. And my three friends from our travelling club were online and we all had a chat, including my friend from Munich who is just out of hospital after an eye operation.

While we were chatting, I was transcribing the dictaphone notes from last night.

There had been a body discovered in a shallow grave in Canada. It was of a girl about ten years old. Eventually, the police managed to track down her family – they lived in the Maritime Provinces. At one stage, they had moved out west but the lure of the Maritimes was too strong and they had returned. That was as far as I’d gone before I awoke.

Bodies are being pulled out of shallow graves by the dozen in North America, so there’s nothing new here. And neither is people going out west to the oilfields of Alberta from the Maritime Provinces, especially after the collapse of the fishing industry following the cod moratorium of 1992, something that we have discussed on numerous occasions during our visits around the Atlantic coast of Canada.

It’s also true that most of the families do end up coming back. The pace of life in the oilfields is much more intense than the laid-back attitudes of the Maritimers, so once they have done several years out there and made their pile, they gradually filter back home to work at whatever they can find while drawing on their not-insubstantial savings.

I was with one of my friends last night and we were in Crewe watching the Crewe Carnival. And while I was trying to fix something and she was watching me, another parade went past with all young people. I happened to recognise two or three people in this parade. I’d heard that there was going to be some kind of parade in respect of something else, some march or demonstration, so I wondered if this was it. After the crowds dispersed and we slowly began to walk away, we were walking down Queen Street … "It was Queensway actually" – ed … and there was sunlight with a very fine rain and we bumped into one of the girls whom we’d seen in this parade. I asked her how her parade went and she replied “ohh, the speech by the leader was magnificent and it’s really going to make him grow”. I replied “yes, but what about the parade?”. “Well, maybe there were six hundred people there and it all seemed to go very well” she said. And while I was standing in a queue for something or other, it might have been a packet of crisps or something, another girl whom I knew came along. She tried to take her mug off the counter but she couldn’t quite reach it, so I reached behind me and it was much easier to reach from there so I passed it to her with a smile. She wandered off, but my friend asked me about the girl – who she was. I replied that she was someone from our office. We began to walk down Queensway and I was eating my packet of crisps. I asked my friend what she was doing this evening. She replied that she was going to look for a pair of shoes in some of the shops around the area, so I said that I’d come with her, with the idea that maybe later on, we’d go for a meal or something. Then she began to talk about Margaret, a former employee of mine on the taxis. She said that she went round to see Margaret’s first accommodation which was some kind of bedsit place down one of the back streets off the West End. She said “it has to be worth more than £1000 per year”. She mentioned something about the smell but I didn’t really notice it. She began to think aloud about investing some of her money from her retirement pension into a rental property in Crewe and seeing whether that would make a better return than what she’s receiving on her investments at the moment.

Strangely enough, in our Welsh class later, we were talking about rituals and ceremonies and discussing how many old ceremonies have disappeared in recent times. The subject of Crewe Carnival actually did crop up during this discussion. It disappeared about fifteen or so years ago, which was a shame because at one time it attracted tens of thousands of people to the town.

The two girls – I know them too. The second girl was a girl with whom I worked for a while, and the first one was a friend of a friend from Stoke-on-Trent who came to stay with me for a few days while she was interviewed for a post at the European Commission. The bit about “the leader” sent a chill through my spine, though. There are far too many of these “leaders” around these days and it can only go all pear-shaped.

Isabelle the Nurse came along later and wished me a happy birthday as she sorted out my feet and legs. And after she left, I made breakfast. As a special treat, I had cheese on toast with my porridge, and it would have been really nice had I not dropped both slices upside-down in the oven.

While I was eating, I read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

He’s finally finished discussing pottery, and he’s still no nearer solving the riddles that have been plaguing him throughout the chapter. His conclusions are full of theories and unanswered questions, but at least, his “layering” technique for identifying periods of occupation seems to have produced positive results, even if they aren’t the results that he’s expecting.

Back in here, I went to revise my Welsh and then I joined the lesson. And it passed really well today. All of this revision seems to be paying off, if only I could remember it the following morning. Wouldn’t that be nice?

After lunch my faithful cleaner came to do her stuff and she shooed me into the shower too, so now I’m nice and clean … "well, clean, anyway" – ed …

Liz ‘phoned me later and we had a Rosemaryesque chat that went on for an hour and eighteen minutes. Just a short one today. We discussed lots of things and she promised to send a recipe for a grilled vegetable salad, which I received later.

My niece and one of her daughters ‘phoned me later, as did my friend from the Orkney Islands. I shall have to have birthdays more often at this rate, if I’m so popular.

Once everything had quietened down, I began work on another radio programme but regrettably, I fell asleep for almost an hour – one of those sleeps where I don’t even realise that I’ve gone to sleep until I awaken.

While I was asleep in the early evening, I was with two friends. I’d met them while I was out driving down Chestnut Avenue in Shavington, presumably on the way home to Vine Tree Avenue and they were walking up the hill. There was a house for sale in the avenue and I’d noticed it because it seemed to be remarkably cheap for what it was so I happened to mention it. They looked at it – a big, modern detached home, on sale for £199,000 and it had a big gazebo at the back. The wife liked the look of it so the three of us went into the garden. She was worried that we had no authorisation but I told her that it didn’t matter. I’d simply pretend. As we walked up to the house, we noticed that there was no path and the lawn towards the front door was badly eroded. But as we walked, it became steeper and steeper and more and more eroded until we found ourselves on the roof. There seemed to be no other way in, despite how it looked from the road. And the roof seemed to be all old slates rather than the nice, neat tiles that we’d seen from the road. We eventually found our way inside, and it didn’t seem to be so bad, but there was someone else in there showing another couple around. He was telling them “you’ll probably get this place for £130,000 because … ” and then he mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch. I asked him to repeat it but before he could, I awoke.

Whatever this is about, I have absolutely no idea. I can’t think of anything that has cropped up recently that will have triggered this off.

Tea tonight was a lovely vegan vegetable stir-fry with noodles followed by a slice of fiery ginger cake with thick custard. And “fiery” is definitely the correct word to use here. I’m well-impressed. Isabelle the Nurse had asked me if I would be putting candles on my cake, but I told her that with climate change, global warming and all of that, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Mind you, my breath alone after eating that will contribute to a rise in planetary temperature, I imagine.

But now, I’m off to bed to sleep off my rather large meal. I couldn’t resist all of that lovely food, no matter how ill I might have been feeling.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my friend from Munich … "well, one of us has" – ed … the doctor came to check up on him this morning.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four" replied my friend
"Good" said the doctor. "Now come with me" and they both went outside.
"Now what’s that?" said the doctor, pointing up into the sky
"That’s the sun, of course"
"Well, that’s ninety-three million miles away from here. If you can see that far, your eyes must be good enough to go."

Friday 6th February 2026 – I HAVE THROWN …

… away another huge pile of food today. And that included the leftover Christmas cake and mince pies.

And what a tragedy that was – all of my Christmas stuff consigned to the bin. It just shows you how ill I’ve been over the last couple of months that I couldn’t bring myself to eat all that much of it.

But last night, as I said, I was beginning to feel better. For the first time for a long, long while, I’d managed to eat a proper-sized meal, and that is definitely progress.

So back in here afterwards, I wrote up my notes, although I’m still not as well as all that because I managed to fall asleep a couple of times while doing them. In the end, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing, it was about 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

But here’s a thing.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying that I was convinced that it was the after-effects of the dialysis, particularly the following morning, that were causing me so many problems with my sleep, leading me to wake up at some silly time of the morning. However, last night I slept all the way through to the alarm at 06:29 without moving a muscle.

So much for that idea.

Anyway, another desperate struggle to leave the bed, followed by a stagger into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was with a woman and her daughter – it might have been Laurence and Roxanne. We’d been for a drive somewhere, just aimlessly driving around the suburbs of this city. I remember that we came to some traffic lights and I was waiting for them to change, but I was busy talking. Suddenly, the car behind me beeped and overtook me. I could see that the lights had changed and I hadn’t noticed. We turned into the main road, and there was a side street on the left that I had never ever been down. We went down there and came to this really magnificent parking area. It had kind of wooden pavilions, lock-up garages and trees, these monkey-puzzle tree things, and there was a lake. The lake was enormous and there were quite a few people sitting around there enjoying it. Whoever I was with, she knew the owners of this lake. They were extremely rich people and this was part of their property, although people were allowed to go on it. We had some flasks, so we went to sit down by the water’s edge. One thing that we noticed was that there were several families. One of them was a small child, younger than the girl who was with us. That child was standing there, arms folded, in a real sulk. We wondered what could possibly have been wrong with this child, given the absolutely beautiful view that we were having.

The road, the traffic lights and the parking place with the lake are so familiar to me but I just can’t put a name to them. I’m wondering if it might have been when I was at FORT NIAGARA IN OCTOBER 2010.

As for the child sulking, I’m not going to embarrass someone who might (or might not) be reading these pages by reminding them of an incident at Pegwell Bay in Kent in 1966 or 1967.

Isabelle the Nurse was rather later than usual this morning, and she didn’t hang around very long. But she was in an exceptionally good mood today which was quite surprising.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

Now that he’s left his rambling preamble behind, his notes of his excavations are much more orderly, although not on a par with those of James Curle. It’s still rather difficult to follow his timeline for the occupation of the site.

But, going off on a tangent as I usually do, I ended up reading a critique of Wheeler’s work. He hasn’t yet reached the cemetery, as far as I have read, but someone, in his critique, has posted to the effect that Wheeler has posted “some kind of fanciful description” of a battle that took place at the site between the natives and the Romans but says that there is “no evidence to support it”.

Leaving aside completely the fact that “absence of evidence” is a totally different concept than “evidence of absence”, our critic notes that Wheeler uncovered some kind of ad hoc cemetery with twenty-odd skeletons in it, many with wounds that can only have come from battle, one of whom has a Roman ballista arrow embedded in his spinal column, but notes that “there is no evidence that they actually died there”.

Now, I’ve commented before on Wheeler’s flights of fancy, but even so, nothing in this World is going to convince me that these people with battle wounds died elsewhere and that some people hauled them all the way up to the camp from wherever it was that they died, simply to cast them any old how into a series of hastily-dug, poorly prepared graves.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office, I had a few things to do this morning and then I had to prepare my shopping order for LeClerc as I’m running low on a few things. After that, I finished off the radio notes for the programme that I’d started earlier in the week.

Having done that, I then began to research the next programme. That took some doing too, but having found out what I needed to do, I had to track down some music, and that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

When my cleaner turned up, I had to knock off because we needed to make an inventory of the apartment and work out what we need the joiner to do when he comes back here for a day’s work. There’s quite a lot to do, and I’m sure that anyone who has visited this apartment can think of a few other things.

As my cleaner was leaving, she bumped into the delivery man bringing the food, twenty minutes early. And so the next hour or so was spent putting away all of the food and cleaning, dicing and blanching a pile of carrots ready for freezing. Only a kilo today rather than two because there are some left, although not enough to last until the next order.

While I was blanching, the ‘phone rang, so while the carrots were draining, I checked to see who had called.

It was Rosemary, who wanted a “little chat”, so there I was for one hour and nine minutes having this “little chat” with her. And once more, we talked about nothing much at all. But she was shocked to learn that my bill from the supermarket for three weeks’ worth of food was just €69:00. But it’s true, give or take the odd few mushrooms for the Sunday pizza that my faithful cleaner brings me.

There was time afterwards to finish selecting the music, reformatting, remixing and re-editing it and then pairing and segueing it. I even managed to write some of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with a pile of cheese melted into it, followed by some of the fruitcake from before Christmas with a soya dessert. It was a fair-sized meal, not the largest that I’ve had, but I still managed to eat it all, which, I suppose, is progress.

While I was messing around in the fridge, I threw out a pile of stuff that was long past its sell-by date and, as I said earlier, all of the uneaten Christmas stuff followed it into the bin. It really is a disaster, but it can’t be helped. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not like me to throw away food. I really must have been ill over that period.

After finishing the washing-up, I put the water in which the carrots had been blanched into a glass bottle and put it in the fridge to use to make my leek and potato soup next week (I bought some fresh leeks today) and then put the carrots into the freezer to freeze for future use.

And now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. I wonder if I’ll sleep as deeply as I did last night, or was that just a one-off? We shall see.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about those skeletons in that cemetery at Maiden Castle… "well, one of us has" – ed … Tessa Wheeler asked her husband Mortimer "fancy letting themselves be killed like that. Why didn’t they fight back at all?"
"Well, darling" said Mortimer "people like that just don’t have the guts to do it."

Sunday 25th January 2026 – IN CONTRAST TO …

… the last few weeks, or even months, I didn’t go to sleep at all quickly last night. Actually, had it not been for the fact that there were several dreams recorded on the dictaphone, I would have said that I didn’t go to sleep at all last night

Actually, going to bed last night wasn’t as early as I would have liked it to be. For a start, it took an age, as you might expect, to finish writing WAR AND PEACE, which, with over three thousand words, is one of the longest entries ever.

That kept me going quite late, and by the time that I finished everything else that needed doing, it was about 22:30 when I finally made it into bed.

As I said just now, I didn’t go to sleep straight away, as has been the situation in the past. Doped up with “Vick” and “Fisherman’s Friends” I lay there for ages trying to go to sleep, but without success.

When the immersion heater clicked out at 06:38, I definitely heard it, and then I lay there, trying once more to go to sleep, until Isabelle the Nurse blew in.

She found me in bed, and she took my temperature. Thirty-eight point four degrees. So the fever is still raging. She gave me another lecture about taking the wrong antibiotic and then insisted that I take a “Doliprane”.

However, I refused. This country is afloat on Doliprane.

“I have a headache” – “take a doliprane”.

“I have a fever” – “take a doliprane”.

“I have a pain in my foot” – “take a doliprane”.

“I’m going for chemotherapy” – “take a doliprane”.

“It’s cold outside” – “take a doliprane”.

“I have a Welsh exam tomorrow” – “take a doliprane”.

“Y Bala were beaten on Friday night by y Fflint” – “take a doliprane”.

Nothing will convince me that doliprane is anything other than a placebo.

After she left, it took me an age to rise up and head to the bathroom. When I finally made it into the kitchen, it was 10:00. That was a nice way to start a day.

What was even nicer was breakfast. Porridge, plenty of piping-hot coffee and my last two homemade croissants. I must make some more next weekend.

While I was eating, I was also reading some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

This book is totally fascinating, and I’m learning all kinds of interesting things that I didn’t know previously, and that’s surely the aim of reading it.

James Curle is discussing glass today, and one thing that I didn’t know, but which I do know is that "the window glass which was found throughout the fort, and in the Baths, varied in colour from green to a pale blue. As usual, one side was invariably dulled".

So it’s not clear glass at all. But then, recycled glass today doesn’t come out clear either, due mainly to the impurities and the mix of colours that go into the smelter. Maybe it was the same in Ancient Rome.

Back in here, I had a footfest, watching the highlights of Penybont v Caernarfon and TNS v Y Barri.

Online later came THE HIGHLIGHTS OF LAST NIGHT’S GAME, Colwyn Bay v Connah’s Quay Nomads. They are well-worth watching but unfortunately, they can’t reproduce the tension and the drama. The FULL MATCH IS HERE and believe me, you won’t be disappointed.

There was also Stranraer away at second-placed East Kilbride. And this incredible undefeated run goes on and on, with Stranraer running out 0-2 victors. They are really riding along on a crest of a wave right now. Their next game is at home against third-placed Clyde and if they win, only goal difference will be keeping them away from that coveted playoff spot.

Eventually, I decided that maybe I ought to take a listen to the dictaphone. And sure enough, there were three entries – at 02:15, 03:06 and 04:15. So there we go. I must have had at least two hours sleep, even if I didn’t think so.

There was something about a new plan to link various hard drives together to make systems bigger and work better. It involves a certain form of attachment and something that was quite complicated to do, so there were rules and regulations about it. But there was something going round last night that you don’t need to do certain things in order to make it work. Secondly, that older hard drives could still be linked together, and thirdly, if you open up a piece of paper with the sterile equipment inside and you lose or drop something, it makes no difference – you can still go ahead and carry out the task. Furthermore, if you approach it in a happy frame of mind, you are likely to have much more success than if you approach it with a grimace on your face. Someone was round at my place trying to link my devices together and I was extremely interested to see how they did it because it didn’t seem all that complicated at all to me.

There’s nothing new in this idea. Even back in the 1990s we were piggybacking SCSI drives, using patched cables. I had one on my desk for a while in the chauffeurs’ office in Brussels.

The second part of it relates to the nurse at dialysis who, having opened a sterile kit and put on the gloves, had to take them off to attend to a patient and then open another complete sterile kit just for a pair of gloves.

I met up with my friends and their family again. We were in Belgium again, chatting about my plans for the future. I explained that I’d recently bought a new apartment so they were very interested in it. They asked me if I was going to let it, or what was the plan? I said that I was going to move into it and sell the place where I was living now, because although the place where I was living now was small and convenient for the centre, this place is bigger, cleaner, more in the open air, it’s on the north side of the city that I like, it’s near the airport and it was offered to me at a really good price. I asked if they would like to go to see it, so my friend said that she would so we climbed into my car and set off to drive. But we drove for miles outside the city – it was a really long expedition. We ended up down some kind of country lane, but there was nothing going on there so we turned round. I headed back driving but at one point there was an extremely sharp left-hand bend. I wasn’t concentrating and missed the bend, going straight on through the hedge. I put the car into reverse and went to reverse back out the way that I’d gone in, but there were two vehicles heading my way so I thought that I’d wait until they’d gone. One was an old type of pickup with a tower on it like a carnival float. I noticed that there was a wing missing off this pickup and a few other pieces, but it went and parked on wasteland opposite this bend. The other was one of these mini-pickups that were popular thirty years ago, these Japanese ones. This one was a British registered “T” registered, and it had trees growing out of it. It had obviously not been used for years. That disappeared up a side lane. We ended up back in another town and we were talking about my new apartment. I explained that it was two-bedroomed but I didn’t have all my furniture from where I used to live up until Virlet. It was all at the farm in Virlet. I only had the stuff that I’d bought since I left Virlet. If she had another bed and a mattress that she wasn’t using, I’d install them in my place, and I’d have a bedroom ready for when she and other people came to visit. We were walking through this town and we came to some kind of barrier, like a huge canvas screen that was blocking the entrance to a gate of the city walls. We tried to find a way round it. I went to one side and she went round to the other. I couldn’t leave from my side but she managed to from her, so I went to her side but somehow in between, the gate had become open again so I could walk through there. Then she asked me about parking. Was there an attributed parking space? I replied “certainly. That was an essential”. She answered “well, make very sure about it because we have two parking spaces attributed at our place but even so, we had a £25:00 fine for not parking in accordance with the rules”.

This second apartment is one that has appeared in a dream on a previous occasion several months ago. It’s a three-roomed apartment en enfilade, that is in a line from front to back, and it’s situated in a street (that doesn’t exist) across the Boulevard Reyers on the border between Schaerbeek and Evere.

The gate here in this dream reminds me of the drawbridge here in the walls in the medieval city up here. And driving through a hedge reminds me of once when I actually did just that, having skidded on a patch of black ice on a bad bend. And then, I simply turned round and drove back out the way that I came in.

As for the ancient vehicles, Isabelle the Nurse and her friends have a carnival float that they are entering in this year’s Carnaval in a couple of weeks’ time.

There was an interview about the new Roman alarm system imposed for waking up in the morning. The presenter was asking some kind of Roman officer how it was working. He thought that he was happy in general but it does create its own problems because the finger-swipe with the time to stop the alarm has been personalised so that only the person who set the alarm can switch it off, which is not very convenient if he’s been posted to a different camp or a different site within the legion.

This would be interesting indeed, Roman soldiers swiping their alarms. I wonder what James Curle would have said.

After that, I crashed out for half an hour, and then spent a few hours on my Welsh homework and now, that’s all finished and ready to go once I’ve checked it again.

This led me up to pizza time. I have plenty of bread in the freezer so I decided not to make any more until I’ve emptied the freezer somewhat, however I reckoned that I ought to make a pizza at least, and try to eat at least some of it tonight even if I don’t feel like eating any of it.

Surprisingly, I did manage to eat about half of it and it was actually quite nice. The other half will do for when I next feel hungry, whenever that might be. But it’s hard, really, to believe that six months ago, I’d make a Sunday night pizza with 167 grammes of flour, whereas now, I’m struggling to eat half a pizza, made with 50 grammes with 50 grammes left for another day.

That’s a problem for another time, though, because, rather later than I would like, I’m going to bed to try for a decent sleep before dialysis. Isabelle the Nurse told me to stay in bed tomorrow and she’d some into the bedroom to sort me out. But I could easily see myself doing just that and working on nothing at all when I have so much to do.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Roman soldiers and swiping alarms … "well, one of us has" – ed … it wouldn’t really be an anachronism to have finger-swipe alarms in Ancient Rome.
After all, they had cars in Biblical times. And if you don’t believe me, read Acts 2:1 where it says "and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one Accord in one place."
They also had motor vehicles in Tolkein’s Middle Earth too. And if you don’t believe that, Tolkein tells us quite clearly that "Legolas and Gimli were to ride again together in the company of Aragorn and Gandalf, who went in the van with the Dúnedain and the sons of Elrond"

Saturday 24th January 2026 – AND ONCE MORE …

… I’m off to bed without any food.

It’s not only that I don’t feel like any, or even that my stomach is churning around so much that I’ll be ill if I eat something, I also have to shake off this miserable feeling of tiredness, wretchedness and ill health.

As you can probably guess, I had another bad night last night, followed by another really bad day today, probably one of the worst days that I’ve had since I fell ill over ten years ago.

Last night, I finished off by saying that I was going to bed early. It was round about 21:30 when I finally finished everything that needed doing, and it wasn’t much longer after then that I managed to climb into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep either but I awoke with the stabbing pain in my foot and a really bad fit of coughing. I’m not sure what time it might have been, but I tried for what seemed like an age to go back to sleep. When I finally looked at the time, it was 03:43, so it must have been about 02:30 at the latest when I awoke.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep because I awoke later and lay there wondering what time it was. I had my answer about five minutes later when the alarm went off, so it must have been about 06:20 when I awoke, something like that.

Once more, it was a real effort to leave the bed. I had a spinning head, nausea and heaven alone knows what but I made an effort to crawl into the bathroom for a good wash and to sort myself out.

The hot drink and medication were next, and even though I didn’t feel like taking them, I forced myself.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and I really was surprised at how far I’d been.

There was some kind of rock festival going on in France and it was raided by the police. I was in my bed when they came. They began to ask me questions, to which I replied quite well so they asked me if I would mind being the interpreter for many of the interviewees. I didn’t really see that I had much of a choice, but one thing was certain was that I wasn’t going to leave my bed because I was quite comfortable there and everything that I wanted, including the alarm, was at arm’s length so I didn’t really have to move at all.

Could you imagine this? Me in bed at a rock festival? But it wouldn’t be by any means the first time that I’ve been asked to act as an interpreter by the local administration

I was driving my taxi last night. I was in Sandbach. It was a hot day, no-one was moving and it had been very quiet so I thought that I’d have a wander back towards Crewe. In the end, after much deliberation, I was parked up in Edleston Road, or one of the streets near Edleston Road. I hadn’t noticed that the rear end of my vehicle was blocking the street but there was no traffic about at all. Suddenly, a young boy came up and asked “are you the office manager?”. I asked why, and he replied “the director of Cumberland School wants to speak to you”. I’d heard this once before, but I hadn’t taken it seriously, seeing as it was a Sunday, so I decided that seeing as I was doing nothing better, I’d go. For some reason, I parked the car and walked up Edleston Road towards Nantwich Road and was planning to walk along Nantwich Road to Cumberland School. But then I thought “I couldn’t remember where Cumberland School was, and how I wished that schools would just have the name of the street, like ‘Bedford Street Primary’ or something like that rather than these fancy names”. I thought that by the time I found it, I’d probably want to buy an ice cream or something to cool me down, and it would have been cheaper to have gone in the car in the first place. But I bumped into a couple of people whom I knew. One of them was my Greek friend, so we decided to walk together. And these three or four people of us set out to walk. We were having this argument about shopping in Preston, about how the shops were better in Preston than they were around here, and should we look in this new shop that was being opened to see if it’s any good? I replied that seeing as it’s just opening here now, it’s probably been open for twenty years in Preston. I described one of my visits to Preston, where I’d gone into town, parked in a multi-storey car park on the edge, walked out, gone to one of these catalogue shops, bought everything that I needed for everyone at Christmas and come straight home again. This discussion carried on for quite some time. Then, suddenly, I looked around and thought “we’re in Stoke-on-Trent here. We’ve walked from Crewe to Stoke-on-Trent. Where on earth did we go wrong on this route?”. In the end, my Greek friend and I said goodbye to everyone and went over to the bus stop. On the corner of one of the streets where we were standing was a huge collection of bus stops. Then I couldn’t remember the number of the bus that went from Stoke back to Crewe. In the old days, it used to be the 20 and then it changed to the 320, but I couldn’t think at all. I left my Greek friend standing against the wall and went over to a couple of the buses. There was a group of drivers standing around the buses, and someone from the bus company looking very official with a crash helmet, so I imagined that he was collecting the money, so he must be someone important. I asked him if he could tell me which bus went to Crewe but he said “no” and walked off. The other bus drivers weren’t particularly helpful either so I went over and had a look myself at the stops. I saw the 320 on there so I imagined that this was probably it, but there probably wasn’t going to be another bus for nearly an hour. There was also a bus 550, and that number rang a bell with me for some reason but I couldn’t think why. By then, my Greek friend was sitting on a wall so I helped her down and gave her a kiss. That surprised her, but she responded. So we were standing there and she said “I hope that this isn’t a trick to lure me out of my home and keep me out for ages”. I had to reassure her that I was as disappointed as everyone else, as I was supposed to have had this meeting and it should have taken place a long time ago but I’d ended up in Stoke-on-Trent too and I was only supposed to walk half a mile. I couldn’t explain any of this but it was certainly no plan.

First of all, there’s no Cumberland School in Crewe that I know of. And if there were, it would be at the other end of town near the Cumberland Bridge or the Cumberland Sports Arena rather than off Nantwich Road somewhere.

Secondly, my Greek friend was a strange girl. She started at the European Union at the same time that I did. There was quite a group of us who began at the same time, and we used to organise social events and that kind of thing between us. It was only natural that after a while, we began to pair off and I spent a lot of time with this girl. However, although she encouraged me to spend the time with her, there would always be a moment where she would have a mini-panic attack and withdraw into her shell, and I could never penetrate her barrier. Strangely, a few years later when I met Laurence, she made much more of an effort to be friendly, but when Laurence and I separated three years later, she immediately withdrew back into her shell

Funnily enough, she asked me once to drive her to the airport when she was flying back to Greece. I helped her carry her suitcase inside and said goodbye to her at the barrier.
"Make sure that you eat properly and look after yourself" she said.
A woman in the queue behind her said "that’s right, we’ve got to give our husbands their orders"
And I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a big, beaming smile on anyone’s face, either before or since.

And thirdly, although catalogue-shop shopping was a thing that I did at Christmas in the past, I have never ever been shopping in Preston in my life.

We’d gone to Chester for the day, a big group of us, and it began to rain. It continued to rain in one of the most incredible torrential downpours that I have ever seen. After a while, the rain stopped and we could start to walk. I went for a walk around and met several people from our trip, and we talked about the weather. At that moment, the level of the water in the town began to rise. It looked as if the river had overflowed from outside in the country and was beginning to flood everywhere. I made a few comments that were pretty much ridiculed by everyone else, and then I decided that I’d go for a walk to see exactly how badly the place was flooded. I went and found the little shortcut alley that I used to take from work up to the town centre. That seemed to be OK, but I walked on a little further and there was a steep road down on the right. Where the railway bridge was, it was deep in water and there was a torrent of water circulating up against the support of the railway bridge, making a huge splashing noise each time. I decided that I’d walk down that way to see how bad it was. Luckily, the pavement was quite high there, so even though the road was flooded, it wasn’t actually too deep if I kept to the pavement. I carried on walking through it. Then I began to think that I hope that this current doesn’t knock me over because I can’t stand up again and there’s no-one else about. Perhaps I ought to have come down here on my crutches.

Even now, I can still see where I was during this dream. I was at first in the city centre, and later, I was along the ring road on the southwest side of the city centre. And if the River Dee had flooded all of that, then the World really did have a problem.

And once more, going for a walk without my crutches, knowing full well that I should have them with me. It’s wishful thinking, this walking.

Isabelle the Nurse came in, face mask and all, and gave me a serious lecture about these antibiotics. With still no prescription from Emilie the Cute Consultant arriving at the chemist’s, I’ve been taking the ones from last time. She warned me against it because I don’t know if it’s the same type that has been prescribed, and I don’t know if it’s the same dose.

She checked my temperature too. Thirty-seven point four degrees. Yes, she thinks that I’m ill.

After she left, I could make breakfast. I didn’t feel like anything, but I’m going to be really ill if I don’t eat something. So I ate it, albeit with a churning stomach, and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still giving us his Roman pottery lecture, and once again, as I mentioned the other day, he tells us that "when we pass from the early vessels to those of later date the most striking characteristic appears to be that the ware employed is generally rather poorer in quality."

That’s not what you would expect at all.

After I’d finished, I came back in here. It was 09:55 and by 10:00 I was back in bed, not only fully-clothed but with my slippers on too, as I discovered later. I just couldn’t keep going.

It was, would you believe, 13:00 when I awoke. And a good forty-five minutes before I was back at my desk. It took me that long to leave the bed.

And would you believe? There was yet more stuff on the dictaphone from that three hours.

I found myself in a prison. I was sharing a room with another person, and there was also the Egyptian doctor whom I knew in there. He was there more as a doctor than an inmate and the room and the situation was more like a hospital than a prison. I’d bought my computer in with me. It was a new computer and I was coming to terms with it, but I was busy trying to do some work while he was busy trying to pack up and prepare everything for his holidays, the doctor. I went to change, and ended up with my fleece under one of my big fleeces. It made me feel extremely warm and it was constraining me around the chest, and I couldn’t think why at first. Then I began to settle down. I noticed that all over the room, someone had put these little hand-made stickers of an orange background with a face and two eyes wide open. So I wondered what was happening here. Then I noticed that while I’d been away, someone had closed my laptop. I wasn’t sure if that had shut it down, whether it would reopen if I were to open it. I moved it around on the bed to give myself a little space. The doctor then said something like “it’s strange really that there are only the two of us here who have some kind of information technology tool. I replied that when I had my taxi in the 80s, we had an Apple II computer and I had my first PC in 1993, so I always had some kind of information technology with me when I’m travelling around somewhere.

This is another one of those dreams that totally beats me. It seems to relate to nothing at all, except that I’m surprised that I could actually remember, during a dream, all about my computer-owning history

Did I dictate the dream about some friends of mine and me and me down in the Auvergne? We had a house together. We’d been somewhere and come back, but there was someone parked in our drive so we had to move these people out so we could put our cars in. I had a Ford Cortina in there that I was repairing. It was up on a jack, an electric jack with a hand-held button with one of these long curly cables to operate it. I could set it en route, either up or down, but I hadn’t worked out how to stop it. It was either all the way up or all the way down. This was not what I wanted it to do and it was becoming extremely frustrating. One of my friends was then talking about putting a lock up and I wondered what he meant. I imagined two subterranean tubes that you could buy that you could pull out and lock to stop people parking in your parking space, but I didn’t think that that was what he meant. At that moment from down the road, a car was coming. It was coming really fast on this dirt track and there was dust everywhere. It roared past and we both said that if it keeps on going like that, there will be an accident. But the car in our driveway, it was a dark red MPV with a trailer and had Ukrainian plates. It came out of our drive in reverse at such a rapid rate of knots that it had disappeared around the bend before we’d even managed to do that without coming to grief.

Having a Ford Cortina up on a jack would be nothing new, but an electric jack? Certainly. Those two red vehicles would be interesting, especially the Ukrainian one and trailer disappearing at a rapid rate of knots in reverse gear.

When I was feeling like it, I did some work on the next radio programme, but it was a slow, painful work that took about ten times longer than it ought.

Eventually, I knocked off to watch the football. Colwyn Bay v Connah’s Quay Nomads. In front of the biggest crowd for a league game for many, many a year, we had a game that everyone would have enjoyed. It was another candidate for the best game that I have ever seen.

It pulsed along from end to end and the dramatic ending couldn’t ever be bettered in fiction. No-one would believe it if you were to write a story like that.

There were quite a few kids in the crowd too and despite it being January, freezing cold, wet and windy, you wouldn’t believe the queue at the ice-cream van. Nothing ever changes with kids, I suppose.

So that’s it. I’ve had enough, and I’m off to bed, cold, hungry and fed up but I don’t care.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greeks and Greece … "well, one of us has" – ed … back in Ancient Greece, a distinguished old gentleman took his hlamis to the akestës for repair.
"Who are you?" asked the akestës, preparing to chisel out the tablet.
"Who am I?" asked the customer. "I’m one of Athens’s foremost playwrights"
"Euripides?"
"No. The wife caught them on a nail as she was taking them out to dry."

Friday 23rd January 2026 – EVEN AS I TYPE …

… these notes, I really ought to be making tea. But the truth is that I have a churning stomach right now and running through a list of possible menus that I might eat, there isn’t one that appeals to me. All it seems to do is to make my stomach churn over even more.

As well as that, although I’m feeling somewhat better than I did this time last night, I’m still feeling a lot worse than I ought to be, so the aim is to do what I have to do as soon as I am able to do it and then head off to bed again, in the hope that yet another good sleep will do me some good.

Not like yesterday, which, despite my early, really early night, didn’t go according to plan.

As I mentioned yesterday, despite going to bed at 19:25 or thereabouts, I was awake again four hours later. And although I said that “I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep”, I was still wide-awake at 02:30 and showing no sign of dropping off.

At some point though, I must have gone back off to sleep because I was awoken by the alarm, and it took me completely by surprise. And I must admit that I have never felt less like leaving the bed as I did this morning. It took me an age to rise up to my feet and head off to the bathroom. As a result, I was running really late for everything else.

In the bathroom, I changed my clothes, having been in the same clothes without a change for forty-eight hours and I washed my undies. I like to keep on top of my clothes like that, having spent years living out of a suitcase. And then, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was in the Soviet Union last night in my van. There had been some kind of concert supposed to take place, so I was in this village or small town down in the south of the Soviet Union on my way to Asia and I bumped into these two American girls who were also going to this concert. We went into this room and there were probably thirty or forty people standing around. So we sat down and waited for something to happen. We were expecting this music concert and then perhaps a discussion about what came out in the songs, that kind of thing. But I fell asleep, and when I awoke about ten minutes later, everyone else was asleep too except these two American girls. They were looking at their watch and one of them said “well, we may as well go. There’s a bus back to the USA in an hour. In the end, the three of us left, with all these other people asleep. Outside, there was plenty of snow, and we walked, and where the bus was due to be picked up was at this car park and there were two white MkIII Ford Zephyrs there with the word LEI written on the badge instead of “Ford Zephyr”. The girls went to stand there, and in the end, I invited them to come with me to Asia, but they were reluctant. They asked me if I’d ever been there before. I replied “no, but I have travelling in the blood”. I said that I’d been a taxi driver, coach driver, chauffeur and I’ve travelled the Northern Hemisphere all on my own in the past, and my father was a lorry driver so it’s all in the blood. But they were very reluctant, so in the end I left them and climbed over the roof of one of these Ford Zephyrs to head back to the van. I heard one of them say to the other one “it’s a shame that he’s such an untidy person” so I was thinking that maybe if I’d been more tidy, they might have come. I walked over to where I’d parked the van but couldn’t see it. This looked nothing like where I remembered having parked it. I thought that I must be in the wrong place so I tried to retrace my steps and ended up miles out of town trying to find the van. Where I was, all the snow had melted and it was an urban scene with trees in the distance. I wandered through all of these buildings, trying to find my way out to see if the van was behind them, but I couldn’t find my way out of these buildings. I was wandering around for ages. In the end, I found myself on a train. I was standing by a window, looking out to see if I could see the van somewhere, but I heard a commotion behind me. It was a teacher with a bunch of maybe ten girls. She’d gone to find the ticket controller. It seemed that some English-speaking people were sitting in these girls’ seats and she had to make them move. She spoke to them in English, so I spoke to her about the van. She said that she couldn’t help me. I need to see the police. I replied that the van hasn’t been stolen – I just can’t find it and in any case, I can’t speak Russian. I tried to speak some Russian from what I remembered but made a mess of it and she really wasn’t able to help me at all.

What a strange dream that was! For a start, I did learn to speak Russian, although I’ve forgotten most of it now. That started off when I was working for Shearings and I’d heard that they were trying to win a contract with an American travel agency to transport American tourists behind the Iron Curtain to “visit their roots”. It sounded probably the most fascinating coach-driving work ever, so I found a local Russian exile who taught me over a period of six months. When the company announced that they were looking for drivers to go behind the Iron Curtain, I naturally volunteered.
"Why should we select you ahead of everyone else?"
"Well, actually, I can speak some Russian"
It was the most fantastic work that I have ever done, and I enjoyed every moment of it, even if it did mean a relentless diet of wiener schnitzel.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … dream, I could easily imagine myself at one time driving through the Soviet Union to Asia, somewhere like pre-revolutionary Iran, but the political climate east of Poland and Romania these days would put anyone off. And wandering around aimlessly looking for my van because I’d forgotten where it was parked is just like me, especially these days.

As for the white Ford Zephyrs, I couldn’t ever imagine them being in the Soviet Union, whether under a different maker’s name or not. They are much more likely to have been ZIL 111G vehicles, although if you were to see one of those, you would know that you are in trouble, because they were only ever given to members of the Politburo.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise this morning. Fitted with a mask, she stormed into the apartment and attended to my legs. She had a go at measuring my temperature with my thermometer and it’s still quite high. However, she doesn’t think much of my thermometer and she’ll bring her own tomorrow.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still discussing pottery, and now, we’ve moved on to how we are able to identify the different potters. There’s a fascinating list of potters’ marks and some equally fascinationg comments such as "this little fragment is an example of pottery classified by Dragendorff as ‘Dragendorff 37’, and there is a sample of this ware in a museum in (some obscure town in) Bulgaria."

Back in here, I had a variety of things to do, not having attended to my affairs as I should for the last forty-eight hours, and then I had last night’s notes to write.

They are now online, and then I finished off the notes for the radio programme on which I’ve been working.

In the meantime, I was having a good chat with Liz, who was giving me loads of motherly advice about how to find natural remedies to deal with my current health issues, and later on a brief exchange of messages with Rosemary.

There was football too. On Tuesday night Stranraer had played Queen’s Park of the second tier in the Scottish Cup on a swamp in a monsoon and had beaten the Spiders 6-5 on penalties after a 1-1 draw during one hundred and twenty minutes.

In theory, they now have a match at Ibrox against Glasgow Rangers, but the behind-the-scenes and off-the-field controversy after the game will need to be resolved first before it’s confirmed.

But that’s about everything, really. I suppose that there’s much more about which to write, such as my faithful cleaner coming down to do her stuff, but instead, I’m going to bed. And good riddance to me. I really don’t know how to cope with this latest illness. It’s getting on my wick and it’s high time that something happens before I go berserk.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Soviet Union … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a man in the Red Square holding up a pice of paper.
I asked a local – a very vocal local yokel – what he was doing, and he replied "protesting, of course."
"But what about?" I asked.
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Why would he need to put that on his sign? Everyone knows what’s wrong! ".
Two minutes later, a police van pulls up and they drag him inside.
"So what’s he done now?"
"Ignorant foreigner!" he replied. "Everyone knows what he did!".

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

… parcels delivery this morning, on a Sunday! What kind of strange idea was that? There was nothing in my e-mails to suggest that one would be arriving today.

Not only that, I wasn’t anything like prepared for its arrival either. What with one ting and another, like a late restart after tea, falling asleep on my chair for almost an hour, all of that, it was long after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was probably 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s why I was so surprised and disappointed to be awake at 03:20. There was something about being in a strange place and some American expected me to be in charge of the gentlemen’s restroom when I knew nothing at all about the exact situation.

The next time that I awoke, it was 07:50. I was in two minds whether to leave the bed at that point but I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and went back to sleep.

At about 08:15, there was this insistent ringing on the doorbell. The nurse usually rings when he arrives to make sure that I’m about, but I ignore it as he has a key to the building and my door. And then it rang again. “Don’t worry” I thought. He’ll work it out.

But a third time? And a fourth one? At that point, streaming profanities and vulgar abuse, I began to leave the bed but the door opened and in came the nurse, carrying a parcel. I quickly nipped back under the covers.

"Parcel delivery for you".
"Where was it?" I asked. "On the doorstep?"
"Oh, no" he replied. "The courier was ringing your bell to deliver it when I arrived"

So a courier delivering parcels at 08:15 on a Sunday morning? Whatever is going on here? It’s rather an extreme way of behaving, dragging people from their beds at silly times on a Sunday morning when all respectable people should still be asleep.

The nurse fitted my socks while I was lying in bed, and after he left, I have it a few minutes and the left the bed.

This morning, I didn’t bother with a wash. I just sorted myself out and then went to make breakfast – porridge, coffee and the last of the inside-out croissants. I must make some more next week, but I’ll make them the correct way round this time.

Back in here, there was some football from last night. I started off with Connah’s Quay beating Y Barri 3-1, despite being 1-0 down with only twenty minutes to play. And that’s as far as I went because this computer is just not up to watching streamed programmes

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was some kind of party going on in Stoke-on-Trent and I’d been invited by my friend. So I turned up, and I was in my van. I had some things in the back to drop off. He noticed the spare wheel in the back and the large sheet of wood – pallet wood made into a sheet.I explained that one of my tyres was down somewhat on tread so I need to replace it. He said that it’s no surprise that it’s down on tread because it’s always sagging down to one side He had a look inside and said “yes, we have a jack. Yes we have a wheelbrace. There’s a DC socket in the back for the compressor and a few other things”, and he said that we’ll deal with it, but right now, there were other things to do. We had to go round to the front, but people kept on appearing with things wrapped in towels. They were unwrapping the towels and handing them to us. There were all kinds of different food supplies, piles and piles of stuff, loads and loads of loose mint sweets in wrappers. There was so much that we were just dropping it on the floor because we couldn’t carry it all at once. We decided to make a couple of runs and then come back for it, hoping that no-one else comes back for it in the meantime. Some of the people coming back were my youngest sister and her husband. They were dressed as if for Hallowe’en, with blackened faces. I went in to drop off these things, and all my family was in there. My mother said “oh Eric, you’re looking smart today”. I replied “meaning that I don’t look very smart any other day?”. There were all these children around, children whom I knew, children and grandchildren of all the people whom I knew in my circle of friends. There was one particular girl whom I would have liked to have seen, but she hadn’t come. I was particularly disappointed, but so was everyone else. However, she had sent a letter saying “don’t think that I am being rude but ..” and I didn’t manage to hear the rest of it. I was quite disappointed. We dropped these things off, and all these children whom we knew milling around. A couple of young teenage girls came over to chat. I thankedt one of them for doing something for me in the past, but I can’t remember what it was. She went to pat me on the chest and I replied “be careful. I have a catheter port in there” so she apologised. We began to chat, and that was that.

“all my family was in there” – how about that for a scary nightmare Hallowe’en scenario? But this was a dream with all kinds of things going on. A friend and I had had been talking about her children and grandchildren a day or two back, and this probably is where the scenario about all these kids comes from.

As for the missing girl, I am sure that you can all guess who it was, so I’m going to award Zero marks for that.

Caernarfon were playing in the Welsh Premier League and were very close to the top. With the final game to play, it was extremely important. If they were to win, they would qualify for Europe. However, they were hemmed in and surrounded by a large force of Apache warriors and i was very difficult to do anything under these events. The captain of the fort found two of his players fighting . He broke them up, and gave them a lecture about tomorrow being the most important day in the club’s history, all of this, In the meantime, he sent two people out during the night through the enemy lines. They were successful and managed to meet up with a large force of cavalry that was heading their way to try to relieve them. Having been told of the forces and their positions etc, the cavalry commander decided to sleep the night in a dry gulch in the immediate area so that his troops would be fresh and rested ready for battle that he would give on the first of the month as soon as it becomes daylight

If you think that the previous dream was all mixed up, then this one was even worse. The root of the word “Caernarfon” – “Caer” – implies a Roman fort or camp of course and there was a Roman camp there, but they were hardly likely to be defending it against Native Americans. The idea of resting after a march and launching an attack at daybreak was quite a common US Army military tactic in those days.

Did I dictate the dream about the guy going on the bus to the neighbouring town? … “No you didn’t” – ed … He was disabled too, just like me, and couldn’t walk properly. He had no force in his legs. He managed to climb aboard the bus and it set off. Its destination was this town and was going no further so it didn’t pick up anyone as it entered the town. When it came to the edge of the pedestrian area, the bus stopped and everyone alighted. The disabled guy went up to the bus driver and asked if this was where they would come back on board later. He replied “yes” so the guy said that he wouldn’t manage to climb back aboard. The driver recommended that he go to one of the bus stops a little further out of the town centre where the pavements were raised. In the meantime, back at home, there was an absolutely tremendous shower of snow. Within half an hour, there was maybe half a metre of snow everywhere. Some was some poor guy, a footballer, standing by the door of his apartment looking very miserable because he had been planning on breaking some kind of record for his team that afternoon but all the matches had been postponed. People began to shovel, but it wasn’t really much good because the snow was coming down too fast. They wondered if they should bring in some professional snowmen. They thought that that might be a good idea, but they remembered reading that one professional snowman had been killed a couple of days earlier during an incident involving heavy snow. Someone else had the idea of picking up a couple of laptops and taking them outside to put on chairs so that when the snow fell down, the warm laptop would actually melt it and it would be somewhere for people to sit while they were taking a little break from shovelling snow.

We’ve had a few dreams abut buses in built-up areas just recently. And having difficulty climbing aboard a bus is another one of those issues. Here in Granville, some of the pavements have been raised to bus-door height but, ironically, the ones outside the medical centres and in the town centre, where most disabled people are likely to go, have not.

Leaving a laptop outside to melt the snow that falls on it is an interesting idea. It might work for te minutes, but it would be an expensive way of doing it.

The rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon were spent doing some housekeeping on the travelling laptop and the external hard drive, trying to tidy everything up before the new computer arrives.

Later on, I tried a different way of making bread. I’d seen a “no-knead” recipe for making bread in the air fryer, so I thought that I’d give it a try.

It’s very long-winded and takes a fair bit of time and the result wasn’t anything spectacularly good. It was only half a loaf too (my air fryer is quite small) so I might persevere and next time, make a full-sized loaf but bake it in the conventional oven.

While I was at it, I baked a small pizza and managed to eat half of it. I’ll save the other half for tea tomorrow night. But it was a weird pizza, because I had no fresh mushrooms. My cleaner hadn’t been to the shops this weekend.

Instead, I used frozen mushrooms, a great big handful, and I simmered them to dry the water out. And when I’d finished, there were hardly any mushrooms left. You’ll be amazed at how much water thee is in frozen mushrooms.

So right now, I’m off to bed, if the pain in my foot will subside. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately. We are back in our usual routine. And my new laptop might be here for Wednesday so that I can start working again. Steam-driven computing is not an ideal way forward.

But seeing as we have been talking about dreaming … “well, one of us has” – ed … one of my friends told me about a dream that she had.
"I dreamed that I was to have a new washing machine" she said. "If I went to sleep on my right side, I dreamed that I would have an Indesit, but if I went to sleep on my left side, I dreamed that I was t have an Electrolux."
"So what happened?" I enquired wearily
"I woke up my husband and told him"
"And what did he say?"
"He said ‘if you lie there on your back like that, quite still, I’ll give you a hotpoint"

Wednesday 31st December 2025 – HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all of my readers. If you are reading these notes before midnight, I wish you an excellent reveillon. For those of you reading after midnight, I hope that you had a wonderful evening.

My best New Year’s Eve was, of course, that of 1999/2000 where I was interviewed on Flemish TV – in Flemish – as I flew out from Brussels and spent a week on Long Beach Island off the coast of New Jersey. But that’s another story.

Instead, let’s turn our attention to last night.

For once just recently, I managed to go for a whole day without crashing out and even managed to complete the notes too. I must be feeling better than I did at the weekend.

By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was about 23:15 when I crawled into my beautiful bed, and it wasn’t long until I was asleep either. It was so comfortable in there.

So comfortable that I really didn’t want to wake up, but I did nevertheless. I didn’t check the time, though. Instead, I thought “I’ll heave myself out of bed when the alarm sounds. It’ll go off in a couple of minutes, probably”.

After about half an hour of waiting, I had a look at the time. It was 03:20, meaning that I had been awake since about 02:50. Consequently, I tried my best to go back to sleep but instead, I watched the clock go round and round.

When it reached 04:55, I thought that I’d give it ten minutes and then go off an start work. The next thing that I remembered, though, was that it was 06:10. I must have gone back to sleep again.

When the alarm sounded, I hauled myself off into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. I took my time sorting myself out. It was nice to have a slow start to the day.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in Davenport Avenue and someone came to the house. They said that they wanted the catalogue for the records over the road at the social club. I must have lent them my records and I presumably wanted to play them and let people search through them for their favourites. I found the book with everything in it and set out to go across the road with the book. There were a couple of young boys loitering around the entrance to the place and they asked me what I was doing. I said that I was minding my own business. What were they doing? They cycled off and I walked down to the clubhouse. It was heaving with people and you couldn’t approach the door at first. I eventually worked out where the door was, walked through and began to ask around for whoever had asked for this. The first place that I tried was in the lounge bar but there was no-one there who seemed to be interested. In the sports room, there was no-one there either. In the end, I went through to the dance room. The barman was there with a crowd of people waiting to be served so I handed him the book and he took it.

We did have a social club across the road from our house in Davenport Avenue that was indeed laid out like that. It was quite popular too and there were times when it was very difficult to fight your way in. Today though, when I looked at an aerial photo of the site, it was yet another housing estate.

Later on, I was running my taxis again from Shavington. There were probably about a dozen people in the house. They were all doing different things, ironing clothes, cleaning shoes, etc., presumably for some big meeting or something. A couple of years earlier, there had been a taxi driver around Crewe whom my mother liked but he’d disappeared. The last we’d heard was that he was in Portugal. So my mother then disappeared and these people were all still trying to sort out their shoes and clothes. I was trying to find my shoes, which had disappeared somewhere amongst the chaos. My mother came back and said that she was off to see this guy. She was going to take him this, take him that and take him something else. I said “don’t take him everything like that. You don’t know anything about this guy”. She replied “that’s where you’re wrong. As a matter of fact, he has some kind of virus and he set up a business out there and it all went wrong. He’s really poverty-stricken”. I replied “so he made a bad business decision, so he’s ill but that happens to a lot of people. I’ve made bad business decisions, and I’ve been ill, but no-one came running halfway across the continent for me”. She was totally adamant that she was going and taking all this stuff so in the end, I just turned round, walked into the other room and carried on looking for my shoes, and everyone else carried on sorting out their clothes. Then someone else came in and was talking about the current situation and asking me how I was. I said that I’d just had a huge, blazing row with my mother. They asked me if I was bothered and I replied “not in the least. I’ve won the field and she’s cleared off so I’m not bothered in the least”.

So I was back on the taxis again after a couple of nights off – a very rare event indeed when I was actually driving.

As for my mother, I often had rows with her. It never bothered me, though, because I was quite used to her unpredictable and sometimes illogical nature. I’d heard it all before and so I was immune to it all.

However, I did find this dream to be extremely embarrassing. Now that I am ill, I have in fact had people who have come halfway across Europe and even further vide Canada to see me. I’m hardly likely to go criticising others.

The nurse turned up again but he didn’t stay long. We talked about his chiropodist and how nice she seemed to be – a vast improvement on whoever I’ve had before.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on with reading about Roman military engineering. Today, we’ve been talking about Hero engines and Heron fountains and both of those are interesting concepts. Had I been down on the farm, I would have built an example of each and had an experiment to see whether I could harness the energy and put it to use.

We were also discussing reverse overshot waterwheels. These are interesting because rather than water falling into buckets on a kind of treadmill to turn the treadmill and power machinery, there were men inside the treadmill turning it by walking, as in a mediaeval crane, and the buckets attached to the treadmill were used to lift the water up and out. That was how they drained mines and quarries in Roman days.

Back in here, I had some football to watch. Cardiff Metropolitan were at home to Hwlffordd in the JD Cymru League, and there were highlights to see. And hats off to the producers who managed to squeeze something out of the game because the fact that it was a 0-0 draw summed up just about everything there was to say about the game. I shan’t waste any more time watching a repeat. Someone ought to present Hwlffordd manager Tony Pennock with a stringed musical instrument and a ruminant animal for his team to use in the opponent’s penalty area next game.

There were computer issues later on. One of the discs in the array decided not to fire up and it was shorting out all of the others. After I’d taken it out, the others worked perfectly. I was trying for hours to fix the disc, but in the end, I had to call it a day. I “repaired” it about three weeks ago and it’s developed the same fault so I figure that it’s a hardware issue.

There should be a ruck of spare hard drives around here somewhere but God alone knows where. I found a 2 TB external drive, but the power pack for it is missing.

The rest of the day was spent on the radio programmes. All of the text is now written, and I started on another one. This one is going to be another Rock Festival and they are hard work to prepare

Tea was falafel and pasta, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. And now I’m off to bed, to celebrate the New Year by sleeping through it. I wish you all the best.

But seeing as we have been talking about that club in Crewe … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was in there, a ‘phone on the bar suddenly began to ring. A man right by it picked it up and answered the call
"Darling" said a female voice. "There’s a beautiful leather coat here in this shop on sale at £1000. I know we can’t afford it but it’s so lovely … "
"Just this once, ike it so much" said the man. "I’m sure that we can manage somehow."
"But you said that we couldn’t afford that £3000 holiday for our wedding anniversary " said the female voice
"If it means that much to you dear, go ahead and book it too. We’ll manage somehow."
The conversation finished at that point, and the guy with the ‘phone looked around at the people standing nearby and asked "Does anyone know whose ‘phone this is?"

Tuesday 30th December 2025 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… catastrophe, I’m feeling a little better again today. However, it will be interesting to see if I can keep on going until I finish everything.

Not like last night, when I ground to a halt round about 22:00 and couldn’t carry on. That was the quickest slide into fatigue that I have ever had, because half an hour earlier, I was feeling quite sprightly.

Anyway, after I’d fallen asleep in the chair yet again, once I’d awoken, I decided to go straight to bed and finish off everything the next morning. That’s why those of you who came to read my notes overnight may have found some rather terse notes instead of the entry that is there now.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. And there I stayed, flat out and dead to the World, until all of … errr … 03:20. Mind you, I was able to go to sleep quite quickly until at least … errr … 03:50.

That was, unfortunately, my lot. Despite trying everything that I could, I wasn’t able to go back to sleep so round about 05:45, I gave it up and arose from the Dead. That was when I attacked the rest of the notes.

As well as that, I was chatting online to Alison, who is also ill and can’t sleep. We really are a right pair. There’s no hope for us. What a way to spend the Christmas break – flat out ill in bed!

While I was pondering over the aforesaid, I was beginning to wonder. Falling asleep at 22:00 or thereabouts and waking up at 04:00? Has my body clock reset itself somehow? So how do I reset it to how it was before?

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and brush-up and then into the kitchen for the medication. Everything today, though, was done at a rather leisurely pace. I was in no mood to hurry.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I was with one of the nurses from dialysis last night. We were in my car heading back towards Crewe when the song THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN came onto the radio. We were listening to that on the way home. That’s really all of this that I remember. It’s another one that evaporated the moment that I grabbed hold of the dictaphone.

She’s a girl who fascinates me. She’s small, with masses and masses of wild, dark hair, and I could easily imagine her playing a demon violin. That’s why the song is so relevant. You probably know the song – it’s based on a traditional American folk song from the Nineteenth Century and first recorded by Buster Carter and Preston Young in 1931 under the title “A Lazy Farmer Boy”

It was popularised by Alison Krauss and Union Station, but you have never ever heard it played quite like in the video clip. Along with Le Vent du Nord’s “Forillon”, which you can find AT ABOUT 49:00 ON THIS VIDEO CLIP, it’s probably one of the most extraordinary pieces of music you’ll ever hear. If you don’t know what the French word ‘déchainé’ means, just listen to, or watch, the solos in the songs, and you’ll need no further explanation.

And later on, I was up in the High Arctic, up in Goose Bay with someone else. It might even have been the aforementioned nurse from dialysis. We had to go back to Québec, so there’s a bus that leaves, and we climbed aboard the bus, an old yellow school bus, and it set off. There were about half a dozen passengers on it and there was a woman driving it. But before we climbed on board, we were sitting in another bus somewhere. As it pulled into Goose Bay, whoever was with me was asleep at the other end of the bus. We saw a VW camper with a caravan on the back pull off the road into a rest area. Instead of going in a complete arc and round, the driver tried to cut off the arc to make the entry smaller and became stuck on a rock. I nudged whoever was with me, or shouted to her, or gesticulated to her. As she turned round, the driver tried to go a little further on, but he overturned the vehicle. Our bus stopped and the driver alighted – it was a woman – and she helped them roll this camper thing back onto its four wheels. Then, we drove into the town where we picked up some more people. It was school chucking-out time and the kids were all there in British school uniforms, hanging around on this corner by this petrol station. I thought that this was weird for Labrador. On the bus back, we were talking, and some people were saying “whatever would we have done before we had the current crop of social media?”. I asked “does anyone remember ‘MySpace’?”. Apparently, no-one did, and I felt terribly old at that point. Then someone mentioned that it might have been the first, so I asked “what about First Class that we had at the university? The only thing was that all of the computers had to be physically connected by a server. If they were all working off the same server, you would have a really impressive social network, which many of us did at the time”. Then it began to go dark and I began to feel tired. I was thinking to myself “how long is it going to be before we reach Québec? Should we have brought some food with us?. I thought that I’d go down to the front to talk to the driver to find out if there’s any chance of stopping somewhere, maybe at Labrador City, to go to buy some food, but I fell asleep at that point.

It’s impressive that I could recognise in a dream that some British school uniforms would be totally out of place in Labrador. Not so impressive, though, that I thought that Goose Bay was in the High Arctic, which of course it isn’t.

Does anyone else remember social networks like MySpace? Last time I checked, a couple of years ago, my Myspace account was still active after all these years. And “First Class” – that was the university’s social network. It was quite primitive but still, thirty years ago, what did you expect? And it was designed by one man and one man only, whom I actually met. You didn’t have to be physically connected to the university’s intranet to use it, but it was only accessible by logging in to the intranet, which you could do via an internet connection.

And those were the days, weren’t they? Internet at 9.6 kbps. But then again, in the 1980s I was running a taxi business on an Apple II computer, and all that had was 2 x 5.25-inch floppy discs. Look at my setup now!

The nurse turned up, still as cheerful as ever. We had a brief chat and then he cleared off, leaving me to make breakfast.

And I’m still reading about Roman military engineering, although what the book on “Congreve’s Rockets” that I was reading had to do with Roman military engineering I really don’t know. It shows just how easily I can be sidetracked.

After breakfast, the chiropodist arrived. She took one look at my feet and sighed with despair. But in the half-hour that she was here, she did a really good job on my feet and toenails, and I was so impressed. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Back in here, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme, and by the time that I’d knocked off for a disgusting drink break, all of the music had been chosen, edited, remixed, paired and segued.

After my drink, I was sitting here slowly sinking into a semi-daze when the door burst open and in came my faithful cleaner. Any chance of a rest evaporated at that moment and when she’d done her stuff, I was ushered into the bathroom ad stuck under the shower. So now, I’m a nice, clean boy again … "well, clean anyway" – ed …

While I was in the shower, my cleaner was changing my bedding, putting my new sheet, quilt cover and pillowcases on – my Christmas presents to myself. And the setup is beautiful. It’s a very dark blue with planets, stars and asteroids all over it. I saw it in an online store and had a coup de coeur. I’m glad that I did. It goes really nicely with the dark blue of my bedroom curtains.

After she had left, I began to write the notes for the music that I’d just sorted out. I also had a chat with Liz too but she disappeared before I’d had a chance to tell her that Santa had paid me another visit last night or early this morning.

Tea tonight was the last of those strange curry-filled burgers with rice and veg followed by Christmas pudding and … CUSTARD! As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I don’t have many friends but those whom I do have are the best friends in the World. No-one could wish for better

What I wish for now, though, is my bed. I’ve managed to fight my way through to the end without falling asleep, and seeing that I’ve been awake since 03:50, that’s something of a miracle. And a nice clean me in a nice clean bed is something to anticipate, that’s for sure. Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about asteroids … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once told me that Asterix the Gaul went into the European Space Centre.
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some asteroids" he replied. "And then a polar bear went into the optician’s"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some polaroids" he replied. "And then hurdler David Hemery went into the waste room at the local hospital’s surgical centre"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"I don’t know" he replied. "He didn’t say."

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: liz terry messenger

Friday 15th May 2026 – WE ARE NOT …

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