Tag Archives: mandy_m

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

Saturday 11th October 2025 – MY LUCK WAS …

… in today, for once – or, rather, for twice. I had my favourite taxi driver today, not just for the outward bound trip to Avranches but the return journey home too.

Yes, it’s about time that I had some good luck because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

My good luck certainly wasn’t there last night. As usual, it was another horribly late night where I couldn’t seem to push on with any kind of urgency.

It was long after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed, without realising that I’d forgotten to switch on the water again last night. And regardless of whatever time it was when I went to bed, I was wide-awake again at 04:10.

The pattern of the last few mornings repeated itself yet again though. After tossing and turning in bed for what seemed like a week trying to go back to sleep and miserably failing, the next thing that I knew was the alarm going off at 06:29. So once again, I’d managed to go back to sleep at some point.

It took an age to leave the bed, and in the bathroom I found out that I’d forgotten to switch the water back on. That was rather a shock, and it certainly served to awaken me properly, although not in a fashion that I appreciated all that much.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was with TOTGA last night. She was telling me that she was leaving school and was going to college in Wrexham. I told her to let me know where she was going to be in Wrexham because I go to Wrexham quite often. We had quite a chat and we set off back to my house. As we turned into Davenport Avenue and slowed down in front of my house, I suddenly shouted “stop!”. I asked the driver to reverse again and go forward again, but I couldn’t see my Minerva. It wasn’t in the drive. There was another vehicle at the entrance to the drive so we piled out and went down past this first vehicle. The second vehicle was a Vanden Plas 4-litre R. There were a few bits missing off it and it was quite rough. We were having a look at it and we noticed that the front wing was rotten. One of my friends said that he would obtain another wing for me if I wanted one, but I said that I knew where I could find hundreds of these wings. I also noticed that the floor was rotten as well and needed replacing. But I found my Minerva. It had been put on one side at the end of the driveway before the garage, heaped over with things like old bits of wiring harness and I didn’t recognise it for a while. But while we had been reversing up and down the street in front of the garage, someone was looking out of the front window to see what we were doing. Anyway, we knocked on the back door of the house and went in.

So hello, TOTGA! Long time no see!

That dream though is one that is full of interest. TOTGA leaving school and going to college (she didn’t go to Wrexham, by the way) must have been a very young TOTGA. However, seeing as I was naught but a pup myself when I lived in Davenport Avenue for about three years in the very early seventies, it’s not too bad I suppose.

But what is the fixation these days with Davenport Avenue? I’ve lived in a lot of places for a lot longer than three years but I don’t dream about them half as much as I do about the aforementioned. It’s not as if the house meant anything significant to me either.

And there was a Vanden Plas 4 litre R at our house for a long while. They were based on the big Austin Westminster A105 but the difference was that they had a slimline all-alloy Rolls-Royce engine and, their Achilles heel, hydraulic tappets in an “over-under” valve configuration.

The tappets were absolute swines to adjust and my father sweated for weeks trying to set them correctly. Helping my father in the garage, I learned a lot of words that I never knew before.

My car in the drive last night wasn’t actually the Minerva. It was in fact the Lomax kit car that I owned for several months after I moved to Belgium. There’s a long story about this car, but here and now is not the time and place to discuss it.

Later on, I was going on holiday with a group of people from work. We’d stayed overnight at someone’s house in the area of Manchester Airport and the next morning, we were all preparing to leave. I asked if I had time to wash myself, but they said that we were leaving immediately. So I went and had a quick wash but the others were just about leaving the house when I came out, so I had to run after them. Then we reached the airport, and this big group of us were standing in the middle of the reception area having checked in. I needed to use the bathroom so I went. When I came out, they had all disappeared except for one person who was looking at the departures. I went over there but he headed off into a corner where I imagined that everyone would be waiting. I had a wander over there and when I arrived, I found that it was the exit door. They had all left. There were the shuttle buses outside waiting to run the people to the ‘planes. I had to find out which bus was going to my ‘plane but none of the drivers seemed to know which was which. Suddenly, they all drove off and left me standing on the apron. My immediate thought was to go to find a taxi to take me there but there were no taxis about so I began to walk to where the ‘plane might be. I ended up walking through the top end of Crewe. There were several girls there chatting away but no-one paid any attention. A couple of taxis drove past with their “for hire” signs lit but none of them stopped for me. I was beginning to think that I could see me going back to work on Monday instead of being on holiday with everyone else.

Whyever a dream like this has appeared, I really have no idea because nothing as far as I am concerned could be worse than going on holiday with my colleagues from work. Mind you, their opinion of me was probably the same as my opinion of them, so being abandoned in an airport terminal while they made good their escape would not come as any surprise to anyone.

The nurse was early yet again, and his good humour seems to be continuing. He didn’t take long to sort me out and then he cleared off. Whether his good humour will continue tomorrow after he’s helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education wants me to wear remains to be seen.

While I ate my breakfast, I finished the final part of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Although the surrender of New York was not actually as a result of a battle, I’m still surprised that he doesn’t mention it except very, very briefly in passing.

The next book on the list, which I shall start to read tomorrow, is AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE. When Colonel Carrington set out to Indian Territory to build the forts to protect the Bozeman Trail, his commanding officer, General Sheridan, asked Mrs Carrington to keep "a daily record of the events of a peculiarly eventful journey, " and this is the story of the book.

It will doubtless (I hope) contain much more colourful information than the terse military reports of her husband, and provide me with much more information for when I (finally) make a start on writing the full notes of the area that I visited in 2019.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programme, sorting out all of the music, and that took me up to the time that my faithful cleaner arrived to sort out my anaesthetic.

My taxi driver came round bang on time to pick me up and we had a lovely, long chat all the way to Avranches. And it was a long chat too because we had to go via Champeaux to pick up another passenger.

Even though I arrived on time, I was still the last to be coupled up today. but once the machine was working, they left me pretty much alone. I wasn’t in the mood to do any work today, which is no surprise seeing as the blood pressure was dropping rapidly. At one point it dropped as low as 6.8, which is way below the critical level.

For a change, I wasn’t last to be uncoupled, although there wasn’t all that much in it. My favourite taxi driver and I had another nice long chat on the way back to where my cleaner was awaiting me.

After a rest of half an hour, I managed to find the strength to make some baked potato, vegan salad and one of these breaded quorn burgers that I like. However, I wasn’t (yet again!) in much of a mood to eat very much.

But now, I’m off to bed. there’s a footfest (I hope) tomorrow and then a Day of Rest while I summon up the energy for chemotherapy on Tuesday and Wednesday. In fact, I have six consecutive days of medical appointments, and that’s too much for anyone.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being abandoned and unwanted … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not a new feeling for me at all.
One day, when we were kids, we had alphabetti spaghetti for tea. My mother carefully dished out the meal to each of us, and I noticed that the letters that I had been given were "C F F F K O U"

Sunday 10th August 2025 – HA HA HA HA!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the Welsh football club TNS. Created out of what used in the good old days to be Oswestry Town FC, and bankrolled to an enormous degree by its extremely wealthy chairman, in the last ten or so years the club has won just about every trophy or prize the Welsh domestic league can offer.

Some say that it’s a bad thing, that they monopolise the Welsh football system, but as it happens, I’m in two minds. I’ve seen the dramatic improvement in playing standards and in facilities in the Welsh pyramid over that period as other clubs struggle desperately to try to keep pace.

It’s also quite good for the morale when some lesser football team manages to scrape a win against them and their supporters collapse in a delirium of delight.

Last season, TNS became the first ever Welsh domestic club to qualify for the group stages of a European club competition and against all the odds, they managed even to win one of the group games to ensure that they didn’t finish bottom.

However, the success has gone to their heads. With the 5,000,000€ prize money, they have gone out and bought a raft of top-class professionals who really have no place in this league, and they kicked a pile of their journeymen professionals into touch.

Victims of their own hype, they had a dismal pre-season as their new stars struggle to adapt to the physical nature of lower league competition, and having predicted another successful European campaign, they failed embarrassingly to progress beyond the first round of the competitions in which they played.

Today, the JD Cymru League season began, and they were at home to Llansawel, a team that struggled near the bottom all last season and one of the clubs heavily tipped for relegation this season.

And if you want to see how the game progressed, HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS. You don’t need to be a football fan to enjoy them. TNS are in the green and white.

Just two weeks ago, I wrote an article for a football magazine in which I said "having seen TNS’s performances to date, it’s a certainty that several optimistic managers will be searching desperately for some rapid wingers to exploit the cracks over the top and round the sides of the TNS defence". In this game, you have a perfect example of a manager doing just that – and doing it in spades too. THE KEYSTONE COPS have nothing on the TNS defence.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night was another … well … not exactly “early” night, but I was in bed by 23:00, having once more dashed through everything at another uncomfortable rate of knots.

It goes without saying that I awoke quite early – at about 04:10 this morning. But this tile I was determined to go back to sleep and to my surprise, I actually succeeded, only to awaken at 06:29 precisely.

That’s the time that the alarm is set to sound on six days of the week. Sunday is a Day of Rest and the alarm is set for 07:59 so in theory I could have tried to go back to sleep yet again, but instead, I decided to raise myself from the Dead.

In the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication, followed by coming back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And who had come with me too, because TOTGA appeared in a dream last night. I was in Crewe, sorting out some food, jars of all kinds of things, tomato sauce etc that we’d collected. I was going to put them into Gainsborough Road. However, one of the jars had leaked so I’d had to clean it. My friend told me to knock before I went in, made sure that the tenants knew that I was there etc. I decided in the end that I didn’t really want to go because being inside that house again would dismay me. By this time, TOTGA had appeared and we were due to go back to Normandy, the three of us. First of all, I wanted to telephone an old school friend. TOTGA knew who he was and she said that he hed been ill, he had depression and all of that kind of thing. As I picked up the ‘phone, I suddenly forgot his number, so I just dialled a number at random and then hung up, saying that there was no answer. Then we decided that we’d ring up Rosemary to see if she fancied a quick visit before we went back. I couldn’t think of Rosemary’s ‘phone number then. Eventually, I managed it so I ‘phoned up and we had a chat. I asked her if she fancied a quick visit and she was really surprised. She wondered where we were and what we were doing, so we agreed to go down there. By this time, some people from the street had come past. They recognised me and came for a chat. TOTGA knew who they were because her aunt had a shop in the street and she had served in there on several occasions. They wanted to be introduced to her of course but she was teasing them with little suggestive hints from back from when she was a kid and worked in the shop. They were scratching their heads trying to think who she was. She thought that it was rather amusing so we left it at that. By this time, we were standing on the edge of a river that ran through a little gorge with a stone arch bridge over it in the background. We were all chatting, and then we decided that we’d better shoot off and visit Rosemary quickly otherwise we’ll be going home without seeing her.

It’s been ages since TOTGA has been around during the night. I thought that she had gone for good, just as Castor seems to have done and The Vanilla Queen did quite a while ago. But it really does make a change to see a dream full of nice people and no member of my family coming along to throw a spanner into the works.

Curiously though, when we were moving jars and bottles and so on downstairs, there was one jar where the top had worked loose and the contents had leaked

Later on, I was somewhere in Africa with a group of people in one of our old Fordson E83W vans. I was trying to find some paper on which to write some notes about a job that I had just completed but the only paper in the van was wet, soggy and mainly had other people’s calculations on it. I couldn’t find a big piece at all. By now I was running behind the van that was driving so I made a signal to the driver to stop. I opened the back door and my notebook was in the back. I rescued my notebook and waved on the van to start off again. Once it was going, I closed the door and carried on running behind it.

We did have a couple of E83W vans when we were kids. The first one was one of the early ones, KLG93, which my motor traders’ handbook tells me was registered in October 1937, and one of the last ones, XVT772, registered in January 1957. And you might think that walking behind one would be ridiculous, with an 1172cc side-value engine, a three-speed crash box and a downrated gearing on the rear axle, these vans would struggle to see 35 mph flat out. In fact, I have very vague memories of all of us having to get out and walk behind one once because it didn’t have enough power, fully loaded, to climb Shooter’s Hill in Blackheath, and when I mentioned it to my parents as I grew older, I was told that my memories were correct.

Isabelle the Nurse was back to her usual routine and back on time. We had a brief chat about one of my neighbours who is now in an Old Folks’ Home and she dealt with my legs, and then she cleared off as quickly as she came in.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday, we left our author arguing with the police, having been detained to “help them with their enquiries” and he, in a show of innocence, "of I know not what crime"

Today, however, things become a whole lot clearer. In order to cross a river, "my companion and I clambered down the hill, stole a boat which lay moored to the bank, and with a walking-stick for an oar painfully traversed the river Wey. When we had landed, we heard, from the further bank, a woman, the owner of the boat, protesting with great violence."

Later on, "with Margery Wood it reaches the 700-feet line, runs by what I fear was a private path through a newly-enclosed piece of property. We remembered to spare the garden, but we permitted ourselves a trespass upon this outer hollow trench in the wood which marked our way."

All that I can say is that if those events are samples of his habitual attitude and behaviour, I’m surprised that he hasn’t been arrested a long time before the previous day.

After I had finished breakfast, I came back in here to watch Stranraer lose at home to Edinburgh City, and then I had things to do.

It seems that no-one is interested in the furniture that I have for sale or that I’m trying to give away, so I rekindled my long-dormant on-line auction account. That took much longer than it did in the past, and putting your articles on-line is much more complicated than I remember it.

So after a great deal of huffing and puffing, I managed eventually to list everything that needs selling on. But probably there won’t be anyone from there interested either. It seems that selling on-line isn’t the thing that it was twenty years ago. But then, the internet is nothing like the community that it used to be back in those days either.

After lunch, I had a relax for a while before the TNS v Llansawel game, and then at the final whistle I went to make the bread for next week and the pizza for tonight.

Rosemary rang me for a chat while I was baking, but I couldn’t stay long because there was yet more football. Colwyn Bay, newly promoted to the JD Cymru Premier League, were at home to Connah’s Quay Nomads in front of a massive crown of over 1500 people.

Last time Colwyn Bay were in the JD Cymru Premier League, they didn’t last long. This time though, they have signed a whole raft of experienced players and they looked a much more formidable outfit. They went toe-to-toe with the Nomads for the entire 90 minutes and the 1-1 scoreline was quite a fair reflection of the game.

Almost immediately after the final whistle, the telephone rang. It was one of my former girlfriends from school years ago, with whom I’m still in touch. She’ll be in France in late September, so would I like a visit?

Now that’s a silly question. I don’t have enough visits, and so anyone can visit me at any time they like. If she would like to come, she’d be more than welcome, and so would anyone else (except of course, my immediate family)

Tonight’s pizza was excellent and I shall have to make more like that. There’s already been an order from my fiend from Munich when he arrives here next weekend.

That’s right, next weekend. That’s when my house move begins. Just four more climbs back up the stairs. I can’t wait for the torment to be over.

But right now, it’s over for tonight because I’m off to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about TNS’s laughable performance against Llansawel this afternoon … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a boxing match that I saw years ago where one of the contestants had been very quickly and very badly beaten.
The commentator was doing his best to console him, saying "Never mind. If you hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have been much of a fight."

Friday 1st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… things are much better today and I’m feeling a little less … "only a little less" – ed … miserable, depressed and ill.

What probably helped was a much better night’s sleep than just recently. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday’s notes were somewhat … errr … compressed as I dashed through them before ill-health and fatigue overwhelmed me.

It was something of a mad rush to finish them but I managed to climb into bed just before 22:30 and once in there, that was that. I was out like a light and didn’t feel a thing until all of … errr … 05:40.

That might have sounded as if it was early, but it represented over seven hours of uninterrupted sleep, and when was the last time that I managed that?

It took a good few minutes to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have left these days, but by 06:10 I was in the bathroom having a good scrub up.

The medication was next as usual, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had been there with me. And lo! And behold! I had a telephone call while I was asleep. It was from TOTGA. She was telling me that she was thinking about moving and in fact was planning to move on in a couple of weeks’ time. I told her that I was really pleased for her, but I was really sad in another way because her bakery would be closed and there would be no more fresh bread from there. We had a lengthy chat over the telephone. Halfway through it, I had to go out so I walked off down the street taking the ‘phone with me, chatting on the way and I came to her bakery. Of course, with it being a Tuesday it was closed. I could hear her inside talking to me on the ‘phone. Anyway, one of the blinds moved. It was her husband who was peeking out through one of the blinds. After a little minute or two, he opened the door and let me in. She was saying that she was moving in a few days’ time or in a short while. Her husband said that he would be there for another couple of weeks and then he’d be moving. I said that I’ll be moving in a week or two’s time too so we had a big chat about moving. Then she began to pack her boxes. She wanted her boxes opened in a certain peculiar way that meant that the tops had to be folded right back. I couldn’t understand why she was having to do that this way.
So welcome back to TOTGA, who has been missing from these pages for far too long. So she’s on the move too, at least in the ethereal World. I wonder what might be the significance of that. I don’t keep in touch with people as I used to since I cast all of my Social Media adrift eighteen months ago.

However, I could easily picture her running a bakery. Apart from the fact that she’s a good cook, she has a natural talent for organising and managing. With someone like her in the background managing all of my ideas, we could have ruled the World, but she had far more sense than to come anywhere within range of my evil clutches.

The next task was to review the news article that I wrote the other day and see how it was. In the end, I practically rewrote it and I still wasn’t happy with it. However, on the principle of “over-egging the pudding”, I left it as it finished and sent it off. And for a news source that is crying out for articles, it’s not been published as yet.

Back in the olden days in Brussels and down on the farm, I wrote quite a few articles for various publications and made myself a little pocket money, but even though this publication pays three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing, I ought to go back into the habit of working for a living before my brain seizes up completely.

There’s an interesting article in the local news this morning. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the controversy three years ago about the Russian sailing ship Shtandart COMING TO VISIT GRANVILLE during the Festival of Sailing Ships, and how it seemed that I was the only person in the whole département who found it objectionable give the political situation and the number of Ukrainian refugees here.

Apparently, the organisers of the festival have invited her back this year, but this time, the regional and national authorities have intervened and refused her a landing permit. And quite right too, in my opinion. But all the same, this incident and that of three years ago shows quite clearly that, despite the number of Ukrainian refugees living in the area, on which side of the fence the local politicians are sitting. Remember that they even banned my pro-Ukrainian rock concert.

Usually, I try my best to keep politics off these pages because otherwise, I’d be talking about nothing else. However, sometimes, it’s unavoidable

Hurricane Isabelle the Nurse blew into the apartment to give me my injection and to sort out my feet, and then she blew out as quickly as she had come in. And once she’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author, John Stow, has now made it to Westminster which, in those days, was a suburb of the City of London. His account of the area is fascinating, telling us all about the origins of the names of some of the places that are so famous today.

St James was a house for "fourteen sisters, maidens that were leprous, living chastely and honestly in divine service" but when the religious establishments were surrendered to Henry VIII, the King "built there a goodly manor annexing thereunto a park, closed about with a wall of brick, now called St James’s Park."

He also speaks of "a large plot of ground inclosed with brick, and is called ‘Scotland’ where great buildings have been for the receipt of the Kings of Scotland.". So “evening all”. And I bet that the plot of land is more than three feet long and three feet wide.

There are pages and pages of explanations like this, and it’s fascinating to read it all. I shall be sorry when this book comes to an end.

Back in here, I made a start on assembling the next radio programme’s music. It’s to be a live concert but it was recorded by different people in different fragments and so I have two complications to face.

Firstly, to make the recording levels and sound balance etc the same
Secondly, what to do about the gaps of a few micro-seconds in between some of the tracks where nothing was recorded.

Where there are overlapping parts, that’s quite easy, just fade in and out as appropriate and merge the tracks, but filling holes is more complicated, especially when one recording is 0.5% faster than the other one.

So that’s a task that has taken all day and it’s far from finished

The very first job though was to complete my order for LeClerc. And it’s extremely sad as more and more produce is being removed from the home delivery service. And when it was delivered, we had a catastrophe. The box of grape juice burst and soaked half of the shopping, so some of it had to go back.

There was an endless stream of visitors too today. Firstly, the energy guy came to do an energy audit, then my cleaner came along to do her stuff, and finally the sewing lady from down the road came to talk curtains with me.

It’s rather unfortunate, that, because she’s on the verge of retiring and so her stock of cloth has run down. She had nothing that I liked. She’ll have a rummage in the back of her shop to see what she can find, but it looks as if it’s going to be another on-line order.

People talk all the time about “shop local”, but these days, you can’t even give work away to people. They just don’t seem to be bothered.

When the LeClerc order (or what was left of it) arrived, I washed, diced and blanched the carrots ready for freezing, washed the tins and jars to remove the grape juice, and then went to sit down for a while. My knees were killing me.

Tea tonight was falafel, salad and chips – not very much tonight as I’m not that hungry. And then I put away the carrots and the rest of the stuff that needs freezing.

So having written my notes, I’m going to bed, later than planned, but still hoping for a good sleep before dialysis, which I hate with a passion.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Westminster … "well, one of us has" – ed … John Stow tells us that "had ye one house, wherein sometime were distraught and lunatic people."
While I was chatting to a friend of mine, I mentioned it to her.
She replied "so he’s not a big fan of the House of Commons either."

Sunday 6th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again. And you have no idea how hard I have worked either.

It actually began last night after finishing writing my notes. Straight away, I dictated the notes for the two radio programmes that I prepared during the week so that they were ready to edit today.

Even having done that, I was still in bed before 23:00, which made a very nice change from how things usually are. And with a potential lie-in until 08:00 today I was set for a really good sleep.

And I actually had some of it too. It wasn’t until about 06:15 that my eyes first opened. Disappointing, I know, but 7.25 hours of uninterrupted sleep is something that is very rare indeed.

From then on until 08:00 I drifted in and out of sleep. Flat out when the alarm went off at 08:00 but it was still a struggle to force myself out of bed.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to start transcribing the dictaphone notes but the nurse came early today. He was in something of a rush.

He probably set a new record for being in and out which suited me fine and I could crack on and have breakfast. And carry on reading MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright, has now left Kent and is in Ludlow and Western Shropshire, scrambling over the Iron-Age hill forts in the Clee Hills

Back in the late 1970s, feeling totally fed up of just about everything, I drove into Shropshire, left my van parked on a car park and walked miles to a Youth Hostel near Much Wenlock.

From there I walked all the way down the Wenlock Edge, the Long Mynd and the Clee Hills stopping at various Youth Hostels on the way, totally alone, just communing with nature.

Eventually, after a week or so, I found my way back to my van and drove home, a cleaner, fresher, more focused person. It’s amazing just how much good a week of that could do.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes. And guess who turned up last night? Yes, it was TOTGA’s turn to put in an appearance. Did I dictate the dream about the sale at LIDL where I bought four saws or something like that because they are the kind of thing that I would use when rebuilding the house? … "no you didn’t" – ed … Later on, we were with TOTGA. She put in an appearance and we were wandering around the supermarket when we saw one of our friends come by. She showed us four lightbulbs that she’d picked up from LIDL. They certainly hadn’t been on sale when I was there so we thought that they must have put out some more stuff so maybe we should go to look. We went in and had a wander around. TOTGA went off for a wander around somewhere else. When I looked she was standing by a tray and there on the surface was wood glue, four big tubs of it at £3:99 each. I shouted down to her to grab hold of the glue and bring it back because that’s the stuff that I use more and more. Of course Nerina had something to say about that but as we explained, rebuilding a house and doing it primarily out of wood – we aren’t going to do it all today but this is the kind of stuff that you can never find when you want it. Having four tubs on a shelf in the shed would certainly ease my ability to progress whenever I feel that I have the time to do it

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I always used to keep my eye open for bargains and quite often I’d see a real bargain that I don’t actually need straight away but in a year’s time I will. So I buy it, and when I do need it, I can’t find it and have to buy another full-price one. If I did find something, it usually meant that my plans had changed and I no longer needed it.

At some point last night I was working for a company and we were planning to launch an advertising campaign. I had several good ideas in my head that I had discussed with an advertising agency but the woman who saw me there was rather frosty and didn’t really pick up very much on my ideas. Instead she suggested something else. We crossed swords on several occasions. A little later on I had to go back to the agency. I wasn’t really looking forward to meeting this woman. Over chatting, she told me that things had gone on in their office and she’d handed in her notice. She didn’t know what to do. In a fit of enthusiasm I asked her “why don’t you come and work for me?” which took her by surprise and took me by surprise too when I said it. We actually sat down and began to discuss one or two things. Later on I began to buy and accumulate office equipment that I would likely need in the hope that it really would come to fruition.

In the past I’ve worked with many people whom personally I didn’t like but because they were so good at their job it was in fact a pleasure to work with them. Skill and proficiency are to be admired in everyone who displays it.

There was also something about driving a lorry through Crewe with a ladder on the back. I’d been to pick up this ladder and put it on the back of this open-back lorry and was driving it back home. I could see that it was really unsafe on there and wasn’t actually compressed . It was fully-extended, which I thought was strange. I stopped, took the ladder off having seen a convenient terraced house round the corner with a blank wall. I struggled to carry this ladder and went to prop it against the side wall of the house so that I could collapse it safely but the ladder was too long and overhung the gutter. The street was on such a slope that the ladder was canting over to the left. I thought that if I’m not going from one crisis to another, it’s certainly starting to look like it here. I’m going to have an enormous amount of difficulty putting this ladder into a safe condition.

In my mind’s eye right now I can still see where all of that happened. It was going down Derrington Avenue near the turning into Hammond Street. And strangely enough, ladders is not my best subject either when it comes to DiY and building.

Having dealt with all of that, I set to work. And without too many interruptions I bashed out two complete radio programmes, including the extra tracks and notes, and they are now finished and ready to go – sometime in … err … May next year. Something else that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … is that I want to be as far ahead as it is reasonably possible to be, so that my programmes can live on, even if I can’t.

One interruption that I mustn’t overlook was lunch. My cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich on fresh bread tasted delicious.

It was about 16:30 when I finished so I had my hot chocolate and coconut cake (I do like that, even if it’s not politically correct) and then made an apple cake. In the absence of a recipe, I made a basic oil cake, added a pile of desiccated coconut and raisins, and then diced an apple into small pieces.

Today, I tried an experiment. I decided that instead of stirring everything with a spoon, I’d make it in my food processor. After all, no point in having it and only using it to make hummus. And it did actually make it all mix up so much better and so much more evenly

Once it was mixed up I lined a baking tin and poured the mix in and left it for a while to settle.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … kitchen table I kneaded the pizza dough that had been defrosting since lunchtime and then rolled it out onto the tray.

Once everything was ready I switched on the oven and when it was hot bunged the cake in. Never mind your “40 minutes” – it was 75 with my oven. It’s a tabletop oven and it’s not very reliable or accurate.

15 minutes before the cake was ready I assembled the pizza and then when the cake was done I swapped it with the pizza and cooked that.

And wasn’t that delicious too? It would have been even nicer had I remembered the cherry tomatoes. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

The only task that remains to be done is the Welsh homework, but that’s a job that I’m going to try to do at the hospital. I may as well try to do some good while I’m there.

Off to bed now, and who will come to see me tonight? It’s Zero’s turn so I’m keeping my fingers crossed just in case.

So while we’re on the subject of things doing some good … "well, one of us is" – ed …whether it’s working at the hospital or walking over West Shropshire, I’m reminded of the time that Nerina went to a Health Farm.
"It’s wonderful here" she told me on the ‘phone. "I’m feeling a different woman!"
On that point I could have agreed with her, but I thought that I’d best keep silent and keep my activities a secret for as long as I could.

Thursday 25th April 2024 – I HAVE ACHES …

… and pains in places that I didn’t even know that I had places. I’m not as young as I used to be and this travelling is really taking its toll of me. I wish it didn’t.

After I’d finished my notes last night I didn’t have what it takes to go to bed. It took an age to find the energy and morale to raise myself from my chair and stagger off on this marathon trek of several inches that seems as if it’s several hundred miles.

As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it wouldn’t be so bad if I could find the energy to do something productive while I’m waiting but I can’t seem to do that either.

But eventually I fell into bed and that was that. It took an age to go off to sleep, being wound up as I was, but once I’d gone off I don’t recall moving again until just a few minutes before the alarm went off

It goes without saying that I took full advantage of every minute under the covers that I could because right now it’s freezing around here. You’d never believe that it’s the end of April with temperatures like we’re having. I know many people who have relit their heating and if this cold spell carries on much longer I shan’t be far behind.

So off I staggered into the dining area to sort out the medication and then to prepare everything for Isabelle the nurse so that she has everything that she needs and it’s set out how she likes.

So she came and organised me and told me that tomorrow I have a blood test to undergo. I’m not looking forward to that one bit. My arms look and feel as if I’ve been wrestling with a hedgehog as it is.

After she left, I came in here, sat down on my chair and that’s how I stayed for several hours. I couldn’t even be bothered to go to make breakfast – that’s the kind of state in which I was this morning.

The cleaner came round later and snapped me out of my reverie, bringing me all of the medication from my new prescription.

And there are piles of it too. It’s starting to become ridiculous, all of this and I really don’t know where it’s going to end. There are two more now added to the pile of nonsense after these latest visits and next time I go, there will doubtless be a couple of others to counter the side-effects that those two have caused.

Once she’d gone I managed to transcribe the dictaphone notes from yesterday at the hospital and add them into the notes, all of them and it really was “all” of them because it must have been a very mobile night that night with a lot going on.

In the middle of all of that I was out like a light for an hour or so. I really can’t keep on going these days and it’s driving me to distraction.

Rosemary rang up for a chat this afternoon, just a short one today. Only 1 hour and 10 minutes today – we’re losing our touch. She was telling me about her forthcoming trip to Italy which should make a nice trip out for her. She has all of the luck. It was Vietnam last year.

After we finished our chat I transcribed last night’s dictaphone notes. The Government was talking about some big, bold plans for railway modernisation to bring the railways right into the 21st Century. All of the particular regions were asked to submit their plans. We were working on a series of cross-country lines from east to west. Everywhere where we went where we saw the proposals from other areas, it was all about going north-south from London into the different regions. It seemed that the whole of the cross-country system would be squeezed out. Of course there was very little that we could do because we didn’t have the weight or influence. It was very frustrating to everyone concerned. All of the people were so concerned and frustrated that we couldn’t seem to make any headway at all with our plans. Naturally we were doing everything we could but we were being squeezed at every turn by everyone else. It was impossible to put forward any coherent plans because nothing that we were doing would conform to whatever it was that the Government really wanted. There was a grave danger that the whole of our east-west railway would be squeezed out. I had girls from the office coming to see me in tears about the prospects of failure that all of our lobbying and arguments were bringing but we we were doing everything we could. There was nothing more that we could do but we didn’t seem to be making any kind of progress. Everyone was just so frustrated.

Anyone who knows anything about the British railway network will know just how true that is too. Going cross-country in the UK by rail is really difficult and time-consuming. Government policies haven’t helped either. A cross-country railway line closed in the 1960s was approved for reopening as far back as 1992 and we’re still waiting. Brunel would have had it up and running in 6 months.

They run all kinds of feasibility studies and passenger surveys, file the results and then go back to re-run the exercise 5 years later by which time costs have doubled.

And after Zero a few nights ago and Castor the other night, TOTGA came round too during the night. I’d been in France with Nerina and we’d just come back. Early on Sunday morning she came round. She had an apple. I made a remark something like “that’ll be the last apple that I’ll see for several weeks” so she left it for me which I thought was really nice of her. Then I had a ‘phone call from where she was working. Could I go to see her? She was working in some kind of merchant banking office. I arrived and it was one of these self-service receptionist places where you had to root around to try to find your contact’s ‘phone n°. I couldn’t find hers at all. In the end she happened to turn up at the counter by pure chance. I asked her for her telephone n° in her office but she made some kind of cryptic remark so I asked her whether she wasn’t allowed to leave her ‘phone n° or not. She said no, she wasn’t. I said “that’s strange. Anyone can have mine any time of the day even at 04:00 and get me out of bed as long as they say the magic words”. She asked “what are those?”. I replied “do you want to earn some money, Eric?”. She asked “was that really the last apple that you’re likely to see for several weeks?” I explained that we weren’t exactly that broke but we’d just come back from the Continent and we didn’t have any in the house. Nevertheless some kind of additional income would come in handy and I was intrigued to hear what kind of proposition she was going to make to me from her work that would be of interest to me in a financial sense

So that was a very special treat for me last night to follow my vegan pesto.

Tonight, I finished off the vegan pesto with more pasta, veg and a vegan burger. I need to order some more of those as the European Burger Mountain in the fridge has shrunk dramatically just recently. But not right now as despite it being really early, I really am going to try to go to bed and sleep the Sleep of a Thousand Dreams and see who comes with me.

After all, I’ve had all three of my favourite females over the past week or so coming to see me. And wouldn’t it be nice if they came more often, or, at least, more regularly? Life is much more interesting when they are around. It’s the only interesting company that I seem to have these days.

My life at the moment is, after all, hardly interesting. It reminds me of a story I heard when one person asked another one sitting next to him at a dinner "do you ever think that life is really boring?"
To which the other one replied "Quite often. Especially when one is sitting next to you"

Saturday 30th March 2024 – MY BROCCOLI STALK …

… soup was absolutely delicious at lunchtime.

chop up an onion and fry it in a heavy duty saucepan
dice your broccoli stalk and a potato into very small pieces and add them to the fried onion, and fry them
add your herbs – I used coriander, chervil, marjoram and chives – a stock cube and some garlic, and fry them with everything else
when you’re satisfied that all is going well, add enough of the water that you saved yesterday from blanching the carrots and broccoli florets – make sure that the stuff above is covered and remains so throughout the entire process
simmer away on a low heat for about 20 minutes
add a tub of soya yoghurt and whizz it all up with your whizzer
serve with fresh black pepper and fresh-baked bread

That’s what I call a really decent meal for a lunchtime.

When I blanch my broccoli for freezing I only blanch the florets. But one of these 99 cents special offers of broccoli is usually more stalk than florets so you have to be inventive, and broccoli stalk soup is the way forward

However I wish that I knew the way forward out of my current sleep issues because they reared their ugly head today, and in spades too.

Last night was a late night again. Once more I couldn’t seem to have my tasks completed in anything like a reasonable time. They do seem to drag me down these days and like anything else around here, it’s never-ending.

Finally, hours later than intended, I managed to find my way into bed.

Once in though, I slept right the way through until the alarm went off without the slightest interruption, which is quite strange these days. Usually, the slightest noise awakens me, so I wonder if it’s something to do with one of the pills that I take just before going to bed.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed again and went to check the blood pressure. 15.5/8.9 compared to last evening’s 15.9/10.1. So not a great deal of difference.

After the medication I tidied up in the kitchen and arranged everything for the nurse to come. She was her usual cheerful self today and it didn’t take her long to sort me out. I told her about the issues with the pharmacy and she thinks that I ought to see my GP about the blood tests.

My opinion is that they are called for by the hospital so it’s up to the hospital to decide whether I need them or not, and as for my injections, I’m in the hospital in 3 weeks time and if I don’t have them for 3 weeks, there’s plenty of time for the hospital to catch up

Back in here, there was nothing on the dictaphone yet again from the night, and even though that usually signifies a decent sleep it’s still disappointing because, as I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … going on my travels is the only fun that I have these days.

Back in the old days before my health finally gave out, I’d always be travelling. And not just in vehicles either, but on foot. I’ve roamed miles over places like the Long Mynd in Shropshire, moors in Scotland, Arctic tundra in Greenland and Northern Canada and so on.

Who will ever forget my famous journey when I nipped out for a couple of hours in 2014 and ended up roaming for miles through the Pyrenees in Southern France, Spain and Andorra for several weeks?

But returning to last night, even though there was nothing on the dictaphone I do have a recollection of something else to do with Ford Cortinas scattered all over Crewe and that’s a regular, recurring dream.

Apart from making broccoli stalk soup, most of the day has been dealing with radio stuff, sorting out music for the next few programmes. Time to restart work after being away on a course for a week. and I’m still thinking and talking in Welsh when I talk to myself.

There was a lot of progress made with the radio stuff but I would have done more had I not crashed out.

And I crashed out good and proper for a couple of hours too, the deepest that I have ever been too and it was really uncomfortable too, really, really uncomfortable. I was so far out that I wouldn’t have come back for a week.

Nevertheless I came round and wandered off for my hot chocolate. And there was something on the dictaphone from when I’d crashed out, and that doesn’t happen too often either. I was on my way to see my sister and my brother. They had given me directions but the closer I came to where they were supposed to be, the less sense the directions made. I ended up on an island, a long narrow sandspit that was completely built up with a big apartment building. As I approached the front door there was a man there so I hurried and he held the door for me to enter. Inside I went into the lift and came out on the first floor. I asked on the radio which apartment they were in but their answer was garbled so I asked which floor and they said “top”. I went back into the lift and came out at the top and was now in the open air countryside, still heavily built up. I asked if they were on the water side or the inside but the reply was “down here” so I went down the road. There was still no trace of them so I asked which house they were in. They replied that there was nothing near them but a pub. There was nothing whatever like that where I was but searching around I came across a village name something like Rhydymwyn (but wasn’t) so I asked if that name meant anything to them. There was no reply to that – I’d gone out of range obviously and lost radio contact, so I must have been miles away, so I gave it up zs a bad job.

The likelihood of me ever wanting to meet my brother and sister would be so remote that they wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of giving me false directions to keep me away.

But the island, the long thin sandspit, reminds me very much of Long Beach Island in New Jersey. That was where I went to celebrate the Millennium. I flew from Brussels Airport, where I was interviewed by Flemish TV – in Flemish – to New York and hired a car, then just drifted around until I found somewhere nice.

And LONG BEACH ISLAND REALLY IS NICE TOO. I had a wonderful time out there.

TOTGA had just been abandoned by her husband and was left alone with a small baby. I invited her to join me on the trip
"Where would be staying?" she asked
"We’ll work that out when we arrive. Just drive and find somewhere nice"
"Actually, it’s not really convenient"

A few years later we were talking and she said "I’d have come with you if you’d had a place booked to stay, you know."

It was then that I realised what a lucky escape she’d had. In 2015 I slept out on the trail every night in Northern Labrador and Northern Québec, timber wolves howling in the distance and something or other scratching at Strider’s truck cap, wanting to come in and share the sleeping bag with me.

TOTGA would have had a heart attack a long time before that if she’d had to share a lifetime with me. Nerina was the adventurous type and would have been fine, but I’m sure that I tried her spirit a few times

But just in case you are wondering, these people who figure quite often in my dreams, like TOTGA, Castor and Zero and so on, they are actually real people whom I’ve encountered, or even had a close encounter, at some time or other and who have obviously left a very great impression on me.

There was football on the internet later – TNS v Cardiff Metropolitan in the other Welsh Cup semi-final.

To everyone’s surprise, the Met raced into a 2-0 lead but of course it couldn’t last. TNS changed out of first gear and off they roared.

TNS’s overwhelming dominance of the Welsh domestic game wouldn’t bother me all that much if they could take it further. But they are knocked out of European competition at the first hurdle and they really ought to be doing much better than

It would really be nice if they could make it to a European group stage for once and have a real stab at something worthwhile.

And it would be nice if other clubs could do well too, emulating Hwlffordd who actually made it through to a second round last season.

Tea tonight was baked potato with vegan salad and one of these breaded quorn fillets that I like. But aren’t plates heavy when they fall on your foot? I’m glad that there was just a quorn fillet on it at that moment and nothing else.

But now I’m off to bed. We lose an hour tonight of course with the change of calendar, and I have the nurse coming which is a pain. I need to be up early and have everything ready so I hope that the alarm works.

Not like back in the old days when I was always late for school
"And why are you always late?" asked the exasperated schoolmaster
"Please sir" I explained "there’s eight in our family but the alarm was only set for seven so I had to miss out."

Tuesday 13th February 2024 – I’VE BEEN SUMMONED …

… back to the Centre de Re-education. They’ve arranged a visit for me for the 5th March, and even sent me a bon de transport so that I can have a taxi there and back.

There were several pages of notes setting out my medical history and what they have discovered during the examination. They reached the conclusion that

dealing with my case was difficult due to all kinds of problems
technical aid is proposed
a timed walk that should have taken 43 seconds took me 6 minutes
a further appointment is planned

And so by the same post an appointment on 5th March was sent to me.

And at 09:20 too – be there 10 minutes beforehand. What do they think that I am? I know that I might be up and about on my own two legs by that time but I’d hardly say that I would be coherent enough to discuss my medical affairs so early in the morning.

Mind you, I’m hardly coherent at the best of times so I don’t suppose that it makes much difference

However, I’m intrigued as to this “technical aid”. I wonder what they have planned for me. There isn’t much that would work around here that immediately springs to my mind.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night, I couldn’t go to bed.

What I mean by that is that I couldn’t summon up the motivation to leave my comfortable chair and drag myself off to bed. Instead I wandered aimlessly through the internet and it was well after 01:00 when I dragged myself off.

You know the feeling though – when you can’t seem to find whatever it takes to raise yourself up and go to bed.

It would be no surprise to anyone if I had had a difficult start to the morning but instead I seemed to be quite lively for a change – and that’s a surprise. I shall have to do this more often

So I hauled myself off into the kitchen to take my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. We were back in some kind of music dispute between Hawkwind and a group called Wyneb Wyneb … "which is Welsh for Face-Face" – ed …. It concerned a song that Wyneb Wyneb wrote. There was a considerable amount of plagiarism in the song, so Hawkwind said, and they were very unhappy about it. The two groups found themselves at the same music festival and this led to a great deal of complication and confusion with people threatening to sue and to counter-sue etc. It was sorted out at the last minute by Wyneb Wyneb withdrawing from this concert and playing at another at a later date with a couple of other acts who were also withdrawn. Basically anyone who bought a ticket for the main concert and didn’t want to go because Wyneb Wyneb weren’t appearing could claim some kind of refund that would go towards the cost of a ticket for the next festival.

Anyone would think that I have an obsession with Hawkwind. They have been regular visitors during the night over the last couple of weeks. It would be interesting to find out what’s going on that’s triggered off something like that.

What else has happened ever since they’ve been appearing is that my whole dream pattern seems to have changed and they are nothing like what they were in the past. So is one of the tablets that I take in the evening playing havoc and disturbing my subconscious? Or is something else happening?

But be that as it may, I had a Welsh lesson to deal with and that went on until 16:30, with a couple of breaks and an interruption from my cleaner who brought me my post as mentioned above.

Once it was all over I had my hot chocolate and then had a good scrub down and a change of clothes to make myself all pretty for tomorrow.

During the breaks I was dealing with the radio programme that I’m planning, and writing the notes. I managed to complete some and was planning to write more but instead I crashed out this evening.

All through the lesson I was fighting off waves of sleep but my bad night eventually caught up with me and I didn’t finish it.

Tea was a nice taco roll with some of the rest of the stuffing, and I’ll finish that off tomorrow in a leftover curry with one of my naan breads. I’ll have to make some more naan dough sometime soon as I’m in danger of running out

So that’s it now, ready for tomorrow. I need to take some bread from the freezer to defrost ready to make my sandwiches because it will be a long day. My appointment is at 12:40 when I shall find out my future.

What I suspect is that they’ll transfer me to a more local hospital – either Caen or Rennes, and more likely the former. I’m sure they won’t keep me there, going back and forth to Paris with what it costs to transport me.

Nevertheless, "how you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?" And knowing hospital food as I do, at least I had friends in Paris and Leuven who would smuggle me some supplies now and again. I know no-one in either Caen or Rennes who can help me break the monotony of the dreadful food supplied in these places..

And as Joni Mitchell SANG,
"I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favours
No one’s future to decide
You know I’d go back there tomorrow
But for the work I’ve taken on
Stoking the star-maker machinery
Behind the popular song"

And I am going back there tomorrow, maybe for the last time. I can’t see me going there again, certainly not unfettered and alive anyway.

That’s a shame because of all the times that I’ve walked through the city singing that song, and the nights that I’ve spent trying to get the metre of the song correct when I’m trying to play it on the guitar.

The last time that I walked through the city was almost two years ago, in the company of someone who figures regularly on these pages, usually during the night, but right now I can’t even wander around my apartment.

Frank Harris, in his rather … errr … explicit autobiography said "all human beings took what pleasure they could get whenever they could get it" and that’s certainly true of the past and the present. Make the best of whatever comes your way because that’s all that there is.

As for what happens after tomorrow, I shall just have to rely on my hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche and "all along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand".

When I climb into that taxi in the morning I shall remember the words of Tom Bombadil – "be bold, but wary! Keep up your merry hearts, and ride to meet your fortune".

Tuesday 16th January 2024 – WE HAVE REACHED …

… the nadir today.

After my visit to the Centre de Re-education today I couldn’t climb back up the stairs to my apartment and I was stranded on the second step (and I still don’t know how I managed to climb those two). Totally stuck, with no opportunity of moving.

It wasn’t until one of my neighbours turned up 20 minutes later that I was able to make it as far as the lift. And have you ever, ever heard of the absurd situation of two disabled old men, taking it in turns to help each other up the stairs one by one?

Yes, I really plumbed the perigee of despair today and I’m thoroughly sick to death of all of this.

So as you can see, the depths of the dark pit into which I slid last night are nothing whatever to where I am right now.

And do you know what made it worse?

TOTGA came to see me last night. That would be the kind of thing to immediately perk me up and bring me back into the Land of the Living.

But no such luck. And what with Castor (because I’m sure that you are all aware by now that it was she who came to see me a few nights ago, at long last) coming to cheer me up just now to no effect, things are really bad.

All I need now is for Zero to come to see me and I’ll have had my three favourite young ladies. But that’s wishful thinking and even if she were to put in an appearance, it wouldn’t do any good. I’d still be just as miserable

Cue another load of unwelcome immediate relatives tonight then, and my life will be complete.

It was another lousy, pain-ridden night last night where I felt every single jolt or bump, and I do wish that STRAWBERRY MOOSE would behave himself. Whatever will it be like when there’s a cat on there too? That is, if I ever do move down to the apartment below and don’t peg out beforehand.

But there must have been some passages of sleep because you won’t believe how much stuff there is on the dictaphone. And it wasn’t all about sleeping either because the first thing that I said when I opened my eyes in bed in the middle of the night at one moment was “oes rhywun sy’n gadael y llyfr yn y bedd” – “there is someone leaving a book in the grave?” and I didn’t understand that for a minute but that was what I said.

There they were later … "later than what?" – ed …, Jerry, Mike and I can’t remember the name of the third person, a girl whom we knew and I’ve forgotten. They were all there singing. I heard the song about “you being in my bed” which I thought was wonderful

At some later point I awoke and found myself in TOTGA’s bed. A couple of her daughters, which is strange because she only has one, were milling around fetching cups of tea for different people etc but I was being conspicuously left out of it which shows how welcome I was at the moment. Then TOTGA came and got under the covers with me and curled up. I thought to myself “this can’t possibly be right”. Even in a dream I knew that it can’t possibly be right but “hey!”. We were discussing things about a book that I was reading, where people were actually screws and had different characteristics according to what screw they were. She said “you should have said that you were from such and such a place” which was somewhere in the book. “That would confuse everyone”. I replied “I’m quite happy saying that I’m from no-tea town seeing as I’ve been here for half an hour and no-one’s offered me a cup of tea yet”.

And discussing screws in bed? It reminds me of that Excise Inspector whom I mentioned a while back giving evidence in connection with the case of a fraudulent medium. When one member of counsel asked him his occupation he replied "Excise Inspector"
"Testing spirits?" asked counsel
"Yes" replied witness "but not the kind of spirits that we are discussing at the moment"

And I know that if I ever were lucky enough to be in bed with TOTGA talking about screws, it wouldn’t be the kind of screws that came up in the dream

Then there I was in the hospital with TOTGA’s family too. We were still taking this barium meal thing. We were lucky because we were moved away at one point and the whole families left behind were at the mercy of the people who’d captured them. I continued to take this stuff, then they began to deal with all the results. I was swollen up quite badly with all this liquid but they began to take the results. They found that my condition had improved so I didn’t need to take as much of the product. The others could slowly stop it. This was how it continued, me gradually taking less and less and the swelling slowly disappearing etc. But it was still all kinds of nightmare and torture etc and I was really hoping that I didn’t have to do this again, and really hoping that TOTGA’s family didn’t. I wondered how she was getting on but there was then some kind of emotional reunion where we both met up but we were still connected to these kinds of things but it looked as of we were on the winning side of how everything was supposed to be.

And I was back in this dream again. This time we’d had the same preliminaries but I was tied up somehow. They asked if I was still coupled to the perfusion. I said yes so they started up the machine to give me more product. I could feel myself ballooning up like a lamb and at no time at all I was at the 21st stage where there was an old man chatting to one or two people. This was me, where I was going to be for a while. A nurse came to check my pochette and my injection and compared the muscles … fell asleep here … it all seemed to be favouring the woman who was with me at the beginning but everything settling down etc. She seemed to be being taken care of but I seemed to be just shunted around. In the end while I was sitting there singing to myself someone came to take control of me, measured everything and slowly reduced the product bit by bit until in the end it was just a small nominal amount that was going in me. I could see my friends on the other circuits … fell asleep here …

All I could remember of this particular one was the blue plastic spines of how we’d been arranged when they had initially taken our measurements. I was one of the one s who had been sorted out for higher doses and the others had not so it was quite obvious that I’d be taken away from these blue plastic spines and started again from another point. I ended up on the north side of the building. That was when they began the treatment. I could see myself slowly ballooning up and could feel the product rising inside of me. I’d be interested to know what the figure was but of course no-one at that stage was going to take it. I’d have to wait a good while before someone would come along to do anything about it. I spend a lot of time thinking about TOTGA and her children, how we’d ended up in this particular situation which wasn’t very nice at all, wondering when everything was going to happen. But I’ve had this dream, it’s been a continual dream, dozens of times tonight and I really don’t know why

I was dropped off in the middle of Ottawa one night by my cousin who lives there. It was in the middle of winter and I was just wearing a shirt and tie, jacket and trousers. I was carrying a big file of paperwork, one of these site-workers’ radios and something else. I wandered around for a while, found a building that was open and went in. I had a wander around and found that it was a Little Chef. I sat down and went through this paperwork and managed to find out something that might have been her address for the moment. She was staying with a friend who was a dentist whom I’d briefly met. I made a note. By this time it was pouring down with rain outside. Luckily I had my winter raincoat so I put it on. I had a small waterproof bag in which I could crumple all these papers so they wouldn’t be wet and I could keep it underneath my raincoat. The old site radio would just have to take its chance. I set off outside into the rain with absolutely no idea whatever of what I was going to do now

Yes, Ottawa in the middle of winter in just a shirt and tie, jacket and trousers and it begins to rain. If that’s ever likely. Ottawa is the second-coldest capital city in the world, beaten only by Ulan Bator in Mongolia and it was freezing cold when I was there in November 2010 on my way back to see Katherine in Windsor.

But that’s not all the stuff n the dictaphone, but you really don’t want to know about the rest, especially if you are eating a meal right now.

when the alarm went off it was a mad scramble to find the phone and I really didn’t feel like getting up, but there I was.

And after the medication and typing the dictaphone notes I tried to do so much but it seemed that the whole wide world and his wife wanted me on the phone. I couldn’t even have a wash in peace.

And as a result I was also late for my Welsh lesson and the lesson itself was a disaster too.

The car came for me on time and it really was a struggle to go to the Centre de Re-education today. The ergotherapist had me cooking food today to see how I managed (and I brought it home too) and then Severine massaged my poorly knee. But you can’t perform miracles with shoddy material

After we’d finished I had this nightmare to come home where I made myself some hot chocolate and then crashed out like a light over my desk.

Tea, the first time that I’ve eaten today, was a taco roll with the pasta and veg from the Centre de Re-education and it was delicious.

So what are the odds on visitors tonight? It’s odds-on that my family will be here, but Zero will be a rank outsider because she’s the only one of the three who’s missing. Castor will probably be even farther out, having made her annual visit the other day.

But we might have a surprise visitor too – I mean, how long is it since the Vanilla Queen came to see me?

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, she’s a girl who once quite literally dogged my footsteps all the way from Montreal across to Edmonton, then to Whitehorse in the North West Territories and then onwards into the High Arctic.

She was someone whom I admired greatly. She was a hairdresser (“hair stylist!”) from Montreal who had a passion for the High Arctic just like me and one day just happened to notice that the lease on a hair salon in Iqualuit on Baffin Island was available.

So "gone! And never called me ‘mother’!". How brave was that?

But that’s even less likely than Castor.

The stage is probably being reached where not only would it be Nerina but I’d be quite happy about it too. But there’s no point in brooding about things like this. As if I don’t have enough to brood about right now.

If I’d stayed in Crewe I’d almost inevitably have ended up in Shrewsbury Nick or something or else driving a bus or taxi somewhere. Of course, all work is honourable, no matter what it is, but how do you keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?

If I’d stayed in Crewe I wouldn’t be where I am now, and I’ll remember that quote next time I’m having to think about spurious quotes to attribute to Boyle Roche.

So "as I write this letter I have a pistol in one hand and a rapier in the other". Good night

Sunday 7th January 2024 – WHAT A WAY …

… to spend a Sunday – all doped up and nowhere to go.

Yes this morning they gave me some more sodium – sodium sulphide this time – but in liquid form. “Here – drink this!” and so I did, and it’s disgusting.

No hallucinations, so no Zero, Castor or TOTGA to keep me company, but it didn’t ‘arf knock me for six and I was flat out for a good part of the day.

It was rather unfair, because I was awake quite early – ridiculously early for a Sunday in fact. And there’s tons of stuff on the dictaphone too as you’ll find out in a minute.

One of the nurses came by. "If you need any help in the shower, don’t hesitate to ask". To which I took no notice.

But when the second nurse came past and repeated the same phrase, it was "Okay, okay, I get the message. I need a shower."

Mind you, it was nice under the shower. I really did enjoy it.

After breakfast I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I’d been living a kind of extremely nomadic life … "no surprise there" – ed …. It wasn’t that I was broke either. I had plenty of money. I was living in the attic of a folk club where I had to climb up a whole series of strange steps to haul myself up through into the top so all my post was being directed to my eldest sister. She forgot to deal with some of it for a while. It turned out that I’d had the option on a house for which I’d signed and for which the bank was arranging a mortgage but she didn’t give me some of the letters which meant that the option had expired so I wasn’t going to have that house after all. That was extremely distressing to me. At the same time I was driving around in BILL BADGER my old A60 van. It had no tax on it and I’d already been stopped twice by the police. It had no insurance on it either and they had noted that. I’d also driven through a speed camera at one time faster than I ought. I was living a temporary, nomadic life and none of this had been taken into account anywhere so one day I would be called to account, I’d have all these things on my driving licence. I’d have 9 points and with another 3 points I’d lose my licence. I could see that it wouldn’t be long before that happened, having these 9 points all together and then having to go carefully for all this time and in the meantime having the van MoT’d. I could see that all of my life at the moment was falling to bits. Nothing was going right and I had all kinds of problems. I was just extremely distressed by all of it.

And that’s not an unusual state of affairs in my dreams – and in real life too, is it? Nothing going right and the wheels dropping off everything all the time

I forgot to mention that at one point I had to climb into my attic at this folk club. There were plenty of people there. Sitting at the foot of the stairs was an old guy with 2 children. I thought that one of them was a girl so I said “excuse me, miss” but it turned out to be a young boy. That was extremely embarrassing too.

There was a young boy rather similar to Jimmy Clitheroe, very tight with his money and always trying to find some more. There was some kind of party that he had to attend, which involved spending £5:00 to go. He was keen to go but there was an argument downstairs at the door when someone who appeared to be drunk said that he was a representative of the Co-op or something. Jimmy Clitheroe pushed him out and closed the door, but the pane of glass broke. Everyone else was broke too. One old man who was there was complaining about how hard up he was. He’d gone through his accounts to show that he was broke, rang up the glazing company and gave them the measurements for the window. When asked about the payment foolishly gave his own bank card number. This boy Jimmy Clitheroe was quite pleased about this because he’s got away without paying anything but his mother had learnt what was going on. When it came to giving him his pocket money for the next week she handed it out and said “here’s you pocket money minus £1:00 for the old guy who had to ring up etc an here’s another £1:00 for the house for the inconvenience”. That meant all his pocket money and he didn’t have any money to go to visit his friends at this dance so he couldn’t go … fell asleep here … what I meant to say that everyone thought that he would be unhappy about it but instead he remembered the song about “one wheel on my wagon”. He went off singing that. That seemed to make him a lot happier about the situation.

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few right now, I don’t actually fall asleep. I am asleep when I dictate these notes – something that years of practice has enabled me to do. What happens is that slowly I drift off into total silence while I’m dictating and after a few seconds you’ll hear a slow, deep rhythmic breathing,

There was also a dream involving a herd of polar bears being given sledges on a kind of miniature railway to go downhill to the sea. Instead, on their way down they encountered a herd of wildebeest and the wildebeest encountered a couple of humans and you don’t really want to know what happened especially if you are eating your tea right now.

I was round at an estate agents later on trying to find a house. There was one described as “2 bedrooms with study” so I wanted to find out more about it. I noticed that it had a large garden, part of which was lawn etc and the other part was gravelled over as if someone had been parking several cars there. That immediately piqued my interest. There was also a discussion about commercial properties. There was a shopping mall that had been built a long time ago but no-one was quite sure when. Several of the units were empty so people were looking at them with a view to trying to find some kind of clue as to their origin. They seemed to think that it might go back as far as 1890 but that was doubtful. There was one big unit that was empty. It seemed to be the kind of unit that a certain ladies’ clothes shop was seeking so they contacted the shop. They came to see it but it wasn’t really suitable for them. In any case the description of “large sales floor with plenty of storage” didn’t seem to fit. I couldn’t find the storage anywhere. It certainly wasn’t in the basement underneath so I was wondering where it was and how it was controlled or made.

And then I was being interviewed by the police about something or other. They asked about my movements over the last few days. I explained that they were extremely difficult but nevertheless I pointed out two calls to the hospital between the first and the third of the month to which I’d been invited. That was what I’d been doing for a couple of days just recently. It was the First of March until the Third of March and this was about the Fifth of March. He saw that there were several difficulties recording them and asked me if I could transfer them over to my big computer. I told him that it would be put on the big computer in due course which seemed to satisfy him for the moment but to me he was more interested in my notes and records on the computer than he was on this murder in my opinion. He didn’t seem to ask me many questions about the murder at all.

Of course, in real life I was a great deal of use to the Cheshire Constabulary. Almost every day I was being asked to help them with their enquiries.

As I said just now, I’m asleep when I dictate these dreams. But usually when I’m typing them out later I have some kind of vague recollection of them in the back of my mind. Rarely though, I have no recollection whatever, and that one was one of those.

We then had an issue of dark olive green cabs for lorries that had been discovered somewhere in Greenland. These cabs were new and had never been fitted. I was trying to identify them. They looked very much like ERF cabs to me, or maybe Foden cabs but someone seemed to think that they were MAN cabs, and if I posted them as MAN cabs someone would immediately recognise them and claim them as theirs as not having been delivered. I was looking through the internet trying to find identical cabs that had been labelled but I wasn’t having much luck because for some reason the computer kept throwing me out of the page that I was trying to search so I couldn’t actually see properly what the results were of my search on line.

Finally there was an advert in one of these magazines about a girl looking for a companion. Out of boredom I replied. Much to my surprise I found that, mush as she was a bit of a flighty piece, she seemed to be quite nice and what’s more, she seemed to like me very much. We developed quite a good rapport quite quickly. It was while I was running the taxis so I could only see her on Saturday nights but somehow that seemed to fit in with her timetable too so she was there making plans etc on what we’d do on different Saturday nights. She planned a night where we’d go to have a drink or something and end up sitting on top of a kind of cliff somewhere like at Frodsham and watch the stars, which sounded very nice to me as we’d just been for a drink but for some reason we’d had to come home early. Back at home early she was making a drink. There was still a group of taxi drivers there waiting for work to come in, and there was a pile of little children being dressed in winter coats ready to leave. But while this girl was making a cup of tea I was standing right behind her as cose as I could be, holding her by the waist. We were laughing and joking. My elder sister came in and made some remark about us being home early but last week we’d ended up in some farmyard or other for several hours completely up to no good. I didn’t realise that I was being spied upon so closely. That was what I said, but it was all extremely humorous. My elder sister began to chat to this girl as if she was already one of the family. It ended up being quite a warm ambience of the type that we have in dreams every now and again, something that was quite pleasant and I didn’t want it to stop.

Terry came on line for a chat later, to remind me that it’s the anniversary of our visit to the Stade Louis Dior where we stood on the terraces and watched US Granville, who play in the equivalent of the Conference North with a team of taxi drivers, school teachers and shop assistants stuff the Girondins of Bordeaux in the French Cup.

And how Bordeaux were unhappy and completely lost their cool as well. It was embarrassing to watch a Premier League club behave like that.

We travelled many a mile together, Terry and me, and we worked on many roofs.

tt would always be the same story. Terry would ring me up a about 08:00 "are you free today?"
"You have to say the magic words, Terry" I’d reply
"Liz is baking."

And for someone who said how much he hated cats, I’ll never forget how gentle he was with those two feral kittens he found asleep in a tyre in his barn at Le Fournial.

Liz came on line later too and we had a chat for a while which was nice. I also had a chat with someone who appears quite often in these pages, but usually during a nocturnal ramble. That was lovely too but I wish that she’d appear in real life too. As for who she was, I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few names and have a good guess.

The doctor came by but didn’t have much to say for himself. He asked about the perfusion so I told him about the hallucinations, so I suspect that that’s reason for these drinks today.

Apart from that, I’ve had some reading to do. And talking about global warming, I’ve found a paper presented to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Club of Hereford as early as 1867 by a certain T. Curley, CE FGS, discusses the subject and that really is the earliest that I’ve ever seen where systematic global warming has been the subject of discussion.

Not only does he discuss it, he presents some interesting calculations too, some of which I know to be confirmed by other scientists and geographers.

But I’ve also been asleep for much of the time thanks to this witches’ brew of sodium sulphide. During one of my (many) dozes during the day I went off into a dream with a group of young people but I awoke quite dramatically and the whole thing evaporated from out of my mind. Absolutely all of it.

And now that I’ve had my depressing evening meal (I’m glad that I brought these extra food supplies) I’m going to have yet another one of these sodium drinks. So I imagine that it won’t be long before I start to fall asleep and disappear into the Arms of Morpheus. I suppose that I’d better find the bed quickly before I crash out on the ………. zzzzzzzz.

Wednesday 13th December 2023 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what Severine did today that was different than usual but the climb back up the stairs this afternoon after my session at the Centre de Re-education was one of the easiest that I’ve had for a few weeks.

And that was a surprise too after what went on yesterday because last night when I went to bed I had the feeling that I’d probably need to be carried up the stairs.

A good sleep during the night probably helped. I’d had a really good session on the guitar before I went to bed, earlier than usual, and judging by the timestamp on the first of the sound files on the dictaphone, I was in a deep sleep quite quickly.

But I enjoyed the hour or so on the guitar. I was trying to work out THE BOYS OF SUMMER.

It’s a track that first came into my head years ago when I was walking up and down a deserted beach on Long Beach Island in New Jersey, where I went for the Millennium. I found an almost-deserted motel, stayed there for a week and had one of the best times of my life.

TOTGA had just been divorced and was left alone with a young son. On a whim, I asked her if they’d like to come with me.

"Where would we stay?" she asked.
"Oh, I dunno" I replied. "We’ll just drift around until we find somewhere nice".
"I’m not really sure that I could really spare the time" she answered.

A few years later we had a chat and she said "you know, if you had had some accommodation booked, I’d have come with you that time" and that was when I realised just what a lucky escape she’d had.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t do pre-booking of accommodation and things like that. Drifting around is my way of life. Anyone whose Idea of a holiday is pre-booking somewhere and staying on a beach or something would have had a nervous breakdown after a week with me.

Regular readers of this rubbish will probably recall 2015 when I spent every single night (except for one) “sleeping out” in Labrador and Upper Québec with howling timber wolves keeping me awake, animals scratching at Strider’s truck cap trying to get into the sleeping bag with me, battling with snowdrifts in September and all of that.

No, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … TOTGA did well to slip through my evil clutches.

The irony is that she doesn’t remember those conversations now and even denies that they took place. But they are firmly imprinted in my mind

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … guitar, THE BOYS OF SUMMER took on a new significance many years later.
"I never will forget those nights, I wonder if it was a dream"
and
"A little voice inside my head said don’t look back, you can never look back."
"Those days are gone forever, I should just let ’em go"

Mind you, at that time, there were a great many little voices inside my head saying all kinds of things. And did I listen?

There’s no fool like an old fool, and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

When the alarm went off this morning I was already up and about. I’d been up for well over an hour, in fact, and I’d transcribed the dictaphone notes too. Mind you, there weren’t so many of those during the night. I must have had something of a decent sleep for once. There was a European Cup football match taking place between a club from the UK and a team from somewhere way out east, possibly one of the former Soviet republics. The match was played in the UK so of course there were very few away fans there at all. The away end was empty. Half-way through the second half 4 or 5 away fans went to stand in the away end with a drum and a flag etc to a huge cheer from everyone else in the crowd. It was a really warm cheer of encouragement too to see the people who had come from so far away.

And then I was going off on a taxi job last night. I was at home and everyone was hanging around as usual. There were bits of money all over the place. I thought “this is no way to run a particular business”. With the job to do at 13:45, at 13:30 I went out to the car. Someone from out of the house followed me out. He tapped me on the shoulder and caught me unawares. I swung round but I had a big plastic bag of books in my hand too at the time and swinging round caught me off-balance and I almost ended up flat on my back doing this. A voice from inside the house said something like “don’t forget – you can leave this job until some other time later on” but I thought that the quicker I do the job the quicker it’s done and the quicker it’s finished.

This morning I had a lot of work to do, including some hardware maintenance on the big desktop computer and that took much longer than it ought to.

My cleaner came round as well after her visit into town and brought me the medication that I’d been prescribed. Some of it wasn’t available and so it’ll be here tomorrow, I hope.

In the bathroom I had a really good scrub up and set off a load of washing in the washing machine so that it would be ready for when I came back from the Centre de Re-education.

The car came for me and dropped me off there. First I had a group relaxation session which didn’t do all that much. Would I like to use the weights or the exercise balls? So I replied “the weights” and she gave me a ball. Such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Severine poked and prodded me about for half an hour and then I had to go to wait for my ride home. While I was waiting, I fell asleep with my 2 crutches on my lap, and after a couple of minutes I dropped one, which awoke everyone else.

Back here, I had my hot chocolate and biscuits (and I’ll have to make more biscuits on Sunday), hung up the washing and then finished off the radio notes

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with naan bread, cooked properly this time, and if I don’t fall asleep again I’ll dictate the radio notes before going to bed. I’m back at the Centre de Re-education tomorrow afternoon but if I’m lucky I’ll find time to prepare a programme.

And that reminds me – I’ve forgotten so send off the programme for this weekend. I really must do that first thing tomorrow or I’ll really be in the doghouse. Not that I’m not in it already, of course.

Tuesday 28th November 2023 – MY BREAD AND BUTTER …

… pudding went the Way of the West this morning.

It was looking rather suspicious yesterday and this morning when I opened the cake tin my suspicions were confirmed.

Either it wasn’t cooked through thoroughly enough or else my cake tin isn’t air-tight or, more likely, it’s a combination of them both.

It has to be said that I’m actually baking with a cheap table-top oven and I’ve long-known that it’s pretty much hit and miss. To cook anything in it I have to increase the temperature 20° and increase the cooking time by 50%

What’s sad about all of this is that in the back of Caliburn not only do I have a proper built-in oven that I picked up in Macon from Jean-Marc last summer after he and Jacqueline remodelled their kitchen, I also have the units to fit it that I picked up from IKEA in Munich. It’s handy having friends who live next door to the largest IKEA in Europe.

But be that as it may, in the van they are and in the van they’ll stay because there is no way on this earth that I can bring them up here in the state in which I find myself.

As for airtight containers, I have quite a few more and better ones of those too but they are up on the top shelf in the kitchen and I can’t reach them. What kind of state am I in that I have a set of steps here but I can’t climb up them?.

Anyway, that’s enough of my moaning. Life isn’t all about being dealt a good hand of cards, it’s all about how you play the cards that you’ve been dealt and instead of worrying about problems, I ought to be thinking about solutions.

All of that will give me something about which I can think while I’m in bed tonight, so I’m hoping that it will be a longer night than last night because what with one thing and another (and once you make a start you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are) I ended up going to bed late last night.

And having spent all that time talking about garlic keeping away vampires and my three favourite young ladies, I had a visitor last night. TOTGA came to see me.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I staggered to my feet and wobbled off into the dining area for my medication. And back here afterwards I listened to the dictaphone notes. I’d been a guest in someone’s house and had been interested on one or two items in someone’s collection. Every time I went to have a closer look at them I was suspected of stealing them. The whole situation in this country house-type of place became very complicated. There was one of the guests, a girl with one leg. She was wearing a pair of trousers. She asked me if I’d change the trousers and put a pair of shorts on her. Of course that would be something that I would find extremely difficult to do so I tried to hedge. In the end she explained to me that I was the only person here so it had to be me who would do it. The girl and I had to think of a way in which it would be possible to do it. Every idea with which I came up seemed to have a pitfall in it that wouldn’t make it work. And that seems to be par for the course these days.

And then later on TOTGA turned up, as I mentioned earlier. I’d gone with someone to some kind of club meeting because a guy had some Land Rover wheels and some kind of jacket for sale. My friend was very interested in them so I agreed to go with him to have a look and to help him. We arrived there and he found the person whom he was wanting to see so he wandered off for a chat. While I was wandering around on my own I came across TOTGA and we began to talk. What had actually happened was that there was some kind of snake slithering along the ground. All of a sudden its tongue darted out and caught a most enormous beetle, swallowed it, and slithered off on its way. I pointed it out to TOTGA and asked her if it was a snake or a slow worm. She didn’t know and neither did it. I’d taken some photos of it but the colours looked rather weak and insipid so we ended up talking about colours, palettes etc for photography and images. She told me that she used a palette that was called something like “City of Oklahoma”. I began to do some research and found out a few things about it but couldn’t find out how to load it up. In the meantime my friend came over to me, handed me his glasses in the glasses case and told me to put them in my pocket. I put them in my pocket but just the something hit me really hard on the foot. I thought that the glasses had fallen through a hole and dropped on my foot that way but they were still in my coat. It can’t have been them. I couldn’t see anything at all around there that might have dropped onto my foot. My friend gave me one or two other things, said “come on, give me a hand” and began to collect up the wheels and this jacket. Obviously he’d had a successful negotiation and was now prepared to carry away his prizes.

And wouldn’t I have liked to have carried away my prize too? But as I have explained before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … TOTGA always had far more sense than to allow herself to be swept up in my evil clutches.

Fighting off (sometimes unsuccessfully) waves of sleep I prepared for my Welsh lesson and to my surprise it passed off quite well, which took me by surprise. We spent much of the morning discussing shipwrecks and ocean travel, and I spent time talking about trailing along in the wake of John Ross.

Something else that we had to do today was to produce something from our day-to-day life and talk about it.

Of course, it goes without saying that I produced STRAWBERRY MOOSE and we discussed the events surrounding his confrontation with the Minister of Education, an unexpected death and the issue that arose with a group of students in Scotland, all of which led to his expulsion from the University.

Mind you, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, had he had different friends and companions, the eventual outcome would have been much different.

This afternoon, despite falling asleep on several occasions (and I don’t know why because it’s not as if I’ve done much) I finished off the radio notes ready for dictating later tonight, and then carried on with the photos from Canada 2022.

That latter task is taking far longer than it ought but I’m hoping that tomorrow after I finish the radio programme I can finish those off too. And then I have the notes to write, which will probably take me another 3 months.

And if you think that that’s a long time, I still haven’t finished the post-production of the … gulp … 6,000 photos that I took in the High Arctic in 2019.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and there’s still some stuffing left to make a left-over curry tomorrow

So tomorrow I have a radio programme to prepare, photos to finish off, forms to print out and a physiotherapy session down at the Centre de Re-education. And then I have to think about what I’m going to do about Friday and my trip to Paris.

One thing’s for sure, and that is that you won’t get much sense out of me on Saturday. But then again, why should Saturday be any different from any other day anyway?

Thursday 9th November 2023 – MAIS OÙ SONT …

… les neiges d’antan? wrote Francois Villon 550 years ago in his poem La Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis.

And I wrote something similar last night in my tale of woe about “Ladies From Former Times” when I wrote about Castor, Zero and TOTGA and the absence thereof during my nocturnal ramblings. Where indeed are the snows of yesteryear?

So of course it goes without saying that last night Zero and TOTGA came to see me – at different times, I have to say. I don’t think that I could cope with them both together.

It was all extremely confusing because I had another bad night – one of many that I seem to be having these days. I think that it must be my guilty conscience catching up with me, or something like that.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. As I said, at some point TOTGA came by. We were talking about an expression that I’d used in a conversation – one of these superlative hyperbole expressions. At first she didn’t understand it so I explained that it came from the “Round The Horne” programme which was very good at doing that kind of thing. I went to give her an example and was about to talk about Geronimo and his Indian braves when I suddenly had the most appalling attack of cramp in my left lower leg and I awoke in absolute agony.

Can you imagine it? There I was, not only with the bird on my plate but just about to get my fork stuck in it and I had a bad attack of cramp. The first time that she’s shown up for quite a while too. Is there anything more disappointing than that?

Actually, all through the night I was having these bad attacks of cramp and it was probably all of this that was disturbing my sleep.

In fact, I was glad when the alarm went off and I could stagger to my feet.

It took rather longer than usual to come round into the Land of the Living, but once I was finally on the same planet as you lot, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

TOTGA I mentioned just now. And later on I was in some kind of big city. One of these places with some impressive stone buildings like Bank headquarters etc. I was walking along a path that was on top of a cliff with all of these big buildings on my right. I came to a point where I couldn’t go any further. The wall of the building went right down to the edge of the cliff. I noticed that there was a gate in it. I can’t think why I hadn’t noticed this gate before. I walked through the gate and slowly went up the hill. There in the distance was a Fortis Bank cash machine. Luckily I had my new Fortis card with me. I picked up the card and tried to put it in the machine but it wouldn’t fit. I’d noticed that I’d actually left it stuck to the backing. I had to peel off the backing but it still wouldn’t fit. I noticed that there was still something else attached to it. It took me several goes to have the card completely separate from whatever it was that it was stuck to. I put it in the machine. At first I had a really difficult job to remember the code number. Eventually I recalled it and could access the account. I then had to think about drawing out some money – obviously, with not going anywhere near a bank these days, the more money I have on hand the better but there has to be a limit. I didn’t want to go too close to the limit in case the machine swallowed my card and then I really would be stuck. I had to think really hard about how much money I was going to ask for.

Actually this is a real preoccupation with me right now. I can’t actually go to the bank any more because I can’t climb back onto the bus at the bus stop. I have a little “fighting fund” of cash squirrelled away but it’s not going to last for ever.

It’s actually quite bizarre. When I was at University, as well as being Chair of Northern Europe I was also involved in Disability issues when I was on the Executive Committee and so I’m well-aware of the day-to-day problems that disability can present.

So I’ve never understood why, if the local council only has a certain budget to spend on improving the bus routes and facilities around the town, why one of the last bus stops to be raised up to a working height is the one just outside the Medical Centre where all of the ill and infirm people go.

That should have been one of the first to be raised up. But instead, the buses stop in the roadway far from the pavement and they don’t “kneel down” enough for wheelchairs and handicapped people to board very easily.

Anyway I digress.

A little earlier I also mentioned that Zero put in an appearance. But you really don’t want to know about the voyage that we had together, especially if you are eating your meal right now. It’s been a while since there has been anything really gruesome figuring in my nocturnal voyages, but when there is, there really is.

With a bit of luck she might put in an appearance tonight and we’ll have a happy ending.

Some nights, what goes on in my sleep is far more stressful than anything that happens during the day. It’s similar to the reason why I’m having serious thoughts about stopping my treatment at Leuven. It doesn’t matter how good the treatment might be and how efficient the care is in the journey to and from Vlaanderen is finishing me off.

Once I’d sorted that out I attacked the notes for the radio programme that I dictated last night. And I stuck at it and finished the programme. I’m actually now at 31st May 2024 with my totally-completed radio shows. I want to be as far ahead as I can possibly be because sooner or later the inevitable will catch up with me.

Afterwards I spent some time tidying the apartment. I’m having a visit tomorrow so the place needs to be clean and tidy. I know that cleanliness is next to Godliness but with me it’s next to impossible.

Neitzsche famously said “out of chaos comes order” but he said that a long time before I was ever thought of. Ezra Pound once said of Ford Madox Ford “Put Ford naked in an empty room and within an hour behold total chaos!”. That’s something that I understand very well

The bedroom is actually clean now and I’ve even vacuumed the floor. And you’ve no idea just how difficult a simple task like vacuuming is right now.

And then I had a good wash and brush up and the car came for me to take me to the Centre de Re-education. The ergotherapist had me opening and closing doors, laying tables, picking up pins and counters off the table, that sort of thing. She also says that next week she’ll come round here to give me practical advice about getting the most out of my apartment.

Severine the physiotherapist put me through my paces too and then, totally, exhausted, I headed back home in the car.

My cleaner was just coming into the building so she helped me up the stairs and into here, where I made myself my mug of hot chocolate.

The rest of the day, such as it was, has been spent pairing off the music for the next couple of radio programmes and beginning to write the notes for one of them.

Tea tonight was delicious. Steamed vegetables and a vegan sausage in a vegan cheese sauce. That was a meal that I enjoyed very much.

So now I’m going to bed, but not before I’ve sent someone a message. If I had to pick a favourite relative (and despite everything that I have said, I do actually have one) it’s the one who is getting married in Michigan tomorrow and I’m really disappointed that I can’t be there with her.

She actually works for one of the biggest transport firms in North America and was away on a mission for work when she was caught in the lockdown over across the border in 2020. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to fight the good fight at the shops if the wind has dropped because it was quite savage again today. And then I’ll finalise my tidying up ready to find out what is actually going on about this visit tomorrow.

The plot sickens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 28th October 2023 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, there wasn’t anything on the dictaphone from the night and that’s not something that happens every day. I must have had one of the deepest sleeps that I’ve ever had.

Mind you, I didn’t go to bed until after 04:00. I was quite wound up and stressed out after my travels yesterday.

What I used to do in the old days when I drove taxis was that when I would finally return home I’d go out for a good run to tire myself out

That wasn’t anything that I could do after I married because I never had the time to unwind but when I moved to Brussels and was chauffering, I would go out running again. And I must admit that I was sleeping better after I started running yet again after I moved here.

Of course, all of that is well in the past now.

As I expected, the phone never stopped pinging during the early morning but I tried my best to ignore it. Nevertheless I abandoned all hope and staggered to my feet at 11:40.

Today, I’ve been quite busy. For a start, I’ve had to back up the main computer with all of the amended files that accumulated on the portable computer while I was away at Ice Station Zebra. And there were several hundred of those. It took ages.

There were several discussions on the phone and the internet too. Rosemary rang me and we had another one of our marathon chats. Liz and one or two other people sent me messages but the most surprising, and one of the most welcome, was a chat that I had with someone with whom I usually only have interaction during the night when I’m asleep.

We had football too – TNS v Y Bala. And as you might expect, it was more a case of “when” rather than “what”. The fact that Y Bala held out for 35 minutes before conceding was something surprising.

TNS scored a second too but Y Bala held out until the final whistle. And that was a much better effort than the last time that we saw TNS play Y Bala, when the latter team folded up so dramatically in the final few minutes last summer.

Sure enough, TNS are on their usual relentless stride to the championship with no real opposition from anyone.

Many people think that it must be pretty boring with TNS winning everything every year since the money came into the club, and whether or not that might be the case, the fact is that the race to catch up has improved the quality of the matches and the quality of the players dramatically.

In recent years we’ve had 4 full Welsh internationals, several under-21 internationals, a Zimbabwe international and internationals from Malta, New Zealand and one of the Caribbean nations plus many more besides. There was nothing whatever like that 10 years ago.

Tea tonight, later than usual, was chips (potato and sweet potato) with salad and one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like so much.

So bedtime now, and maybe if I’m lucky I’ll go on a wander about again during the night. I missed my night-time voyage.

Tomorrow I have pizza dough to make and then maybe I’ll have to start work again. I’ll have to do that some time.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: mandy_m

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

Saturday 11th October 2025 – MY LUCK WAS …

Sunday 10th August 2025 – HA HA HA HA!

Friday 1st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

Sunday 6th October 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Thursday 25th April 2024 – I HAVE ACHES …

Saturday 30th March 2024 – MY BROCCOLI STALK …

Tuesday 13th February 2024 – I’VE BEEN SUMMONED …

Tuesday 16th January 2024 – WE HAVE REACHED …

Sunday 7th January 2024 – WHAT A WAY …

Wednesday 13th December 2023 – I DON’T KNOW …

Tuesday 28th November 2023 – MY BREAD AND BUTTER …

Thursday 9th November 2023 – MAIS OÙ SONT …

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

Saturday 28th October 2023 – FOR THE FIRST …

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