… bed early last night – before 23:00 in fact – for once. And I’m so glad that I did because not long after I’d gone to sleep, I had a special visitor come to see me. Had I gone to bed late, I would have missed her.
But more of that anon
Firstly, though, I did actually make it into bed at something like a respectable time. In fact, had I concentrated and been more motivated, I could have been in bed a good while earlier than that. However, as usual, I dillied and dallied etc. etc.
Once in bed, it took a while for me to go off to sleep and I don’t know why. I ought to have been completely wasted after my session at the Centre de Ré-education, but apparently not.
Eventually though, I did manage to drop off to sleep and although I awoke a couple of times during the night for no good reason, I awoke definitively at about 06:00.
As usual these days, it took a while to raise myself from the Dead and head off to the bathroom. And after the medication, I came back in here to see what had happened during the night.
And to my surprise, I’d had a special visitor. And she’d come quite early too so, as I said just now, I was glad that I was in bed early. Yes, I was with Castor (or, rather, she was with me) last night. We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR again. There was some kind of meeting taking place and I was one of the last to arrive. I had to struggle my way in to find a place to sit. There was a place right at the back next to Castor so I went to sit down on it, thinking that I could probably move to a more comfortable seat at some other time. As I went to sit down, the ship lurched and I ended up sitting down almost on top of her. I excused myself, and she had a smile at me and something of a laugh. I thought “maybe I don’t want to move now”. While this discussion was going on, the two of us and Castor’s friend, we were having something of a chat. We were talking about electricity. They were saying that they needed some more electricity. I was saying that Canada doesn’t have any more, what with Muskrat Falls and all of this taking so long. Then the discussion turned round to the forests, how Canada was destroying all of the forests for lumber. It moved round then to someone else connected with the events of the 11th September being found in New York and extradition to Canada being asked. It turned out that he’d advocated the massacre of all kinds of children and was described in the Press as a “loyalist”. We chatted about that for a while, and then Castor put her arm around me and cuddled up tightly to me so I put my arm around her too. I thought that this was really nice and comfortable.
Nice and comfortable? I bet it was! And how glad was I to see her? I thought that she’d dropped off the end of my dreaming cycle, just as The Vanilla Queen has, and Moonchild, who put in a flurry of rapid visits a year or so ago and hasn’t been seen since..
Muskrat Falls, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is a hydroelectric project in Labrador that we have visited on a couple of occasions. It’s vastly overdue, vastly over-budget and has been described as "one of the most controversial public project cases in Canadian history"
As for putting our arms around each other, well, you can’t turn back the clock, can you?
The “loyalists” by the way, are the supporters of the Crown during the American Revolution. We’re back with Colonel Carrington and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Someone else came to see me last night. It was Castor again. Just as I was stepping onto Her Majesty’s Steamship Pollard, we’d been asked for this incident to build shares and in this steam prop and everything so that if we were successful in capturing it, we could suppress it for a while, while these nasty ingredienty stuff is.
So did Castor appear again later? Not that it matters … "of course it does, really" – ed …
because I have no recollection at all about this. As for the Pollard, I’ve not been able to trace a ship of that name. The only Pollard whom I can recall was the captain of the “Essex”, the whaling ship that was sunk by a whale and the starving crew in one of the longboats killed and ate one of the crew members. That’s the inspiration behind the book MOBY DICK and also behind the song NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE by Mountain.
I was with my three friends with whom I travel frequently. We’d gone to Germany and had arranged to meet at a posh five-star hotel – restaurant type of place somewhere. When we arrived, and I was having difficulty with my crutches, we were welcomed by one of the waiters who escorted us to our seats. I had a special chef who had come to see me for my dietary requirements, and we had a lovely meal. Later on, we were actually on the stage, the four of us. We were singing folk songs, and there was quite a crowd there cheering us on, even when we were singing “The Rocky Shores of England” … "he means ROOTS" – ed …. It was all really enjoyable.
Not that there’s any chance of me singing folk songs praising England, of course. But news on the grapevine suggests that I may be having another visit in the Spring.
I’d been hired as some kind of umpire for a baseball team, which is crazy because I’ve never played baseball in my life. I had to go to Barony Park where, across the road, were some clay tennis courts. The team was practising on there. They all wandered off and I lay down on the floor for a relax for ten minutes. However, people came up and began to play tennis over the top of me. I had a baseball bat and I was holding it up, and if a ball came near me, it hit the bat and was deflected. When everyone came out, they presented me to the crowd and said that I’d hit every ball that had been thrown towards me. Wasn’t that brilliant? I replied “well, I’ve never ever played baseball in all my life before. That was the first time”. It was breakfast break at this time so we had to help ourselves to breakfast. This typical American buffet – it had cake, cream cake, pastries etc but I was simply looking for the muesli and some toast. I eventually found the muesli but I was still struggling for the toast. When I found the milk, which was over by the coffee, I had to ask the waiter if they had any plant-based milk but before he could reply, I awoke.
This is another one of those dreams that seems to be totally mysterious. The American buffet sounds quite interesting though, although there wouldn’t be much there for me to eat.
Isabelle the Nurse was late arriving, but she still found time for a little chat before departing again. I could then push on and make breakfast.
Back in here, there were the highlights of last night’s football matches in the Welsh Cup. However, the match that I particularly wanted to see wasn’t recorded, which was a shame.
After I’d seen all there was to see, I finished writing the notes for the joining track for the radio programme on which I’ve been working. That’s now ready to dictate, which I shall do at the first available opportunity.
My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to await the taxi. It was only a few minutes late but we had to drive out into the sticks to pick up someone else, so we were late arriving. And as usual, I was the last to be connected up.
The doctor, he who is in charge, was supposed to examine me for Tuesday but he barely stuck his head in the room. That was right at the very beginning of the session so I thought that he’d be doing his rounds later. However, I never saw him again.
Instead, I watched the live Cup Match. Bow Street, a little village team from mid-Wales, had fought their way through the preliminaries to this round and had drawn Y Fflint of the JD Cymru Premier Division.
They were well-outclassed but put up a brave fight and managed to keep the score down to 3-0, which, I suppose, is something of a moral victory.
One of the Bow Street players received the “man of the match” award, but it wasn’t the goalkeeper, Lewis James, which I thought was a travesty because he had done more than anyone else to keep his side in the game, as YOU CAN SEE.
For the rest of the session, I began to make up my shopping list, although I have no idea when I’m going to find the time to have it delivered.
The taxi was waiting for me when I was ready, but it was still late when I returned home. There was a reception committee awaiting me – several of the residents, including my cleaner, were having a chat at the door.
One of them offered to programme my timer for me, but after half an hour of trying, he was unable to programme it either. So it’s not just me who can’t make it work.
Mind you, it took so long, and with me being late to start with, that there was no chance of making a cooked tea. Instead, I made myself a few rounds of cheese on toast, something else that I haven’t eaten for years. And it was nice too.
But now I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow and a lie-in until 07:59 if I’m lucky, which I doubt very much.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Castor … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the story to one of the nurses at dialysis.
"What was the name of Castor’s sidekick in Greek mythology?" she asked.
"Pollux" I replied.
"Look!" she retorted. "If you don’t know, there’s no need to be rude about it!"
