… to move my things downstairs.
Just a few things from the kitchen for the moment – nothing at all exciting, but nevertheless, it’s progress of some kind, having some of my possessions in some of the drawers downstairs.
What I have decided, with my faithful cleaner’s co-operation, is that every time she goes downstairs, she will take with her a box of things to put in the apartment. And then each time that I come back from dialysis, I will sort them out, put them somewhere and then bring the empty boxes back upstairs ready for the next load
But my kitchen really is magnificent. I am even more impressed with it than I was with my galvanised steel dustbin. I can’t wait to move in there for good … "the apartment, not the galvanised steel dustbin." – ed …
Mind you, the benefits of sleeping up here in my comfortable bed can’t be ignored either. I could certainly do with as much of that as I could have too.
Last night wasn’t early enough to enjoy it. As usual, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied, lost my way and didn’t know where to roam as I tried to concentrate on writing up my notes, but with not much success. It was almost midnight when I finally crawled into my stinking pit.
However, once in bed, I fell asleep extremely quickly. I didn’t even have time to start, never mind finish my bedtime mantra before I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.
For a change, I slept right through until all of 06:27, and then it was a mad scramble to put my feet on the floor before the alarm went off, and I wasn’t convinced that I actually managed it.
In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub up, and then I filled the washing machine and switched it on. For a change, everything went into it without too much of a crush. There were no clothes left over at all.
After a slow start to the day with the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us down on the Auvergne. One of the people was the old British guy who died in 2013. Someone was talking about him having taken all different kinds of medication. The side effects of one particular one that he had taken was that it made his hair grow which of course was something that he really liked because he had started to lose his hair several years ago and was trying many different things for it to come back. The quite accidental secondary effects of something incidental was really quite a surprise to him.
It was a shame about him. His fate was what made me decide to come to live in civilisation instead of in the mountains. In that really severe winter of 2012-2013 when we had snow from 25th October to 27th May, he had a bad fall and lay for several days on the floor of his house undiscovered for almost a week when he suffered from hypothermia and never really recovered.
Strangely enough, the first time that I took Cécile out on a date was to his funeral. The first time that she took me out on a date was to the court at Riom where she had been summoned to give evidence against a defendant (and it wasn’t me). No-one could ever accuse us of having boring dates.
There was also something happening too about football matches, about a footballer going back to the club from which he had been signed and how the crowds of people there appreciated his return and how much he was looking forward to playing for the team again after having left in January early this year.
That’s a true story too. In the January transfer window, one of the fastest centre-forwards in Wales was signed by a well-heeled opponent, simply, I suspect, to stop him competing against them and his teal threatening them. They hardly played him and signed several other centre-forwards, I’ve no idea why, and so the subject of our story has returned this last week to the club from whence he came
Finally, I was in my new kitchen again, trying to work out how to bake a cake or something like that. Of course I needed first of all to find everything, which was in a totally different place to how it had been. Secondly, it was a case of how long it would take now that I have a decent oven instead of my old hit-and-miss thing. But even after thinking about that for a couple of minutes, I was still wandering around looking for the clothing for the club’s striker
It’s nice to be in my kitchen at last, even if it is in a dream. But it will be quite a problem trying to find things when I’m finally settled, and it will be an even bigger problem to work out all of the revised cooking times now that there’s a decent oven that (hopefully) will work properly.
Isabelle the Nurse was running late today so she didn’t have much time to hang around. She applied my heat treatment, dealt with my legs and then cleared off. I could then press on and make breakfast, and then read some more of MY BOOK.
We are still wandering around the churches of London today. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we had a very strange transfer of property for the sum of "one rose at Midsummer, to him and to his heirs for all services, if the same were demanded.".
The strange property transactions are continuing today. He tells us of a property that changed hands for a fee "paying yearly one clove of Gereflowers at Easter, and to the prior and convent of St Mary Overy, six shillings.".
He also talks about someone called William Fitz Osbert, the leader of a large gang of rioters, who holed up in the steeple of St Mary Bow church until he was smoked out when someone lit a fire at the base of the steeple underneath him. He was stabbed in the ensuing melee and captured, subsequent to which he was drawn to a scaffold and hanged.
Stow clearly didn’t like him. He comments that "such was the end of this deceiver, a man of evil life, a secret murderer, a filthy fornicator, a polluter of concubines and (amongst his other detestable facts) a false accuser of his elder brother."
Now come on, Mr Stow, don’t mince your words. Tell us what you really think.
After breakfast, I came in here to assemble the “Sunday Woodstock” radio programme. And it’s now all complete at long last. However, it runs out at about one hour and ten minutes, so it looks as if two songs are going to be filed under CS. I have a good idea which ones they might be, and I can deal with them tomorrow.
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m quite impressed by how the three programmes have turned out.
My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches and we discussed our (or, rather, my) plans for moving and she fell in with them so we made a brief start before the ambulance came.
It was driven today by the boss, and he had already picked up the woman who travels with me so we had a very interesting chat all the way down there.
At Avranches, the bad news was that they had to carry out a few tests on me before they could plug me in. Consequently, I wasn’t plugged in until 14:40 – which meant being unplugged and compressed ready to leave at 18:00.
None of the doctors came to bother me so I was left to my own devices, and one of the things that I did was to listen to my radio programme to see if there were any errors. I picked up one, and I can soon edit that.
Once I was released, it was a very weary me who made his way to the taxi, and it was 19:15 when I returned home. Having to sort out some things that my cleaner had taken downstairs meant that it was nearer 19:45 when I finally made it back here.
Vegan salad, baked potatoes and veggie balls were on the menu tonight but I wasn’t all that hungry. I was glad to be back in here.
Hopefully, I can have a good sleep tonight and feel more refreshed tomorrow. It’s really dragging these days, this health issue, and I wish that it was over.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about William Fitz Osbert … "well, one of us has" – ed … during his interrogation concerning his actions and subsequent arrest, he was asked "were you stabbed in the fracas?"
"Ohh no" he replied "it was actually in the right shoulder, nowhere near there."
