Tag Archives: ocean endeavour

Tuesday 11th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anything that happened today. It was one of those days where nothing seemed to go to plan, even from the very start. In fact, this is probably going to be a week to forget, all in all.

Last night was rather later than I intended it to be, what with one thing and another. Well after midnight, in fact. And not everything that I wanted to be done was done either.

It had been my aim to finish off the Welsh homework before going to bed but with the head full of spaghetti that I had on my shoulders, I abandoned the plan and left it for another day. There was the radio programme that I’d edited at the dialysis centre that I wanted to send off, but that was left too.

Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep and then it was a very disturbed night as is usual after a dialysis session, waking up here and there and perspiring like there is no tomorrow

When the alarm went off I hauled myself out of bed with the utmost difficulty and then staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I started to transcribe the dictaphone notes but was surprised by the amount of stuff on there. I’d only finished about half of it when Isabelle the Nurse turned up, and she wasn’t early either. I’m not going to have the homework done this morning either, am I?

She and I had a little chat about nothing much and after she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK

Our author has made a couple of points that are extremely curious. He notes that at Worlebury Camp, overlooking Weston-Super-Mare, where there are according to him, unmistakeable signs of Roman siege and conquest, the skulls of the deceased, complete with battle-wounds, are "the long-headed (Iberian) type, and suggest that at the date in question the dominant race in south-western Britain were the descendants of those Iberians who had preceded the round-headed Brythonic race, and who had been ousted by them from the more easterly parts of the island."

Anyone remember when we were discussing stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and none at all?

Secondly, "Incredible as it must seem to anyone who tries to realize the labour involved in the building of any great camp, it seems none the less to be the fact that many of them were planned and constructed according to one original design."

And if that really is the case (and after all, he’s the expert), given the number of different races and tribes, the time period and the distance to travel, it’s probably the most interesting thing that I have read on the whole subject.

Back here, I revised for my Welsh, complete with a full pot of coffee because I needed it. And I don’t know what I would have done without it because even so, the lesson, well, let’s just say that it did not go as I would have wished, and I was glad when it was over.

After lunch I came back in here and carried on with the dictaphone notes, and as I said earlier, I was surprised by how many there were. I dreamed that I was in a scrapyard looking for all bits and pieces of a car. I couldn’t see what I wanted. It was the springs that retained the headlight in. They were tiny micro-springs. I’d had three and I had put them down but when I went to look again I couldn’t see them. They were so small. I was hunting again. In the meantime two guys turned up in a red MkIII saloon with a black vinyl roof. They had parked their car on a trailer while they had gone off to the pub. Someone told them about their car on someone else’s trailer so they just took their car off the pile and just rolled it down the hill into the scrap. They said “well never mind. We only paid £50:00 for this. Immediately everyone swarmed over to it to strip it for spares as they did in the old days. I went to have a look and someone asked me if I needed anything. I told him that I was looking for an old tax disc holder, the type that suckered on to your window but which had an aerial connector in it. People remembered those from years ago but no-one had seen one. I’d looked at a couple of car tax discs of cars that were ‘S’ reg in 1977/78 but there was nothing around there at all. In the end I left and had to stop at a road junction while a big group of soldiers who were on a military parade marched past where I was standing.

Cars for £50:00. Anyone remember those days? And Nerina and I once drove all the way around Central and Eastern Europe in one that cost £25:00, and on another occasion in a different car at the same price all the way round the South of France.

‘And ‘S’ registered cars from 1977/78? I’m really impressed that I could remember that in a dream as well. But as for cars in scrapyards, I’ve done more than my share of scrapyard scavenging in the past

Later on I was with a group of people. One was a small girl. It was a girl whom I’d seen so many times before and we’d always had a laugh and a joke. Then I mentioned something about taking her out and she said “yes, fine!” she said. “When should we go?” or something like that so I hadn’t realised that she was serious but I was ready to take her then and there practically

There is more to this than meets the eye too. However, let me guess. Small as in “one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed” I suppose. But me Getting The Girl in a dream? It’s a good job that this dream ended before my family came along to spike my guns as they usually do at the crucial moment

There was also something else about buses in Alsager, driving buses out towards Kidsgrove and the back of Stoke on Trent at Werrington, etc, but it was something to do with the arrangement of fares, keeping fares down and buses not going into anyone else’s territory but I can’t remember that

Later yet, I was living in an apartment in a modern block of flats in Brussels but I’d bought the apartment downstairs to where I’m going to move, so I’d given my notice to the landlord. He’d put the property in the newspapers and was arranging visits. The first visit came when I was really unexpecting it so the place wasn’t very tidy at all. It was a nice youngish guy, quite tall, who was shown around. He noticed the Tesla that I had in a wooden box that was a pre-war spark generator sitting in the bottom of the room on top of the piano so we had a discussion about that. Then he asked me a few more questions then he decided to leave. He talked about decorating but I told him that I moved here and didn’t do anything. It didn’t bother me, the decorations being a little tired but he said that maybe he could move into one room and decorate all round him. As he left the Estate Agents gave me all of the duplicate keys that I’d never actually had to the property. As he left he asked me a question about the television. Were the “Free” company’s services available here? I told him that I didn’t know. As he left I noticed another couple waiting in the hall. I thought that I wished that I’d known that there were going to be all these visits because I could have tidied up the property. He did ask me before he went if he could come back and have another look. He wanted to come back at 07:30 so I shuddered but said “yes, it’s not a problem” so at that point he left.

Me? An untidy apartment? Perish the thought! And I wish that I had a pre-war Tesla spark generator lying around here somewhere. But the apartment – we’ve been in that apartment before in another nocturnal ramble, a long time ago when I drove a car into the centre of Brussels round the big Basilica. It’s strange how these things crop up so far apart in time.

Did I dictate this dream where I was in a cheap hotel somewhere? … "no you didn’t" – ed … There was a crowd of people in the room with me. The bath was across the end of the room and there was a glass partition in it that only covered a part of the bath. I decided that I’d take a bath. I went in there and began to run the water but the bath didn’t fill up. Then I found that the plug wasn’t in so I had to put it in. It was still not filling up. I saw that the water was cascading out of the joint of the immersion heater. By the time that there was anything like some water in the bath it was cold. I didn’t really fancy the bath but I thought that I needed one. There were all these people there too. Next thing that I remember, I was outside. It was 18:30. I didn’t have time for the bath because we were going to a nearby café for a meal, so I thought that I’d have to hurry up

The idea of me having a bath is interesting too. Leaving aside the fact that I couldn’t climb out of a bath these days, I would prefer a shower any day of the week. And a cold bath? In my case, that’s water at 36.9°C

Later, I was with Zero’s father and a couple of small boys was asking me that he had to go to school and tell them how a carburettor worked . I asked him if he knew how a carburettor worked. He said a few words but obviously didn’t understand the basic principles. We went down to one of the cars. Zero’s father handed a set of keys to me but I couldn’t make them work. In the end I put the key in the other way round. It worked so I could open the bonnet and we began to discuss the carburettor. Zero’s father was there but he kept on confusing the matter. I was trying to make things as simple as possible for this little boy and he was just complicating them by giving long technical explanations that were not really what was needed, not for a boy in Primary School anyway.

There are always some people who will take a simple explanation and complicate it unnecessarily, who don’t seem to realise exactly who their audience is and the purpose of what you are trying to explain. It’s like our author, Arthur Hadrian Allcroft, who is writing for an audience that excludes about 75% of the population. I realise that the aim of any kind of education is to bring people up to a higher level, but how far up are some of these people sitting?

How depressing is it though that Zero’s father is there and not Zero herself?

Believe it or not, that took me up to afternoon nasty drink break and then I had bread to make as I have all-but run out. That took longer than anticipated but I do have to say that the loaf that I made is perfection itself. It couldn’t possibly be any better. I’ll go with that any time.

There was just time for me to finish the Welsh homework before going to make my tea. And why it was so difficult I have no idea. My brain, if that’s what you call it, has ceased to function, and ceased a long time ago.

Tea was as usual a taco roll with veg and rice, followed by apple cake and soya dessert. Just as nice as ever. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t make it.

So that’s the end of another depressing day. I’m glad that it’s over, Here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. I shall have to try to be more optimistic

But seeing as we have been talking of cold water … "well, one of us has" – ed … those crazy Canadians with whom I spent a lot of time up in the Arctic used to love to leap into the cold water from the loading platform of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR at every available opportunity
On one occasion deep in the North-West Passage Castor and Pollux were going to leap in with them – at MINUS 0.5°C in the water. It was about minus 10°C in the air
Castor came to look for me and asked "are you going to come and jump in with us, Eric?"
"I can’t, pet" I replied. "I have this catheter port in my chest and it can’t be immersed in salt water"
After she left, a guy who had overheard the conversation asked me "if you didn’t have that catheter port in your chest, what would you have done?"
"What would I have done?" I said. "Simple. I would have thought of another excuse."

Wednesday 29th January 2025 – MY APPLE CAKE …

… is magnificent.

In the oven, it rose up like a lift – the first cake to ever do that in all the time since I’ve started baking.

It’s a basic oil cake but instead of it being all-vegetable oil I substituted some coconut oil in place of about half of it, slowly melted in the microwave. In the cake itself are two eating apples, minced up with my big whizzer and also some desiccated coconut and spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.

It’s now in the fridge, cut up into sixteen slices and ready to eat as of tomorrow night with the soya dessert because the chocolate cake is now all finished.

But talking of the beautiful cake … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ve had a really good day today, which is a surprise considering how much moaning I’ve done just recently. But there’s a reason for that – I had a visitor during the night.

But more of that … "anon" – ed …

First of all, in yet more surprising news, I was actually in bed early. Not before 23:00 I hasten to add, but by 23:40 and that’s quite an early time for me these days.

But once in bed I remember nothing at all until the alarm went off. I was really soundly and comfortably asleep.

Once more, it was a struggle to rise to my feet but, beating the second alarm (only just), I headed off into the bathroom to sort myself out.

Into the kitchen afterwards to take my medicine, all of it (except the Vitamin D supplement) this morning, and then back into here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night.

And look at this! There was a football club that had recently undergone a change of manager. It was the first game under the new manager last night. The commentators were talking and were saying that this is a very important match for this manager to win because with him being new he will have set his stall out and the club that he was managing, which was Peterborough United was a big club with many fans who all used to go to the ground on one occasion but attendances had dwindled. I had a look at the attendances and found that they were in the nine thousands, which I thought for a town like Peterborough with a team like theirs is actually pretty good going in any case. If he could bring it up to eleven or twelve thousand that would be exceptional. This apparently was not an unrealistic dream and the commentators were fully behind him as he sorted out his team and would take advantage of his new position and take them to win the game. Somewhere amongst all of this, Moonchild was there. I distinctly remember speaking to her although I didn’t say very much of any interest but she was certainly there last night looking at the situation and looking at me on this commentary team talking about Peterborough United.

Yes, Moonchild came DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER … PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH THE GHOSTS OF DAWN, WAITING FOR A SMILE FROM A SUN CHILD and put in an appearance, How lovely to see her. It may not be a satisfactory appearance, her being on the fringe of a dream, but she was there none-the-less. I shall have to work much harder and try to entice her further towards centre-stage.

However, what’s all this about Peterborough United? That’s a team that has absolutely no significance in anything that I have ever done, so I’ve no idea why the club should figure during a night-time voyage. But then again, if I hadn’t gone there I wouldn’t have seen Moonchild.

Later on, there was a group of disabled people, me included, that were being examined for reassessment etc. Just as it was about to be my turn and everyone was going for a coffee or something like that, it was the end of the day and everything was quietening down, my alarm began to sound. everyone looked at me and said “Eric! How could you!” in an air of bitter disappointment. It wasn’t until about 30 seconds later that I realised that it actually was my alarm going off.

That was somehow prophetic, wasn’t it? But I’ve had plenty of dreams where the subject matter has fused into something that was actually happening simultaneously in real life.

Isabelle the Nurse and I had something of a chat. She’s off to the ski slopes on Saturday but unfortunately there is no room in her suitcase for me. I really need a holiday right now but that’s impossible.

If they had told me last summer that I wouldn’t have ever gone far again for the rest of my life, I’d have booked a cruise or something, or gone to a special home or resort where I could relax and stretch out. I enjoyed the voyage on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR and I’d happily do it again. At least I fulfilled a few of my lifetime ambitions, such as crossing the Atlantic by sea and then sailing the North West Passage.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

At long last, I’ve finished it, and I can’t say that I’m sorry. He’s spent page after page after page in complicated calculations, such as on which date did Caesar sail, only to tell us that it doesn’t really matter. I’ve come to the conclusion that he has plenty of knowledge (which is impressive) and I’ve enjoyed sharing in it but how he loves to flaunt it, quite often unnecessarily. And how he loves to insult his contemporaries who don’t have the same knowledge as he does, and don’t have the time to find it.

Here’s hoping that my next book, whatever it is, is less confrontational than this one was. It was really hard going.

Back in here I had bills to pay. Once more, the standing order that pays my taxe foncière – my local authority rates, has failed and I’ve no idea why. But anyway, these days we can pay on-line so once I’d found my wallet, off I go.

There was also the Property Tax on my place in Canada to organise.

Buying that place in Canada was a shrewd move. There are no identity cards in Canada so evidence of habitation is served by the possession of a Property Tax assessment. And armed with my Property Tax Assessment I could open a bank account, buy a mobile ‘phone, buy a pick-up, take out car insurance and a thousand and one other things.

Once I’d sorted myself out it was almost lunchtime but I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme.

Lunch was a slice of flapjack and some fruit which was nice, especially the flapjack. Mixing the ingredients in the big mixer is definitely the way forward. That mixer was a shrewd investment too.

Back in here I had to resort the music as I had mistaken one musician, but eventually all of the stuff was chosen, remixed, edited, converted, paired and segued.

At this point, the cleaner came along to do her stuff. And that included helping me into the shower.

First though, I have to hand-wash some clothes and then throw them into the bath where they will be rinsed. And then I climb in. It’s still quite a laugh that the company who came here to “help” me wanted €300-odd for a machine to help me that didn’t work, and my cleaner and I rigged up a system with one chair and two wooden boxes, cost €0.00.

After she left I began to write the notes for the music but it was soon Christmas Cake time. Just one more helping of Christmas Cake, which will be on Friday, and then it will be back to the hummus and crackers again

When my little break was over I made my cake. And as I said, it’s wonderful. It took even longer to bake than previous cakes but it’s risen really well, and really equally too. I’ll start eating that tomorrow with my soya dessert and if it tastes as nice as the crumbs that I ate, it really will be nice.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, but there wasn’t much left over so a handful of lentils went into it. No naan either because I forgot to take some dough out of the freezer at lunchtime. Still, it really was nice all the same.

So right now I’m off to bed ready to finish off my music notes in the morning, and then continue this downloading..

But seeing as we have been talking about Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … Canada is lovely, the people are lovely (especially my family in New Brunswick and Ottawa as well as Castor of course) and I could have quite happily emigrated there.

However, I fell into that gap – over 55 means no work permit and you can’t be an aged dependant until you are 65. I was 57 when I applied, and when I was 65 I was too ill to go.

But someone told me a lovely story about Canadians. It went "how do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time? "
"Go on" I replied. "I’ll buy it. How do you make 200 rowdy, rioting Canadian men to leave a bar at closing time?"
"Simple" replied my interlocutor. "You ask them."

Sunday 19th January 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… what at first might sound like a really quiet day but it really wasn’t. I might not have seemed to have done much but I haven’t stopped. Not even for a moment.

After I’d finished writing out my notes I had some dictation to do – to dictate the notes that I’d written earlier in the week. That didn’t take too long and after I’d watched a couple of TV interviews on the internet, I crawled off to bed. I’d actually made it (for once) before midnight so with the lie-in until 08:00 I was going to have a decent sleep.

And I didn’t turn over or turn round much either. It did take an age to drop off, but once I’d gone, that was it.

Whatever it was that awoke me, I’ve no idea but at 07:45 I was wide awake, bolt-upright, 15 minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

And so, if I’m awake and there’s a possibility of recording an “early start”, then why not? When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was actually in the bathroom sorting myself out. How many times is this since dialysis began that a Saturday morning has been an “early start”?

After the bathroom I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, to find out where I’d been during the night. We’d been on a holiday, on a cruise. The cruise had come round ready for people now to start the homeward leg. There was a fair bit of grumbling amongst the passengers about, first of all, parking the cars. There was some strangely-worded statement about people not turning up at the office, which, if interpreted in some way, meant that there was no parking for their vehicles. I somehow felt that it meant that one couldn’t go along and queue inside the office while you were waiting to be signed in. Everyone had his own interpretation on this. We talked about cars parked in a long-term car park for ages, and people with fork-lift trucks lifting them out of the way to put their cars in their place. We came back from this excursion and had to change out of our wet clothes into dry clothes. everyone else had done this and was drifting off on board and I couldn’t get out of my clothes. I couldn’t push my feet through my trouser legs. Everyone was drifting further and further away and I was still struggling. There was one guy and his wife still there. He’d been criticising some of the arrangements because he’d noticed that it was a very early start that morning. He’d posted something on the Group’s chat site that “I bet that it will be a packed lunch and cup of coffee on board the train for our breakfast rather than a sit-down meal in the hotel”. He’d been summoned by the Cruise Director and given a lecture and telling-off, so he reckoned that that was exactly what was going to happen. Eventually I managed to put on some kind of clothing and was able to catch up with the throngs although it was most uncomfortable. Then I heard that the rumour that this guy had started had actually been the truth. We were all to board the train and we’d be given a packed breakfast and cup of coffee once we were on board. The walkway over to this train was a narrow, rickety bridge suspended over a huge gap that was probably over 100 feet down. With all the people on this bridge swarming towards the train I was thinking that this bridge wasn’t going to withstand the pressure and we’d all go crashing down to the ground.

Whatever the story about the car park is, I’ve no idea. When I read this I had an image of a car hire office at the airport in Montreal, but don’t ask me why that vision came into my head because I can’t think of any comparable incident. Changing out of wet gear into our normal clothes was something that we did twice a day (at least) on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR after we clambered out of the zodiacs that ran us around in the various bays and straits up in the High Arctic. However the struggle was usually when we had to put on our gear and rush for a zodiac that we might otherwise miss and all our friends and fellow-passengers would leave the ship without us. There wasn’t a chat group for the passengers though – sometimes we were in places where not even a satellite wi-fi system would work.

There was however a passerelle or “walkway” that collapsed – AT RAMSGATE IN 1994 but I was nowhere near that at the time. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and didn’t stop for long. She didn’t have very much to say today, except that the weather really was freezing this morning, which was what I expected.

After she left I made myself breakfast, and then took my time eating it while I read MY BOOK.

Once more, I wasn’t going to waste neither my time nor yours posting more of the same old same old, except to say that at one point he describes with absolute and utter derision the argument of someone whom he freely admits is described as "at the head of living students of English history"

He spends page after page after page scoffing at the idea that Wissant was the port from which Caesar set sail (as if it matters in a book about Britain) concluding with "the claim of Wissant to be identified with the Portus Itius cannot be admitted.".

That was his position in 1907. Having spent page after page in treating with derision the writers who have changed their position over the years, in May 1909 he submitted a paper to the Classical Review, giving "strong reasons for preferring Wissant".

There was bread to make next. I had soup to make later and so I need a fresh bread roll. And that’s the advantage of the air fryer – I can bash out a bread roll whenever I like.

Today’s soup was broccoli stalk soup, with potato, onion, shallot and various herbs and spices, using up the last of the water from the blanching exercise of last weekend.

Heaping in a pot of soya yoghurt gave it that final touch, even if I did forget the black pepper and the tiny pasta elbows. Nevertheless, it was delicious and I’ll make more of that any time. If you want the recipe it’s HERE but it now has a shallot added to it too.

After lunch I came back in here ready to start work but first there was the football – Stranraer v East Fife. East Fife won 2-0 with the first goal being a foul and a wicked deflection, and the second being a handball. And if you think that I’m making it up, you can see for yourself in the HIGHLIGHTS. And you can hear the best TV football commentators in the entire country while you watch the game.

After that I settled down to edit the notes that I dictated last night but I didn’t get far. Someone came on line to whom I wanted to chat and this desultory chat went on until late in the evening, meaning that I could only edit the notes in the pauses between the chats.

We did however stop for tea. I’d taken a lump of dough out of the freezer earlier and it had been defrosting. Later on I rolled it out and put it onto the pizza tray ready to assemble.

Once it had risen I attacked the base and put on the tomato and pepper sauce, the olives, onions and mushrooms, sprinkled it with herbs, put on the vegan cheese and then a couple of nice rows of cherry tomatoes cut in half.

This one was nothing very much different than any other that I have baked but for some reason it tasted by far the best that I have ever made, and the cheese melted wonderfully. If only I knew the secret I’d make many more of those.

So tonight I’m off to bed, and tomorrow we’ll all wake up in a New World where the people of Canada and Greenland will be looking for the rest of the World to save them. Being threatened by a madman armed to the teeth backed by a crowd of paranoid lunatics is no way to live.

While we’re on that subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of Trump’s aides dashed into his office. "I dreamed about you last night" He said.
"Really?" asked Trump. "What was it?"
"Well," replied the aide. "You were being driven down Pennsylvania Avenue. People were cheering, flags were waving, kids were dancing and everyone was partying "
"Wow" Replied Trump. "That must have been wonderful. But tell me – my hair – how was my hair?"
"We couldn’t see" replied the aide. "We couldn’t get the lid off your coffin."

-1

Tuesday 7th January 2025. DO YOU KNOW …

… what I discovered today? And that is the carafe for my coffee machine is not big enough to take all of the water that can be put in the reservoir of the machine. So ask me how I know this.

That’s right – it’s been one of those days where things seem to be going in every direction except the direction that I want. Not that that’s unusual because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s the kind of thing that is the normal method of procedure around here.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Last night after I finished writing my notes I was going to go to bed as I said, but as usual, something came up to disrupt me. Round onto the playlist came a concert from Colosseum.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall this concert only too well. It’s a rather complicated concert with a lot of holes and involuntary fadings but it’s one of the top five live concerts that I’ve ever attended so it won’t ever disappear off the playlist.

It needs editing, rebuilding and remixing and that has been my project on both my trips to the High Arctic. The plan was that when everyone has gone to bed late at night and I’m on my own, up in the observation lounge on the top deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR looking at the snow and ice, I could be editing the concert without having to worry about being distracted. It’s not as if there’s much traffic out there amongst the ice late at night.

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it didn’t happen like that. On both trips, in exactly the same place on the ship and exactly the same place in the ocean and at the same point in the concert, something (well, someone, actually) came along to disrupt me and I’ve been swept off my feet and carried along on a tidal wave of unstoppable events, and that was that.

Still, it’s a good concert so I stayed up to listen to it, and it was rather late when I went to bed.

During the night I awoke just once, at 05:40, But I was soon back asleep again and there I stayed until the alarm went off.

Hearing the alarm was one thing – lifting myself out of my warm, comfortable bed was something else completely. However I managed to beat the second alarm to my feet and staggered off to the bathroom for a good scrub up.

Into the kitchen next for the medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And there was something on there, but you really don’t want to hear about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

However, whatever it was that went on, there was something about all of this taking place at the seaside. It was this place that I used to visit with Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz”) on the north-eastern coast between Sunderland and Newcastle. I can’t remember the name of the town now … "it’s Seaburn" – ed ….

The nurse was early – probably because no-one wanted a blood test from him today. But he was telling me that he took part in the bain des manchots on New Year’s Day where everyone dresses up as a penguin and runs into the sea.

And if you think that I’m joking, in 2019 a couple of us interviewed the penguins for the radio, and here’s a photo of one of them from back then to prove it.

However, it just goes to prove my point that there are some people who simply don’t have both paddles in the water.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

We’re having a big discussion about heads. And the author reckons that he can identify someone’s origin – whether they are Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Saxon etc, by the shape of their heads. Or, more accurately, the measurement of the diagonals on the interior of the skull.

That got me thinking. His idea is all well and good for 1907 but I wondered how it stood now that we have DNA to guide us along.

So hunched over a bowl of porridge I tracked down a site that talked about genetics in the UK.

Now, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we talked several days ago about stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and I was of the opinion that new waves of immigrants pushed the established population westwards and northwards, and that subsequent waves continued the process.

And there, right in front of my face in this document that I read was "British Neolithic individuals had a small amount (about 10%) of Western Hunter-Gatherer excess ancestry when compared with Iberian Early Neolithic farmers, suggesting that there was an additional gene flow from British Mesolithic hunter-gatherers into the newly arrived farmer population: while Neolithic individuals from Wales have no detectable admixture of local Western hunter-gatherer genes, those from South East England and Scotland show the highest additional admixture of local WHG genes, and those from South-West and Central England are intermediate"

So compare that with what we were discussing, the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … and “none at all” and there you are!

Back in here I revised for my Welsh and then, armed with an overflowing coffee pot, I went for the lesson.

Once more, the lesson went quite well, especially as Brain of Britain revised the wrong module AGAIN! How many times have I done that before? And we have a new recruit joining the pack today. She used to live just up the road from where I lived as a tiny baby.

What with another member who was a teacher in the town where I went to Grammar School, someone on a summer school from there too and someone else from a summer school who lived in Wistaston, a suburb of Crewe, this World is becoming far too small for my liking.

After the lesson was over I went for lunch – another slice of this really good flapjack that I made, followed by some fruit. There’s no doubt that this flapjack is the best that I have made to date.

However, I’ve been looking at the dates that I bought to treat myself over Christmas and never got round to eating. There must be a recipe for a date loaf on the internet somewhere, and I wonder how it would work. With my oven, whatever it is, it’s bound to be difficult.

After lunch I had things to do, but I was interrupted by my cleaner bringing me some shopping, and then by my Christmas cake break. For a change, I didn’t have my hot chocolate. I had one of these disgusting protein drinks that I’ve been prescribed. That’s a different type of disgusting to the disgusting anti- potassium powder that I have to take several times a non-dialysis day

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the stuffing, with rice and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. And it was lovely too. Tomorrow is a vegan curry with the rest of the leftover stuffing.

So ordinarily I would think about going to bed right now, but a Lindisfarne concert has come round on the playlist so it’ll be a while yet before I retire.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about DNA … "well, one of us has" – ed … I had a relative (by marriage, not by birth, I hasten to add) who sent off his DNA to be analysed.
I asked him "what did the results say?"
"Actually" he said "they came back marked ‘rejected’. "
"When was that?" I asked
"Three days ago" he said. "The day that all the newspaper headlines were something like ‘Missing Link Between Humans and Apes finally discovered’"

Tuesday 24th December … TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE …

… living in Panama, HIS NIBS and I wish you a Merry Isthmus

And so does Nanuk, a very friendly Polar Bear whom we met in the High Arctic Research Area in Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island in the Arctic Ocean where those of us on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR called for supplies.

Nanuk, or, I suppose, more correctly Nanu’q is Inuktitut for “polar bear”. Some words that I learned from the Inuit in the High Arctic seem to have stuck.

However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. It’ll be Christmas Day by the time that most of you read this so I hope that you have all been good and that Santa has brought you some nice presents. I know what he has brought me, and it’s the same that my namesake the mathematician will receive.

One thing that he will bring will be a nice lie-in. I’ve told the nurse to clear off, the alarm is switched off and that will be that. That’s the best present that anyone could want.

Not like this morning though. When the alarm went off I was already up and about.

It wasn’t as if I’d gone to bed early either. It was approaching midnight by the time I crawled into my stinking pit and once more, I was out like a light and felt nothing at all. Totally painless.

However, something awoke me at about 06:40 this morning, and it was another quite dramatic awakening. I’ve no idea what it was that went off but whatever it was supposed to do, it certainly did it.

Seeing that I stood a good chance of beating the alarm, I fell out of bed and had a most undignified crawl to the bathroom where I sorted myself out, and switched off the alarm when it went off.

In the kitchen I made sure that everything was put away and then took my medication for the morning

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night. At one point I was having a really long, involved and complicated dream that was so interesting. I reached for the dictaphone and the dream evaporated immediately from my mind. I couldn’t recall a single thing about this dream at all

That must have been a real disaster, forgetting an exciting dream like that. But it’s like one of those projector slides that just slides down over the memory and blots it out completely.

Later on, Nerina and I had gone to the USA. We’d been driving around the Midwest just on a case of opportunism, looking at one or two things that were there, but otherwise just following our noses. We eventually turned up in this town in Wisconsin. There was a village fair advertised but which had taken place on 3rd June. We went to have a look at a couple of the notices that were on this site. After a while we worked out that we were actually on the training ground. There must be another site somewhere else where the events took place so we decided to walk across the road and have a look. There, we met some guy who was walking down the road. We said “hello” and ended up having a chat with him about the town. He wanted to know all about us and what we were doing there, a typical friendly American. He decided that he would show us around. The first thing that he took us to was what looked like a large rectangular area with grassed-over earth walls around it. He said that that was where a film had been filmed – one of these Space fantasies in the 1950s about people from Earth going to live on another planet. It had all been filmed there. Then next door to this was a huge office block that must have covered a dozen acres in a kind of Y-shape. It wasn’t very tall, about twelve storeys. This apparently was the offices for this fair. I thought that this was going to be an astonishing place. He took us round to the offices. When we walked around the corner there was this huge arena in the shelter of two of the arms of this Y-shaped building, a massive place. This was apparently where the events took place. We thought that for a little, small town fair this is an astonishing situation. He gave us a talk on it. We turned up at one of the corners of this building. There was a bar in there. he said that he was going in so Nerina said that we ought to buy him a coffee so what would he like to drink and what would he like. We’d had one of the most astonishing guided tours that I’ve ever had in my life.

This is another dream in which there’s a lot of mileage. Firstly, of course, Nerina appears in it. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t mind at all her turning up. I invited her into my life all those years ago so she has every right to be there, and in any case, I wouldn’t have invited her if I hadn’t liked her and nothing that has happened since has changed a thing. They say that you can choose your friends but not your relatives, and that’s certainly true. She would be chosen ahead of a lot of other people much more closely related to me.

Then of course there’s the village, or small-town fair. That’s an institution in many rural areas of the USA and we used to always go to the one in Clinton, in Maine. They had tractor-pulling competitions there so my niece’s husband and two of his daughters used to compete with their monster truck. This fair, like all the others, was epic and there’s nothing like it anywhere else. Watching the kids take part in the piglet-wrestling competition is bewildering if nothing else.

And then there are Americans. Americans in groups are devastating but one American on his or her own in the rural regions is probably one of the most friendly people on the planet, as long as you don’t discuss politics. You’ll remember Isaac Weld saying something along the lines that Americans have a deep sense of curiosity and will ask the most intimate questions to enquire about you and your purpose of visiting their neck of the woods. That’s certainly true. They have a natural sense of inquisitiveness, more than any other people

But then there’s the huge stadium in the tiny town. That rings a bell with me because every now and again my website statistics are swamped by visits that come from the small town of Prineville in Oregon, with the browser being recorded as “other”. Prineville is a town of just 10,000 inhabitants and sometimes it seems that every one of those people visits my sites every day, judging by the number of hits.

However, the mystery is easily explained. In Prineville is the location of two massive data centres, one for a major telephone and computer supplier and the other for a huge social media company. So all these hits are actually coming from all over the World but accessed by the medium of the various private data network connections and the various “own brand” browsers.

There was a load of mileage in that dream.

The nurse came early today and didn’t hang around. I reminded him not to come on Christmas Day as I’ll be in bed. I’m sure that I can manage for one day without him being here sorting out my legs.

After he left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

And in it, T Rice Holmes answers one of his own questions, and the answer is exactly as I expected it to be. He seems now to have forgotten his question about why the continued use of Palaeolithic tools even though Neolithic tools are in use on the continent. However, he does admit that "pastoral tribes do not turn to agriculture until their numbers have increased to such a degree that they have no prospect of being able to live by hunting".

Later, he says "but as their numbers multiplied and it became more and more difficult to find sufficient food, the struggle for life must have led to intertribal war, and men’s minds must have been exercised to improve their weapons"

So, as I said, if the old stuff works, keep on using it but, as I also said yesterday, "It’s only when something like a greater pressure from an increasing population comes along that new technology is considered"

He’s still stuck in the stereotypical myths of savage prehistoric man, which can hardly be the case bearing in mind the organisation that must have taken place to build the barrows, stone circles, hill forts and the like. He comments "matriarchy, it would seem, was the root of family life : descent was reckoned through the mother, for the father was often unknown.", and that on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

Today, I have done almost nothing at all. I have had a nice relaxing day. All that I have done in the way of work is to track down a couple of concerts that I knew were somewhere about, identify them and date them.

My friendly cleaner came round today instead of tomorrow to give the place a clean-up. And that included me, because I had my weekly shower. And didn’t I feel better for it? I can’t wait to be downstairs, have a walk-in shower installed and then hava shower every day.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, that didn’t drop onto the floor tonight. It was followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Tomorrow it will be my Christmas dinner. I shan’t be doing much tomorrow, or celebrating. But I shall be eating well.

So I’m not off to bed yet, but I’ll finish my notes and take my time. A lie-in in the morning.

But while we’re on the subject of the town fair at Clinton in Maine … "well, one of us is" – ed … in one programme that we were given when we were there, it talked about the results of the previous year’s competition.
And there we saw the classic entry "Mrs Jones won the ‘throwing the rolling pin’ competition"
and a few lines further down – "Mr Jones won the 100 yards sprint."
I bet he did!

Thursday 17th October 2024 – SOMEONE IS GOING …

.. to have their nether regions given a good kicking in the near future. And I can’t say that I’m sorry.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few months ago I had an ugly confrontation in the private hospital at Avranches with someone on the accounts department that led to me writing to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company.

Today I’ve finally had a response, full of grovelling apology (I had a cheque sent back to me a week or so ago) and containing the ominous “your letter will be placed before our Committee who will examine your complaint”.

Having received full reimbursement, it’s obvious that my complaint has been upheld, after all, it’s not like a private organisation to hand back money without a fight, so all we need now is a good witch-hunt, complete with a ceremonial burning at the stake

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I finished my notes last night I had one or two things that needed doing so yet again I was rather late going to my nice, clean, fresh bed.

But once in it, I was away quite quickly and there I stayed, all curled up, until the alarm went off. There had been one or two minor awakenings during the night but I was soon asleep again.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a dream. I was auditing some accounts for some company, going through their office and checking everything. There was a guy and girl there working together. It was quite obvious that the guy had his eye on the girl. After he went out of the room I began to talk to the girl to find out a little more about her to see if I could encourage these two in some way. Then the guy came back and carried on talking. I could see that he was looking nervous and was glancing at me so I just said to him “oh, go ahead. Don’t mind me” and tried to encourage him to ask her for a date. Then I was at home and one of my friends was there. We were talking about diabetics. I was watching TV in French, a TV programme in French while she was working. She was wondering why I was sitting down and not doing things. She found that it was actually a programme about diabetes. They were talking about “if you’re having a crisis, have a fruit” but I replied that quite often when I have a diabetic crisis I don’t have any fruits any more. I’ve run out”. And then I was thinking “maybe it’s a good idea to go out and buy some, then we can have a coffee as well, things like that” but my friend had so much work on her plate that I thought “maybe it’s not such a very good idea to propose that we stop for a moment”

Eating a fruit is a good idea in a diabetic crisis and at the hospital they usually give me a cup of orange juice if I’m having a wobble. Then along came the dietician who tells me that fruit has loads of potassium in it, my potassium is too high and I must cut down on the fruit. But that is just how everything is – one thing going on is affecting something else so I need a pill for the side-effect, but that pill then affects something else so I need another. And so on. I counted once just recently and it was about 32 pills, tablets and medicines per day (it’s increased since then). And I bet it’s all on account of the first one that I started taking. It’s hard to believe that when I went to live in Leuven in early 2016 I was just taking four pills per day.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, a shave and applied plenty of deodorant, even though it probably serves no useful purpose. And then I came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I can only remember a small part of this dream but I had to go to the bank to draw some money out at a cash point. I drew out £80:00 when I went to the shops last Tuesday but I thought that if I was drawing out that sum every week it’s going to be an awful lot of money. I was driving down the hill to where the little bank branch was where there was a machine where I could draw the money but suddenly I found myself maybe half a mile further on at a road junction. “Never mind” I thought. I could turn left here, turn round and go back again. But the left turning was a one-way street. I thought “I’ve been here before and turned down here but it’s all really complicated but I can’t remember seeing the bank branch when I drove down here just now. I mean, it’s dark and usually all its lights are on and you can see it from quite some distance away but tonight there was nothing. I hope that it’s not been closed down while I’ve been going”.

And I’ve been down this road during a previous night too. It’s the road that I drove down once and waited on a corner somewhere in South London when I was on another nocturnal ramble. And although I can’t recognise the first part of it, I now recognise the second part where I tried to turn left last night and the corner where I waited last time. It’s in Saint John in New Brunswick, just around the corner from where my Canadian insurance broker has her office. Well, well, well. But I wonder if the dream is symbolic of the issues that I had recently with my bank card.

It was Isabelle the nurse today, seeing as her partner has had to go to the doctor (and doesn’t that inspire a lot of confidence in a nurse?). She was her usual cheerful self, blitzed through her task and then cleared off, leaving me alone.

And so I made my breakfast and read my book. Right now, I’ve read the introduction and all the members are taking the train in the middle of a blinding rainstorm, to go to look at the rocks at Colwall in the Malvern Hills. We’re having a long, complicated talk on geology and underlying rock strata, which makes me wish that I could remember more of my A-level Geography. All the time that I spent studying rock formation in the Arctic with Mark St Onge on our trips out there on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR seems not to have done me much good

Back here I cleared up a few bits and pieces and then made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. I’ve now done a few but this is turning into something rather more complicated than I had imagined. It’s not easy.

My cleaner came in and helped me with my anaesthetic patches, and then she tried some of the new tubi-grip bandage that we’ve acquired thanks to the prescription from Isabelle the nurse. That seems to work really well and I’m impressed.

The taxi came early and we set off, picking up another passenger on the way, for the Dialysis Clinic.

Being quite early I was soon installed in my bed with my laptop and music and the nurses didn’t hang about either. The first needle went in almost painlessly but the second one wasn’t so easy and they needed the echograph machine to test for the tube in my arm.

And when they finally found it and pushed the needle in, the anaesthetic had worn off.

It looks as if it’s definitely all over between Emilie the Cute Consultant and me.

She was there this afternoon and although she gave me a little wave of her hand, she kept her distance and that was that.

She certainly speaks English because there’s a monolingual English-speaker being dialysed and she was talking to him in English so she’s probably a regular reader of this rubbish and will recall a few of the comments that I have made. That’s enough to drive anyone away, I suppose. Let’s face it, I have enough trouble trying to persuade anyone to come near me in normal times, never mind when we are thrust together cheek by jowl to fester away in a hospital.

The other nurses came by every now and again to check the machine and to ask me to translate stuff for them so that they could speak to the English guy.

However I spent most of the time now that I have an internet connection trying to track down the dates of some of these live concerts that I have. I didn’t check many because it’s really had to do it when you aren’t comfortable, you only have one hand that you can use and that’s interrupted every 20 minutes by a blood pressure reading.

They carried out a diabetes test on me and sure enough it was at a critical level so they gave me a big glass of orange juice. Presumably they don’t think much of the dietician either.

After they unplugged me, disconnected me and compressed me, I went to weigh myself. I’d lost 3.1 kg in this session. All of that would be quite impressive if I wouldn’t put almost all of it straight back on again. It’s no good taking it off and it all going back on.

And a blood test report was sent to me today. After dialysis a few days ago the creatine was down to 283 (the required level in less than 100 and mine was at 450 which is close to fatal just before all of this started). However when I went back to dialysis a few days later it was up at almost 350 again. So not even that is staying put.

But never mind all of that. If I’m feeling better with just that much improvement, what will I be like if ever it goes down to less than 100 and I’m at my target weight?

There were three of us in the taxi and the driver was having an intense discussion with the other passenger so I sat in the back and relaxed.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and watched as today I made 8 steps without using my hand to lift up my leg. If I keep this up, in a couple of months I’ll be outside through the skylight climbing up the roof to the chimney.

My cleaner says that she’s noticed a major improvement over the last few weeks and thinks that I ought to try going for a drive. But that’s out of the question right now. There’s not enough force in my right leg to apply the brake and that’s that.

Tea was, as I said yesterday, a slice of vegan pie with vegetables in gravy and I forgot the herbs with the gravy. But the pie defrosted and warmed up really well in the air fryer and really was nice. I made the gravy thick and glutinous and stirred the veg in it so that the gravy stuck to all of them. That made it even nicer.

So right now, later than intended, I’m off to bed. But the talk of tying someone to a stake and burning them alive reminds me of a boy at our old school.
He came in one morning saying."I saw this incredible film last night. It was all about this man who changed into a bat and they killed him by hammering a stake into his heart. Can you imagine that? Killing a man with a stake?"
"That’s nothing" I retorted. "My mother can do that with egg and chips"

Friday 3rd May 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… bad day today.

Actually, it was a bad afternoon, to be honest. In the morning I was extremely busy, as you’ll find out in a moment or two.

But it’s no surprise that the afternoon wasn’t very good. It was yet another night where I ended up in bed much later than I would have liked, and the night was somewhat turbulent too. There was a huge pile of stuff on the dictaphone.

When the alarm went off though I was fast asleep so I fell out of bed and switched it off before staggering off to the bathroom

After I’d had the medication I made a start and began to prepare the dough for the weekend’s bread

While the bread was busy proofing the nurse came round to see me, to change the dressing on the foot and to put on my puttees. He was actually born in Flanders and so we spent some time talking about Belgium and in particular the linguistic war between the Flemish and the French

After he left I gave the bread its second kneading and then baked it. And for once I have some perfect bread rolls, exactly as they ought to be and I’m well-impressed. They are without doubt the best bread rolls I have ever made.

While the bread was baking I was busy making some broccoli stalk soup with the aid of a couple of small potatoes, a large onion, some garlic, herbs and, when it was almost finished cooking, a tub of soya yoghurt.

The soup with some nice fresh bread was absolutely delicious. There’s nothing quite like it, except of course my carrot and ginger soup. I’ve not made one of those for ages though, and maybe perhaps I ought to have another go at that in due course

That was when my problems began because I fell asleep at the table while drinking my coffee. Yes, don’t let anyone tell you that coffee keeps you awake. There have been many times when I’ve fallen asleep with a mug of coffee in my hand, half drunk.

And that, regrettably, is how it’s been for most of the afternoon, fighting off wave after wave of sleep, sometimes not successfully. And I’m really fed up of it. I can’t do anything at all when this kind of thing happens and there’s so much to do

My cleaner came down for a whizz through the apartment and while she was doing her stuff I transcribed the dictaphone notes -all of them. There was something going on with our Welsh group. We’d formed a band of some description and were being led by someone. We ended up somewhere in the countryside and had to go somewhere so everyone set off. They were going at a much more rapid pace than I could keep up but that didn’t seem to matter. I was just falling behind all the time carrying these two huge cymbals. They went down a hill at one point and then climbed up the side of a bank. I thought that I’m never ever going to climb that bank at all but in the end I worked out that if I began to climb the bank at a much earlier point I could traverse my way across and make it to the top and even save a little time that way. I managed to get very close to them but they went off down this farm track at a really rapid rate of knots. I was staggering on behind, tangled in barbed wire and other kinds of wire etc. The we eventually arrived at a stadium-type of place. I had no idea what was happening or what we were supposed to be doing, how we were going to be doing it, but they’d come here in such a determined fashion that they obviously knew about it but I didn’t. I was having a feeling that I was being somehow squeezed out

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have in fact fallen way behind the rest of my group and that’s how it’s been for a while – since I went to Canada in 2022 in fact. One month there and then two months in hospital knocked a big hole in my learning and not being able to concentrate afterwards hasn’t helped in the slightest. I wish I knew what I was doing but at the moment I’m just stumbling along

Later on we were doing some kind of disco. We were all there and the music was playing. One or two people were dancing on the stage but not many people were there at all really. They asked me why I wasn’t dancing but I didn’t really have a reply. In the end I climbed up on the stage and began to dance about which seemed to satisfy them. There were still not very many people there. Just as another girl began to climb onto the stage the record ended and they switched to a waltz. I grabbed hold of the girl and waltzed with her. At first it was complicated as I tried to remember the steps and I tripped on her feet but eventually it all came back. I began to waltz with her and it was really quite a good dance. But then the record ended and I thought “what’s going to happen now? How are things going to pan out? Who’s going to do what, when and where?” It seemed that the evening wss just being left hanging in the air like that

That reminds me of a night on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR. Someone struck up a waltz so I picked one of the females (it wasn’t Castor) and waltzed off with her down the deck. I don’t know who was more surprised – she who didn’t think that I would be the type of person to waltz or me that I could actually remember how to do it without stepping on her toes.

Then it was necessary to change my clothes. I’m not sure why even though I was dressed in a convicts uniform type of thig I was still quite comfortable but gradually people were changing out of their uniforms into civilian clothes, plain clothes so I thought that I would too but there was really no possibility of escape. All I wanted to do was to sit down and have a great big relaxation somehow but it wasn’t going to happen with all of this going on. I was still going to be quite wound up going in towards breakfast

Then the alarm went off and I was about to haul myself out of bed when it suddenly cut out. We had the “ladies and …” bit it stopped before it said “… gentlemen”. Then I realised that everyone was helping the children in the nursery which was probably why they didn’t want any men about the premises so I went outside. I couldn’t see anything happening. It didn’t look to me as if the children were leaving the school but it was all about the statistics so I’ve no idea what had gone off and awoken us if it wasn’t this alarm

As you can imagine, it wasn’t my alarm at all. For a start, mine doesn’t go “Ladies and gentlemen …” but it’s the good old Billy Cotton WAKEY WAAAA…. KEY that wakes up not just me but the rest of the building and half the street.

Then a voice was crying “a third! A third!”. I’ve no idea what was going on but there were a couple of empty banana-flavoured Alpro cartons lying around. For some reason I wasn’t allowed to drink anything so I started to look for a pair of scissors to cut into them so that the patients who were in the ward that I was controlling could drink them themselves.

At 05:20 I had to work out which woman had lost her bloomers in one of the dances because the bloomers fell to the floor and you could see them in the middle of the dance floor but no-one seemed to own up and accept responsibility for it so I thought that I’d go to have a look to see if I could work out whose they were. They’d obviously want them back and of course if they could actually find them.

It beats me why I noted the time here, but it’s certainly interesting that someone should lose her bloomers and then ignore the fact. It brings insouciance to a whole new level.

The whole thing dissolved into a St Trinians-type of farce with the buses pulling up in Gresty Road and all the kids streaming out and going off down Claughton Avenue towards the school. There were several new teachers there, one of whom was clearly disorientated so he’d have to sort himself out but another one seemed to be at least vaguely interested, a big, heavy guy so in a group we all swarmed down with the children. At the corner of the street where there was a turn-off for the hall there was some person who was a kind-of teacher, a male organiser who was taking everyone’s name and finding out which alternative subjects they wanted to do, being friendly and cheerful, chatting to everyone. The big, heavy new guy turned up and the light-hearted teacher-type of person said “I can see that you have a great big frame. You’re obviously right for the rugby team”. The fellow admitted that he played rugby so he was immediately signed up. On the way down the avenue these new teachers were extremely perplexed because they couldn’t work out why we were going down there and couldn’t work out why the school would be down there. Of course they clearly had no idea what kind of school it was and why it should be situated in such a very poor area and that so they were going to be in for a dreadful shock when they finally arrived there and met the other teachers and the children.

My opinion is that if they were to have a girls’ school in Claughton Avenue in Crewe it would make St Trinians look like a kindergarten. And it wouldn’t need teachers either but wardens. It’s not exactly the calmest and most peaceful street in Crewe.

Later on, after another wave of sleep, I went for tea. Some of those delicious vegan nuggets with salad and chips thanks to my cleaner who brought me some potatoes today. It really did go down well and I was good and ready for it too. At least I have my appetite back.

So now I’m going to make a really big effort to go to bed early. I might have visitors tomorrow so I need to be on form.

But talking to the nurse about the linguistic wars reminds me of an incident that took place on the linguistic border between Waterloo and St Genesius-Rode.
As you drive into Waterloo there’s a sign that says the town name. Underneath it they fixed a plaque "You are now in Wallonie. Here we speak French"
On the other side of the sign it said “Sint Genesius-Rode” and following the posting of the Wallonie plaque the citizens of Sint Genesius Rode put up a plaque that said "You are now in Flanders. Here we work"

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

And if you read on, you’ll find out what and why. I’ve not had a very good day.

Anyway, last night after everything had finished I sat down and READ A BOOK about an American sailor and his family, including his 6 year old daughter, captured in the South Pacific in 1917 by a German sea-going raider and who spent 10 months as prisoner on board before being shipwrecked off the coast of Denmark.

After that I settled down, fully dressed because I was freezing, under the covers and that was that.

A few times during the night I was awoken by a few comings and goings but for some reason or other I was so tired that I was back asleep almost immediately and ended up not awakening until they came to take my blood sample at about 09:15.

Actually it was the little student nurse who came on her own so I told her that if I leave here alive she’ll have earned her diploma. Anyway, she managed to find some blood. I still have some left, apparently.

Once she’d gone I went for a wash and brush up as best as I could and then a driver came to collect me. It was the rock music fan who has taken me before so we had a good chat before he dropped me off at Neurology.

While I was waiting for my appointment I had a good chat with the receptionist and another patient and saw several photos of cats and dogs before being ushered into the room where the examination was due to take place.

It was the doctor who had seen me before on two occasions. He and his sidekick gave me the electric shock tests to my arms and legs and I was right – there is a further deterioration. So no surprise there. We had a good chat and now he’s gone away to think about a Plan B.

The same driver came to pick me up for my next appointment but that’s not until tomorrow so he brought me back here.

While I was eating lunch a doctor came to slap a freezing patch on my lower back and we all know what that means. She took an age to find the correct position so I asked her "can’t you see the scars from the previous attempts?"

When she told me that she could, I told her that they ought to paint an “X marks the spot” or even a target in the correct place.

A short while later, Batman and Robin, the young ward nurse and her little student who follows her around like a shadow, came to prepare me.

It was the little student who drew the short straw and had to hold me down and I bet she wished that she hadn’t when the doctor missed her aim with the lumbar puncture and found the central nerve.

Eventually, but not soon enough by any means, the torment was over and I could go to lie down. “You’ll just need to be flat out for an hour” but she was joking. After an hour or so a nurse came round to make sure that I was still alive and to take my blood pressure, with predictable results. But in fact it was several hours before I crawled out of bed, and then only for a particular reason too.

Once I’d settled down in my chair I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Yesterday’s are now on line and then I started on today’s. I was going to start at a new school but the morning that I was due to go I had a ‘phone call that began speaking in Welsh. It was a young girl saying that she was glad to go back to live in Easingwold. I couldn’t understand who it was but the conversation became more and more intimate until in the end, I had to go, I said plenty of encouraging words and finished with “I love you” but I had no idea who this person was at all. Absolutely none. I arrived at the new school but couldn’t find out how anything worked, the system of how lessons were organised etc. In the end I stumbled across a lesson from one of my class so I asked the teacher where all the other lessons for our year were being held. He gave some kind of nebulous speech abut how I should have looked at the newspaper. Of course I knew nothing about this. I found a copy of the newspaper but didn’t understand it. In the end I found some kind of paper print-out with the details on it. It was headed with the most extraordinary offensive message that had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter. I thought it totally astonishing that they’d pin this on the wall. I couldn’t find any paper then. Every piece of paper on which I tried to write, I was making no impression with a ball-point pen. The writing was just not sticking as if it had one of these shiny surfaces. I kept on coming across paper that had already been used, carbon copies of the ‘phone call that I’d had earlier in the day from that girl etc, but nothing that I could do would be able to reproduce anything on any kind of piece of paper. It was just so frustrating because I wanted to crack on and organise myself as this was just not working at all.

Then this conversation that I’d had in the morning had completely shaken me. I didn’t have a clue who on earth it was to whom I was speaking and I really wish that I knew because it had all the air of being something really interesting. The only Welsh-speaking girl I knew at school was only in passing and it certainly wasn’t her so who on earth was it?

Then we had a boisterous kind of office party where everything was going out of control. The sad part about it was that these were all middle-aged people. The boss there had picked on someone else’s wife and was making life really uncomfortable for them. They were trying to work out a moment in which to disappear such as when the boss went to the toilet but they’d brought the PA with them so putting that into the car in the space of a couple of minutes was going to be complicated. There were all kinds of things like this. Some woman was making some very plain and clear hints that she wanted to dance etc with me but of course I was having absolutely none of this and sat stoically at my seat in the dining room watching the events unfold, taking absolutely no notice of any of the extremely broad hints that she was dropping. All in all it was an extremely sad evening watching these people behaving like this

There have been more than a few parties like this where everyone makes a fool of themselves and I note that I even made a remark about it while I was asleep, which shows you just what I think about it all.

Then I was going through the videotapes looking for a blank one but came across a football match that took place years ago that I hadn’t seen. It involved one of these obscure South American republics playing in similar colours to Portugal and who had qualified unexpectedly for the World Cup after beating a selection of prize teams from other parts of the World to make it to the finals. I’d obviously taped their opening match but I couldn’t remember how it went or what the score was so instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing I put on this videotape and settled down to watch them. I got as far as watching them come out onto the pitch before I awoke. I’d no idea who their opponents were in this particular game.

And despite what I said the other night, Castor put in a very brief appearance last night. And wasn’t it nice to see her? We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR rearranging the dining arrangements. I was passing the cutlery and crockery and glassware from one table to the next. There was the final piece that I picked up to take round to the other table and who should be sitting there but Castor? She was talking to someone else about their life, I suppose. She was saying that she was born into a policeman’s family. I’ll tell you that that didn’t ‘arf ring a few alarm bells with me finding out that she was the progeny of a policeman’s couple.

But even if it were true and I had known, nothing of what happened back then would have changed for a minute. As I said at the time, I would have accepted any consequence. And as Joni Mitchell sang, YOU KNOW I’D GO BACK THERE TOMORROW BUT FOR THE WORK THAT I’VE TAKEN ON

And fancy the dream stopping there! I suppose that it was the shock that awoke me.

While I was asleep in the afternoon I was going for a walk. I had all of the four cats coming with me, following in my footsteps, climbing and jumping over each other as they used to do etc. There were a few members of my family with me. I had to take some money out to pay for something or other, housekeeping or whatever. I needed €60:00. I walked as far as the cash machine but when I went to look through my wallet I couldn’t find the bank card that I usually used. In the end, looking through everything I found a selection of other bank cards but I wasn’t sure which ones would work and which ones wouldn’t. There was one from the bank in Belgium so I put that in the cash machine. It seemed to read the card because it asked for the PIN. I typed in the usual number and that seemed to accept it but that was as far as I reached in the dream.

Tea tonight was salmon lasagne with creamed spinach so some horse trading was undertaken but I’m not doing too well for food which is a shame, but not unexpected.

So right now I’m off to bed to try to recapture Castor and to hope that they try to check my blood pressure at calmer moments.

But while the little student was preparing me for my lumbar puncture I asked her why doctors always wear masks
"Is it to do with infection?" she asked.
"Not at all" I replied. "It’s in case the procedure goes all wrong. Then they can’t identify the guilty party"

Sunday 7th April 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… horrible, gruesome, miserable day today again.

And if you thought that the one the other day was bad, this beats is easily. In fact it beats any day that I have ever had and I wish that I were dead.

It was at about 05:30 when I awoke this morning which, considering that once more I didn’t go to bed until long after midnight, is simply not enough.

Whatever it was that awoke me I really have no idea but I do know why I couldn’t go back to sleep, and that is this nerve ending in the sole of my right foot that is absolutely killing me.

It was doing its best to unsettle me last night, not without success. I’m getting to the stage where I’m simply afraid to move or to do anything in case it flares up again. And then after a while it flares up again all of its own accord anyway.

What would be nice would be in I knew what was causing it so that I didn’t do it again, but that’s far too easy a solution.

So when the alarm went off first thing that I did was to check the blood pressure. Maybe because of the stabbing pain in the sole of my foot it was 17.1/10.1 whereas last night, despite the stabbing pain then, it was 16.2/10.1

The nurse was early again today and I hadn’t finished my toilet so it was a very dishevelled me who went to meet him. And he’s given me instructions to wash the puttees for next time, but not to worry as I have the spare set which are already clean.

After he left I made myself some coffee and corn flakes, and went to carry on reading THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY for a while.

Considering that the book is over 100 years old, it’s absolutely fascinating. It’s interesting to read his speculation about a lot of the ancient Egyptian temples, and then read subsequent modern research into the sites that proves his theories

The amount of old, interesting out-of-copyright books that I’ve found on these archiving sites is phenomenal and I’ve enjoyed every one.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night last night. There was a group of girls being used as entertainers. I had a woman who wasn’t all that much older than me supervising them and making sure that they were well-behaved. While they were eating the supervisor was hanging around the girls so I wondered what was going on. I went over to find out. I found out that she had a series of plates, cups and saucers etc that were made in bright green plastic. She was trying to have her whole network to buy these products and use them so that she could identify them whenever she went away or was on some foreign soil etc but one or two of her members I suppose were quite keen on the idea but the rest weren’t so she was having a really difficult job trying to explain this to them.

When we were up in the High Arctic we were all given bright blue jackets. Firstly, they stood out really well against the snow and ice so that we could be seen quite easily in case we lost the way
Secondly many of our landings were dependent upon winds, currents, tides, polar bears and ice flow. All that could change in an instant and if we had to be called back to a zodiac or to THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR we could be distinguished quite easily from a local.

Not for nothing was our party always known as “The Smurfs”.

My jacket from 2018 is hanging up in my cupboard here, but the one from 2019 was last seen hanging from a coat hook in a hotel in Calgary with my notebook and a few other bits and pieces in its pockets.

The whole of my progress around the Northern Hemisphere is marked by the objects that I’ve left behind, scattered to the four winds like that

By now I’d crashed out, for the first (but not the last) time today and was gone on this occasion until 12:00.

But even though I was feeling so bad, worse than you will ever know, I pressed on as well as I could with my radio notes to try to make some kind of progress.

After lunch I crashed out again but managed to awaken in time to make a start on the biscuits. And nice as they are, they would have been even nicer had I remembered the desiccated coconut to go with the coconut oil that I put in there.

It’s just a basic 10/8/4 mix of flour, butter/oil and sugar with nutmeg, cinnamon, ground ginger and cocoa powder.

While the mixture was firming up in the fridge I was crashing out again and then while it was baking I was dealing with tonight’s pizza. Not that I wanted to because I wasn’t hungry but I forced myself. And you can tell that I’m ill when I’m off my food

To everyone’s surprise, especially my own, I’ve brushed up in here and washed the floor. I’m likely to have a visit tomorrow afternoon. A party of Auvergnats has now arrived in the immediate vicinity and I’m likely to be called forward for inspection.

So I’ll need to pretty myself up too – an impossible task these days, I know. But if I have a better night’s sleep that will be a start.

But talking about polar bears just now reminds me of the time that they decided to have some cycles available for the more intrepid tourist on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR
Two polar bears were admiring the advert and one of them said to the other one "high time someone started a ‘meals on wheels’ service around the Arctic"

Monday 26th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS …

… if I’ll be back in hospital sooner than I imagined.

In fact, if the hospital had its way I’d be there now.

The nurse who telephones me every few days to find out how I am and so I told her, and that was that. She told the doctor and he issued the instructions, and left it to the nurse to find a date seeing as I turned down “today”.

Yes, it’s “all go” here in the apartment. I wasn’t in bed very early because I had things to do, even though I was tired. And so I didn’t have much sleep.

What sleep I had was quite good though and I wish that I had had more of it. There’s no doubt that I seem to be sleeping better these days than I have done but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. As I have said before … "" – ed … my nocturnal travels are very important to me.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and went to take the blood pressure. A very low 14.8/8.9 this morning, compared to 17.1/11.8 last night.

After the medication I came back in here and had a few things to do before I could transcribe the dictaphone notes. We were at school last night. There was an issue about climate change etc. Our headmaster gave a speech to a certain organisation about something or other on this subject. It turned out to be a huge self-justification about all kinds of things. I somehow managed to access the meeting so I stood up and made a speech simultaneously criticising him for all kinds of different things that had gone on in the past in the school for which I considered him to be responsible but no-one took any notice of me at all. I thought “fair enough”. My life carried on as usual, I had a nice girlfriend (and I wish that I knew who she was). Then I noticed that there wee jobs for school leavers. A couple of them were really interesting. One was to go to Kenya for a couple of years as some kind of exchange of teacher or something like that. I must admit that that appealed to me. Anyway I wanted to go to sort out the headmaster. He had a meeting of people my year at school at the start of the afternoon so I went five minutes early and said “I want to talk to you”. He looked at me and said “and what position are you after?”. I had to be honest and explain that although I was after the one in Kenya I’d come to see him on another matter. He took the greatest amount of umbrage with me criticising him for his speech. He was really quite aggressive with his defence of what he said which I thought was way, way over the top and out of place.

It’s one thing that I’ve noticed about Climate Change deniers and the others of their ilk. When you challenge their “beliefs” the become quite aggressive and try to shout you out of their argument. Yet the facts are indisputable.

"Climate change is a natural phenomenon" – indeed it is, but that’s no reason for us to do nothing about it. It’s like saying that the Titanic was going to sink anyway so why bother pumping? The answer is that by pumping it gave them an extra couple of hours for Carpathia to come to the rescue. And that’s why we have to keep on trying to save the planet – to give us more time to find a solution.

"The Earth is simply rotating on its axis like it normally does". Indeed it does, but at a rate of 1° per 7,000 years according to calculations made by Sir Norman Lockyer, so we’re talking of arcoseconds in real terms. But if that’s what is going on according to the naysayers, why aren’t other parts of the World freezing as quickly as the High Arctic is melting?

But seriously, anyone who has been to the High Arctic can see the evidence for themselves. I was talking to an Inuit on Bylot Island who told me that he used to come to the spot where I was standing to fetch a block of ice for his old grandfather to make tea. And then he took me to the head of the glacier where it was in 2018 – a walk of 1.5 miles
"So how old were you when you did this?"
"Twelve or thirteen"
"How old are you now?"
"Twenty-four"

The glacier has receded 1.5 miles in 12 years.

In the memoirs of James Rae he writes about battling through the snow and ice around Pelly’s Bay in August 1854 when he met a group of Inuit who gave him information and relics about Franklin’s lost expedition. We landed at Pelly’s Bay to refuel on our way out to Mittimatalik in September 2018 and there wasn’t a fleck of snow anywhere.

The presentation that I did on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR was afrer we’d sailed several miles up a Fjord on Ellesmere Island and I showed a slide of an Admiralty chart of 1857 which showed no fjord there – the whole island was covered by an ice cap all the way down to the sea according to the chart.

Bylot Island, where I talked to that Inuit, wasn’t even an island. If you look at the map you’ll see that the strait that separates it from the mainland of Baffin Island is called “Pond Inlet” because that’s what it was when Europeans first visited it. It wasn’t until the ice melted that they discovered that Bylot Island was actually an island.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, following on from the previous dream, the girl to whom the headmaster refused to talk … "which girl?" – ed … ended up teaching part-time at a college which was part of the story and in fact taught German to the guy who took over from her boss as whatever official position it was for which the girl was secretary, but she was still chasing her boss and trying to persuade him to either justify his speech or to withdraw it and the implications that it had against us, this particular girl.

It seems that there’s a chunk missing from these dreams somewhere, and that seems to be a regular thing. It makes me wonder what else I’ve missed, and I know that ON ONE OCCASION I missed a visit from Castor. Imagine that!

Having done that and pushed it out of the way I went to finish the radio programme that I was organising yesterday. It meant dictating the notes that I’d written last night for the final track that I’d chosen, and then editing it and adding it all in with the actual song.

And to my surprise it was exactly one second SHORT.

When they are too long, I can cope quite easily. I always include in my notes some things that can be edited out if necessary to bring them down to the correct time; but when they are too short it requires more inventiveness.

But one second isn’t too bad. That’s 20×0.050 second “silence generated” pauses in salient places and that’s the job done.

After that I chose all of the music for the next radio programme, paired it off and began to write the notes for it. I could have done much more too except that I … errr … had a rest

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over, thanks to having forgotten my mushrooms on Friday and a suspect tomato in the fridge. That will keep me going for a few more meals.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson, and then there’s an order to send off to LeClerc as I’m running low on frozen vegetables. So tomorrow late afternoon will see me blanching carrots and sprouts ready to freeze. Still, there’s some chocolate cake left to see me through

Then I’ll have to think about this hospital appointment. Will it be for a stay or just a day visit? I know that it’s for a lumbar puncture which I dread, but I can’t believe that they’ll send me home on the same day.

But as Macbeth said, "If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly". And he was right. No point in waiting around because it will still be the same. It’s as Terry Venables once eloquently put it – "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

Or as Vivian Green sang, "Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain"

Friday 19th January 2024 – GUESS WHO …

… has been in the Urgences at the hospital in Granville again this afternoon?

This morning at about 10:45 I had a ‘phone call. "Mr Hall, you need to come back to the hospital. We’ve picked up something on the X-Rays that might be important. Can you come this afternoon?"

So having arranged transport (which was a story in itself, which you’ll find out in early course) I arrived at the hospital.

They shoved me through one of these Stargate time-tunnel machines, one made by my former employer, General Electric, and then waited around for the results.

When someone finally turned up, it was "sorry, it must have been a false alarm. You can dress and go home". So off I went home, driven by a mad taxi driver (which was a story in itself, which you’ll find out in early course).

But it reminded me of the time after my bad car accident in 1986 when I was taxiing in Sandbach, and they gave me a brain scan.
"How did it go?" I asked
"No need to worry" the doctor replied. "We found nothing"
Well, quite …

But I digress … "again" – ed …

So there’s nothing wrong with my leg, they told me. They would have had a different opinion if they had been in bed with me during the night because I was awake for hours in agony. It’s not getting any better – in fact it seems to be getting worse.

And with a late night and all of these sleeping issues I felt like death when the alarm went off. And I forgot to take the ‘phone with me when I went to walk the parapet so the whole building was probably awoken by the second and third alarm.

Dressing was a struggle yet again and then, having taken the blood pressure, went for my mountain of medication.

Back in here I eventually managed to summon up the energy to transcribe the dictaphone notes, such as they were in the short time during which I was asleep. I’d somehow found myself at a dance and had ended up in the company of an Inuit girl to whom someone had introduced me. What I didn’t realise was that there was another girl whom I liked much better and who was actively trying to find me to begin to talk to me but of course when she found me with this Inuit girl she backed away. I didn’t find this out until later so I was rather annoyed with the person who presented me to this girl. Of course it was all my fault for getting together with her but anyway I was still annoyed. Eventually the girl began to chat to me so I explained to her about the confusion. She asked what had happened later on. I explained that the person responsible for the mix-up getting me together with this Inuit girl had ended up dancing on the floor with a group of people or someone or other and was quite happy where he was but they announced that they were going to divide the room into two – there would be a dance for the people from the reseau urban – the urban area and another one for the people from the pays lointan – the distant rural areas. He ended up being in a different area than where he actually wanted to be, or, at least, away from the people with whom he wanted to be. He was not happy at all so I thought that there was some kind of justice being served somewhere and that made me feel a little better

But why would I be upset about finding myself a nice Inuit girl?

Vaino Tanner, the Finnish anthropologist, went between 1937 and 1939 to Northern Labrador to live among the Inuit in order to study their lifestyle, customs and habits, and to report on the area in which they live.

In his report, “Outlines of the Geography, Life and Customs of Newfoundland-Labrador” published in 1944 he tells us that the Inuit girls –

are very hard-working around the house (and then goes on to list the tasks that they enjoy performing)
are keen to marry men of European descent
have an extremely sensual nature

It intrigued me how he discovered the third part of that trilogy so, believe me, having read his report, I was off on the next trip of the THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR to the frozen North to conduct my own in-depth field research.

It was shortly after this that the ‘phone went berserk.

Throughout the morning I was negotiating my shopping list with my cleaner who was wandering around town carrying out her various errands.

The hospital at Paris rang up to find out how I was doing so I told them of all of my complaints here and there. After an extremely long and complicated telephone call, made harder by the fact that she dragged me back from being away with the fairies so I didn’t have both paddles in the water at that particular moment, she said that she’d speak to the specialist.

Next was the local hospital as I mentioned. I had to negotiate a taxi voucher from them but they could only do it for the return so they rang up my doctor to issue it. And I forget how many ‘phone calls I must have made to his secretary to confirm it

It still wasn’t ready when my cleaner, poor lass, went by to see and she broke the bad news to me when she came to bring me my shopping.

Nevertheless I phoned for a car and told them that we’d have to stop at the Medical Centre to pick it up. But when he came he said "I’ll pick it up later when I have more time". He’s not come back to me so I imagine that it must be OK.

The poor guy. Being quite busy he was in a hurry but he had to spend an age hunting down where I was supposed to go. Everywhere seemed to be closed. In the end, after what seemed to be a geological age and several phone calls, he found out that it was the Urgences, which is what I’d told his controller and I’m sure that I told him too.

One there I had to undress and wait a while before being put through the Stargate, and then wait a while for the results.

And now I know where the Grinch goes when it’s not Christmas. He works for the rival taxi company to the one that I use.

Bad-tempered and miserable, he told me that he didn’t have time to help me up the stairs so I had to telephone my long-suffering cleaner.

We hurtled through the 30kph limit of the harbour area at 75 kph and eventually screeched to a halt outside my building.

And his car – it was a “EA” plate, meaning that it was registered in March or April of 2016 and it had, would you believe, 320,000 kilometres on the clock. My next car (if there is one) will be a Peugeot 508 diesel.

My long-suffering cleaner helped me up the stairs to my apartment where I crashed into a chair and couldn’t move for 20 minutes. Then I made a hot chocolate and that was that for the day.

Tea tonight was wonderful. I had a raging fancy for a potato salad with my salad and vegan burger so

I diced some potatoes quite small and put them to boil
Half-way through I drained them to dispose of the starch, and then carried on with the boiling with fresh water and some dried chives
Meanwhile I took some vegan mayonnaise, added some garlic paste, lemon juice, vinegar and olive oil with some herbs (and there would have been some finely chopped raw onion in there too if I had remembered)
I whipped all of that up into a nice liquidy mix
Then I drained the potatoes, rinsed them to cool them down, put them back in the pan and added the sauce and mixed everything up together
When it was done I tipped it out onto the plate with the salad and burger – and ate it

And do you know what? It was absolutely out of this world delicious and I’ll make this again.

So now, much later than usual, having had a short (only 48 minutes) conversation with Rosemary, I’m off to bed hoping for a better night.

But hospital again? It’s really going beyond a joke. I’ll be moving permanently into a hospital at this rate.

And I know which one it will be. It won’t be one that we’ve encountered so far. They don’t have wards like that in general hospitals.

Wednesday 17th January 2024 – THEY HAVE RECEIVED …

… the results of this morning’s blood test. The nurse who came to inject me and take a blood sample thins morning sent the blood to the laboratory who then sent the results to me and the hospital

And the hospital sent me an e-mail. "Your potassium is still too high" they said. You know, as if they are telling me something that I didn’t know. "Here’s another prescription for some more medication"

So how many is that now? I lost count a long while ago. These days I just shovel down the stuff as if I couldn’t care less. And I don’t, anyway. So what’s one medication any more or any less to the quantity that I’m taking?

Sometimes I think that they have run out of ideas and are just prescribing any old medication in the hope that they find something that might work.

And before anyone says anything, that’s not meant as a criticism at all. Anyone who reads ABOUT THE LATEST STAGE of mutation of this illness will notice words like "extremely rare neurologic complication", "Given that BNS is so rare" and "There are a few options when it comes to treatment so the type one will choose is completely individualized".

So what the hell does the hospital do?

There’s certainly no complaint from me about the kind of care that I’m having. Everyone is going above and beyond what is reasonable to make sure that I’m being well-looked after. My poor cleaner is running her socks off with trips to the pharmacy.

And I do have to say that I was told almost 8 years ago when I first went to Leuven that the end wouldn’t be pleasant. And in fact one of the reasons for going to be treated in Belgium is that I could choose when the end would be and I wouldn’t have to put myself – or anyone else – through all of this nonsense.

But perhaps it’s as well that I’m living in a (nominally) Catholic non-laïc country because the end would have been a long while ago. I can’t keep going on like this.

In fact, the end would have certainly been this morning after the events of last night.

You won’t believe this – or, perhaps you would because some of you have been followers of these pages since they first saw the light (in one form or another) during the heady days of T102 in 1997 and are quite used to this kind of thing because it happens all the time, but one of last night’s visitors was none other than Castor – and I wasn’t there.

Well, maybe there in body but not in mind, and certainly not in Spirit. Castor and I were playing with Hawkwind last night and I died in the middle of one of the songs, DAMNATION ALLEY. Of course Castor was distraught. She was surprised that the band had played that song knowing how ill I was. She asked one of the roadies if there was anything that she could keep as a souvenir. They said that they might be able to let her have a tyre from the vehicle, presumably the “eight-wheeled anti-radiation tube” but they weren’t sure if that would be possible. Another song that they played as a kind of tribute for me afterwards but I can’t remember which one that was. They then began to play another song and again she was annoyed about this because it was very personal to me. After a while she began to realise that it was also upsetting someone else who everyone wanted to upset so they were playing it deliberately. That thought seemed to cheer her up a little.

But can you believe it?

Something else that has gone horribly wrong today is confirmation of what I’ve been saying for 18 months, in that every time I have a bad fall, it makes things worse elsewhere and coming back from Re-education today, I couldn’t get back up the stairs even with the taxi driver helping me.

The power in my left leg has now gone and that, dear reader, is that

My cleaner came round this afternoon with a lorry-load of medication today and I told her quite frankly that if someone were to give me the option of going for a really decent and complete 8-hour sleep and never waking up again, I’d take it without a second thought.

She was quite naturally horrified, but that’s where we are right now.

At least last night’s sleep wasn’t all that bad. But it was another desperate scramble to find the phone when the alarm went off. Since the tragic events of Saturday evening the phone charger by the bed has been lost in the chaos and I’m having to charge it elsewhere

After taking the blood pressure (high as usual and I’m expecting another medication for that at some point) I went for the pile of medication and then came back in here.

There was a radio programme to send off so I had a listen, and found a glaring error so I had to re-edit it.

Years of bitter experience have taught me never to over-write anything but to prepare a re-take so I have all of the speech files at various stages of re-editing saved as (the date that I recorded it)_R(evision)1, R2, R3 etc so it’s easy to go back to the earliest revision, find a bit that I’ve cut out in subsequent revisions and then add it back into the programme to make up for the error that I cut out and the programme for broadcasting on Friday then becomes “emission_240119_R1”

And then I had a listen to the dictaphone. Some of the stuff I’ve already mentioned but there was other stuff on there too. I was playing in a rock band in the back of a trailer being pulled by a car. Because it was so narrow and the field of view was so deep the sides of the trailer folded back and were pinned back so that the crowd could still see whoever was at the edges of what in fact was the stage. We played a couple of Hawkwind numbers, including SLEEP OF A THOUSAND TEARS, a song that Castor and I had messed about with on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR. The dream went on from there for quite a long time but I was of course more interested in the song and kept on going back to the song and being on stage again. But I was certainly back home with my family at one or two points during the dream

I went to see my aunt in London and I’d bought her a bed. There was another young guy there when I arrived. We erected this bed together. She tried it out and thought that it was wonderful. After we’d chatted for a while we both left and headed for the Underground. I asked him where he was going. He replied that he had to go right the way round the city on the Underground to see his aunt, which is why it cost him a fortune whereas my journey back to one of the mainline stations was a lot quicker and a lot cheaper.

And that was all the work that I have done today. For most of the rest of the time I’ve been asleep. I really have. It’s been one of those days when I’ve felt like doing nothing at all. Liz had a chat on the internet with me but regrettably I fell asleep not once but twice in the middle of it.

The taxi driver who came to fetch me didn’t feel like getting out of his car and I can’t blame him in this weather so I had to struggle downstairs on my own.

Once I arrived I had Ophélie the ergotherapist trying to teach me a good way to get in and out of bed.

"Come this way" she said, leading me to the bed in one of the ante-rooms
"Well I never!" I thought. "Well, not for a while anyway"

There was half an hour on the walking carpet and then Séverine trying to help me as much as she can, which wasn’t easy.

A little earlier I mentioned the struggle to return home, and then I had my hot chocolate and a chat with the cleaner, to which I referred just now.

Having crashed out yet again, I’ve been for tea, a left-over curry, my first food of the day, and then I’m off for a hot drink and bed.

But where do I go from here? I dunno, and quite frankly I’m past caring. There has to be an easier way than this to go about things

And believe it or not, onto the playlist as I typed out the line above came Hawkwind and MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE
"IF YOU CALL THIS LIVING I MUST BE BLIND."
I couldn’t have said it better myself

Saturday 13th January 2024 – “IT SOUNDS TOO …

… good to be true”.

Yes, doesn’t it just?

There I was, lying awake, watching the clock on my fitbit tick round and round. 05:35 came round certainly – I saw it and watched it. And a few other times too.

It seems that even being a passenger in a car, never mind the driver, is having this effect on me. In the old days, as I have mentioned previously… "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’d go for a good run before going to bed in order to ease the stress, but I can’t even go for a good walk these days.

And even less so, starting from this afternoon

There was football on the internet, Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon, and I watched the first half on my knees. I’d tripped over something coming into the bedroom and ended up flat on my knees. It took me 50 minutes before I could invent a means of standing up.

My right leg, which was bad before, is now completely impossible. I’d tell you more but there’s no feeling in it as you know. I’ll have to wait until I go to the Centre de Re-education on Tuesday to find out just how bad it is.

The good news (and there has been some today and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any) is that my leek and potato soup was cooked to perfection and the home-made bread rolls were delicious too

For tonight’s meal, the oven chips cooked in the air fryer were done to absolute perfection too so the meal of salad, chips and one of those soya steaks in breadcrumbs was wonderful

Not so much the bread pudding. That was definitely the worse for wear after my week away from home so that’s now pushing up the daisies. But me no daft, me no silly, I’d cut a big pudding into 4 large sliced and there are still 3 in the freezer.

So meanwhile, back at the ran … err … bed I checked the dictaphone when I finally did awaken at 09:50 and there was tons of stuff on it.

We started off with me playing bass and singing in a rock group with a guitarist, my friend from the Wirral on rhythm guitar and a drummer, and we were playing a concert in a pub somewhere in Crewe. Neither the gear nor the van had arrived. It was my friend from the Wirral who was driving it. He eventually turned up, much to the applause of the audience and much to our relief, about an hour late, and we set up our instruments. My friend from the Wirral just sat on the floor, refused to move, refused to stand up and refused to play. He was known for having his moody fits and outbursts and was just in one of them at the moment. In the end the guitarist and I just shrugged our shoulders and began to play. We began to play BORN TO BE WILD. When I awoke I was actually singing it, live on stage, something that took me completely by surprise.

This dream is famous for several things.

Firstly, I did have a friend like that. He would freeze in times of stress and would be totally incapable of acting if a problem arose. On several occasions his friends have had to rally round and help him out of his problems.

Secondly, I was always happier playing in a power trio of drummer, guitarist and me. I had a very good drummer with whom I had a good rapport and we as a rhythm section played in several bands. But every time a fourth (or fifth) member came along, it usually dissoived into chaos.

One thing though, was that I loved to sing but the guitarist with whom I was most associated was also a singer who loved to sing so my chances were few and far between, even though I actually owned the PA that we used (a 200-watt Hiwatt amp with 2x 4×12″ columns and several treble horns).

There’s a story behind those horns too. I wanted a set and there was a pair advertised in the Manchester Evening News at an address in Stockport so we went round hot-foot. And who should open the door but Graham Gouldman, songwriter and bassist at Strawberry Studios down the road from there.

On the subject of people called Graham, I hear that Grahame and STRAWBERRY MOOSE have been having a lively chat via e-mail today.

But thirdly, there’s something that I really don’t understand about this dream is that although I didn’t dictate it, we had another person up on that stage for a while. And I know that we did because I even remember introducing her to the public, the words that I used to introduce her, and the songs that we played.

Anyone care to guess who it was?

When I introduced her to the public from the stage in Crewe as she came up and put on her guitar, I used her real name (not the name by which she is known in these pages), I mentioned her age (which is something that I would absolutely not do these days for anyone) and so asked the audience to “be gentle with her, because I am gentle with her”, something that might have raised a good laugh 50 years ago but would be an absolutely outrageous thing to say today.

We played several numbers that we had worked on together on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR (so you’ve probably guessed now who she was) including that one by Green Day … "BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS" – ed … where that young Inuit boy on board joined in with us.

But what’s astonishing about this is that she put in an appearance and I didn’t dictate it. The other week when I mentioned that my subconscious must be creating a barrier between me and certain people, I wasn’t sure that I was being serious.

After last night’s escapade, I am now. And what I would like to know is how many times and for how long has it been doing that.

One of the most extraordinary things that came out of this exercise that we do about dreams was the girl who dreamt that she could run around in the fields and forests even though she was born without legs and had never un an inch in her life. But this can’t be far behind that.

What happened after this was pretty banal by these kinds of standards. I was part of a delegation that went to South Korea to a military air base there to discuss the products of our company with some people from the Korean military. One night while we were there the guests inn the bar were Widespread Panic. Of course, we went. There was a problem with the cash machine in the restaurant where the concert was to take place. It kept on ringing up ice cream as “various” and charging a purely nominal amount for it so of course we were ordering ice cream all the way through the night like most people would order a beer. We were eating tons of it and I was sure that we would be sick next morning. When we returned it showed the bill from this night at the restaurant had twice as many ices as we had ordered. Instead of there being three for some rounds there had been six. The accounts department was extremely concerned and called us in. I explained that at some part of the night another three people had noticed what we were doing and came over to talk to us. They joined in this ice cream orgy. The accounts department then asked why it was that we considered it to be appropriate that their ice cream should be added to our bill. I explained that these three people were in fact a delegation from Airbus there to see the Korean military too. We were of the opinion that it would be a good idea to entertain them to ice cream because it could open a lot of doors for our company in the UK and France which otherwise would never ever open to anyone. That seemed to settle the matter and everyone seemed quite happy. A few of our colleagues were surprised and disappointed and questioned the bill but that was more out of jealously than anything else.

I’ll have to stop leaning over to where my dictaphone would be in Paris. Anyway Nerina and I had gone on a boat trip around the harbour in St Helier and the Channel Islands area. It was one of these large motor yacht type of things that would carry a dozen couples or something. We boarded it and it set off. We were given something of a running commentary. We noticed that there were plenty of kids up at the front, fishing out of the water all kinds of plastic like old buckets, fishing buoys, jerry cans etc, trying to clean up the harbour. Anything that they noticed, they pulled out. I went to have a look. There were loads of letters there too so I began to fish them out. Many of them were addressed to me so I was quickly collecting a pocketful. There were some addressed to others and looked quite important. In the meantime this guy was busy talking. We noticed that one or two of the couples were actually jumping into the water, swimming around and then catching up the boat. For some reason Nerina and I jumped in and we had a great time splashing around in the harbour. We suddenly realised that the boat was a long way from us by now so we had to swim like hell to catch up with it. I was pulling out more letters from the water at the same time. Eventually we managed to climb aboard. She climbed up the steps at the back and asked me how I came on board. I pointed out a ladder that was there on the rear corner of the boat that she obviously hadn’t seen. We sat down again and I began to open these letters. There was one that was from Poland and had a diplomatic stamp on it. I wondered what this was all about. I managed to open it discreetly. There was a return envelope inside, a pre-stamped one with a Polish diplomatic pass stamp on it addressed to someone at our address urging them to make their donation to their war relief as quickly as possible. I showed it to Nerina to ask her what she thought about it. We sat there puzzling over it.

And as if I’d ever want to swim around in the harbour of St Helier. I’ve seen what’s pumped into there.

The soup was, as I said, delicious.

chop a small onion and fry it in olive oil and butter
add a couple of garlic cloves with coriander and chives
when these are browned and smell nice, add in your finely chopped leeks and potatoes, and stir round to fry for 10 minutes
add just enough water to cover, add a stock cube and leave to slow boil (with the lid on) until the potatoes and leeks are really mushy
add some soya cream
remove from the heat and whizz up with your whizzer
then eat with the fresh bread that you prepared earlier and baked while all of the above was going on

As for quantities – leeks and potatoes, how many do you have that need to be used?
And the rest – it’s all down to taste.

There had been some washing going on while all of this was happening so after lunch I hung it up to dry.

Then I … errr … had a little relax.

Watching the football from the floor was a new experience, although I managed to pull myself upright by half-time. Caernarfon had to do better against Cardiff Metropolitan than Hwlllffordd did against Y Bala in order to qualify for the playoffs for a European place next season.

And in a pulsating game that roared from end to end with Caernarfon’s new signing from Porthmadog, Morgan Owen, having an outstanding game, they were still 2-1 down with minutes to go while Hwllffordd were 2-1 up.

But in wild drama at the end, first Danny Gosset scored an equaliser for Caernarfon with just minutes to go, and then down in West Wales Y Bala scored 2 quick goals .

So it’s Caernarfon who push on for Europe while Hwllffordd have to join the fight against relegation.

Tea as I said was excellent so now as I’m cold and in total agony from my knee, I’m off to bed.

Will the young lady from last night come to join me for the second half of our gig? Or will it be someone new?

And more to the point, if my subconscious really is trying to block out some people from visiting me, I can name half a dozen for a start and my subconscious can block them out starting tonight, with my full permission and pleasure.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I am not feeling in the least like any Christmas Spirit today, but I bet that you lot are.

And so HERE are a few Christmas gifts.

Between 2010 and my rushing to hospital in November 2015 Liz and I ran a kind-of production company writing and presenting weekly radio programmes in English for a few French local radio stations with the aim of making the British and Dutch population of Rural France more up-to-date with French laws, rules and regulations.

We had a tremendous amount of fun doing them, especially when we had a whole hour to fill at Christmas, so we’d put on our own Christmas Specials to rival Morecambe and Wise.

I really enjoyed writing those. I was absolutely given my head with no editorial control and so it was a case of “anything goes” – or “everything I had always wanted to do in a radio programme but was always edited out”.

Déchainé as you might say around here.

While I’ve been cleaning up my various old hard drives I’ve come across most of the old “Radio Anglais” files and so I’ve uploaded one of our Christmas Specials.

Since I came back from one of my adventures in the High Arctic in November 2019 I’ve been working for a French local radio station here in Granville.

Outside broadcasts (which for obvious reasons, I can no longer do), technology support; music consultant and, on Friday and Saturday nights, my own hourly rock show.

Two years ago I recorded a Christmas rock special, and that’s included too.

If you’re listening on a desktop or laptop computer or similar device, could you download the two above rather than stream them? Streaming plays havoc with my bandwidth and could cost me a fortune if 300 people decide to stream everything.

And that reminds me – neither of my websites is sponsored. I pay for the hosting and streaming etc. myself.

And so if you have enjoyed these pages, please consider making your next Amazon purchase via the links aside. It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission that helps defray expenses

To those of you who do that on a systematic basis, I don’t know who you are of course but I am extremely grateful.

Thirdly, I have a little Inuit friend (well, I have several as it happens, but there’s one in particular) in the town of Uummannaq, about 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland.

Uummannaq is the farthest north place where it was possible to revictual THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when we were On The Trail Of John Ross so we put in there a couple of times.

On one occasion in 2018 a group of us went for a walk around the town while the ship was fuelling up, and we heard the sound of a guitar coming from one of the rooms of the Orphanage. And so we went there to check it out, like you do … "like some of you do" – ed …

It turned out to be a young girl of 14, an inmate of the orphanage, playing guitar. And we were all totally captivated. It ended up being one hell of a jam with Heidinnguaq (for that’s her name) and SHERMAN DOWNEY on guitar, Dylan White on Keyboards and Yours Truly on bass and we finished off with Amy Winehouse’s “Back in the Black”.

It goes without saying, of course, that STRAWBERRY MOOSE fell in love, and can you blame him?

Heidinnguaq and I still keep in touch occasionally, and she sent me one of her songs to share with you all as a little Christmas present. That’s on the Christmas page too.

Some of you might have heard it before. Heidinnguaq came to Granville to see us all a couple of years ago and I did a radio programme of her. That was one of the songs that she played.

Anyway, THERE YOU ARE. Enjoy them all, with love from Liz, Heidinnguaq and me

Tuesday 19th December 2023 – THE GOOD NEWS…

… is that if there is a change in condition of my heart, it’s an improvement. The cardiologist put me through my paces this morning and her opinion is that whilst the evacuation of the heart isn’t 60-65% as it’s supposed to be, it’s not the 48% that the previous cardiologist recorded.

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few, let me explain.

A normal blood count should be between 13 and 15. My carcinogenic protein is attacking my red blood cells so my blood count is less than it ought to be.

If, for example, I have a blood count of, say, 9, it means that my heart has to beat 50% faster to move enough oxygen around my body.

If the evacuation is, say, 48% instead of 60%, it means that it has to beat 25% faster still to take the oxygen loss into account, and that means that it’s beating at 185%-190% – almost twice as fast.

The heart can do this for so long of course, but not for ever. And this is why they are keeping a close eye on mine.

But the bad news is that they gave me the tests where they pulse electricity through my nervous system to see how the nerves and muscles respond. It’s the fourth time that I’ve had this test and each time they have noted a deterioration.

And that’s how it was today. I’m losing more strength in my legs.

But returning to last night I mentioned yesterday that my blood level had dropped below the critical limit, which is 8. Then there’s not enough oxygen to make the body function. And, I suspect, that’s why I’ve been feeling so miserable these last few days and why my co-ordination is going.

And so at 23:44 they cam around with two pochettes of blood to give me a transfusion.

It took four hours for the transfusion to be completed, with someone coming around every half an hour to check my pulse and blood pressure. And being the light sleeper that I am, it awoke me every time.

And what was the worst about this was that at one point Zero came to check on me too but just as I started to talk to her one of the nurses awoke me to take my blood pressure, and I couldn’t go back into the dream afterwards to carry on our conversation.
"Candles burn
dull red lights
illuminate the breasts of four young girls
dancing, prancing, provoking …
Dreams are always ending far too soon
Life’s to short to be sad
wishing things you’ll never have
You’re better off
not dreaming of
the things to come
Dreams are always ending far too soon"
It seems that CARAVAN HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE ME and know the feeling only too well.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that after having lived a life full of excitement, the only excitement that I seem to have these days is what goes on during the night.

I’ve been told on many occasions that I ought to take sleeping pills to have a good night’s sleep and I’d cope with things much better during the day

And miss out on what goes on during the night and the possibility of a visit from TOTGA, Zero and Castor, and anyone else who comes along to keep me company? You must be joking!

And strangely enough, the walls of my room are actually grey and pink.

By about 07:15 I’d given up the idea of a good sleep and once I’d gathered my wits, such as they are, I set out for the bathroom and a good wash.

However no sooner had I started than a nurse came round to take a blood sample. It was quite a while before I made it into the bathroom and the chance of a shower was gone.

Having said that, the van to pick me up to take me to Cardiology was rather late but the driver stuck me in a wheelchair and pushed me outside to his vehicle.

Once more, for the benefit of new readers, this hospital isn’t built “up” like most modern hospitals, it’s built “out” on 33 hectares with a whole series of buildings built since the earliest hospital building on the site, in 1648. Consequently there’s a fleet of electric vans with drop floors and ramps in the back for wheelchair-bound passengers and a bus service for those who can walk, to take people from one building to the next.

First stop was Cardiology, second was Neurology and finally, after much waiting about, I came back here in time for lunch.

For each of the trips I had the same driver and vehicle. He’s a rock music fan and one-time musician so we had a good chat. He imagines people like us in an Old People’s Home in out 70s and 80s still rocking the crowds of old women, and 70-year old groupies throwing their panties onto the stage.

Back in 1973 a group of us was hired as roadies for “The Sweet” when they played at the Liverpool Empire and the things that we saw, well, perhaps they are best left unrecorded.

This afternoon I had an endless stream of visits from different medical personnel doing all kinds of different things. But my neighbour, the President of the Residents’ Committee, is in Paris again and she came round for a chat which was very nice.

She stayed for about an hour and we chatted about nothing in particular and then she had to nip off.

However her visit coincided with afternoon coffee so they didn’t bring me a cup. But I managed to blag a cup of coffee later on from one of the nurses.

They don’t like my blood pressure. They think that it’s far too high and there’s no real reason for it as far as I can tell.

However it wasn’t as high as the time at Castle Anthrax when the young student nurse with the low-cut overall and no t-shirt underneath climbed all over me to couple me up to the machine.
"I don’t know why your blood pressure is so high this morning."
"I do" I thought to myself. "And if you climb over me like that again it’ll go even higher."

There was plenty of work that I have to do but I didn’t accomplish all that much. Last night’s lack of sleep took its toll on me and I was falling asleep for 10 minutes here and there all day.

However I did manage to transcribe the dreams from last night. I’d been to a Saturday lunchtime class for my University course. Coming out I went a couple of doors away to where Zero was living. The house was empty but I had a key so I went in. There was a book there. It was part II of “500 photos of the Bangor area of North Wales Published Consecutively” or something like that. I sat down and began to read it. After I’d been reading it for a couple of minutes the front door opened and I could hear Zero’s voice along with my elder sister and her husband. That was quite a surprise. It was Zero’s birthday today and there was a party later on to which I’d been invited. Zero opened the door into the room where I was sitting. I said “hello gorgeous” to her and at that moment I awoke.

It seems that the medical staff of the hospital has joined forces with my subconscious in preventing Zero from succumbing to a virtual fate worse than virtual death.

And of course, I couldn’t step back into that dream, could I?

There was also a golfing competition taking place. The club decided that it would have an annual tournament so many of its members took part. I went along a a sort-of adjudicator, not that I knew any rules about golf. There were all kinds of things happening. On one occasion one player lost a stroke, or, rather, he had a ball moved so he had to play an impossible shot and then play on because of some infringement. People wondered if that was legal. Then someone hit a ball which was then lost from view so he took a penalty and another shot, and he found that ball but it was right by the one that was lost so he wanted to play the first ball again and withdraw the penalty but I didn’t know what to do. It was another one of these long meaderings that seemed to go on for ever and ever. As I said, I know nothing about golf and I don’t know why I was there. I don’t know any of the rules and couldn’t give any decisions on anything.

We were next building an armoured lorry for a trip into the Middle East. We came down to the question of the doors. We found a door that would fit, an armoured door, but it had seized up. We tried to dismantle it but one of the things was that the cover on one of the inspection hatches where the lock was, a bolt had seized solid and there was nothing that we had that would free this bolt. The girl who was going to drive the lorry also pointed out that it didn’t seem safe because the window winder had broken . I took it apart and found that there was a bearing and retaining clip missing so while the window winder would go round, if it went over a bump or something it might drop off and the window would fall down again to the bottom. That wasn’t in accordance with the idea that we’d had about this armoured lorry. She was insisting that we found another door where the window worked. My father was more interested in trying to remove this inspection panel off so that he could check the lock. The girl and I were joking about 1 or 2 things, talking about unnecessary heat that would ignite any kind of conversation. One of the guys had some WD40, sprayed the bolt with it and fetched a cutting torch with the idea that he’d use the cutting torch to set the oil alight that would heat up the bolt to free it from the hosing where it was stuck so that he could unscrew it. It was funny him doing that just as the girl and I were talking about heat so of course we had to smile. All the time my father was trying to remove the lock. He had someone else there who was freeing off another inspection panel to show the girl how the lock worked, trying to convince her that this was the most secure door that could be found but the young girl was extremely frustrated because she was still insisting on doing something about the window. If that dropped down in the middle of the mountains or something people would be able to enter or fire a gun into the cab. She was much more concerned about that but no-one seemed to be taking any notice of that. They were all trying to prove to her that this door was secure when it was quite obvious to the girl and me that it wasn’t, because of the window.

Having told them this morning (again) that I’m vegan, tonight’s tea was veal and carrot soup followed by salmon lasagne with spinach in cream

Luckily the nurse who came later saw what was going on and made me a bowl of cheap vegetable soup with bread, and my neighbour had brought me some bananas and clementines.

But it’s not that I’m unprepared. Following what went on at Riom over the food when I was there for my “second opinion” in 2016, I have brought a few supplies with me “just in case”.

In a few minutes I’ll be off to bed, and hope that Zero comes back to check up on me, or maybe TOTGA or Castor might come along.

But Castor seems to have disappeared now. It’s been ages since she’s come to visit me. Our three nights on the upper deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR looking at the midnight sun and the northern lights and singing to each other are long gone now.

Life’s too short to be sad, wishing things you’ll never have, but when you are sad wishing for things that you actually might have had and which slipped through your fingers on a deserted, windswept airstrip in the High Arctic as a ‘plane prepared to take-off for Ottawa, life is never too short for that

Before I went to bed, a Dutch group called Alquin came round in the playlist and we had their song THE DANCE from their second album THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN.

As we were talking … "well, one of us was" – ed … about ships that pass in the night and that kind of thing, somehow some of the lyrics of “The Dance” seemed relevant to our parting.
"Where will you be tonight?
Where will you be tomorrow?
Fly in your silver kite
And leave me here in sorrow
Hey dude can you see what you’ve done to me
Oh I’m feeling so bad
Yes I’m feeling so blue"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: ocean endeavour

Tuesday 11th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

Wednesday 29th January 2025 – MY APPLE CAKE …

Sunday 19th January 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

Tuesday 7th January 2025. DO YOU KNOW …

Tuesday 24th December … TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE …

Thursday 17th October 2024 – SOMEONE IS GOING …

Friday 3rd May 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

Sunday 7th April 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

Monday 26th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS …

Friday 19th January 2024 – GUESS WHO …

Wednesday 17th January 2024 – THEY HAVE RECEIVED …

Saturday 13th January 2024 – “IT SOUNDS TOO …

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Tuesday 19th December 2023 – THE GOOD NEWS…

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring