Tag Archives: Paul_H

Friday 8th May 2026 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again!

Yours Truly spent a nice hour this morning completing his shopping list for LeClerc and then went to send it off for delivery later today.

At first, the delivery site wouldn’t load, and when it finally did, it was service indisponible – "service unavailable". So what’s going on here? I kept on trying for a good while, using all sorts of tricks and so on to navigate what I thought was a blockage in the service’s website.

And then, after a while, the lightbulb suddenly clicked on. It’s a bank holiday here today, isn’t it? D’ohhh.

What I put it down to is too much sleep. Last night, by the time that I’d finished my notes and done everything that needed doing, it was about 21:30, and wasn’t I glad to slide under the bedcovers at that time? It took a while … "as usual these days" – ed … to fall asleep, but that was into a nice deep sleep, which I enjoyed intensely.

During the night, I awoke a couple of times. At one moment, 04:10 to be precise, I was lying on my back and not coughing, which surprised me a considerable amount, but I didn’t spend too long thinking about it because I was soon asleep again. And there I lay until the alarm went off at 06:29.

As usual, it took a while to leave the bed, and then I went off to the bathroom to sort myself out. In the kitchen, I had my high-energy drink to wash down my medication and then came back in here to find out what had gone on during the night.

I was on a mission to the moon last night and we were all strapped into these various seats inside what I suppose was the space shuttle or something. A series of tapes was running all the time and the blast-off was extraordinary. I’d never felt anything like that in the past. We soared up into the sky and within four or five minutes, we made a perfect landing wherever it was that we were supposed to be. I managed to find some insects after I’d been chosen and I’d found a few more on the moon. We were all there, looking at different things and everything like that. No-one thought for a minute about how we were going to come back. We were just not interested in that but interested in finding out what there was to see. But there won’t ever be anything like that blast-off. It was absolutely out of this World.

To whatever this relates, I have no idea. But judging by the tone of my voice when I was dictating it, that blast-off must have been really impressive. And going somewhere and finding myself too busy to bother about coming back is par for the course for me.

However, four or five minutes to go from here to the moon is impressive in anyone’s language – however, it does have to be said that, believe it or not, it takes longer to go 30 or so miles from Bangor to Porthmadog by train on British Railways than it does to go to the moon.

I was with my former friend from Stoke on Trent doing something or other. Things didn’t seem to be working out very well there so I left. I found myself in London and wanted to go to the third floor of this building, but when we arrived there, the third floor was absolutely out of order with all of the lifts. We had to force the lift open. There were some people up there directing us and we managed to find our way onto the stairwell. I remember going down one flight of steps but I ended up in a subterranean car park. I went into the street and there was a Lloyd’s Bank there. It was heaving with people, there were people fighting to enter and others fighting to leave. The staff was having to push them out of the door. eventually, I managed to find my way in but it was so crowded that I couldn’t find a cash point anywhere. In the end, I ended up wedged against the counter so I asked the girl there if I could withdraw some cash. she asked if I had an account there, so I replied that I had a bank card and a cheque book, which seemed to satisfy her, so I had to search through my pockets for the bank card. I found all kinds of cards in there – old SIM cards, old memory cards, all kinds of things like that. In the end, I found my bank card and I handed it over to her, and she filled out a form and stamped it. Then she began to stamp all the other cards, and I couldn’t understand why. She asked me if the thing was always as slow as this, to which I replied that I had no idea. This carried on like this – she was busy stamping everything in my possession that she could possibly find.

It’s a shame about my former friend. He was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, until he had his accident and they gave him these pills …

The bit about London doesn’t fit in with any of our “London” dreams unfortunately, and neither does the bank, but the relentless stamping of everything in sight reminds me of the French obsession with documents, paperwork and rubber stamps on everything.

And we’ve been in this underground car park before, during one of our “Brussels” dreams ages ago.

Did I dictate the dream about being at my friend’s house where he and his wife were in bed or doing something in the bedroom? I had to go to the bathroom so I went in, and for five minutes I did some running on the spot to try to keep fit, but they became really annoyed about this. In the end, I decided to wait for a suitable moment and then pack up and leave.

… "No you didn’t, but this looks as if it might have been near the start of the previous dream." – ed …

The nurse turned up as usual this morning. We talked about the panic at the dialysis centre but he didn’t understand the point that I was trying to make. But not to worry, I’ll make my point on Monday at the dialysis centre, no problem.

The name Charles Roach Smith has appeared countless times during our reading of these historic books on the Romans in Britain. He was one of the foundres of modern archaeology in the UK in the mid-nineteenth century. Today, having finished THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT MONKTON, the next on the list turns out to be REPORT ON EXCAVATIONS MADE UPON THE SITE OF THE ROMAN CASTRUM AT PEVENSEY by Roach Smith so, after having made breakfast, I began.

It’s only a very short book so we’ll only be here a day or two. So far, he’s avoiding controversy by giving a description of the site.

Back in here afterwards, I had the LeClerc order to send off, as I mentioned, and then I had a printer to coax back into life so that I could print a return label to send a package back. That took longer than intended too. I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.

After that, we had two matches in the Scottish playoffs to watch from earlier in the week. Dunfermline v Arbroath and Alloa Athletic v Airdrie United. Regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall that when I used to visit my friend Lorna up in Scotland, I stood on the terraces at Alloa a few times, so I have a soft spot for the Wasps.

Later on, I attacked the radio programme that I’d begun the other day, and now, all of the notes are written, ready for dictation. That’s quite a pile that is building up on the back burner waiting for this coughing to stop and I need to make a plan about them.

There were a couple of interruptions today during the radio notes. Firstly, my cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff as usual, and I declined a shower again today. I’m not in the right kind of health at the moment for that.

Secondly, after she left, I made a taco roll with cheese and salad. It’s not much, but I’ll try to break myself slowly into eating again, if I can.

With the time that was left, I began to think about the radio programmes for next week. We’ll see where we go with those.

But one thing about seeing where we go is that I can see where I’ll be going very shortly. My bed is right behind me, even as I type, and I won’t have far to go for that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going to the moon … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the early summer of 1969 when a North Vietnamese peasant told his friend "The Americans have gone to the moon."
"What?" cried his friend, incredulously. "All of them?"

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Thursday 30th April 2026 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a somewhat better day, at least, for the most part. I’ve also accomplished more than I accomplished yesterday too, even though there were only two hours in which to do any work.

Last night, I began to write out my notes at about 19:30, but even so, it took quite a while to complete them and then do everything else that needed doing. I don’t suppose that I was in bed much before 21:30.

It took another few minutes to drop off to sleep, but I awoke, following another coughing fit, at some unearthly time of the morning. I didn’t check the time but I do remember debating with myself whether to leave the bed in order to go to walk the parapet. However, the decision was taken out of my hands, as I must have fallen asleep at that point.

Somewhat later, I awoke again, with no need to debate the situation. I did check the time this time, and it was 04:43. THis made me think about staying up and dictating some radio notes, but how can you debate when you are being wracked by fits of coughing? Instead, I climbed back under the quilt where I fell asleep again.

When the alarm went off, I was with my former friend from Stoke on Trent. We had my LDV on a trailer that was being pulled by something. We were round at his house, although it was nothing like his house. It was a terraced house in one of the better classes of terraces with a front garden, something like in Alton Street near the old petrol station. Anyway, this guy and someone else had to go to a meeting, which was in one of the houses a little way down the street. When they went to this meeting, someone opened the door, and I could see the wall decoration, which was blue, black and white, and it looked terrible but they went in. I went back to the LDV and I had to walk around the vehicle on the trailer. Someone shouted from a distance “are you fat?” so I just ignored them. By this time, I had over my shoulder my travelling bag with my clothes, etc. in it. When I came round to the back of the vehicle, it was no longer the LDV but a Land Rover. There was some kind of big machine sitting on the tailgate so I picked up the machine, which was fairly heavy, and went up into the guy’s house. Once inside, I wiped my feet on the doormat and went to install myself on a chair in the kitchen with this machine and my clothes bag. But when the alarm went off, I was somewhere on foot down some kind of motorway somewhere but I don’t know where and I don’t know why.

My LDV was a strange van. It was good when I bought it, but I couldn’t find any spare parts at all for it over here. In the end, the join between the roof and one of the sides rusted through, which might not have been so bad had I not had a big roof rack on it, on which I carried huge loads of wood.

And I reckon that I’ve told the story of my former friend often enough that it doesn’t bear repeating.

As usual, it took me a while to summon up the courage and the energy to leave the bedroom, and after a stagger into the bathroom to have a wash and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went into the kitchen for my medication. Today, as it’s dialysis, I washed it down with just a mouthful of grapefruit juice.

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

I had to go somewhere in my van and meet a few of my friends in a nearby town. I had a huge load of computers with me, eight notebooks and three ordinary laptops. I arrived at the place where we were meeting, which was next door to a bar. We had a chat about a few things, which included registering for health insurance so we ordered that. I was astonished to notice that I was registered n°1. There was some work to do on the van and then we walked down to the place where we were meeting our friends. He mentioned something about a load of grain to pick up from the side of the road somewhere up in the mountains. I almost set out but realised that I’d left the computers on the edge of the road so I had to go back for them. Then, I drove off into the hills, but I couldn’t see this pile of grain anywhere. In the end, I came back and told them about the pile of grain that I couldn’t find. The conversation carried on, and we saw a few people go into the bar next door, including two old women carrying guitars. Our host brought out three cans of beer and told us to choose one, two of one make and one of another. I chose the one on its own, but I couldn’t take the label off the backing plastic, no matter how I tried. It wouldn’t come off. And then we carried on talking about the grain. I realised that I would have to go back for it, but even if I found it, I wouldn’t be able to load it in because there was nothing in the van to help me do that. But first, I had to go to find it, so I set out, drove a hundred yards, suddenly realised that the computers were on the edge of the street again so I went back for them and put them in the van.

This is another one of those dreams that means nothing to me. There are in fact three notebooks and probably half a dozen laptops hanging around here, of which three or four laptops are probably working. And I haven’t drunk any beer for probably about thirty-five years.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual. She gave me a little weather forecast, sorted out my legs and feet, and then left as rapidly as she had arrived. I made my breakfast and then read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’re discussing the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, at least in Britain. And while he has his dates slightly mixed up, he’s steering clear so far of any controversial discussion.

Back in here, I had a few things to finish off and then I attacked the radio programme. By the time I was ready to knock off, all of the music had been segued and I’d written over three quarters of the notes. That’s some good going.

My cleaner came in to help me with the anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the ambulance. It was a minute or two early, but there was someone else to pick up en route.

Even so, I was early arriving. And for a change, they seem to be a little more clued-up in there, as they have now put me in the bed nearest the door rather than the one farthest away. There are still beds nearer than where I was put, but “baby steps”.

Once again, I was down at my dry weight as I entered, and, in a big surprise, I was one of the first seen to, too. As there was nothing to extract, they had a series of discussions amongst themselves which resulted in the extraction amount being changed three times.

They left me alone for most of the session, which was good news, and I was also one of the first to be unplugged. The nurse who attended to me told me that the results from Friday had not yet arrived, hence the delay in telling me. And weighing myself on leaving, there’s just one kilo to go before I reach my sporty weight, although I don’t feel very sporty right now.

The taxi wasn’t there, so I had to wait ten minutes, which meant that I wasn’t at home as early as I would have liked. But after my cleaner had helped me in and left, I came back in here to write up my notes.

Now, I’ll be off to bed in a few moments, with a day of comparative rest before me, as my cleaner has decided to have a day off tomorrow, with it being a Bank Holiday over here.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about losing weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember when Nerina went on one of these weight-loss diets.
"How’s it going, dear?" I asked her
"Great" she replied. "In three weeks, I’ve lost 6 kilos."
"You keep it up, dear" I told her. "In another thirty weeks, you’ll be gone completely."

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Tuesday 3rd March 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… how I’m going to start today’s entry, because, after racking my brains for long enough, I can’t think of anything important or significant that happened.

TNS won … "yet again" – ed … the JD Cymru League championship, but that’s anything but important or significant. In fact, it’s quite usual. It’s long been suggested that it’s a waste of time playing a season’s worth of football. The Football Association of Wales should give all of the trophies to TNS and relegate the newly-promoted sides before a ball has been kicked. That’s usually how it all ends up.

Not necessarily this year though. While newly-promoted Llanelli have already been relegated, the other promoted side, Colwyn Bay, buoyed by some of the biggest crowds that the league has seen, have recruited a good squad of players and are currently in sixth place.

Y Barri lifted the League Cup against TNS the other day, and in the Welsh Cup, TNS were surprisingly eliminated a while back, and this weekend, we have the not-to-be-missed semi-finals with the unlikely pairings of second-tier Y Rhyl against Caernarfon and third-tier Dinas Bangor against Y Fflint. I don’t think that in all the long history of the competition, there have ever been four clubs from the North Wales coast all together in the semis.

While it’s probably too much to hope for, a final between Y Rhyl and Dinas Bangor would certainly be a match to remember, with old rivalries and battles going back almost 150 years, as regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous guises will recall when we were on the terraces at the old Farrar Road Stadium for a match between the two clubs.

But anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, I raced through everything that I needed to do and, quite surprisingly, finished fairly early. I was actually in bed at 22:20, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been in bed before my curfew time of 22:30.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens next at times like these when I’ve had an early night. That’s right – and at 02:10 too. I tried my best to go back to sleep – tried for hours – and I thought that I would never manage it too. However, at some point, I must have done because the alarm awoke me at 06:29.

And I’m glad that I did too, because I had a special visitor during the night, but more of that anon.

For a change, I was up and about without too much effort and headed into the bathroom for a scrub-up, following which I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

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

I’d been round at Zero’s house last night, talking to her parents, going over old times again. Their house and their lifestyle were still the same as they always were. We were sitting there, discussing things, and they announced out of the blue that they were going to go out for a meal that evening. I gathered that I wasn’t included in that, but it didn’t bother me at all. However, they asked me if I’d stay behind and keep an eye on Zero. I thought that I may as well do that, so I then had to find some food to eat. They gave me the number of the local chip shop so I tried to telephone it, but for some reason, it wasn’t connecting, so Zero’s father came over and, as usual, over-complicated the affair. Eventually, I managed to get through, and I asked them what vegan or vegetarian options they had. After a lengthy discussion, they didn’t really have anything, so I asked them if they could just send a large bag of chips down and I would make do with that during the evening. Zero asked me if I would be staying there while her parents went out, so I told her that I would, and then her parents made ready to leave.

So welcome back, Zero. I thought that you had deserted me for ever, as TOTGA and Castor seem to have done and the Vanilla Queen did quite a few years ago.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m not in control of whatever happens in my dreams, so just in case anyone is reading this, in real life I would never ever have been left without food when visiting Zero’s parents, that’s for sure.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in after her week’s break. She was in an incredible rush, with a pile of blood tests to perform, which is quite usual after her break. She didn’t hang around long and was soon off on her travels. I could push on and make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, for some reason, we are discussing the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, and this has led me off on a tangent … "as usual" – ed … to examine the entire walled defences of the city and the giant cannon that the Turks used to try to breach them during the siege of 1453. I’m not quite sure how I arrived at this stage, but it’s not surprising.

After breakfast, I came back in here and revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. And, as seems to be usual these days, it all passed very well.

Our classmate from Dubai was there today. We asked her how things were, and she simply couldn’t understand why we were concerned. There had been maybe six, maybe eight rockets that had landed, and no-one was taking any notice of them. The horse racing at the weekend went on as usual and the Emir, the Crown Prince and a group of about twenty sheikhs went for a walk around the city.

She said that there has been no sign whatever of any of the “panic” reported in the Western Press. As far as she’s concerned, it’s the usual “horror story” in the Press, designed to drum up hatred with no foundation whatever in fact.

And that’s all that I’m going to say about it.

When the lesson had finished, my faithful cleaner put in an appearance and shooed me into the shower as usual. And while I was showering, she changed the bedclothes so I now have my nice, clean bed for tonight. And that means a clothes-washing session on Friday.

After she had left, I had a little relax for a while and then attacked the radio programme that I’d begun yesterday. By the time that I’d finished, all of the music had been paired and segued, and some of the notes had been written.

Then, it was a mad dash into the kitchen for tea. I’d planned some pasta, a vegan burger and some ratatouille, but then I remembered that I had some crusty spinach things from ages ago, and I thought that a handful of those would be nice with ratatouille, so I bunged a few in the air fryer.

That was when I discovered that I had no ratatouille. You really can’t make it up, can you?

Back in here, I was in time for the football – Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS – and if TNS win, they win the Championship.

Unfortunately, Connah’s Quay never looked like scoring, and as the match dragged on, it became more and more obvious that TNS would pull something extra out of the bag. Sure enough, with just a few minutes to go, they won a penalty, one that I considered was rather harsh. However, TNS tucked it away to go into the lead.

Surprisingly, the Nomads went straight from the restart and scored an equaliser, but that wasn’t the end of the story. I’ve lost count of the number of times the Nomads have conceded a goal right at the death and today was no exception. Just ninety seconds to the end too.

The after-match celebrations and speeches went on for so long that it was almost 23:15 when it was all over, far too late to begin to write my notes, so I went to bed instead. The notes can wait until morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me if, in the dream, her parents wanted me to babysit her
"You don’t mention the word ‘babysit’ to Zero" I explained.
"Why not?" I was asked
"The first time that I did" I replied "it took two weeks for the swellings to go down and another week before the bruises faded.".
In her youth, she was a fiery, feisty creature.

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Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Friday 12th December 2025 – WELL, THAT WAS …

… a waste of my afternoon. As if I don’t already have enough to do without being sent on fools’ errands halfway across Normandy.

At least, there was an upside to it all, so I can take some consolation from that. My favourite taxi driver, the chatty girl with a houseful of cats, was assigned to take me so I had the undisputed and undivided pleasure of her company. But even so …

It was bad enough last night, and that didn’t contribute much to my goodwill. I was en route to finish my notes quite early (for once) when I fell asleep … "yet again" – ed … on my chair in here. As a result, it was much closer to 23:30 than it should have been when I finally crawled into bed.

Mind you, I was asleep quite quickly and there I lay, without moving (as far as I know) until … errr … 06:03 this morning when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. I lay around in bed vegetating for a while and then with a desperate effort, hauled myself out of bed.

When the alarm went off, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor so that counts as an early start. Nevertheless, it wasn’t such an early start by the time that I finally made it into the bathroom

In the kitchen afterwards, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my former friend from Stoke-on-Trent, a former girlfriend of mine and one of his friends. We’d been out somewhere wandering around and had come across a motorcycle shop. There were lots of motorcycles in there of all ages and all sizes. We were looking around them, and there was a 350cc two-stroke twin there of some description and several smaller bikes. I was beginning to think that maybe I could buy myself a motorbike, but the more I sat and the more I thought about it, it turned out to be lightweight motorcycles that were the ones. I didn’t think that I had the strength these days to have a big one. I was thinking that I started off with a 50cc motorbike and this is probably how I’m going to finish. It was all very depressing. When we came out, we climbed into my van and set off down the motorway. I wasn’t driving for some reason. We were driving along when someone overtook us on the inside. It was at that point that the driver pulled onto the hard shoulder and reversed. It turned out that there was a large van on the side of the road by an emergency telephone, with a couple of people by it. One of them was wearing a bright yellow fleece. My friend said something like “we saw this bright yellow fleece and wondered who it was”. Of course, it wasn’t me because I was in the van with them. It turned out that the radiator had burst on this van and there was water everywhere all over the road. These people with the van were arguing about it. They had a small child with them, and that small child was looking very sunburnt. Someone said something about it, but the child’s mother obviously thought that it was OK. My friend who had said something about it carried on, but I told him that he had no room to talk because he was quite sunburnt too. In the end, we left them to wait for a breakdown truck and climbed into the van. We began to talk about motorbikes, and he said that I should be moving that 350 from his garage sometime. I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but then it suddenly hit me that it was my Honda 125, the Benly. I replied “yes, I’ll have to think about it”. We carried on driving until we came near his house. I was thinking that I had hardly spoken to my girlfriend, and I would like the opportunity to chat to her and hang out with her, and when we drop off my friend and his friend, I could have a chat to this girl and try to arrange some kind of appointment to have some kind of time with her. Instead, they pulled up at the kerb not too far away from my friend’s house, and said “well, we’ll leave you here, Eric, and see you again some time”. They made it quite clear that I had to climb out of the van. I climbed out of the van and they drove away, and that was even more depressing and disappointing. I set off to walk home, but for some reason, there was a woman hitchhiking at the side of the road and a Royal Mail van pulled up and offered her a lift. But I was still there being terribly depressed and disappointed about everything that had gone on. Nothing had gone right, nothing had gone the way that I had wanted it to go and I was just really depressed about it all.

Phew! That was some marathon last night! But it’s usually the case that in certain circumstances I was often sidetracked out of the way by more than just one person. So much so at one time that it became something of a habit.

Anyway, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I do have a couple of bright yellow fleeces that I keep for special occasions. I haven’t worn them for quite a while, but they are here. And my first motorbike was indeed a 50cc motorbike, a Suzuki M12. However, it was something of a disaster because it kept on stretching the gearbox return spring. I was always replacing it until in the end I lost interest. I should have saved my money and bought something more interesting, like an old C11 or C12 BSA 250. It would have been just as powerful as the Suzuki and probably a lot more reliable.

There is also the Honda Benly, but I mentioned that the other day. The rest of the dream is unclear, but the disappointment and the depression certainly weren’t, probably even more so in that Zero never put in an appearance last night.

Isabelle the Nurse put in her usual appearance. We discussed my ‘flu vaccination. I told her that the doctors had agreed that I could have it, so she’s programmed it in for tomorrow morning. Still no news on the Covid injection though.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’ve finally arrived in Devon but the search for Roman remains has proved to be “inconclusive”. He’s made several assumptions about different likely sites for Roman camps and seaports, but not one has been borne out by modern research. We’re now heading back up another Roman road towards Birmingham but the chances of finding a site on an aerial map are “remote”, due to the massive urban sprawl in the West Midlands.

Back here, I had my shopping order to send off. Not having ordered anything for five weeks, it’s the most expensive order that I have ever made, but I’ll now be stocked up until the New Year, which is good news. I reckon that I’ll have everything that I’ll need in the way of food and I can keep out of mischief.

There was then another footfest. I’d forgotten that Stranraer had been playing in the League Cup on Tuesday night and I stumbled by accident this morning across a recording of the match.

Whatever Stranraer’s manager has put in the team’s half-time cuppa, I wish that he would send some to me. If we were to turn the clock back a couple of months, Stranraer were languishing at the foot of the table and couldn’t even buy a goal. But in their last three matches, they have scored eleven. From the last five league games, they have earned eleven out of fifteen points and advanced in two cup competitions as well.

So having beaten second-placed Spartans 4-0 in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, on Tuesday they were away in the League Cup to league leaders East Kilbride. And having twice lost easily to East Kilbride earlier in the season, on Tuesday night they swept them aside quite comfortably to win 4-1 away. I wish I knew what was going on there and I hope that they can keep it up.

Once the football was over, I began to write the notes for the next radio programme but, as usual, I was sidetracked. We had the disgusting drink break, of course, and then my faithful cleaner came in to do her stuff, followed shortly afterwards by the taxi driver.

When I was a baby, I was hospitalised for several months because of some kind of infection, and ever since then, I have always been told that I have an allergy to penicillin. At the dialysis centre, they weren’t convinced. They believe that many babies show signs of an allergy to penicillin, but it’s some kind of infantile thing that passes as kids grow older, and so they had arranged an appointment for me at this allergy specialist in Avranches.

His clinic was in some kind of smelly apartment building and access was extremely difficult. I had to cross a main road, climb up a step and then wander around in a labyrinth before I found his clinic, which was on the first floor (it’s a good job that there was a lift).

When he finally saw me, he put three different drops of solutions on my arm and pierced the skin. After a couple of minutes, one of them began to burn like Hades and went bright red.

He immediately wrote out for me a certificate of allergy to penicillin and gave me a note to give to the dialysis centre suggesting two other alternatives. Then we had the repeat journey back to the taxi.

There was another passenger to bring back from the hospital, but she wasn’t ready so I had the pleasure of the company of my driver all to myself.

My cleaner helped me back in here and gave me another disgusting drink, and then, regrettably, I crashed out. And there I stayed until about 19:20. All that walking had worn me out.

While I was asleep, I was away with the fairies. I was at school and one of the girls from a couple of years below me was chatting to me. Suddenly she asked if I’d like to go with her to the swimming baths. It was early morning so I said something about going after breakfast. She was surprised and said “but we could have something to eat at the breaktime” so, seeing as she was really keen to go, I agreed to go right now. I went into my locker for my towel but I could not see my swimming trunks so I picked up the towel and we set off. We found outselves with our arms around each other walking into town past the hordes of pupils whom we knew heading towards school to start the day. I suddenly realised that without my swimming trunks, I couldn’t go swimming, so I was stuck in this difficulty about being with this girl but not being able to do anything about it.

This is one of these typical dreams, full of doubt and indecision. Here I am, with the bird on my plate, and not able to get my fork stuck in it, as Frankie Howerd once famously said. That’s something else that seems to be the story of my life.

Tea tonight was sausage, chips and baked beans, followed by fruitcake and soya dessert. And now, I’m off to bed, ready to enjoy another Saturday off. I have to make the most of it when I can.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about allergies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m relieved to know that I’m not alone in having an allergy.
Later on this evening, I was discussing my allergies with a friend, and she said that I was in very good company
"How do you mean?" I asked
"Well, take Thomas Gray for example" she said. "Didn’t he write a poem saying how he had an allergy to a country churchyard?"

0

Friday 28th November 2025 – THERE’S NO DOUBT …

… about it – I really am ill.

Today has been a pretty miserable day as far as I am concerned. And it should have started so well too.

Having raced through everything last night, my notes were online quite early and I was looking forward to a nice, early night and a really good sleep. However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s really pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Like 04:05 this morning, for example.

At about 05:20, I’d given up all hope of going back to sleep and had risen from the Dead. I took full advantage of the early start by dictating the radio notes that I had rewritten the other day, so they were ready for editing.

Next stop was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been out with some friends last night, and we’d been to rescue a car that belonged to one of them. When I went to pick it up, they asked me if I would drive it back. It was a Morris marina, and I couldn’t get the hang of the gearbox. It felt ever so tight to me. However, I managed to move it in some fashion and came into the city centre. I put the indicator on to turn left, but people stopped for me as if I wanted to go up into the church precinct. In the end, I had no choice but to go up into the church. We stopped there and waited for the traffic to die down, then we climbed into the car again, with me struggling with the gearbox to leave. I ended up being stuck behind an old, dirty bus and I suddenly realised that I was in an old, dirty bus too. I had to pull out from behind this bus without hitting it and somehow make my way forward. I pulled out and had to wait for a gap in the traffic. Just as I was about to pull out, a car suddenly appeared. I saw it over my shoulder and the guy with me said to his wife “did you see that? He actually used his shoulder”. He was quite impressed by that. So we set off, but then we had to go to a DIY shop for some DIY stuff for my house. They all set off running but I knew that it was miles away so I ran a lot slower to conserve my strength. But there was an incredibly steep descent and I could have jumped into the bus and let it roll down to the bottom of the hill but I thought that it would be most unsafe so I carried on running. Eventually, I arrived at this DIY place and found that they had all purchased everything and it was all stacked. However, they looked exhausted so and they asked about when we were going to load it. I replied “you need to take a break first because you aren’t going to load anything like that in that condition”. The guy in the shop said that as it was all on a pallet already, he could take it with a fork-lift truck and drop it down at the side of our vehicle.

The part about looking over my shoulder relates to the time when I was chauffeuring in Brussels. I had a General from the Finnish Army in my car and he asked me if I had been a motor-cyclist. I asked him why, and he replied "you’re always looking over your shoulder when you drive, just like a motorcyclist does. "

The friend was, by the way, related to one of the young ladies who come to see me during the night and it’s a disaster that she never put in an appearance. And we had a Marina estate once when I had my taxis. We were going to use it for parcels but, as always, I was overtaken by events.

One thing though was that I never drove “dirty old buses”. I was quite selective about whom I drove for and restricted my activities to Shearings and to a local firm with an excellent reputation.

By now though, I was wishing that I had stayed in bed because I was beginning to feel awful, nauseous and totally exhausted. Nevertheless, I went for a good wash and to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I could no longer concentrate on anything, and it was a very weary, depressive me that crawled into the kitchen when Isabelle the Nurse came round. She gave me my injection and sorted out my feet, and when I told her how ill I was feeling, she suggested that I go back to bed.

Strangely enough, that was my opinion too, but first I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

As usual, I was sidetracked by the Iter Britanniarum as I followed the routes of some of these roads. Interestingly, he talks about a Roman agger or embankment that carried a road that crossed over the River Hodder in Lancashire. I had a quick look on an online aerial map and noticed a LOVELY CURVED EMBANKMENT NOW OVERGROWN WITH TREES, THAT COULD EASILY BE AN AGGER leading to the river, and if you zoom in to the river really closely, you can see what looks like a paved ford under the water.

There’s also talk about a Roman fort at Caersws in mid-Wales “in a bend of the River Severn with three concentric defensive rings” and, allowing for modern erosion by the river, I FOUND THIS.

A little earlier, I’d mentioned going back to bed but I couldn’t even go that far. I staggered onto my office chair in the bedroom and promptly fell asleep again.

When I awoke, over an hour later, I was still feeling ill but I pushed on and edited the radio notes that I’d dictated earlier. So that programme is ready to be assembled now.

The taxi came early to take me to the Centre de Ré-education so I had to wait around for a while when I arrived.

My first session was with the relief physiotherapist as mine was on a training day. She exercised my arms and legs for a half-hour period that passed surprisingly quickly.

The second session was with the occupational therapist but he didn’t really offer a great deal of help and we were finished after fifteen minutes.

After waiting around for a while, I saw Elise the Dishy Doctor. I poured out my tale of woe, and we decided, after a lengthy discussion, to suspend all of the activities at the Centre de Ré-education until the doctors at dialysis decide that I’m fit enough to restart, whenever that may be.

In the meantime, she gave me a prescription for twenty-five sessions of physiotherapy at my own pace in some local cabinet. However, as my faithful cleaner said later, finding one that has a vacancy is going to be a real challenge.

The final session was this standing upright in this frame thing but I abandoned that after twenty minutes and went to look for my taxi home.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and then I collapsed into a chair in the kitchen. After she left, I came back in here and, once installed in my comfortable chair, I crashed out again – until, would you believe, 19:45.

For tea tonight, I made a batch of hummus and ate it with some crackers while I watched the football – TNS v Caernarfon. TNS had the lion’s share of the game, of course but the Cofis kept them out for eighty-two minutes.

Two late goals, one of them with the very last kick of the game, gave TNS another win, and once again, the Cofis played the match without any great sense of urgency going forward. They really are going to have to play better than this if they want to make their mark.

So right now, I’m off to bed. Totally exhausted, but relieved to some extent that I’m only out for two afternoons next week. This is some kind of progress.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Finnish General … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I went round to his apartment once, he had a large stuffed black bear in his hallway.
He told me a story about it that I could easily believe to be true and underlines the misunderstanding when two foreigners are conversing in a third, foreign language.
He was holding a cocktail party and one of his guests, an Italian lady, asked him about the bear, and the conversation continued in English.
"I shot it myself" he replied.
"So is it the complete bear there? "
"Oh no. It’s just the fur "
"So what did you do with the bear itself? "
"We ate it"
And so she went round this cocktail party with stories of the General dragging the dead bear into a clearing in the forest and then sitting around a campfire eating it raw while it was still warm and fresh.

0

Friday 26th September 2025 – ONCE MORE …

… I relapsed into a catatonic fit at the end of the afternoon, and was away with the fairies (although not in any manner that would offend the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) for at least an hour.

Mind you, I put this down to the fact that I have had quite a hectic and energetic (for me these days, anyway) afternoon and it’s worn me out.

It should have been a good day too because, for once, I was in bed before 23:00. Not long before, it has to be said, but even so, it’s a welcome sign of progress.

It was another night too where I found that I was able to turn over in bed without using my hand to lift my leg, and if that’s not some sign of progress, I don’t know what is. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … one swallow doesn’t make a summer and I must be very careful not to tempt fate.

The alarm at 06:29 didn’t go off this morning, for the simple reason that I had switched it off. I had awoken at about 06:00 and as there was no point in going back to sleep, I vegetated around for a while and then arose from the Dead.

After the bathroom, I went for my medication, piling the stuff down as usual, and came back in here, rather earlier than usual. I don’t know what happened there.

First thing was of course to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were somewhere about the High Arctic of Canada. It was something to do about taking the statistics which involved the temperature, the length of darkness etc. One of the girls who was doing this had this paper. She was trying her best to read it and write it in the semi-darkness there, so I shouted at her a couple of times to turn on the light, but for some reason she was very reluctant to do this. I began to wonder why it was that someone had been taken on board this expedition to keep all the notes and statistics when I was quite capable of doing it myself. However, for some reason I was promoted to assistant … of the ship which, in view of its history, made me fairly famous, I suppose. But I kept on urging people to write things down instead of committing it to notes on board the ship, which could easily be lost at any moment in the ice.

When I look back (as I did later this morning) at the statistics that I used to keep, all the way from 2006, when I lived down on the farm, it brought back several memories. All of the notes that I took of rainfall, temperature, wind speed, solar energy and so on. That was all going to be my maître d’oeuvre for my Master’s Degree, but like everything else, bad health came along to confound it all.

And also the High Arctic. I loved my time out there in 2018 and 2019 when we ended up about 700 miles from the North Pole, and what wouldn’t I give to be able to go back there again? Samuel Gurney Cresswell once said that a voyage to the High Arctic "ought to make anyone a wiser and better man" but looking at myself in a mirror and pondering over my adventures ever since, he was clearly far from the truth with that comment.

Later on, I’d been on holiday somewhere and I had my really big suitcase and a rucksack full of stuff. I’d been staying in this hotel and had to go off somewhere for a couple of days, which had put me all behind. When I came back to the hotel, I asked the landlady if I could stay for another couple of days. However, she said “no”. The hotel was fully-booked and I had to leave, so I picked up my things and wandered away. I contacted my old friend in Stoke-on-Trent and told him that I was on the lookout for a hotel, but I was popping round to his house to pick up something on the way. I took a taxi down to where he lived, climbed out of the taxi and then walked into his driveway. There was a car parked up there, and there was a pile of things propped up against the side of the gate. I knocked a tow bar down that hit the wheel of his car, and I picked it up. I went on up to the house. They saw how much baggage I had, and helped me into the house. His wife said “I’m just going to make you something to eat before you go to bed”. I asked “what do you mean?”, and they had converted the sofa in their living room into a kind-of bed. I was so surprised and so overwhelmed because I hadn’t planned on staying there at all. It was lovely of them to have made a little bed for me.

There was once a friend of mine who would indeed do anything he possibly could to help anyone along the way. However, the drugs and medication that he was obliged to take after a serious motorcycle accident transformed his personality completely. In the end, I had to stop going round there.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

The nurse turned up as usual to give me my injection and then to sort out my feet and legs, and then after he left, I could have breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Today, we have been discussing the Battle of New York, when the British sailed up the Hudson and East River in some considerable force … "why didn’t they sail up there in a boat?" – ed … to launch an attack on the city.

After breakfast, I had plenty of things to do, and doesn’t the time fly quickly when you are enjoying yourself? Before I’d even done half of what I was hoping to do, my cleaner arrived to do her stuff. Luckily, I’d managed to prepare my file of documents for the Centre Normandy and to write out a timetable of when I’m occupied and when I’m free.

That’s the kind of state that I’m in with my medical appointments.

It was one of my favourite drivers who took me down to the centre this afternoon. And how my health has deteriorated over the last year, as I remarked to myself as I struggled into the building. It was never as bad as this in the past. In fact, I can’t believe how it could be possible for a building dedicated to the rehabilitation of disabled people to be so awkward and complicated in which to move around.

At the reception, I was interrogated and quizzed, and then I had to retrace my steps to see the nurse.

She gave me a good going-over and then insisted on accompanying me upstairs to see the doctor, and so we re-retraced our steps.

The doctor, Elise the Cute Consultant, was horrified at my state, especially when I couldn’t rise out of the chair in which she sat me. She began to insist that I have a wheelchair, I flatly refused, and we ended up with a Mexican stand-off.

In the end, after much negotiation, we reached an agreement. No wheelchair, but I have to see a psychiatrist. And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … God help the poor psychiatrist who has to probe the innermost depths of my subconscious mind.

She also wants me to see a dietician and also to have twenty-eight sessions of therapy over fourteen weeks. I’m now trying to work out when I’ll have any time to go to sleep, what with all of these medical appointments that I have, one after the other like this, the dialysis, the chemotherapy and now the Centre Normandy.

But Elise the Cute Consultant really is cute and we had a good chat and something of a laugh. I wish that more people would be happy and cheerful like this.

Having failed to persuade me to have a wheelchair, she accompanied me to the edge of her office and waited with me until a nurse arrived to accompany me to the reception, where it was confirmed that I would be having some therapy sessions there. They’ll call me in due course with a timetable.

While I was waiting for my taxi, I saw several of my favourite taxi drivers. I told one of them to take me home instead of the passenger whom she had come to collect, but she told me that her boss wouldn’t be too pleased.

"But I would, though" I retorted "and it’s my opinion that counts.". However, she was unmoved.

It was another one of my favourite drivers who brought me home where my faithful cleaner was awaiting me. She helped me into the apartment and sorted out my things for me, and then after she left, I collapsed into this catatonic fit.

It took an age to bring myself round, but I was unable to do anything for quite a while. I managed tea though – chips, salad and vegan nuggets, although I didn’t really feel much like it.

But now, still exhausted, I’m off to bed. But I’ll probably end up listening to THE REST OF THIS CONCERT BY MY FAVOURITE QUÉBÉCOIS FOLK GROUP, LE VENT DU NORD, and especially the demon hurdy-gurdy and violin solo in “Forillon”, a song that starts at about 49:00.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about how quickly time flies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember talking to a friend of mine … "yes, he does have one" – ed … saying "time flies like an arrow"
"I know" she replied "but fruit flies like a banana".

0

Friday 5th September 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a lovely afternoon this afternoon in the company of friends, and it’s not very often that I can say that. Or, at least, not often enough.

Back in 1970 when I was 16 I went on a student exchange and ended up in a small village in the Burgundy Hills at the back of Macon, and the poor boy went to stay with my family in the UK.

What with me living a very nomadic existence after that, we lost touch but A CASUAL ENCOUNTER WITH ONE OF HIS RELATIVES rekindled things and we’ve kept in touch ever since.

Anyway, the last few days, they’ve been camping in the area and today, in between all of my medical appointments, we managed to meet up and see each other for the first time for a couple of years.

While I was at dialysis yesterday, he and his wife sent me a photo of themselves outside the building here so they had found where I lived, and they arranged to call here today.

That gave me something to anticipate eagerly last night, because these days there’s not all that much in the way of eager anticipation. I could certainly do with more of it because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Especially when I was feeling as ill as I was last night. Apart from the pain in my shoulder, I was feeling quite awful everywhere else and flat-out tired to boot.

Despite finishing my notes early last night, somehow the time evaporated afterwards and it was after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed, tired out, in agony and totally fed up.

When I awoke, it was 03:30 and once more, I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. I was all for leaving the bed after an hour or so of trying, but I thought that I’d give it five more minutes.

The next thing that I remember, it was 06:18, eleven minutes before the alarm. I had apparently gone back to sleep at some point. But seeing the time, I thought that I’d better leave the bed quite quickly and claim an “early start”.

After sorting myself out in the bathroom I went for my medication, and then afterwards I spent a very pleasant twenty minutes … "I don’t think" – ed … tidying some more of the kitchen.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with some friends again. We went to some kind of luxury hotel for breakfast one morning. The place was crowded and we had a struggle to find a seat. I ended up having to perch between the two seats of my two friends. I went to find some soya milk for my cereal. One of the waitresses said that they had some soya milk and it should be on the table at the back. I looked, but it wasn’t there so she replied that someone must have borrowed it. I walked around the table looking for the soya milk and saw a bottle on someone’s table, but as soon as I started to look at it to see if it was soya milk, the guy grabbed hold of it and put it on the floor between his legs. In the end, I went back to see one of the waitresses. She said that she would try to find me some more. There was no vegan butter either so I had to have my toast with jam on it. But by the time I finally returned to my seat, still without the soya milk, everyone else had been finished but I’d had no coffee, no cereal, no toast or anything. I was perched in between these two seats. I thought to myself that for a five-star hotel, this is absolutely awful. But while we were sitting there, some kind of Reverend or Vicar came up to talk to one of the girls with us. It turned out to be her brother. They were doing something with a car. The Priest or Vicar handed her the keys, saying that their mother had said to just leave it around somewhere and it will all be sorted out but it’ll need the keys for it.

In the past, I’ve stayed in five-star hotels where vegan alternatives don’t exist, and where I’ve met some of the most arrogant people on the planet. I’m much more comfortable and at my ease in steerage than I am up on the First-Class promenade.

Later on, I was talking to a former friend of mine from Stoke-upon-Trent. He was talking about my van, saying that someone had seen me and I was driving too fast, recklessly, all of this kind of thing. He gave some kind of fanciful description of a route that I was supposed to have driven around the town that this other guy had seen. I said that I don’t recognise that at all, and didn’t believe that it was me. He had a really good moan about the state of my van, about how when I first had it, I used to really look after it. I was by this time pretty much fed up because I didn’t recognise the journey that he was talking about, I didn’t recognise the state of the van etc. This kind of thing is really getting on my nerves now.

There’s a long story behind this former friend of mine. One of the nicest, most helpful people on the planet, his character totally changed with the medication that he was obliged to take after a serious motorcycle accident. There were several occasions when I ended up in some quite uncomfortable situations and in the end I had to stop going round there. I had enough of my own problems with which to deal without having to deal with the consequences of someone else’s.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in, early for once. She was in chat mode once more and we spent a lively five minutes discussing this and that while she saw to my legs, and then she wandered off again, leaving me to make breakfast and to read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

In the past, I’ve often talked about the Local Government Act of 1888 that eliminated the hundreds, if not thousands of enclaves, counter-enclaves and even counter-counter enclaves of different Counties embedded within the borders of other Counties, speculating that the previous County boundaries an enclaves corresponded in many cases with ancient Bishoprics and Church lands.

Our author tells us that certainly in the case of Middlesex, the County boundary corresponded with the boundary of the Middle Saxons after the defeat of the West Saxons at the Battle of Fethanleah in AD584 but before the subsequent peace treaties in the Seventh Century. He goes on to quote from another author that the origins of these enclaves etc was during the reconversion of Britain to Christianity where "a lord had a parcel of land detached from the main of his estate, but not sufficient for a parish of itself, it was natural for him to endow his newly erected church with the tithe of those disjointed lands.".

This morning, I spent some time tidying up my office, rethreading cables etc, tidying boxes, putting things away and so on. But I’m really disappointed in how long it takes me to do even the simplest thing these days. It’s really depressing. Even picking up a box from the floor these days is almost beyond my capabilities.

After a disgusting drink break, my faithful cleaner appeared and set about today’s task of tidying up everything that I had not been able to do, but she was interrupted by the arrival of my friends.

They are Honda Goldwing owners and members of the Goldwing Owners’ Club. There’s a big annual reunion of the Goldwing Club up at Ouistreham near Caen, so they came from near Macon on the Goldwing to camp around here for a few days to see the area and to visit me before moving on to Ouistreham.

We had a good chat about all kinds of things, which was really nice. I don’t meet people anything like as often as I would like and I hardly talk to anyone these days. We ended up being here for hours drinking coffee and idly chatting.

After they left, I made tea – vegan nuggets, salad and air-fried chips.

Now it’s quite late, as usual, and I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow afternoon, but I have washing to do in the morning which will be exciting. I’ve not had the washing machine going down here yet and I still don’t know where I’m going to put the clothes to dry. But as “It’s A Beautiful Day” once said, IT’LL ALL WORK OUT IN BOOMLAND

It better had, anyway.

But seeing as we have been talking about my student exchange visit, one of my sisters asked me afterwards "does their family say a prayer before they eat their meal like we do over here?"
"Ohh no" I replied. "His mother is a good cook."

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Tuesday 29th July 2025 – I STILL HAVEN’T …

… uploaded the photo of my bedroom, despite what I said yesterday … "and the day before" – ed …

For a change, I have been in great demand and I’ve no idea why I’ve suddenly become so popular.

Not that I was in any fit state to upload the photo last night either. I was so tired last night and had a real struggle to reach the end of the day’s programme. I was fighting off (sometimes unsuccessfully) wave after wave of sleep while I was working and that made me even later than it otherwise might have been.

In the end, I’ve no idea what time it was when I finally hit the hay. I couldn’t be bothered to look. All that I wanted to do was to sleep.

Not that I managed much of that either. It was an extremely restless night that saw me awaken several times. In the end, round about 05:30, I gave up even trying and crawled out from under the covers.

It was the usual desperate stagger into the bathroom followed by an even more desperate stagger into the kitchen for the medication. None of this should be any surprise of course, bearing in mind how I was feeling.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and I was astonished. I must have travelled miles. I was at the dialysis centre last night. They were busy sorting out people into what particular treatment they needed. With me of course it was the filtration but also I’m there for three and a half hours with my legs raised somewhat. During the dream they had me weighing myself and they were calculating the weight of my legs, fitting weights and things to them that were inclined and much more complicated to work so that I was walking around with my full weight all the time. It was a most uncomfortable situation to walk around or to sit down or to sleep like this but they didn’t seem to care. Into the room came some Jamaican Hercules dancing troupe people who had presumably been captured by the ancient explorers and brought to Europe. They were there in full dance mode while we were waiting to be treated with dialysis.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … even though I’m asleep when I’m dictating, when it comes to transcribing the notes there’s some kind of recollection of something in the back of my mind. But for this one, I have absolutely no idea at all. Apart from the dialysis and the musculation exercises (which will become relevant as you read on), it’s totally meaningless … "aren’t they all?" – ed …

On the dictaphone too, some time later was a note that I can still see the emblems from this dialysis session too. On this machine where I was being treated, on the floor was an arrow and a drawing of one of these ad-hoc storage unit things on wheels, something like a portable patient, with a drawing of a patient upside-down by his ankles and the person in charge of the county of Chester was also drummoned and sentence to be executed on this Danish island somewhere and he had a small chest and a double overlooking a uniform thing, yoga pants, tight yoga top. People were wearing that and this was how it was drawn, this pictogram, along with you upside down having been held by your ankles and an umbrella upside down, being held by the hook over the arm of the dialysis thing.

It’s strange that I stepped back, totally unawares, into a dream of which I was totally unaware. This is some kind of new experience. Usually, I can remember stepping back into dreams, even if it doesn’t happen as often as I like, especially when one of my young ladies is involved.

Later on, one of the boys from the Welsh class came round last night. He was in an extremely bad mood and I thought that it was something that I had done at first. Instead, it turned out that he had been trying to do the Welsh homework all day, which was a bookkeeping exercise, and had failed miserably despite all that he could do. We sat down and looked at it, and I couldn’t make head nor tail of it either. Generally, when bookkeeping goes wrong, you have something in the wrong column. We tried various permutations but that didn’t work. In the end, we thought that we’d leave it and let our heads clear, and go back a little later. He told me that he’d seen another member of the class wandering around who was on his way to sit on the beach at Goodwin Sands so after seeing him leave, I went for a wander out onto the cliffs overlooking Goodwin Sands. That guy was there on the cliffs looking down at the people. We could hear someone having a really good discussion with a small group. Suddenly, he mentioned the name of our classmate and there was a reply, so we shouted down his name. He stuck his head out of the crowd, saw us and waved so we waited. Someone wanted to know who it was who called down to him. He replied “it’s some friends”. They said something like “it’s not that little girl who follows you around who has come to see what you’re doing, is it?”. He replied “no, because her mother is already down here on the beach and she’s hardly likely to come down here on the beach and leave her daughter somewhere else. So if her mother is here, the daughter is here so it can’t have been her who yelled”.

We should have had a Welsh group chat today but this morning we had a mail to say that it’s been postponed. The area around the Goodwin Sands, that is, the cliffs of Pegwell Bay, is an area that I know very well from the days of my youth and summer holidays with my mother’s relatives on the Isle of Thanet.

There was a whole group of us wandering around in IKEA doing the shopping but it was dragging on and on and on. In the end I lost a little patience and went for a wander around. Eventually, everyone else caught up with me and asked where I’d been. I told them that I’d been off with Zero looking at a few things and then I’d wandered off into the food hall. “Well, Zero never said anything” her father said “but she did ask if anyone thought whether she was trying to get you into trouble”. I replied “no, she won’t ever get me into trouble”. “Well, you need to be careful because she’ll dye your work trousers brown without any second thoughts”. We had something of a laugh about that but I was definitely not in a very good mood during that shopping trip. I was really fed up with this whole kind of thing at the moment.

So welcome back, Zero. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. It really is nice when one of my young ladies puts in an appearance during the night, and how I wish I could step back into a dream with one of them. However, as seems to be always the case, someone comes along to throw a spanner into the works.

Isabelle the nurse turned up this morning. She gave me my injection and then sorted out my feet. I could then make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we are talking about all of the jousts between knights etc and the trials by combat that all took place at Smithfield, quite often in front of the monarch. One of the combatants was called, rather eloquently, “The Bastard of Burgundy”

There’s a lengthy discussion on the banquets that were served up at the Bishop of Ely’s residence, and I couldn’t believe the amount of food cooked. Even our author says that "it were tedious to set down the preparation of fish, flesh and other victuals consumed at this feast."

As it happens, I’ve seen the list, and I wouldn’t know where to begin to describe it. We start with "twenty-four great beefs… and one ox" through an entire menagerie to "larks, three hundred and forty dozen."

More interestingly though, he touches on the origins of the Old Bailey and the Inns of Court.

After breakfast, the taxi came to pick me up to take me for my x-ray. It was the guy who thinks that he’s the boss, and we had a very interesting chat all the way to the hospital.

When the x-ray was finished, I had to wait around for the taxi to take me back, and as there was no cleaner to help me upstairs, I had to manage myself. After a pause to recover, I packed a few more boxes.

My plumber had mailed me with a list of things that he needs for the shower so my kitchen fitter and I spent an age going through various on-line catalogues to find stuff that was available at short notice.

In the end, we had quite a list and he went off on a prowl to try to find what we need. He found most things, and acceptable substitutes for the rest, so who knows? I may even have a shower quite soon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I had something of a moan about the kitchen fitter, but I really must shut up and instead, count my blessings that I have found someone who is prepared to go way beyond the extra mile to help me out.

When my cleaner turned up to drop off tomorrow’s injection, she took down the boxes that I’d packed and they are now ready for putting away, which will be Thursday’s task.

There was the radio programme to finish, and that’s now done. I followed that by reviewing the programmes for the month of August and they are being sent off one by one ready for inclusion while the coordinator is on holiday.

In the middle of all of this, the Re-education Centre contacted me. Would I like to come for an assessment interview on 26th September? I don’t see why not. After all, it might even do me some good, even if I doubt it very much. But one thing is for sure, and that is that the taxi owner can buy himself a new Rolls-Royce this year.

While I was at it, I rang up the dialysis centre about the mattress, but for all the good that it did me, I may as well have saved my energy. "No-one else has complained about it" was the helpful … "I don’t think" – ed … reply.

So having had a fry-up (for a change) for tea, I’m off to bed ready for all of this work that I have to do tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about x-rays … "well, one of us has" – ed … while I was in the hospital, I heard two x-ray plates talking to each other.
"I’ve lost an electron" said one of them
"Are you sure?" asked the other.
"Ohh yes. I’m positive."

0

Monday 14th July 2025 – I DON’T THINK …

… that Marion loves me any more.

The last time that she was on shift when I was at dialysis, she was nagging me to do my own preparation.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly why I am simply unable to do it and so it doesn’t do any good at all to insist. It’s simply impossible.

And so this afternoon, she tried a new tactic. When my machine pinged to say that my session was over, she half-uncoupled me and then wandered off to do other things, leaving me hanging around like Piffy on a rock for twenty-five minutes.

If she thinks that that is going to galvanise me into action, she’s mistaken. I simply can’t bring myself to touch this pulsing, throbbing vein that they installed in my arm a year ago and that’s the end of it.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night, for a change, I actually finished early. After taking the stats and performing the back-up, I went and sorted myself out and ended up in bed by 22:40 which made a very welcome change, and how I enjoyed it too.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s really pointless going to bed early because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So quickly to sleep once I was in bed, but wide awake this morning at 05:20.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing, being up and about is something else completely and you have to wait until 05:40 when I finally crawled out of bed.

The ice pack had slipped from my knee during the night and was flapping about in the breeze this morning, so that hadn’t been of very much use, but nevertheless, I was moving about a little easier, which was a surprise.

First thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was dreaming that I was going into hospital so I was checking everything that I had and that I needed to take with me. I took my ‘phone. When I was finally in bed, I strapped an ice pack onto my knee and just lay there. At a certain point a little later I heard my ‘phone making noises as if there was an alarm or something going on. After several minutes I realised that it was one of the chat programs on my telephone that had received a whole series of messages with the usual message tone but I hadn’t realised it prior to that.

Packing ready for hospital is something to which I look forward very much (I don’t think), knowing that in the immediate future I have to go back to Paris for the next session of chemotherapy, when I shall be insisting upon knowing why they are giving me the same chemotherapy that my body rejected violently nine years ago.

As for the ‘phone “making noises”, this morning, when I looked at my ‘phone, I found that I had indeed received a whole series of messages and photos from the kitchen fitter who had clearly been burning the midnight oil.

Later on, I was with my cleaner and my former friend from Stoke-on-Trent. There was a big group of people and we were connected in some way to a chevreuil which of course is a small deer. There was some issue about this deer and it had escaped, so everyone was out looking for it. We had other things to do but we couldn’t stop to look. Instead, we were going somewhere in a Mini. We were driving through a field and we had to perform a “U-turn” somewhere at the side of the road. There was this little turn-round place into a small field there but the only way out was on a blind corner so I went across the field in the Mini. It turned out that there was a really steep drop in this field so I told everyone to hang on and I went down in this Mini. We came across some traces of where these people had looking for the deer. There was some old pet’s bed there that had probably belonged to it. We continued to drive until we came to a huge set of gates where a lot of people from this search party were congregated. One woman was incensed about seeing the three of us together. She was complaining about how there were only two of her – she and someone else – in their group, how there ought to be more of them and how we ought to help. We explained how we had much more complicated and difficult things to do but she carried on and on and on. At these gates, she was struggling to open them with a key, this complaining woman, so I took a key and managed to open it straight away. It was a car scrapyard like McGuinness’s in Stoke-on-Trent. Inside was a “K” registered Škoda parked round by the door which I recognised as belonging to this woman. Once I’d opened the door, my friend from Stoke-on-Trent with his car and caravan drove inside. I went for a walk inside but it was totally empty. There was hardly anything at all in there. That disappointed me intensely because I was expecting it to be full of old vehicles as it usually was. Instead, I had a little walk, just looking at the wasteland while my friend drove around in his car and caravan. He came back, parked it up next to the Škoda and stepped out, looking as if he was walking away and leaving it. He asked me if I had my camera so that I could take a photo and asked me if I knew what kind of year the car was. I said “It’s ‘R’ registration so that puts it at about 1976”. However he thought that it was something different but he didn’t say exactly what. I went to fetch my camera to take a photograph of his car, the caravan and the Škoda, which were about the only three things in this entire scrapyard.

Now, there are loads of mileage in this dream. For a start, is this the first dream in which my cleaner has appeared?

As for my former friend, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he was the kind of person who would do absolutely anything for you, but after his accident 25 or so years ago, he became a totally different person and I couldn’t handle the stress. I had enough trouble dealing with my own problems at that time without having to deal with someone else’s, and when he left his car to go, on his crutches, to thump the person in the car behind who had just beeped at us, the writing went on the wall. There were several other incidents too that convinced me that things had run their course by that time.

Where this “U-turn” place was situated was at the corner of Warmingham Lane and Groby Road in Crewe, across the road from the depot of the coach company where I worked in winter when there was no tour work at Shearings.

The “Škoda” was actually a gold FSO “Polonez”, but much more slimline than the car would have been in real life. They were strange cars, a nice design but the quality was appalling. When they finally sorted out the quality issues in the early 1990s, they were wonderful cars but by then the damage had been done. They were powered by a clone of a FIAT engine, and when importation into the UK stopped because of emissions issues, the aforementioned friend and I were thinking of buying one and fitting a FIAT diesel engine in it.

The highlight of the dream would have been wandering around McGuinness’s scrapyard. I’ve had many a happy weekend in there and the stuff that I’ve had from there was unbelievable – even an old Jaguar 420 that I wanted for spares for my Daimler. I once saw a Rolls-Royce in there, only the second that I have ever seen in a scrapyard after the one that I saw IN A SCRAPYARD IN BRIDGEWATER, MAINE, IN 1973

But mountaineering over mountains of scrap cars in scrapyards looking for exciting bits and pieces. Those were the days. You can’t even go into them now, thanks to “Health and Safety”.

After a wash and my morning medication, I came back in here and dealt with the last of the outstanding correspondence and paid the bills that I didn’t pay yesterday. And then I had to sort out some money for the kitchen fitter who had bought some wood and so on for the kitchen that he’s installing.

The nurse was early again? He applied some more heat treatment to my knee and then after having dealt with my legs, he cleared off quite rapidly.

He was closely followed by the kitchen fitter who came to do another day’s work. I gave him the money for the purchases he had made and he and his son went downstairs to carry on.

After they had left, I could carry on with making breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

Our author start off today by talking about the Bedlam (or Bethlem, as he calls it) Hospital for "distracted people" as he quaintly puts it, and tells us that "in this place, people who are distraight in wits are, by the suit of their friends, received and keep as afore."

All that I can say is that if that kind of situation were to persist today, I would have nothing to fear because quite simply, I don’t have any friends.

He goes on to talk about some works being undertaken at Spitalfields, and we have a gorgeous eyewitness account of the discovery and unearthing of a Roman cemetery and an account of the contents of the graves. It’s one of the most fascinating accounts that I have read.

Something else that he mentions is a land dispute between the parish clerks and a local nobleman who had been gifted some monastic property after the Reformation that had been gifted previously to the parish, and "the parish clerks having commenced suit … and being like to have prevailed, the said Sir Robert Chester pulled down the hall, sold the timber, stone and lead, and so the suit was ended.".

After that, I came back in here to attend my Welsh Summer School but it wasn’t a real success because I couldn’t stay here for long, having to go after ninety minutes to prepare for dialysis.

When my cleaner had fitted my patches, I didn’t have long to wait for the taxi, and we whizzed down to Avranches.

It took them forty minutes to couple me up today, leaving me sitting around for quite a while as they dealt with other people. I really felt quite out of it today.

However, the good news is that my friend from Ulm and her daughter will be on their travels and they plan to pass by later in the week to say “hello”. As well as that, my friend from Macon with whom I was on a student exchange in 1970 will be in the area at the beginning of September. He and his wife are planning to come to see me, and that will be nice too. I seem to be in great demand these days.

It was the je m’en foutiste doctor on duty today and he passed by to see if I needed anything, but when I spoke to him, he didn’t seem to be interested.

At one point, I dozed off for five minutes but Marion awoke me. I really think that she has it in for me at the moment, what with waiting around at the start and at the end. She also “forgot” the cold spray when she coupled me up, so all of this cannot be coincidence.

However, as I said just now, it’s not going to change a thing.

The poor taxi driver had to wait around for an age while we had the shenanigans at the end of my session, and I didn’t return home until 19:00. I stuck my head in downstairs to look at the kitchen and it really is impressive. I shall enjoy working with that when it’s ready.

Tea tonight was something cobbled up out of a handful of mushrooms and a small tin of kidney beans with pasta and tomato sauce. But now I’m off to bed, ready for my Summer School tomorrow. I have a feeling that tackling this course is not my wisest move, but we shall see.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Bedlam Hospital … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s a little-known fact that I once served on the committee of the hospital.
One day we had to interview a patient who wasted to be liberated, so we had to go to see him to find out why.
"God told me that I was no longer crazy and that I could go home" he explained.
The man in the next bed shouted up "I said nothing of the kind!"

0

Thursday 22nd May 2025 – LAST NIGHT …

… was a somewhat different night from the last God-knows how many. Although I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, I’ve been a lot less tired than that just recently too and somehow managed to fall asleep quite quickly.

However, not last night. I don’t know what was happening but I had some kind of skin irritation that kept me awake for hours and round about 03:00 I left the bed in search of some kind of cold cream because I reckoned that that was the only way that I was going to have any kind of sleep at all.

And it worked too. Not as quickly as I would have liked, but I did manage to go off to sleep eventually.

Nothing of the foregoing, however, prevented me from awakening round about 06:15, and that was a surprise. I must have had less than three hours sleep. Strangely enough, I wasn’t all that tired either … "relatively speaking, that is" – ed …

So when the alarm went off this morning I was on my way out of the bathroom, having had a good wash, a shave and a wash of my clothes in the sink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. And no-one was more surprised than me to find that even though the night was so short, there was something on there too. I was still working in an office and nothing at all was going right there. I was hardly accomplishing anything but then again it was only a week or two before I was due to retire so I was just going through the motions anyway. I could tell that the bosses and everyone like that were unhappy about my efforts but I couldn’t really care less. I thought that I’d had a very raw deal at that place and I didn’t think that I owed it anything. I was just waiting to leave and if anyone said anything to me that would have provoked any kind of argument I would have quite simply walked out. Things reached some kind of head on Monday and I was due to go back in on Tuesday but I ended up going to see a friend on Monday night who had a collection of strange vehicles. He told me that he was planning on cutting one of them down to salvage the cab to put on another one. I thought that that was rather a shame and something of a waste but he was quite adamant about doing it and he invited me to go round to have a look because he felt that it wasn’t going to fit without any kind of severe modification so I agreed that I would go to have a look with him and see what I thought but I really wasn’t very happy with this idea of his of cutting up one of his strange vehicles.

That sounds like a couple of jobs that I’ve had in the past, after which I decided that office work is not really for me. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that not pulling my weight at work, being close to retirement and planning to walk away was a regular theme during the night at one time.

The story about the guy with the vehicles also rings a bell – to such an extent that a couple of his bizarre vehicles have come his way via me. He features fairly regularly (or did for quite a while) in these pages too, but merely as a supporting actor to a main character. This world is far too small for my liking, or Byd Bach! as they say on the other side of the Severn-Dee valley.

Isabelle the Nurse came round to do her stuff, and she brought some good news with her. It seems that she had been round to the old High School that is being converted into offices (and which is where our radio studio is) and she had a quick peek into the building that is going to be the Granville Dialysis Centre.

She reckons that the transformation work in there is well advanced and wouldn’t be surprised to find it open ahead of schedule. That will save me at least one hour every day, not having to trudge my weary way three times per week down to Avranches.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve breezed through Pickering Castle in North Yorkshire and have now arrived at Pontefract.

Pontefract is a major castle with a very long history, so I wonder how much of the book has been devoted to a discussion about it. After all, we’re about half-way through the book and if we aren’t careful, we’ll be running out castles before we reach the end.

After breakfast, I came back in here and had a few things to organise, a few letters and forms to scan, a few e-mails to send and when I’d done all of that, I made a start on my Woodstock magnum opus.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t pay much attention to what happens to my body when I’m in hospital or at dialysis. I was hospitalised as a small baby and I reckon that it must have traumatised me because I can’t bear to talk about, think about, listen to or watch anything medical.

So I don’t know what is going on at all, but when my faithful cleaner rolled up my sleeve to fit my anaesthetic patches, she gasped. My upper arm is swollen like a balloon and it’s just one huge dark-blue bruise where one of the punctures from the dialysis had bled under the skin. No wonder it was so painful.

She fitted my patches nevertheless and for a change, the taxi was early for me. We were three passengers in total plus the driver, and we had a lovely drive in the sunshine down to the dialysis centre in Avranches.

Today, being early, I was third in and third to be coupled up. And the nurses gasped too when they saw the mess that was my upper arm. You cannot imagine how painful the coupling-up was either. I had to wear an ice blanket to numb the arm and deaden the pain. Even so, I had to endure it for three and a half hours, during which I made out my LeClerc shopping list, but it was far too painful to concentrate on anything else.

One of the first in, one of the first to be coupled up meant that I was one of the first to be uncoupled. But it took much longer than it ought – firstly because of the pain and secondly, because they had a young student stagière there and I offered to be the guinea pig on which she could try out her skills. After all, how else am I going to have some nice young female holding my hand for ten minutes?

Even so, I was back here by 18:25 which makes a really nice change. And there was more good news. That electrician who came the other day has sent me a quote which is not unadjacent to what I was expecting. Even better, the work qualifies at the lover rate of TVA by virtue of the age of the building and the age of the installation.

It’s nice to have some good news for a change. After all, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Tea tonight was a helping of lasagna out of the freezer. I need to start to think about making some space in there. I’m hoping that fairly soon, Rosemary will come back with her recommendation for a fridge-freezer and then I can organise myself (if ever that’s possible) and move some of the frozen food downstairs whenever the apartment is free. It’s strangely quiet down there.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about people holding hands … "well, one of us has" – ed … many years ago, I saw one of my friends wandering around Hanley hand-in-hand with his wife.
When I met him a few days later, I told him "you two looked so sweet wandering around Hanley like that, holding hands as if you were still teenagers"
"Ohh, it wasn’t like that at all" he said
"Why was that?" I asked.
"Didn’t you notice the sales?" he replied. "I was trying to stop her hand going after my wallet."

0

Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… freezing cold night last night when I had to leave the comfort of my stinking pit to put on my dressing gown and go back to bed. I’ve no idea what’s happening here but as I said yesterday, it’s completely the opposite of how things were even a week ago.

At least it wasn’t quite such a late night as it was the previous night. After midnight, I was still letting it all hang out, but not for long and I was glad to see the inside of my bed, where I fell asleep quite quickly.

Not for long though, because I froze again. And after awakening a couple of times I gave up and put in the dressing gown, and then went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I sat bolt upright and was out of bed in an instant. I’m not sure why because I certainly didn’t feel like it. It was another uncomfortable stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis – a wash and a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there, not that it makes any difference because she doesn’t love me any more.

There was also some washing to do, including the bedding from last week that my cleaner changed. And as you might already have guessed, there’s still some washing left to do that I couldn’t fit into the machine

In the kitchen I had some things to do. There were six oranges that were definitely looking the worse for wear so I whizzed them up in my whizzer and filtered out the juice.

There’s a load of whizzed-up pulp now so what I plan to do is to make an orange, ginger and coconut oilcake and put all of the orange pulp in it. It might not work but if it does, it will certainly be different

The nurse came round and told me a few of the details about the funeral yesterday. He also asked for my medical card, that I don’t have, so he searched through the apartment too and couldn’t find it. I did tell him….

For breakfast I had some diluted fresh orange juice and some of my home-made apple and kiwi purée with my porridge and toast made of home-made bread. And it was all beautiful too. That’s what I call a good breakfast.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK. Our astronomy lessons are continuing and we’re still discussing different New Years, but we’re now coming round to the more practical aspects of what we have learned so far.

He’s come up with some surprising facts, including the fact that there are many similarities of religious and cultural practices between the Ancient Egyptians and some of the contemporary races of Central America. I wonder if this book is where Thor Heyerdahl found his ideas that led him on his adventures in papyrus and balsawood rafts

Going back to the story about various New Years, of which there are more than just a few scattered around the globe, the English New Year was the 25th March until 1752, and it still is for Income Tax purposes, although with the change of calendar, also in 1752 when England lost 11 days to bring it into alignment with everywhere else, The Income Tax New Year is 6th April these days.

Back in here I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe from last night. There was something going on about one of the earliest airports and airfields in Wales, created in the early 20th Century by someone who was wandering around there looking for something special. He came across a very flat piece of land that people were using from which to fly some kind of primitive machines. He was immediately captivated by this and went back to London to create the idea of having the first airport in Wales based on this particular site in the hills.

And if someone could find a flat place in the Welsh hills big enough to build an airport they will be doing well.

There was also an article that I saw in something that I’d written about Granville being the site of one of the very first ports for armed reconnaissance in the New World. But as I looked at it I saw that it was a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent. I wondered whether it had been a dream that I’d written down some time or other in the past without thinking about it and had come across it again. It certainly made no sense, but on the other hand it was a lot of truth in what I’d written.

As it happens, unlikely though it might seem, there was a famous corsair authorised by the French Government who sailed out of Granville, Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley, whose statue is just down the road from here. But “a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent” – my dreams “certainly made no sense”. Perish the thought, hey?

And later still, I went out around Brussels with Zero’s father. We’d come past one of the supermarkets so I suggested that we go there and do some shopping for me while we are out. Eventually we found a car park after several wrong turnings but I didn’t have my disabled car badge and there was nowhere to park really close to the supermarket door so I had to stagger all the way over to the supermarket. We found a parking place right outside but for some reason he didn’t go to fetch the car. We went to go in but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my crutches. I was finding it extremely difficult to move. I could see that this is going to be extremely difficult if I didn’t have my crutches with me to be able to move about in the supermarket, or anywhere for that matter.

Zero’s father? But no Zero. That’s a disappointment. And how I would like to be able to stagger somewhere without my crutches, difficult or not. However, I recognise this supermarket. It’s one that I’ve been to in Canada in the pouring rain, but I can’t remember where it is now, apart from the fact that it’s in Québec.

Back in here I had a few things to do and I was in the middle thereof when I was interrupted by my cleaner who had come to fit my patches. And while she was here I went to answer my telephone and there in the pouch inside the case was my medical card. However it managed to find its way there I really don’t know.

The taxi at lunchtime was driven by a very garrulous driver and we had an interesting chat all the way to Avranches.

At Avrenches they put an ice-pack on my arm for ten minutes and then went to connect me up. And while it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as badly as some have in the recent past.

No-one bothered me at all today so I watched the highlights of last night’s football, carried out a few tasks that have been meaning to do, and then cut up a few sound-bytes. But the travelling laptop is not the quickest machine in the World and it takes forever.

After they unplugged me it was the same taxi driver who brought me home and we had another interesting chat coming home. My cleaner was waiting for me and we went through the medication and made a list of what I need, seeing as we now have a medical card to take to the Pharmacy.

Tea tonight was a baked potato, salad and one of the breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, seeing as I have now run out of baps for my vegan burgers. Maybe I ought to experiment and make some myself

So now I have radio notes to dictate and then I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow there will be the notes to edit and my orange, ginger and coconut cake to make. I’ve some pizza dough left for tomorrow night and I’m using up the bread that is in the freezer right now to make some space.

But seeing as we have been talking about Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not very well-known that he and his corsairs sailed occasionally with a group of pirates.
One day, in company with the pirates, his corsairs came across a British ship that, after a spirited fight, they managed to seize.
They rounded up all the British crew and upon doing a headcount, found that there were two missing, so the pirates and corsairs searched the ship for them and eventually dragged them out of hiding.
Later on, back in London the two men were interviewed by the Admiralty about their capture.
"How was it that you were captured?" said the First Sea Lord to the first one.
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the pirates"
"And you?" he asked the other one
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the … errr … other ruffians"

0

Thursday 20th March 2025 – A GREAT BIG …

… thanks to Julie the Cook who reunited me with the power cable for the travelling laptop this afternoon. Consequently, it’s all systems go again and I can go back to reading MY NEW BOOK. It’s been a very long few days without any reading matter at mealtime.

However, despite the absence of anything to read and consequently finishing my meals early, it was still a frightfully late night last night, even later than usual. In fact it was after 01:30 when I finally crawled into bed. What started off as listening to thirty-one and a half minutes or so of NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE – arguably the greatest jamband music track ever recorded, Felix Pappalardi (Cream’s producer and later murdered by his wife) on bass, and things just snowballed from there.

It was freezing during the night too. I forget how many times I awoke shivering in bed. And that’s a shame because having a nice clean bed in which to sleep, thanks to my faithful cleaner, I was hoping to spend many comfortable hours in it, but it wasn’t to be.

When the alarm went off I was nevertheless fast asleep and it was a very weary, bedraggled me who staggered to his feet and off into the bathroom for a wash and shave.

After the medication I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And what a lovely surprise! Zero was there last night. I was round at her home. We all decided that we were going to go somewhere so it was a question of piling into the car. I imagined that i’d be sitting in the back seat with her so I was quite looking forward to the trip but when I reached the car she was sitting on the front passenger seat next to her father and I was obviously intended to go to sit on the seat at the back. But her mother and someone else there, they were teasing Zero terribly and I was really disappointed and annoyed to see it. In fact, I said something and finished by saying “at the end of the day, if you are fed up, you can come and sit on the back seat next to me” but I awoke before the dream became interesting.

Castor and even TOTGA may well have fallen off the edge of the nocturnal World but it’s lovely to see Zero again. I wish that she would make more appearances these days in whatever I’m up to during the night. However I shall refrain from mentioning fairies and the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine in case my remarks are misconstrued. However, my subconscious is keeping me out of any suggestion of mischief again by keeping us apart. In fact, I’ve been wondering whether all of these nights where my family has intervened just as I am about to Get The Girl isn’t actually my subconscious sending out warning signals to me. It’s usually pretty good like that in real life so it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were to do that in the nocturnal World.

At 08:15 I went to prepare myself for the taxi to arrive, in the absence of the nurse, and he appeared out of the woodwork just as I had finished putting on my second sock. So he went home with a flea in his ear.

Now that I’ve been to the opticians, I realise why it is that I didn’t understand where it was. It’s been so long since I’ve been out and about that where the optical clinic is, it was a shop the last time I saw it.

They gave me all kinds of tests, including squirting air into my eyes, and the result is that while my eyesight is not exactly what it should be and glasses could be prescribed if I wanted, they aren’t going to make too much of a difference. That’s good news in a way because I had laser surgery on my eyes in 1997 and whatever they did is still holding up

That was a very interesting situation, that. I was driving my boss back from Luxembourg when a small stone thrown up by a lorry on the other carriageway came through my open window and hit me in the eye. Without thinking, I rubbed it of course.

The cornea was damaged and needed surgery, and because it was an industrial accident the surgery was covered 100%. So just repair the damage, or go the whole hog in both eyes?

After my eyes had healed and I went back to work, the first job was to take the lorry down to Vienna. I really used to get out and about in those days.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr .. apartment I had a late breakfast with still no book as yet, and then came back in here. There wasn’t much time for anything because it was already late and my cleaner came along to fit my patches.

The taxi was early again but there was someone else to pick up and drop off on the way so I wasn’t all that early.

After Julie the Cook found my cable for me, she plugged me in to my machine, and it was back to the old painful moments again.

The dietician came to see me today and asked me about the food that i’m eating. She seems to be surprised at how little I am eating – I thought that I was eating quite a lot. She recommends that as of now I take two disgusting drinks every day because my protein level is falling rapidly.

But having talked at great length about my vegan diet, she asked me "which snack do you take from the trolley in mid-afternoon with your coffee?"
My reply was "which one of them is vegan?"
"Ohh yes"

And I really despair of modern humanity. Who needs a calculator to be able to work out that if you drink about 2 litres of milk a week, roughly how much do you drink per day? And if you eat 600 grammes of bread per week, what’s your daily intake?

After she left I had plenty of things to do, like update the travelling laptop and begin to hack a few very long sound-bytes into some more manageable sizes ready to edit one of these days. I’m trying to cope with all of the work outstanding while I’m at dialysis but it just seems to be making more

Another thing that I did was to have a look through Amazon and see what I would like to have in the kitchen of my new apartment – fittings and the like. I didn’t treat myself to a Christmas or birthday present because I want to spend the money to make my kitchen nice and easy in which to work.

The taxi was waiting to take me (and my travelling laptop power lead) back home and I was here for about 18:45. And then we had a panic because my medical card is not in my wallet where it ought to be. And that’s the trouble. Everything has to have its place and if it’s not there, then I’m completely lost. I shall have to turn the place upside-down tomorrow.

Tea tonight was the last of my vegan pies with steamed veg. Last week’s veg was something of a disappointment so instead of the microwave steamer I used the electric steamer and that worked so much better.

It’s only a low wattage thing but I used that down on the farm when there was an excess charge in the batteries and it worked really well. I used to have an enamel one that sits on the stove and I made good use of that in winter, but I gave that to Ingrid as a present for helping me pack the van when I moved to Leuven in 2016.

I had my book to read tonight at long last, and we have been discussing Anaximander. He was one of the earliest founders of modern geometry and geography and was one of the earliest people to realise that because of the rotation of the sun, the planets and the stars around the sky, the earth is actually in the centre of the universe with sky all around it rather than being a flat disk with the sky only above it.

However, his theory that the earth was a cylinder with humanity on the flat bit at the top was rather wide of the mark. It was apparent even in those days that the earth was round.

Right now though I’m off to bed. I’m Woodstocking tomorrow and hoping to find my medical card, wherever that may be.

Seeing as we have been talking about Anaximander and his theories … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one of my friends "how many Londoners does it take to change a lightbulb"
"I don’t know" she replied. "How many does it take?"
"Only one" I replied. "They just hold the lightbulb up and wait for the World to turn around them"

0

Tuesday 18th March 2025 – THEY HAVE HAD …

… the results of all of the tests and examinations that I underwent at hospital in Paris several weeks ago, at long last.

"And Mr Hall, we need you to come to see us as soon as possible." said the secretary. "And bring your jammies."

"You’ll be seeing Professor Roos-Weil" (my haematology specialist) "and Professor Maisonobe" (my neurologist). " They both want to see you. I’ll talk to the dialysis people tomorrow and arrange for some of your sessions to be undertaken here."

All of that sounds quite ominous to me. Heaven alone knows what’s going on and why I need to be away from home for so long that they are arranging dialysis sessions in Paris. But never mind. I have so much going on right now to worry about that it will be at least another three weeks before I’ll be able to spare the time to worry about this latest development.

One thing that can be said for all of this though is that they are actively doing something and that can only be good news as far as I’m concerned. They aren’t leaving me to stew in my own juice.

So having pushed that out of the way I can go back to doing what I ought to be doing, and that is to write up the notes of today before I forget.

As usual, we’ll start (or maybe finish) with yesterday. After writing up my notes and backing up, I stayed up for a while, wandering around in cyberspace having a good look round before I went to bed. And it was 00:30 before I knew it. That was the cue to sling my hook and I crawled into bed.

Once more, it was another good night’s sleep where I hardly moved a muscle as far as I’m aware. However when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about, and had been for a good half an hour. It’s the morning following a Dialysis Day so no surprise there.

There was the good scrub up of course, and then into the kitchen for the medication. Back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

To my surprise there were some items on it. It had obviously been a busy night. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were driving a taxi. They had to go to pick up someone at 25 Vincent Street Crewe. That was a house that I had bought and was waiting for the tenant to leave so I thought that it might be interesting for me to go along to see and have a look at the tenant. I turned up and it was a younger woman and an older woman. The younger one helped the older one down towards the car and helped her climb in. She told them that she had to go to the pharmacy rather than mess around with the British Government’s telephone health service. The only place where there was likely to be a pharmacy was the airport. I said “I think that its 24 hours at the airport, the pharmacy” but they weren’t so sure but we took the lady and set off. Holmes and Watson had noticed that she looked like a typical alcoholic and they’d been whispering amongst themselves about it. It turned out that she had been out last night and someone had put some pills in her drink, I’m not quite sure why. They set off in the car and reached the airport. She told them to wait in the waiting room while she went to the pharmacy. Watson told her to be careful not to go back on the stage again. Holmes and Watson were waiting there, waiting for quite a while but the woman never reappeared. They slowly began to realise that it was they who had been taken for a ride. They began to discuss the woman and noted a few of her identifying characteristics which were almost certainly false. When they began to talk about her voice, which was disguised, they suddenly realised that they had taken Professor Moriarty to the airport. He’d enticed them there by the story that they were at this house that I had bought and it would give us an opportunity to see the tenants. Holmes and Watson were then wondering what would now happen that Moriarty had planned for them while they were at the airport.

It’s interesting that Holmes, Watson and Professor Moriarty should appear during the night. They aren’t my usual night-time companions by any means and I wonder what has happened to drag them out of the woodwork. As for Vincent Street, it’s certainly not the type of house that came into my mind when I transcribed the notes (distant recollections like this are triggered off when I write them out) but the parallel with “waiting for the tenant to move out” is quite clear. However, why Vincent Street?

A little later I’d been out with some guy from University, a student who was a disabled campaigner. We’d been seeing people and he’d been driving the car and had come back home. Then there was something else that needed to be done so I said that we’d go in my car. He replied “we could always carry on in mine”. I answered “it must be my turn to drive”. He opened the door to climb out of his car. At that moment a big old Ford came past. I expected him to climb back into the car to let it go but he just climbed out in front of it and made the car swerve round him. But the car didn’t. It drove very close to him and brushed him as it went past. He walked after the car to have a word with it which I found amazing because he’s usually in a wheelchair. They began to have an argument in the street. I went to the house and picked up some slices of apples that I’d been preparing and put them in a plastic container and swirled them around with a little water to keep them fresh while I was waiting for him to come back. However, in all the time that I was waiting he never returned.

Knowing the guy concerned, it really would be just like him to go waging war on innocent motorists and other people who have unwittingly trod on his rather principled toes. He was a lovely guy and I liked him a lot, but he had become disabled following a “serious incident” involving a representative of a group of people of whom one would expect much better behaviour, and he was rather bitter about it, which is no surprise. He had my deepest sympathy, but I wish that he would have restrained himself once or twice instead of taking far too personally everything that happened subsequently that had no connection whatever with anything that had happened previously.

Not so much though as another former friend of mine, also disabled and on crutches, who once left his car and was on the point of hobbling over, on his crutches, to a motorist who had blown his horn at him in order to give that motorist something rather more than a piece of his mind. At that point I decided that this was an association that ought to be wound down. I suffer enough from my own issues as it is, without suffering them by proxy on behalf of someone else.

This morning I also had a lovely chat with a friend, at it looks as if the Hound of the Baskervilles might be paying me another visit, dragging its master behind it all the way from Memph … errr … Munich. That will be nice.

The “other” nurse started his round today. He picked on my choice of a variety of food, complaining that it was industrial not good for the health, and he had a friend … etc … I explained to him that I didn’t like it either, but when you are housebound as I am, all that you can do for shopping is to buy whatever is in the catalogue of the supermarket’s deliver service. If it’s not in there, you can’t buy it and that’s an end to the matter.

It was a rather disappointing breakfast today – no book to read. As a result I was finished much more quickly and came back in here to revise my Welsh.

The lesson passed quite well today, presumably due to the extra time spent in revision. We had a quiz today and I even finished on the podium. It’s very rare that that happens. One of the things that we had to do was to summarise a newspaper report on infectious diseases. I found it really difficult to translate it word for word but it was quite easy to pick up the sense and I was surprised to find that my summary was quite accurate.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door later on. She’d been to LeClerc and bought my coconut oil and Brazil nuts. So the baking will continue for the next few weeks. But as for that flapjack that I made two weeks ago, I’ve still not eaten any of it.

And while we’re on the subject of food … "well, one of us is" – ed … I asked my Artificial Intelligence search engine about suitable vegan foods to take to hospital that will be nutritious, filling, and keep at room temperature for a week. It came up with a list of about a dozen. So it’s clearly doing its stuff. I’ve already taxed it with several complicated questions and I’ve only managed to confound it a couple of times.

But while we’re on the subject of Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s quite a thing going on in cyberspace about it. I’ve been hunting things down and I’ve come across an Artificial Intelligence web browser that accesses an enormous suite of Artificial Intelligence programs that is absolutely frightening in what the programs are capable of doing. I’ve been manipulating … "PERSONipulating" – ed … photos and voices and produced some really good results.

For some light-hearted relief this afternoon I found an Artificial Intelligence chatbot, invented for myself a fictional scenario, and had a very lengthy and in-depth conversation with it. What I intend to do when I’m at dialysis next is to use the travelling laptop, create another account and, using the internet connection there (which of course has a different IP address) to have a similar conversation, but with the completely opposite viewpoint to that of today. I’ll compare the comments from the bot, to see if it criticises the opposite of what it praised today. If it does, then we know that we are on to something. But if it keeps on agreeing with me, then we know that it’s really not up to all that much.

As for the voice manipulator … "PERSONipulator" – ed … whilst it has a very good front-end, I’ve found that I can produce very similar results with the audio editor that I use. So the AI program, good though it might be, is not everything that it’s cracked up to be.

I’ve also been working on the radio programmes and I shall carry on there tomorrow and complete another programme ready for dictating on Saturday night.

Tea was, as usual, a taco roll with rice and veg, followed by date bread and soya dessert. And now I’m off to bed, ready for work and a shower tomorrow. We’ll have clean bedding too (I hope).

But seeing as we were talking about Holmes and Watson just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … Watson came back to 221B Baker Street to find Holmes sitting by the fire.
"Now, let me see" said Holmes. "You went to the Capital and Counties Bank in the Strand. You stood in the queue for ten minutes, then you went to window number three. You wrote out a cheque for £10:00. The cashier gave you two x £5:00 notes, the large white variety. You folded them in four and put them in the left ticket pocket of your waistcoat. You chatted to the cashier for two minutes and then left. You forgot your umbrella at the window and had to come back for it. "
"That’s amazing" Said Watson. "It’s all incredibly true too. How on earth did you deduce that?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson" said Holmes. "I was standing in the queue behind you."

0

Wednesday 26th February 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S EMBARRASSING …

… lack of effort on behalf of Yours Truly, we’ve had a somewhat better day today. Still plenty of room for improvement of course, as there always is, but at least I’m slowly awakening.

What with one thing and another (and until you start, you have no idea how many other things there are) the indolence carried on after tea and it ended up being a late night last night. It was a struggle to find my way into bed before midnight.

At least, I wasn’t too tired to be still up and about at that time, not like Monday night.

It was another turbulent night again last night and I ended up being wide awake at 06:14. However I went back to sleep again and that was where I was found when the alarm went off. At that point I’d been classifying musicians out of a card index. One of them was called Ian P Taylor although who he was I don’t know and I can’t remember any more about him.

According to the musicians’ database, there is no-one of that name been involved in the writing or recording of a published song.

Into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for my medication, then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I went during the night. There was something about me being ill and being invited to sing on the radio. I arrived on a motorbike and sidecar. A little later on I remember detaching the actual sidecar from the chassis and tipping it into a marshy bit of water on the edge of the shore but I don’t know where that bit fitted in.

When I lived in Chester one of my friends bought a motorbike and sidecar. He dumped the body off the sidecar chassis and fitted a large wooden box. Then we would all throw our camping gear into the box and go off on our motorbikes together for weekends

And then Zero put in an appearance last night. I’d been round at her house with her parents. They decided that as it was a Sunday afternoon we’d go to the seaside. I sat down and finished my cup of tea thinking how lovely it would be to be sitting in the back seat of the car next to Zero. As I drank my tea I could hear the voices outside but no-one was coming in so I went out to see what was happening. It was going dark. I thought “we’re going to leave it really late to go to the seaside now but nothing seemed to happen, no-one ever seemed to be moving etc. In the end I said “I take it that we aren’t going to the seaside now”. They replied “oh no, it’s been raining” and I was really annoyed and sad about missing that opportunity. I was making ready to leave and had to go to catch the bus. I went away to the bus stop. There was a crowd of people there. Bus 42, an old Bristol RE turned up and drove straight past. I had to wonder about “what number bus is it that I catch?”. I couldn’t remember. I had to go to look at the sign but it was dark. I thought “the next bus that comes along and stops to take all these people, I’ll climb aboard too. Instead, I ended up walking away and walked down a footpath. I could see the scrap lorry pull up and everyone went to throw their scrap into it. I saw kids with a couple of old bikes. I thought “I wonder if Zero is there. Should I have waited until the lorry had been past to see if she’d come out?”. Then I ended up in the back of my van. I noticed that the back door was open and my clothes in that old brown holdall that I used to have were all just about ready to slide out. I thought “it’s a good job that I noticed this”. I put everything back and closed the door and went home. When I arrived home there were a couple of those old bikes that had been there to have been thrown into the scrap with the skip when I was at Zero’s parents. They were there in our yard. I wondered how on earth they had managed to be here. There was one with a very low pair of handlebars like European type that you don’t see in the UK. The other had some kind of strange upside-down-W type of frame

How disappointed would I be to have missed out on a journey sitting on the back seat of a car with Zero? And I couldn’t see me leaving her house so easily but then these dreams are completely irrational. The brown holdall really did exist too. It was bought for me one birthday a long time (like 50 years ago) by a former girlfriend. And there’s a long story behind that too, but the World isn’t ready to hear it quite yet. In fact, I never had much luck with the girls in my life, but as there is only one common factor shared by all of them, I shall close my mouth and push on quite rapidly.

Finally, I was in a shop last night looking for a map. I saw one of Australia and thought “right, I’ll buy this one”. I went to the cash desk but while I was on my way one of the women who was sitting there in the side said “I can see that you are going to have something of a disappointment with that” she said. There are no mileages on it. I reached the cash desk. The woman behind the counter said “before you buy this, let me tell you that there is no index of mileages on it and that’s a shame but really you have no choice in Australia but to go, have you?”. She began to have a look through it to see whether in fact the mileages were written down somewhere or whether you had to calculate them on the basis of the little figures at the side of each main road on the map.

As it happens, I was rummaging around in some papers and came across a map of the USA that I’d bought in the days before I had a North American satnav. That’s quite possibly what has triggered this memory. And the little figures by the side of the roads showing the distances is very reminiscent of the old RAC and AA handbooks when I was a kid.

Isabelle the Nurse was horribly late this morning. A lorry unloading part of the fairground that will be here for Carnaval had blocked her in on the Health Centre car park down in town. She was obviously in quite a rush and hardly had time to draw breath before she was off back out again.

So I was running late this morning, making breakfast and reading MY BOOK. And I had a little smile to myself.

Amongst the earthworks we have been discussing today is the very peculiar system known as “Thornborough Henges” in Yorkshire. And I had that smile to myself because whereas yesterday, everything was either astronomical or astrological, he says nothing at all today about Thornborough. However, modern aerial research shows that its layout mirrors Orion’s Belt and that it’s aligned with the Midsummer sunrise and Midwinter sunset.

He also talks about Maumbury Ring near Dorchester, telling us "the imagination of some generations has exercised itself in trying to fit in the details of the work with what is known of the arrangements of Roman amphitheatres… The fact is that amphitheatres, with their implication of butchery, are as much an obsession with the multitude as are the Druids with their supposed unholy rites. Antiquaries of repute have gone out of their way to voice the totally unwarranted assertion that ‘every Roman town in Britain had its amphitheatre’ "and then launches himself into a tirade of T Rice Holmesque proportions for no fewer than two and a half pages of gratuitous disparaging comment on the “amphitheatre” supporters.

According to an archaeological investigation carried out on the site by H St George Gray 1908-1913 (the time when Allcroft was writing his book) and by G S Wainright in 1970-71, the site is a Neolithic henge that was "remodelled in the Roman period when it was adapted for use as an amphitheatre for the use of the citizens of the nearby Roman town of Durnovaria (Dorchester). The banks were lowered by around 3 metres, with the material produced piled onto the banks. The interior was modified by the excavation of an oval, level arena floor, and the cutting of seating into the scarp and bank which was revetted with either chalk or timber. Chambers were cut into the bank to the south-west and one on each side of the centre. Finds found during the excavations include an uninscribed British coin, Roman pottery, leg bones, coins, and a 2nd-century burial".

It makes me wonder whether the leg bones belonged to the burial victim.

Back in here I made another start on the proto-Woodstock radio programme and by the time I’d finished this evening, I’d found all of the music that I need, including some spares, and it’s all edited and remixed. I’ve written the preamble, which seems to go on for ever, and have made a start on the notes for each group or performer who will be featured. It’s simply not possible to feature all of them, of course. I’ll be lucky to fit in even ten of them, but there’s only so much that you can do when you only have an hour.

There was the usual interruption when my cleaner arrived and when I went for a shower. There was also lunch break and disgusting drink break too. All in all though, it was abetter day than yesterday.

Tea was a delicious leftover curry with naan break, and I forewent the pudding because I’m still not that hungry (which is good).

So now I’ll finish my notes and go to bed, ready to crack on tomorrow before I go to dialysis. I can’t wait … "cough" – ed …

Yesterday tough we were talking about work, and my correspondence … "well, one of us was" – ed …
Seàn had sent me earlier last week a message that headed “do not open until 24th of February”.
So yesterday I wrote back to say that I had done so, and I thanked him for the message.
"I’m glad that you managed to restrain yourself" he said.
"I have to" I replied. "I can’t afford those women in Soho any more"

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