Tag Archives: Paul_H

Tuesday 25th August 2026 – THERE’S A NICE …

… clean me … "well, clean anyway" – ed … tonight, going to sleep in a nice clean bed tonight. It’s Tuesday, so that’s shower day, and while I was hosing myself down, my faithful cleaner gave my bed a good going over and changed the bedding.

Actually, it’s quite nice to be in that position, because these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, showering is something that I find extremely difficult these days. And so I’m only allowed to have a shower when she’s here to watch over me. I’m not allowed to have one when I’m on my own in case I fall.

But anyway, be that as it may, last night, having abandoned my notes halfway through, it was still after 22:30 when I went to bed. I awoke twice during the night, but I have no idea what time it was – I couldn’t be bothered to look. And in any case, I was back asleep quickly enough.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was definitely asleep. And I was certainly in no mood to leave the bed. It was quite a struggle to coax myself out of bed and sit on the edge, never mind stand up and go to the bathroom.

Eventually, though, I made it into the bathroom and managed to organise myself into something like, ready to face the day, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

I had a huge, blazing row with one of my friends last night. We’d all been away and were due to come home. I’d spent all afternoon and evening servicing the van, and all through the night we’d been packing everything away. Early in the morning, we set off for home again. We arrived back home in the early evening, and I reckoned that I’d been working for about thirty hours without a break, so whilst everyone was gathered in the living room, I excused myself and said that I was going straight to bed. I went into my bedroom, and it was untidy with all kinds of stuff everywhere, but then I thought “it’s my room, so what does it matter?”. I made a little space, but before I could go to bed, three or four people came up to chat. That was really the last thing that I wanted. They wouldn’t go, and they were there for most of the evening, so it was now almost forty hours without any sleep. Eventually, they left and I was just now going to bed when my friend turned up. He asked me “have you seen such-and-such”? Well, of course I hadn’t – I’ve been ill in bed, so I went to bed. And after wrestling with a pile of frozen food that needed to be put away, he just lay on the bed next to me, talking. I told him to go about three or four times, but he wouldn’t. In the end, I picked up a couple of jars that he was carrying and threw them at the door, and in the end, he got the message, and I tried to go to sleep. However, my friend went to the police and explained that I’d attacked him. This led to all kinds of complications, and he came back. I asked him to go, but he said no, the police said that he could stay if he liked. Just then, the woman who was in charge of the whole outfit turned up, so I asked her if she could make him leave. However, she wanted to know note-by-note exactly what had happened.

This dream does have some kind of basis in fact – not about the van and not about wanting to go to bed, but about a former friend and a friendship that came to a shuddering halt. Although, as usual, it’s one of those stories that the World is not yet ready to hear.

But being out and about with no sleep is not unusual. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall Back about fifteen years ago, I was in Cambridge. I had to drive to Gloucestershire to pick up a trailer, then to North Lancashire to pick up a mini digger, and then all the way down to central France – a working “day” of thirty-five hours with the only sleep being the couple of hours on the cross-Channel ferry. I couldn’t do it now.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. While he was working, he was chatting about Welsh football, which I thought was rather strange.

After he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Actually, I didn’t read that much of it today. He started to talk about the Batalha Monastery in Portugal, and that was something of which I knew nothing at all. Consequently, I set off to find out about it. Apparently its construction was ordered by King John I of Portugal as fulfilment of a vow that he had made before a battle in which his small army decisively defeated a very much larger Castilian and French army and assured Portugal’s independence.

Back in here, I began the knotty problem of this soundtrack, where I had to dispose of about one and a half minutes of something, but I know not what, in order to make enough room for a decent introduction.

By the time that I’d finished, I’d actually disposed of two and a half minutes, which makes it even better. But it didn’t ‘arf take some time to do. I managed to save some time by trimming out some of the applause. That involved trying to mate the “before the trim” endings with the “after the trim” starting points, and that took a great deal of time and effort, and yet it still didn’t take out enough.

The next step, therefore, was to listen to the long and pointless guitar and bass at the start of one of the tracks. With a constant beat running through it, I could take out a lot of that and simply mate up the beats. But when you have a choice of ten beats, it’s not that easy. And, after about an hour and a half and once you do find the correct beat, that’s when you find that the drummer’s timing at the “after the trim” point isn’t the same as at the “before the trim” point, so they don’t overlap. And that’s when it really does become difficult because the two parts don’t overlay.

Eventually, though, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to solve the problem to some kind of suitable degree, using an awful lot of “Silence” mode. And when I played it back just now, you couldn’t hear the join.

By now, my cleaner was here doing her stuff. She organised the bathroom for me and I went for my shower. While I was in there, she was tidying up my bedroom and changing the bedding.

Once more, I was able to go into the shower, shower and come out without help again. That’s definite progress, right enough.

After my cleaner left, I began to think about what I needed to write for the introduction for the programme, and by the time that I was ready to knock off, all of the notes had been written – all three minutes and four seconds worth of them. There will still be some editing to do, I reckon.

Tea tonight was non-existent. I wasn’t in the mood, so I simply had a handful of biscuits, and now I’m thinking of going to bed, ready to begin the next radio programme tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about silence … "well, one of us has" – ed … a woman in church whispered to her husband "I’ve just broken wind silently. It’s one of those “silent but deadly” ones. What do you think I should do?"

"If I were you" said her husband, "the first thing that I would do would be to switch your hearing aid back on."

0

Sunday 9th August 2026 – THAT WAS WHAT …

… I would call “a good Sunday” – that is, once the early part of it was out of the way, because the early part of the day was nothing at all to write home about.

As I mentioned yesterday. I abandoned my work early and fell asleep at my desk, and for quite a long time too. And when I awoke, I dragged myself into bed, and that was that.

Well, that was that until about 01:25, when I awoke, thanks to another good coughing fit. And despite trying my hardest, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there watching the clock go round and round and coughing all the time while I was doing that too. But as the day slowly started to dawn, I must have fallen asleep again, for I was awoken at about 08:40 by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

She’d brought with her some cuttings of rosemary, thyme and lemon thyme, and while she was doing my legs and feet as I was lying in bed, we talked about the herbs.

After she left, it took me quite a while to leave the bed, and after I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, it was 09:20 when I found my way into the kitchen.

The first job was to prepare my breakfast – porridge, black coffee and the last two home-made croissants. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Or, rather, I wasn’t. As usual, I found myself running up a side alley to the church at Barnack to look at the tower and steeple, and that led me on and on to several other places too. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this was why I didn’t receive a very good grade from university – I was being continually side-tracked and spent more time learning the things that were important to me rather than the things that the examiner wanted to know.

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to finish off. That took longer than it ought to have done too because I was continually drifting off into that semi-consciousness when all kinds of hallucinations drifted before my eyes. However, they are online now … "the notes, not the hallucinations" – ed … for you to consult at your leisure.

Once the notes were out of the way, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I was with a former girlfriend last night, and there was something about going to hospital. And when she came back out, I built this big plastic greenhouse out of one of these kits that you buy from a DiY shop. It was absolutely impossible to anchor it to the ground with its plastic outer coating applied, so I tied two wires from front to back and two wires from side to side, and where they intersected, I dropped a row of paving slabs on it from the door to the inside, and the paving slabs held down the wire and stopped the greenhouse blowing away.

This story about my girlfriend in hospital and the plastic greenhouse and the unique method of holding it down reflects a remarkably similar situation that is currently or has recently occurred elsewhere in a different plane of existence than in a dream. However, this is yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There was something about an Indian, a young man who came round to me for some tuition in something or other, but in fact I ended up giving him some tutoring in English. There were things that he didn’t quite understand, such as “why is it ‘tutoring’ and not ‘tuting’?”. I did my best to explain and gave him a few other examples. He asked me whether it would be possible for him to come again. I thought “well, why not, if he’s keen and interested in learning?” so we agreed that this kind of tuition could continue for a couple more weeks and we’d see where we end up.

This sounds quite similar to one of the guys to whom I taught webpage design in Brussels twenty-odd years ago when all you have to worry about was HTML 5.0 and *.css. And these days, I’m still using them, with a little bit of IFRAME and JavaScript added on for good measure.

I was with a friend of mine, and we were walking around the edge of some city that I knew well. There were several big tower blocks there, so we went for a walk. One thing we found was a small cat trying to jump up to a window to climb into a house, so I went over to try to pick it up and help it, but at that moment, a woman opened the window, so I had a laugh and a joke with her and then moved on. In the shopping arcade underneath these big buildings, there were all kinds of shops that we were looking at, and we picked up one or two things from there. But round another corner was the Woolworth’s shop. I said to my friend “here’s something that I haven’t seen for years,” so he agreed, and we dug our way through the bombardment ruins and found our way into the supermarket. It was really nice and clean and small … fell asleep here … but my friend was talking at one time about us being in a hotel a while ago. It was one of these very posh places, and we’d been on a course of some kind. I’d been interviewed for something or other, so I was late returning to my table. The desserts had been cleared away, so I didn’t bother too much about that. In the end, they announced that they were wanting nominations for someone to be the hospital ambassador, I suppose, for the forthcoming year. But you can’t nominate yourself – you need six people to nominate you, so I decided to let nature take its course at that. I had a black Mk III estate, a 2000E, and I wanted to put that back on the road, so I wanted to do some work on it, but I ended up talking to two guys from the hotel. One of them wanted some documents signed, and the one who was with him, he ended up saying that my music was really great and that if anyone had any problems moving cars and leaving after the conference, they had a mechanic on site They would suspend paying the bill until the problem had been fixed. I mentioned all of this to my friend, and he told me that it was not really as simple as that. He’d had a problem with a motorbike, and what they had done was to push it off a trailer, left it for a while, started it up, told him that it was fixed and charged him €16:00. That made me go to think about if I were to advertise this car mechanics service, just explain that it was for basic things and nothing really major.

This housing estate could have been any one of a dozen housing estates around which I walked in Moscow and Leningrad when I was there with the coaches in the 1980s.

It could also be where I used to live in Brussels, where we did indeed have a little shopping centre on the ground floor of one of the blocks of flats nearby. However, there was no “Woolworths” in that shopping centre, neither in Moscow nor in Leningrad either.

The conference sounds like one of the Open University Students Association conferences, although we weren’t ever likely to be allowed to stay in an upmarket hotel. Not on your Nellie!

Once everything else was out of the way, there was football. I had the match from yesterday to watch, and when I went to restart it, I found that I’d only just about managed to watch half an hour of it, so I settled down for a long session.

There’s no doubt that Colwyn Bay played the prettier, more technical football, but there were plenty of nice touches from the Rhydaman players too. Rhydaman’s players were also the most aggressive, and although I’d left the match on Saturday with Colwyn Bay 2-0 up, by the time the game was over, it was 2-2 and some of the Colwyn Bay players were quite close to losing their cool.

Later on, there was a baking session. And something that I have learnt today is that my fruit bread doesn’t keep for much longer than a week. When I went to look at it today, at two weeks old, it looked as if it needed a shave, so it went the way of the west.

That meant as well as a loaf, I also had to bake more fruit bread. The two loaves that I ended up making look wonderful, both risen up like lifts. But what I’m going to have to do with the fruit bread is the same as with the ordinary loaf, and that is to cut it in half and stick one half in the freezer to pull out when the first half is eaten.

There’s no tea again tonight. I’m off to bed as soon as I’ve written these notes, backed up the computer, etc.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about herbs … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once lived in the same building as a girl who was studying for a degree in cookery.
One night she told me that her best friend had been expelled after failing her exams
"How come she failed?" I asked her.
"She had to cook a dish of fish cooked with herbs, but the examiner didn’t like it."
"Why not?"
"The examiner told her that this was neither the thyme nor the plaice for this kind of thing."

0

Friday 17th July 2026 – AFTER THE DISASTER …

… of yesterday, today has been a much more satisfying, and a much more productive day, and for once in a long, long time, I am happy with what I have accomplished.

Not that you might have thought so during the night. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … it was 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed last night, looking forward to my long, uninterrupted sleep.

And there I stayed, too, until all of 02:03 (I checked). At that point, an enormous coughing fit awoke me (yes, the antibiotics stopped a week ago) and I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

At some point, though, I must have done, but it wasn’t for long and I was awake again, watching the darkness gradually turn into daylight as the sunlight slowly began to creep round the edges of the shutters.

The alarm shattered my reverie, and to my surprise, it didn’t take long for me to have my feet on the floor. Mind you, having my feet on the floor is one thing. Standing upright on them is something else completely.

Once I’d summoned up the enthusiasm and the energy, I went to sort myself out in the bathroom and then came back in here.

I had my CX500 out, so I thought that I’d go to see my friend on the Wirral. I went all the way there, but he wasn’t in. It turned out that he was in the local bar, so I went to look for it and there, I joined him. We were chatting about things and he mentioned that there was some kind of motorcycle rally taking place over the weekend in his area. We carried on chatting for a while and then I asked him if he wanted me to come up on the weekend to go to this rally, but he said “no”. I thought “there’s not much point carrying on this conversation” so I went to begin to go home. But I had no headlight on the motorbike. There was a sidelight but no headlight. First of all, I went down to another pub and had half of bitter. That was absolutely packed and I had trouble trying to find a seat. There was someone in there saying “God, this place is just packed with people drinking” so I shouted out “so what did you expect to find in a pub?” that brought a whole roar of laughter from most of the people in there. When I went to go, I climbed onto the motorbike and made sure that the sidelight at least was working, started up the bike and headed for home. But I was halfway down Electricity Street and Alton Street before I realised that I was going the wrong way, so I turned the motorbike round and headed for home. I stopped off on the way at a friend’s house in Winsford. He found a headlight bulb so I went to try it in the motorbike and it actually worked. I thanked my friend and my father. This other guy was here, he from the Wirral. He said to my dad and his friend “do you want to see two motor scooters?”. They had no interest in that so they said “no”, but it turned out that they were two types from Eastern Europe. One was a Korno but I don’t know what the other one was. Eventually, they went to see them but they were distracted by four kittens that came out of the garage. One of the kittens I knew, but I didn’t know the three others. When he went away to do something, my father, his friend and I just stayed there looking at these kittens.

There’s lots of mileage in this dream.

  • My father and his friend are here again, after making an appearance a couple of days ago. My father, I can understand, but not his friend, about whom I haven’t thought for something like thirty-five years.
  • As for my friend, there is a pub just around the corner from where he used to live. And there is actually a funny story about it, but the World is not yet ready to hear it.
  • He was also extremely moody and his rather abrupt “no” wouldn’t have been any surprise in real life.
  • Why I would be in Alton Street and Electricity Street (in Crewe) when I’m supposed to be on the Wirral, and coming home via Winsford is totally mystifying me.
  • The friend with the lock-up garages (and the kittens) is a different friend completely than the one on the Wirral.
  • In that particular friend’s garages, you might well be likely to find a couple of rare motor scooters from Eastern Europe, but as far as I have been able to find, there was nothing called a “Korno”. However, there is a village of that name in the Czech Republic.

And probably much more besides.

There was also a dream about me having a very tight timetable for the place where I worked. There was talk that I’d be having a few days off from the Wednesday to the following Tuesday to go to see a concert by a German composer, somewhere on the north coast of Scotland on the Saturday night. Nerina would be going with me and so would my brother and his wife. We met in a pub to discuss what I thought was the trip but it turned out that they had no intention whatever of going. They couldn’t recall mentioning it in the past, but I was certain that they did. But I’d warned everyone at work, but obviously we aren’t going now so it doesn’t matter.

Not that I’m likely to be going anywhere with my brother and his wife, a classical music concert wouldn’t be of all that much interest to me.

But the idea of organising everything and having it all fall apart at the last moment is nothing new whatsoever, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s something that happened frequently in the old days. As for working to a tight schedule, I’m sure that you have seen plenty of evidence of this.

But there was one boy who was fed up with having porridge and things like that for breakfast and was agitating his parents to have sandwiches. I hoped that that didn’t happen because I enjoyed my porridge in the morning.

This is something that I dread happening. Breakfast, with my porridge and toast, is just about the only meal I really enjoy these days and it would be an absolute catastrophe if I were to lose my appetite for it.

And that reminds me – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been talking a lot about the loss of my appetite following the chemotherapy sessions that I had. While I was browsing through these pages looking for something in particular, I came across this quote –
"At lunchtime, I had some vegan cheese on my butty and I’m a little disturbed because the taste seems to have changed. It hasn’t – it’s that my taste buds have changed since I’ve had chemotherapy and that’s disturbing me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m off my food right now. I don’t really fancy anything to eat and the idea of eating anything greasy makes me queasy."

That’s a quote from the first time that I had chemotherapy, and in particular the ENTRY FROM 10th APRIL 2016 – over ten years ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

The nurse was a little later than usual today, and he wittered away about nothing in particular while he dealt with my legs and feet. After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

At the moment, he’s having an interesting discussion on the difficulties that people had back in his day almost two hundred years ago, telling the difference between Anglo-Sacon and Norman stonework.

saxon stonework St Mary Magdalene, Geddington, NorthamptonshireIf you ever see them close together these days now that we know so much more, there’s no difficulty in recognising the differences

You can see the difference here in this photograph that I took of St Mary Magdalen Church in Geddington. The Anglo-Saxon stonework is on the left and straight ahead over the arch. Then round to the right, where it all becomes so much neater, that’s the Norman stonework. The Normans had much more experience of stonework than did the Anglo-Saxons, what with everything that they built in Normandy prior to the Battle of Hastings.

Back in here, I had the usual few things to do, and then I attacked the notes for this concert on which I’d been working. They are now all written and ready for typing.

After that, there was one that I started a week or two back, and that’s now all done too and ready for broadcasting, although that won’t be for a while just yet.

There were the odd interruptions while I was doing that. First of all, there was a disgusting drink break with the lunchtime medication, and then my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff.

While she was here, I had her take two of the drawers out of the freezer, and I sat on the chair and went through them, sorting them out. Some stuff was binned but the rest is now organised and I know what I’ve got and where it is. And doesn’t that make a change?

Back in here and after the radio stuff was finished, I began to tidy up the mass of papers that was hanging around in here. That’s mostly now done too. As I said, it’s been a very productive day.

However, I didn’t ‘arf have a fright. While I was looking at something out of the window, a big bird, probably a seagull, flew slap-bang head-first right into it. The noise was astonishing and I thought that the window had broken, but it remained intact.

I told my cleaner about it, and she went outside to look but there was no evidence of anything.

bird strike window u z leuven pellenberg belgiumNot like the owl that flew into the window of a place where I was staying in Leuven.

The poor bird – an owl by the looks of things – quite clearly left his mark on the glass there, and I don’t think that he could have survived a collision like that. But on my window, there’s not a trace.

Later on, it was time for tea. Chips, sausage and baked beans – the beans cooked with freshly ground black pepper and vegan cheese. Delicious as always.

And for pudding, I had some of the fruit bread that I made a few days ago. It’s a little dry, but the taste is magnificent and I’m really happy with that.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about appetites … "well, one of us has" – ed … a young guy takes a young girl out for a meal. To his surprise, she orders almost everything on the menu. And then she gulps it down.
"Blimey!" said the boy. "Do you eat like this at home?"
"No" she replies. "No-one wants to sleep with me there."

0

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?"

0

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."

0

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.

0

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."

0

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