Tag Archives: physiotherapist

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

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

0

Friday 14th November 2025 – MY NEW OFFICE …

… chair is not as comfortable as I would have liked it to be.

Mind you, that’s not the end of the World, not at all. Firstly, if I can’t try it out before I buy it, I have to accept whatever I can find. And secondly, it’s far more comfortable than the previous one.

Anyway, my faithful cleaner and I had loads of fun late this afternoon assembling it and I’m now sitting in it, making the most of a seat that actually goes up and down as it’s supposed to do and a backrest that reclines into a comfortable sleeping position if ever I need it.

As you can gather, I’m feeling rather better this morning. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, sleep has always been my go-to cure for all evils.

Not that I had a good sleep last night, though. I was determined to push on and write up the notes for yesterday and the missing ones from the day before yesterday, before I went to bed, and although I managed it, it was not far off midnight by the time that I hit the sack.

And although I was asleep quite quickly, it lasted until all of … err … 05:10 when I awoke, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

In the end, round about 06:10, I gave up trying and had an early start to the day. Not that I was in any rush, though. I took my time having a good scrub up and taking my medication, including making another honey, ginger and lemon drink, and I wasn’t back in here any earlier than I might usually have been.

And so I transcribed the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in the tower block at work and had gone out for a quick coffee. However, there had been a couple of folk musicians playing in the café so I stayed around to listen for much longer than I really ought to have done. On the way back to my office, I found myself on the roof. It was November and it was a beautiful sunny day. There was a sandy kind of beach on the roof and you could see for miles, and the sea in the distance looked beautiful. I thought that I could bring my sandwiches up here at lunchtime to have a nice little relax. I looked back into the building through the fire escape. It seemed that the top floor stairwell had been completely redesigned over some kind of period and repainted. One of the senior officials who knew me was there, so I asked him when it had been done. He said that it had been done during the Luxembourg Presidency and made the building much easier to maintain and clean. I set off to walk down the stairs to my office but after about three or four floors, found myself on the ground floor. It was inside a little delicatessen type of place in the busy shopping street just outside. I wondered what had happened to all the intervening floors. I was being hours late back to work so I rushed to the lift and opened the doors, but there was a girl in it. I asked her “do you mind if I join you?”. She replied “yes, if you are going to do it today”. I asked her which floor she required but she gave a very non-committal answer so I set the dial to go to my floor and the lift set off. But there was the sound of a girl panting very loudly. It wasn’t the girl who was with me so I asked her if she knew what was happening. She replied that it was obviously some girl in a hurry so I asked “where is she?”. She replied “ohh, she’s around somewhere” and that made things even more confusing.

The tower block relates to a building in which I once worked for a short while in Manchester, although it didn’t have a beach on the roof and you couldn’t see the sea from there. There was no delicatessen on the ground floor either.

However, being horribly late back from a tea break or a lunch brings back a few memories of a very troubled time and I’m surprised that it has risen its ugly head once more after all these years.

And later on, I was at someone else’s house and my niece was there with one of her daughters and her daughter’s friend. They were messing around with an AI app and had managed to make the television in this room talk to them. They were discussing things like going out. It was a Sunday afternoon and fairly late and I would have expected them to go out much earlier because it was such a nice day. But they were talking to this app about going out, and in the end, one of them asked about when they could have a taxi. The app replied that he could be there in about ten minutes. My niece said “well, I want to get washed and get ready and everything” so I said “well, just go out as you are”. So they arranged to have this car come to pick them up via this AI app and they dashed upstairs to get ready. I went to look out of the window and there were crowds of people walking up and down the street, kids running around, and there was a huge dog, an enormous thing. Then there was a slightly smaller dog, all white like a polar bear, and there was a strange kind of deer that was also white. It had the two hind legs much shorter than the front legs so it was walking on a lead with someone in a kind of strange fashion. As I looked, a brown Cortina MkIII pulled up in the street at the bottom of the hill and went to reverse into someone’s drive. However, he hit a trailer that was parked on the pavement. I thought that if he’s the taxi, he’s going to be in a lot of trouble. But he parked in the drive and walked off. So then I went up with the television and found my mobile ‘phone, which was an old type of Nokia. The back of it didn’t seem to fit on the front. I noticed that I’d written some notes on the back about where all the data was stored on which memory stick. I didn’t remember doing that in the past, so I sat down and began to play around with this television and this AI map. However, it was long after ten minutes, the taxi hadn’t arrived and the girls still hadn’t come downstairs from getting ready.

The view from this house corresponds with a view that I had from a house that I used to visit in Neston on the Wirral fifty-odd years ago, although my niece never ever visited it. Talking Ai apps are all the rage these days, although I’m doing my best to avoid them. I prefer text that I can cut, paste and save rather than rely on my fading memory.

The animals were quite curious too and I don’t know what to make of them.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and sorted out my legs. And then, in accordance with the prescription that I received yesterday, she took my blood pressure.

"If the blood pressure is less than 8.5" said the prescription. "telephone the dialysis clinic immediately."

And so she telephoned immediately. "Mr Hall’s blood pressure is 7.9!"

"Oh" came the reply. "That’s normal for him!"

After she left, I made breakfast and for once, I managed to eat everything as well as drink my coffee. And how I have missed a good mug of coffee!

Back in here, there was the uploading of a pile of little miscellaneous programs, some of which I’ve been using for over twenty years and which are difficult to find these days. Luckily, I’ve been saving all the installation programs but even so, there are one or two of the full executable programs that are no longer on line and in one case, the link to the executable program has been hi-jacked so I had to end up cleaning out all of the mess that it had created.

After a disgusting drink break, I made myself ready for the Centre de Ré-education and the taxi came to pick me up.

Having told them that three is the maximum amount of sessions that I feel able to do in a day, they had changed my programme to give me four this afternoon. And while it’s back to three next week, the week after, they have given me four again. I may as well talk to myself, I suppose.

The first session was sitting at something like a rowing machine, using my leg muscles (such as they are) to move some weights. A whole thirty minutes of it too and I couldn’t stand up afterwards. They had to lift me from the machine.

Secondly, I was with my physiotherapist who had me lying on my side giving me breathing exercises. She also suggested some exercises that I can do in bed, although I have my own ideas about those. That was when I realised that I was feeling better.

Thirdly, they strapped me to a machine that had me standing up. They kept on asking me every five minutes if I was still OK. I’ve no idea why, because it didn’t seem like any effort for me and I was enjoying the view out of the window.

Finally, the occupational therapist wanted to see me about hints and tips for the shower. However, that was really a waste of half an hour because he had no suggestions to make. And when he was talking about non-slip rubber mats, he was showing me examples at €150:00 or thereabouts. We’re doing the same job with a worn-out bath towel that one of my cleaner’s other clients was throwing away.

Back here, my cleaner helped me in and then we attacked the new chair. It was a complex piece of machinery to assemble but it seems to work really well. As I said earlier, it’s not as comfortable as I would have liked, but it’s definitely an improvement.

Tea was air-fried chips with salad and those breaded quorn nuggets that I like. And, regardless of there being only very small portions, for once I managed to eat everything. And it’s been a long time since that has happened.

So now I’m off to bed. With a repaired (I hope) washing machine, I shall be clothes-washing in the morning and then off to dialysis to see what delights they have in store for me there.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the girl in the lift … "well, one of us has" – ed … I did once meet a girl in a lift
"Do you mind if I join you?" I asked.
"I suppose so" she replied. "But honestly, I had no idea that I was coming apart."

0

Thursday 6th November 2025 – JUST FOR A …

… change, tonight I tried something new for tea. And for the first time since I can’t remember when, I managed to eat a plate full of food and leave nothing behind on the plate. This is an exciting development.

However, more of that anon.

Last night, I tried yet again to make a determined effort to finish my notes at some kind of realistic time, to dash through everything else that needed doing and then have an early night.

But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall from past experience, I failed miserably. It was 22:34 when my notes finally crawled online and by the time that I snuggled up under the warm covers, it was 23:10, about half an hour later than I was hoping.

As seems to be the case these days, I was asleep quite quickly, despite all of the coughing that I was doing, and there I lay, totally dead to the World until all of … errr … 04:44.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so round about 05:20 I left the bed and dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day. They turned out to be something of a dog’s dinner and will require some considerable editing, but at least they are done. I took full advantage of the quiet of the early morning.

After the bathroom, I went to take my medication. This involved making another one of these ginger, lemon and honey drinks. And once more, Brain of Britain forgot about the reaction between the acid in the lemon juice and the alkaline Calcium Carbonate. As a result, I ended up with only half a glass of drink and a mountain of soggy paper tissue.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And once more, I was surprised at how far I’d travelled. I was with some friends of mine. We were doing something in the front garden of the house of one of them. Suddenly, five people walked across the lawn from somewhere, but we don’t know from where they came. They went to the front door, but we couldn’t see particularly what was happening from where we were standing. All of a sudden, one of the people, the one nearest the door, seemed to flinch as if someone had struck him or attempted to strike him. Then one of the parents came out and began to kick at these people, trying to chase them away. I wondered what had gone on, but there was one of him and five of them so I went over to see what I could do. These people slowly began to retreat but suddenly there were more and more of them. I went around the back, but there were several hundred children coming in from down the hill and through the hedge. I went to the hedge and began to shoo the children away but there were more and more of them coming. In the end, I was overwhelmed. I decided to go back to the house to see what we could do but when I reached the back of the house, there were probably a thousand children and people on the back lawn staring at the house. I wondered what on earth was going on here and what are we going to do about this.

Whoever these friends were, I have no idea. But this was a really creepy, eerie dream that evidently has some significance about something but I can’t think what. I know that I like children, but only in small numbers where, if they begin to misbehave, you can give them back to their parents. Having a thousand or so dumped in my lap all at once would be quite overwhelming.

Later on, I was out in the van somewhere. I ended up stopping in a country lane where I set up a bit of a camp at the side of the road with a tent. I had my cooking facilities and everything. Next morning I awoke quite early and had to go into town to do some shopping, but I noticed that I’d left the van parked right in the middle of the road. It was a surprise to me that vehicles had been able to go by without actually saying anything. I had a look, and there was a space not too far from where my tent was pitched, where there was a small amount of tarmac that had been spilled onto the grass verge so I thought that I’d put the van there. Although there would be some of it on the road, there would still be a lot less and it wouldn’t be in the middle. For some reason, I had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to manoeuvre the van onto this small piece of tarmac. I remember that there was someone watching me too. I thought that this isn’t a very good advert for my driving.

This is my big worry these days. Just before I stopped driving, I could feel that my reflexes were slowing down dramatically and I didn’t feel as secure on the road as I once did. Even if I were to recover the strength in my legs (which is doubtful) I don’t think that I’d be safe on the roads.

One thing that I remember about that dream just now was that I actually walked to the van. I counted the steps, but I can’t remember how many there were. I thought to myself “that’s an improvement”.

Ahhh – if only …..

The nurse came along at his usual time, still cheerful and full of bonhomie which is very nice. He didn’t stay long and said that he’d see me tomorrow at 06:45. Yes, I have dialysis tomorrow early morning.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and have a leisurely start to the day.

After breakfast, I spent some time in the kitchen. While I was sorting out the food the other day, I came across a recipe for a Moroccan Bean tajine. One hundred percent vegan and, to my surprise, I had all of the ingredients in stock.

A proper Moroccan clay coking pot I don’t have, but I do have a slow cooker so last night, I had put some beans in it to soak overnight. This morning, I followed the recipe and mixed everything together, then I added it all into the slow cooker and left it to simmer away throughout the day.

Back in here, I had things to do, but I was interrupted by the postie who brought me another couple of packets. There are just two more to arrive now, and I can’t wait for them.

After the disgusting drink break, the taxi came to pick me up to take me to the Centre de Ré-education.

The first session was fifteen minutes working on the muscles of my arms, followed by fifteen minutes working on what remains of the muscles in my legs. I still live in hope that something might happen to enable me to walk again.

The second session was with my physiotherapist who had me squeezing rubber balls with my feet, and then she took me for a walk with a walk frame. A walk frame is no good, though. It twists my arms into all kinds of unfortunate positions that are quite painful after a short while.

The final session was a team effort in the gym, playing carpet skittles. They have some strange ideas in this place.

Back here, my cleaner helped me into the apartment and then I crashed out for an hour or so. The combination of the early start and the effort at the Centre de Ré-education had wiped me out.

Once I’d come round back into the Land of the Living, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme. Even so, I’m beginning to fall behind again and I need to motivate myself much more. I’m hoping that when the chemotherapy and the physiotherapy are finished, I’ll have much more time to press on with things. It’s hard to find the energy to do things when I’m wearing myself out with all of these medical appointments.

Tea tonight was a ladle-ful of the tajine with couscous. It was excellent too and not too heavy. I managed to eat all of it too, as I said earlier. Couscous is a high-protein food and so are white beans, so add that to the fats and the carbohydrates in my vegan chocolate and coconut cake, and for once, I had a healthy meal.

And not only that, it was delicious.

So right now I’m off to bed. But not before I’ve rinsed the lentils in the slow cooker. Tomorrow, I’m going to make a vegan lasagna so the lentils are simmering away nicely.

But seeing as we have been talking about children climbing the fence … "well, one of us has" – ed … many years ago, I caught a couple of kids climbing over the fence at Gresty Road during a Crewe Alexandra football match.
"It’s no good, kids" I said. "You’ve been caught red-handed. You’re not getting away with this. Now, you can just jolly well climb back and watch the second half."

0

Friday 31st October 2025 – AND EVEN THOUGH …

… I served up a much smaller portion of food for tea tonight, I still left the table with some food left on the plate. My appetite has all-but disappeared these days and, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I’m beginning to worry about it.

At least I’m managing a reasonable breakfast, so that’s something for which to be grateful.

Last night, I remember saying that I was going to leave off worrying about my (lack of) appetite, and so I did. I finished my notes at a time that was much more reasonable than just recently, and then after taking the statistics and backing up the computer, I crawled off to the bathroom.

Managing this time not to fall asleep on the porcelain horse, I sorted myself out in the bathroom and then fell into bed at something like 22:45. Not early, but definitely not late either.

Although I awoke at about 04:15, it was only for a couple of minutes or so, and I was soon back fast asleep in bed. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29.

There was nothing on the dictaphone from the night, and so it must have been a really deep, relaxing sleep. But I’m in two minds about this. A deep, relaxing sleep will probably do me the world of good, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I enjoy my nocturnal travels. It’s the only excitement that I seem to have these days.

After sorting myself out in the bathroom, I went into the kitchen for my medication.

Because of this cough that I have that doesn’t seem to want to go away, my cleaner recommended a hot drink of fresh lemon juice, ginger and honey. I had some honey so yesterday she brought me a root of ginger and some lemons. I made myself a hot drink with some of it and then went for the medication.

Of course, Brain of Britain forgot that the Calcium Carbonate powder that I take, diluted in liquid, is alkaline. Consequently, when I added it into the hot mix which contained very acidic lemon juice, I had a most interesting reaction.

Anyway, I’ll tell you how this concoction goes when I can find my throat again.

There was some repair work to do this morning. These IKEA drawers are very poorly made and every now and again, one falls apart when I pull on it. Last night, I had one do exactly that so this morning, I had to gather up the pieces and reassemble the drawer.

That didn’t leave much time before Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

She sorted out the injection and then tended to my feel and legs, and then disappeared off to her next port of call. I went and made breakfast.

Back in here, there were things to do, as there always seems to be. But once I’d completed everything, I began work on the radio programme, editing, pairing and seguing the tracks that I’ve chosen.

There are two more tracks than usual in that week because they all seem to be quite short ones. To make up for it, one day I’ll play the thirty-two-minute version of Mountain’s NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE.

When the music had been sorted out, I went for my disgusting drink break and then I prepared myself for this afternoon’s torture.

The driver came on time, which makes a change, and I arrived at the Centre de Ré-education just in time for my 14:00 appointment. However, I had to send someone in search of my physiotherapist. Consequently, I missed ten precious minutes of my session.

Today, she had me walking with this huge upright walk frame. It’s certainly easier to use than a pair of crutches, but I almost came to grief when, on the little slope, the front end reared up and nearly sent me flying.

These walk frames are OK, but where am I going to put one? They don’t fold up so there’s no room in here for it, and it won’t fit into the boot of the taxi either.

The rest of the session, she had me trying to stand up from a seat without pushing with my hands. I managed it once, but after that, it was a dismal failure.

She reckons that I’ll benefit from some more “advice” from a few more people, and will arrange the appointments. If it’s free, why not?

The second session, after a half-hour pause, was fifteen minutes sitting down pushing a series of weights with my legs. I can’t manage all that much, but every little helps, I suppose.

The remaining fifteen minutes was lifting weights with a downhill pull on a cord. That wasn’t too difficult, but the greatest part of the exercise was trying to stand up out of the chair afterwards.

The taxi was waiting for me when I left, so I didn’t even have a second to relax and recover. And it’s a long, complicated hike out to the car.

Back here, with the aid of my faithful cleaner, I staggered into the apartment and sat down on a chair, totally exhausted, while I had another disgusting drink.

And then back in here, where I began to write the notes for the songs that I’d chosen. That was a task that took me up to teatime, by which time I’d written about half.

Tea tonight was salad, chips and some of those breaded quorn nuggets that I like, but as I said, I left food on my plate yet again.

When I’d finished, I made another one of these ginger, honey and lemon hot cocktails. I reckon that it’s a case of either “kill or cure”. We’ll find out if it works in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about these wonderful cures … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the two farmers at Crewe Cattle Market back in the 1960s.
One of them, clearly worried, asked the other "when your cow had that mystery ailment in her throat, what did you give her?"
The other replied "I gave her a mix of turpentine, molasses, beeswax and rapeseed oil."
They met up in the market two weeks later, and the first one said "Remember that mix that you told me about? I gave it to my cow, but she died."
"Now isn’t that strange?" said the second. "So did mine!"

0

Wednesday 29th October 2025 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

… wasted this evening.

This afternoon, I went to the Centre de Ré-education and, once more, they put me through the mill. I am so exhausted that standing up out of my chair is about a hundred times more difficult than it usually is.

It’s not as if I hadn’t prepared for it either. After I’d written my notes, in something of a hurry it has to be said, I rushed through everything else and finally crawled into my lovely fresh bed just one minute or so before 23:00, which was very nice.

How I was looking forward to a good sleep, and I wasn’t disappointed because, once more, I slept right through to the alarm at 06:29. That was certainly making the most of it.

When the alarm went off, I was at Stranraer watching a football match. It had just finished and the commentator was saying that if Stranraer had played like that during a league game, they would have been several places higher up the table by now. But I didn’t have very long to stay there because the alarm went off immediately at that point.

Not that I disagree with the commentator, but there are quite a few players at Stranraer who have come from non-league circles and they are making naive mistakes that are being punished by more experienced players.

But even though I don’t seem to have recorded it, I can still hear the commentator announcing “there is one change from the team from last weekend”. That’s no surprise in view of Salou Turay’s injury, but then again, that was the previous week, not last week.

As usual, I needed a good few minutes to raise myself from the edge of the bed and into the bathroom, and then I wandered off into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. One dream I have already mentioned, but also the clinic to where I go was closing down for the day so I was waiting there, hoping to have a haircut and a shave before they all went. But as usual, I was the very last person, and I was watching the person before me, how they were spending the whole quarter-hour on him with his hair and everything like that. In the end, they finally finished. I walked over there on my crutches, but I was walking far too fast and outran the speed at which I could raise my crutches so I actually managed to walk two or three paces, which surprised me. It surprised them too. I sat down in the chair and he told me to move my chair back a bit so that I wasn’t crowding the desk. Then he began to talk to me about this soup that’s made of vegetables. I couldn’t think of what this had to do with having my hair cut and being shaved. Then he pulled out a brochure for a caravan, a static home that’s situated at Wrenbury in Cheshire. Half of the brochure for this place included some see-through flooring which I imagined was thick, protective glass. He said that my first task would be to go to sleep in there. I wondered how on earth I was going to manage that. However, they opened the door of the accompanying car and made ready to open the door of this mobile home.

This dream seems to be confusing my dialysis experiences with something else. But if only I could walk three paces without my crutches. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

As for the static caravan, or mobile home, there was a Romany encampment at Wrenbury for a great many years, but it was cleared out at some point in recent times, but I’ve not been able to find the precise date.

And no Zero last night, after her visit yesterday. That’s a huge disappointment.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, with her usual irrepressible spirit. She gave me my injection, sorted out my legs and feet and then cleared off again, leaving me to concentrate on making my breakfast.

Back in here, I had various things to do as usual, which seemed to take an enormous amount of time, and then I pushed on and finished the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been engaged. They are now ready for dictation.

Having done that, I prepared myself for the Centre de Ré-education and it’s a good job that I did, because the taxi came half an hour earlier for me. That was rather embarrassing because I was … errr … otherwise occupied, and the driver had to wait until I’d finished.

When I arrived, I had to wait over half an hour, only to find that my physiotherapist was off sick. Another one took her place and had me working out, but spent the final ten minutes massaging this bad shoulder that I have picked up from somewhere.

Another half-hour wait, and then into the gym for some light muscular work. But nothing “light” about it at all. I was aching in places that I didn’t even know that I had by the time that I’d finished.

Yet another half-hour wait, and then twelve minutes on the exercise bicycle. Last week, I managed 1.3 kilometres. Today, I managed 1.9 kilometres. Things are obviously improving, but I knew all about it when I finished.

The taxi driver turned up bang on tie and brought me home, where my cleaner helped me collapse into a chair. And there I stayed for an hour, trying to find the strength to move into the bedroom.

Once back in here though, I made a start on the next programme. Most of the music has been chosen and I’ve even written some notes. Where has this enthusiasm come from?

Tea was the rest of the kidney bean and soya mince whatsit with rice, and once again, a fair proportion of it ended up in the bin. I’m just not hungry these days, which is a shame. It’s not like me at all.

But now I’m off to bed, to have a good sleep ready for dialysis. Let’s see if I have just a three-hour session tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the gym at the Centre de Ré-education … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone else in there was extremely dispirited by his (lack of) performance.
"I can’t keep up with this" he complained. "I don’t have the strength for it. I don’t think that I’ll be coming again."
The monitor looked at him. "So this discussion will count then as your ‘too weak’ notice, I suppose?"

0

Friday 24th October 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I’ve left the table, leaving a pile of food on my plate. This is something that is beginning to worry me. It seems that these days, I’m living on a few mouthfuls of food and a pile of protein drinks, and that can’t be good for me.

And neither is going to bed late either, but here we are. last night, it was just after 23:30 when I finally made it into bed. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. It’s not as if there’s a great deal to do when I have finished my tea.

So after writing my notes, checking the statistics and backing up the computer, I went and sorted myself out in the bathroom and then a very weary me headed off to crawl underneath the covers.

For a change, I had a decent sleep. I remember tossing and turning a few times during the night, but that was about everything. At least – until about 06:20 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings.

Only nine minutes to go for the alarm so I hauled myself quickly out from underneath the covers and switched off the alarms. The storm seemed to have died down somewhat, which was good news. One of the ideas going through my head was that if the wind was blowing anything at all like yesterday, I was going to cancel my trip to the Centre de Ré-education.

Being out of bed at 06:20 is one thing. Actually standing up and heading to the bathroom is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And it was rather disappointing. Nerina and I had had a friend come round to visit us. We went for a drive into Crewe – the town centre. As we turned into Flag Lane, there was the Workingmen’s Club place on the right-hand side in the old temporary buildings so we stopped and went in. The person with us was extremely impressed. He’d never seen a place like this before – hundreds of people lounging around, playing darts or snooker, carpet bowls etc. I said that I’d been here a couple of times to give talks on different things. It’s the kind of place where you would come where there was a big football match on the TV and it’s a place where you would have plenty of atmosphere in here with the crowds watching it.

In Crewe, there were plenty of Workingmen’s Clubs and Family Social Clubs, although a lot less these days than there used to be. In my mis-spent youth I used to go to play snooker and table tennis (and have the occasional drink) in one or two of them, and I’ve even played in groups that have played in them. The buildings to which I’m referring though are the old Catholic primary school which, according to one of these street view things, has now been demolished and replaced by a flock of bats.

There’s an interesting story about the communal TV though. When I was very young, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, there was a cup game featuring Crewe Alexandra being televised. The parish council hired a television for the night and there were probably a couple of hundreds of us crammed into Shavington Village Hall watching the game on this tiny 405-line TV screen.

“The Good Old Days”, anyone?.

The nurse was early today. Apparently another one of his clients has been hospitalised … "what’s he doing to them all?" – ed … so his round is rather shorter. We talked about dialysis and the blood clot. He was formerly a dialysis nurse, and he told me that had it happened when he was working there, they would have cleaned the needle and re-inserted it, rather than abandon the procedure.

After he left, I made breakfast, even though I wasn’t all that hungry, and then came back in here to work.

There were a few things that needed doing, and the rest of the morning was spent sorting out some more music for a couple of radio programmes.

There were a few interruptions. Firstly, my cleaner came in with the injections for next week, and then Rosemary ‘phoned up for a chat. Just a brief one, because I needed to prepare my things for going out.

My cleaner came back a little later to do her stuff, and when the taxi arrived, she helped me out to the car although the wind was nothing at all as bad as yesterday.

At the Centre de Ré-education they put me through my paces.

Firstly, they had me working on a kind of press, sitting down and pushing weights with my feet.

Secondly, they attached a length of strong elastic to a pillar and I had to pull on it, keeping my upper arms parallel to my torso.

Those exercises were for fifteen minutes each

Thirdly, I was worked over by the physiotherapist who had me doing all kinds of things, even walking on my hands and knees. Thirty minutes of all of that was more than enough, thank you.

After a rest, during which I was drifting in and out of semi-sleep, I was given twelve minutes on the exercise bike. That was really tough, given the state of my knees and lower legs, but I managed to travel 1.3 theoretical kilometres. At one stage, I was developing as much as eleven watts of power.

It wasn’t just the exercises either. For many of the exercises, they had me sitting in low seats, from which it is almost impossible for me to haul myself up. It was a real gymnastic effort to do that, but, as they say, if it’s not hurting, it’s not doing you any good. I reckon that if that’s the case, then today I must have done a lot of good.

Just like chemotherapy, you don’t have a minute to recover before you are turfed out. It’s a labyrinth in there and you have to walk miles to where the taxis wait. Being disabled and in an exhausted state, it’s no picnic. When I arrived back here, I fell straight into a chair for an hour to recover.

Once I’d caught my breath, I came in here to sort out some more music and then went to make tea.

Tonight, I had a stir-fry of noodles, vegetables, bean sprouts and chick peas in soy sauce, but as I said just now, half of it went into the bin. I’m really not doing too well with my food and I can foresee serious problems ahead if I can’t find my appetite from somewhere.

But since chemotherapy, everything tastes of salt, I have the most incredible wind and I feel full all the time. What on earth is going on with my body?

Anyway, I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow. It’s dialysis, though, and we’ll see how the events of the last few days have affected that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about having the wind … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned to a doctor at dialysis the fact that I have wind.
"Can you give me anything for this wind that I have?" I asked.
He went away, and came back five minutes later with a kite.

0

Friday 17th October 2025 – I AM COMPLETELY …

… exhausted again right now.

In fact, I spent much of the late afternoon asleep on my chair in here. That is, however, no surprise, because they really put me through the mill at the Centre de Ré-education earlier.

As well as that, I spent half an hour or so asleep on the chair this morning. But then again, that’s no surprise either when you consider that I awoke at 04:10 this morning, despite how tired I was last night before going to bed.

All in all, it’s not been a very good day at all, and I’m going to have to snap out of this and organise myself properly before long.

Last night, I finished off by saying how exhausted I was, and I wasn’t wrong. I had never felt so relieved as I did when I finally crawled into bed, bang on 23:00. And the prospect of a deep, uninterrupted sleep of about seven and a half hours was so, so welcoming.

The deep sleep I certainly had, for I remember absolutely nothing at all about anything during the night. But long, it was certainly not. As I mentioned just now, I was awake at 04:10 and once more, I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I tried.

After about an hour of trying, I thought “no time like the present” and arose from the Dead. And it wasn’t easy either.

Taking advantage of the early start, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written on Wednesday. And I made a total mess of them too. My heart wasn’t in it at all. I remember thinking “this is going to take a lot of editing”.

When I had finally finished, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I had been during the night, and regrettably, there was nothing on there at all. It must have been a really deep sleep. Instead, I checked my mails and had a look at what else had been going on elsewhere during the night.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, as cheerful as usual, and she asked me if I’d spoken to them at dialysis about the proposal for chemotherapy on Tuesday. I said that I’d mentioned it, and that they would examine me on Saturday and see how I am. If I’m still full of infection, they won’t allow me to go.

After she left, I made breakfast and then came back in here to start work.

There were a few things to do and then, as I mentioned earlier, I rather regrettably fell asleep. I was out of it all for a good half-hour or so too. I really do need to pull myself together and push on. I thought that dialysis was supposed to put an end to all of this.

Once I’d finally brought myself round into the Land of the Living, I made a start on editing the radio notes that I’d dictated. And I was right about them needing a lot of editing too.

After a while, I had to break off for a disgusting drink break and to prepare to go to the Centre de Ré-education.

My faithful cleaner turned up too ready to start her rounds. She noticed the enormous pile of washing that has built up while I’m waiting for this plumber to fix this leak, and she proposed to take a handful with her so that there could be more room in the basket. And I wish that the plumber would hurry up and sort out his problems and come round to sort out mine.

The taxi turned up on time, with two other passengers so I had to squeeze into the back. And, although you might find this hard to believe seeing as we are in mid-October, going past the port I noticed that they were putting up the Christmas decorations already. That is really taking the mickey.

At the Centre de Ré-education the first task was to sit on a chair and pull on some elastics in order to work the muscles in my upper arms. That was OK but the chair was too low and there were no armrests, so it was a nightmare for me to stand up again.

In the end, the monitor had to help me haul myself up, in some kind of bear-hug. And then some passer-by had to pass me my crutches. But while the monitor had me in her arms, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask her if she would like to dance.

Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?

With my physiotherapist, I was given some kind of apparatus to hold my knees steady and then invited to stand up, just pulling on the safety bar of this apparatus. I had about ten attempts, and actually managed it twice. So all is not lost. However, I was completely exhausted trying to do it. It took an awful lot out of me.

The rest of the session was spent walking around in some kind of machine that’s like a walkframe but it’s quite tall, with handles rather like that of a skid steer machine. She asked me if I would like one of these at home, but where on earth would I put it? It wouldn’t go into the boot of a taxi either so it’s quite pointless really.

As I was leaving, they gave me the programme for the next series of sessions, and they are taking the mickey too. Two sessions per day I can just about handle, three is the absolute limit, but giving me four? I put my foot down at that.

One thing that I noticed though was that my effort today was much less than previously. Whether my body has deteriorated over the last week or whether it’s the effect of this infection, I really don’t know. But whatever it is, I don’t like it.

It was a struggle to come back in here from the car and I crashed into a chair, where I sat for a good half-hour or more while I tried to gather my wits – something that should take much less time seeing how few wits I have left these days – and then I came back in here and crashed out definitively.

While I was away on my travels, I was at some point busy untangling small lengths of wire from a huge mass and testing each wire for conductivity. I’m not sure why.

Eventually, I managed to sort myself out and carry on with editing the rest of the radio programme, texting with Rosemary while I was at it.

Tea tonight was vegan sausage, baked beans with cheese and fried mushrooms, and air-fried chips. That was the first meal that I’ve properly enjoyed for quite a while, although after about half an hour, my stomach was back in the usual turmoil.

So now I’m off to bed. And I can’t say that I’m sorry. There’s no point in wishing for a good night’s sleep because it makes no difference what I would like. I’ll “get what I’m given” as my mother used to say.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the washing … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of back in Gainsborough Road. If the man was hanging out the washing, it was always going to be a sunny or windy day. It never rained when he had the clothes out.
One day, I asked him the secret.
"It’s the wife’s rheumatism" he replied. "If she’s lying on her right side, it means that the weather will be damp. If she’s lying on her left side, it means that the weather will be fine, so we do the washing."
"And if she’s lying on her back?" I asked. "What does that mean?"
"It means that we have far more exciting things to do than to worry about the washing."

0

Friday 10th October 2025 – I AM TOTALLY …

… exhausted.

Today, I have been to the Centre de Ré-education and they have put me through the mill. I don’t think that I have ever worked as hard in recent times as I have today.

And seeing as we have been talking about being tired … "well, one of us has" – ed … last night, I was totally dead to the World. I’ve been extremely tired late in the evening on a few occasions just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but last night’s beats just about everything that I’ve ever had before.

In fact, I was asleep long before I finished writing my notes, sagging face-down over my desk on a couple of occasions before wrestling myself upright again with a few Herculean efforts. It’s a mystery how I managed to carry on and finish.

Once I’d sorted myself out, I was in bed quite quickly, flat out asleep in an instant, and there I lay without moving until all of … err … 04:10.

At that point, I was again wide-awake, and for quite a while too, but just like the other morning, the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. Either I’d gone back to sleep or else I must have been dreaming that I was awake.

Being awake at 06:29 is one thing – being up and about is something completely different, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And especially after yesterday evening. Consequently, it was a very slow start to the day today.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I didn’t honestly expect there to be anything on it, but there we are. We were back in the State of New York during the American Revolution and the commandant of a group of forces was cornered and was obliged to surrender to the British, where he was taken as prisoner in a barge and imprisoned in one of the forts in New York. But the food there was terrible and the conditions were terrible. It was easy to dodge the British controls so he had been out and about several times during his imprisonment, trying to line up strength of supporters ready to oppose General Carleton, and General Carleton was just as careful not make sure that he would lose his numerical advantage if things began to go wrong for him in New York.

Later on, I was back in the American Revolution. The Americans had been besieging a British fort in the interior and after a while, they had finally captured it. Then there were all kinds of discussions about expelling the British garrison etc and what happened to the fort afterwards but I can’t remember very much more about this particular dream unfortunately.

My book, BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, is really getting to me right now. I’ve been having quite a few dreams about it just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. What am I going to dream about when I’ve finished this book and moved on to the next one?

The nurse turned up, early as usual these days, and sorted me out. He asked me a few strange questions, presumably out of curiosity, before he left. which took me by surprise … "with asking the questions, not leaving" – ed.

Breakfast was next, and some more of my book. The British Army has now surrendered at Yorktown after putting up only a token resistance.

And that is perplexing. Reading the stories of Lord Cornwallis, his total lack of aggression, his insipid retreat and how he allowed himself to be trapped with his back to the sea, I can’t help feeling that his heart was never in this campaign from the beginning. I reckon that his whole aim was to extricate himself out of the Southern States without a care as to how he did it, what the fate of his army would be, and without a thought about how it would affect his country.

The politicians in Britain were no better. They prevaricated and prevaricated, refusing to send to the British Army the supplies and reinforcements that they needed to fight a decent campaign, and in the end, abandoned the army to its fate.

Maybe I’m being unkind – I dunno. Perhaps there are a lot of issues hidden much deeper than I realise that influenced the conduct of the war.

One thing of which I am sure is the partisan nature of our author, Colonel Henry Carrington. He writes pages and pages about the reprehensible conduct of the British, looting, pillaging and plundering as they go around. However, in George Washington’s diary, which I know that Carrington has seen, Washington talks about the lack of supplies, arms, ammunition and clothing for his troops "and in all that business, or a great part of it, being done by military impressment, we are daily and hourly oppressing the people, souring their tempers and alienating their affections"

A while ago, I mentioned something like this, but whatever – it shows that irony is not Colonel Carrington’s strong point.

Back in here, I began to work on the next radio programme and, after a while, I decided that what I was doing was in rather poor taste, so it all went into the bin and I decided to start again.

After a disgusting drink break, I waited for the taxi. And waited. It finally turned up, fifteen minutes late, and I barely arrived at the Centre de Ré-education on time.

There were three sessions today – the first being weightlifting. The monitor had me lifting weights, using my arms only, from a sitting position, and I’m disappointed with how much force and strength I seem to have lost. Long-gone are the days when I could lift a Ford Cortina engine out of a car without an engine hoist.

There was half an hour before my next session, so the monitor had me sitting on a bench practising how to raise myself up. As if I don’t do enough of that during the day when I’m here, but it’s free, I suppose, and I may as well do something while I’m waiting.

With my physiotherapist, it was pretty much more of the same – lifting myself in and out of a chair, and then exercising my legs. And there’s no doubt – all the force has gone from my lower legs and she doesn’t think that it will come back. That’s really bad news.

After a half-hour pause, it was back into the gym for group therapy – involving standing up and sitting down once again. I wonder if someone is trying to tell me something.

By the time that I had finished, I was exhausted and my head was spinning round. It was really difficult to walk down to the car. It’s the very first time that I have felt that maybe I’m doing too much, but if it’s not stretching me and causing me discomfort, then it’s not doing any good at all.

My faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment and I collapsed into a chair with a disgusting drink to cheer me up. I was there for well over half an hour trying to recover, before I could find the strength to come back in here.

Until teatime, I worked on the radio programme and then went to make myself some salad, chips and some of those vegan nuggets. And I’m still off my food. This is no good at all.

But now, I’m off to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow, just by way of a change. And then Sunday is a Day of Rest while I prepare for chemotherapy. I have a medical appointment of some description every day (including Saturday) next week. All I need now is one for Sunday to complete the week.

And there is some exciting news about yesterday, in that I set a new record as far as readership went. We had one thousand and six readers, which is the very first time that I have ever had a four-figure readership in one twenty-four-hour period. Well done to all of you.

Anyway, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being awake … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the old Tommy Cooper joke –
"I once knew a man who dreamed that he was awake. And when he woke up – he was!"

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Friday 3rd October 2025 — AFTER YESTERDAY’S LITTLE …

… health and morale wobble, I have spent the day in a much better and much more positive state of mind. And, to my, and probably your surprise too, not only have I not crashed out at all today, I have also managed to keep going without sinking into one of these catatonic fits.

It didn’t seem as if it was going to be like that last night, though. I really was feeling quite out of sorts and a late night … "yet again!" – ed … didn’t help matters all that much. I was certainly ready for bed, and glad that I could slide in underneath the covers without any further ado.

If only it had continued like that. At about 03:15, I awoke, and couldn’t go back to sleep. There was this nagging feeling in my mind about whether or not I’d switched on the water heater before going to bed and, if so, was it still working?

Realising that I’m never going to have any peace at all until I find out for definite, I went to look. And sure enough, it was switched on and still heating, so there will be hot water to wash the dishes in the morning.

On that note, I went back to bed and luckily enough, I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly.

Not for long, though. By 06:00 I was wide awake, having given up all hope of going back to sleep, and so I heaved myself out of my stinking pit and headed for the bathroom and the lovely hot water.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was during the American Civil War. I was in some kind of charge of a small area where I had eventually to transform everything into war defences to keep the Union army out. For a few months, it was a very vicious siege until at the end of the day we had beaten the Union Army and they began to retreat from the area. This was another one of those occasions where I really was ill and had a most upset stomach. I didn’t really feel like doing anything at all during the night and morning with all this going on.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … although I’m asleep when I’m dictating these dreams, there is usually some kind of vague recollection that comes back to me when I am typing them out. On a few rare occasions though, I remember nothing whatever about them and they are a total mystery to me, just like this one is.

There was some kind of meal being given in a restaurant where my boss, I suppose, had invited someone to lunch. Anyway, it wasn’t my boss at all but another guy and he was sitting at a table upstairs in this restaurant. I was hovering around on duty. I could hear the front door open and someone come in. As I looked down the stairs I could see this woman coming upstairs. She came in and stood by the door, but before I could go over to her, my boss went over to her and invited her back to a chair at his table. I felt embarrassed about that because I should be doing this. But this woman, she had Zero with her. They began to discuss the meal and the point of this meeting, but she said that she would like to start the meal straight away and eat while she is talking. For starters, she decided that she would have meatballs, and everyone else would have meatballs – the man would have meatballs and so would Zero so I beckoned the waiter over to take the order.

So welcome back, Zero! How lovely to see you again! I wish that she, and Castor, and TOTGA would come back more often into my dreams. As for this restaurant, though, I’ve been there before and I can still see it quite clearly in my imagination, but can I recall where it is? But it does remind me of a restaurant in Brussels to which I went once with a young lady of my acquaintance, but I shall say no more about it in case she is one of my anonymous readers.

By the way, if you are one of my anonymous readers, introduce yourself and say “hello”. I like to interact with my audience. There’s a contact button on the bottom right that you can use. I don’t bite … "well, not hard, anyway" – ed …

There was something else about someone coming into Granville. I’d arranged to meet them at the roundabout at the Sports Centre. However, I can’t remember anything else about this. It’s one of those that has evaporated completely.

Is this the first time that I’ve dreamed about Granville? I can’t recall Granville figuring in the dreams before and that’s a surprise because I’ve been living here for eight and a half years after I left Leuven.

Isabelle the Nurse came around, her happy, enthusiastic self as usual. She didn’t stay long, so I could push on and make breakfast, and then read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The British are at it again. Despite an overwhelmingly superior army (in numbers and supplies), they are refusing to take the battle to the Americans in the Northern States, and are abandoning coastal cities in the South for fear of being enveloped by the French fleet that has now joined in.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the British are not going to win this war unless and until they bring the American Army to the battlefield and defeat it. Running away from a fight won’t win any battles. I have the distinct feeling that the British are wasting their time here. If they aren’t going to fight to the bitter end, what was the point of starting?

Back in here, after dealing with some correspondence, I’ve spent the rest of the day dealing with this difficult radio programme that I’ve been trying to sort out for several weeks.

By the time that I’d knocked off for tea, I’d sorted out and remixed all of the music and I’ve written over half of the text. It all took an age to do and I’ve no idea where all of the motivation and energy came from, but here we are. I’m hoping to finish it tomorrow so that I can dictate it on Sunday morning and then move on to another one.

There was an interruption for me to go down to the Centre Normandy for my physiotherapy etc. My first appointment was for 13:30 but the taxi came for me at 12:45, which meant that I had a wait of over half an hour. Why can’t the taxi come early like this when it’s dialysis?

To my surprise, my physiotherapist proposed a foot massage, to try to force the circulation back into my feet and toes. They are actually quite cold and numb, as no blood is reaching them. It sounded such a strange idea to me, but who am I to complain? I’m just grateful that I’m having all this attention, all for free. There have to be some consolations with being terminally ill.

The second session was with the ergotherapist. He discussed my living arrangements and what I would need to be more autonomous. And one thing that I learned was that “a young Thai serving wench” is not the answer to my problems – at least, according to the ergotherapist.

He took a lot of notes and filled in several forms, but what the outcome of all of that will be, I have no idea.

When I went in, they gave me a programme of next week’s sessions, and the driver duly photographed it to send off to her dispatching office. And so, when I came out, they gave me another one to replace the one that I’d had just an hour or so earlier.

Back here, my faithful cleaner helped me inside and then she cleared off. I had a little relax, a disgusting drink, and then carried on work.

Tea was falafel and chips with vegan salad, and now I’m going to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow so I need to be on form. And then with a bit of luck, there will be a foot fest on Sunday if I’m lucky. It seems to be my only source of enjoyment these days.

But seeing as we have been talking about useful help around the house … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of a chat that I had once with a French woman.
"What do you call in English that machine thing that you have around the house to make the clothes smooth and flat after you’ve washed tham?"
"Ohh, that," I replied. "That’s called a ‘wife’."

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Thursday 11th January 2024 – THERE SEEMS TO BE …

… some confusion about when I might be going home.

The doctor who came to see me this morning told me that if all goes well and my improvement continues, I might go home at the end of the weekend or on Monday.

The orderly who has just brought me my evening meal tells me that I might be going home as soon as tomorrow.

And if the evening meal that he brought me is anything to go by, tomorrow isn’t soon enough. On the other hand, if my medical condition isn’t up to it, then the longer that I stay here, the better, even if it means drinking more of the dreaded sodium sulphide.

They gave me another dose of it at midday, and I was out like a light again for several hours. I think in all honesty that they do that simply to sneak in here and turn down the heating while I’m away with the fairies. I wondered why it was going cold here.

So apart from being cold and being away with the fairies, I’ve been a busy bee today. Rhys and Helena have been sending me messages to which I’ve been replying.

Helena is one of my oldest friends and we go back well over 50 years to our school days in Nantwich. She, along with Robert, is part of my personal on-line medical staff, having been a nurse in Yorkshire for quite a while.

A couple of neighbours from Granville have spoken to me on the internet too and my neighbour who is currently in Paris spoke to me on the phone.

There have been the dictaphone notes to transcribe as well. With our amazingly busy schedule Nerina and I had hired help to do some of the more mundane tasks around the house. One of them was cutting all the lawns and there were specific days to do it. We were walking through Willaston one afternoon when it was a lawn-cutting day. Th guy who was cutting our lawn was there with our lawn mower and had just gone into a shop to buy a cup of coffee. So evidently I walked nonchalantly into the shop and said “hello” to him. His jaw dropped completely to the bottom. He’s obviously been doing someone else’s lawn and claiming payment for it as well as claiming payment for ours that he never did. He simply left, and left me with the lawnmower equipment which I had to pick up and bring back to the house

Later on, I was asleep in my hospital room when a machine started up, started to make its alarm noise. I waited a minute to see if it was the case then I rang the bell for the night porter like you do. It was actually for real. It really was bleeping and I really did ring the bell. The night nurse appeared. Of course my dream disappeared completely because what I was dreaming was actually the thruth about what was going on yet I’d done it all in my sleep.

I had a kind of field somewhere that needed cutting. I’d talked to a young Filipino boy whom I knew who worked as a coach driver for a local company taking schoolkids around. His boss had one, a tractor with a grasscutter so we agreed that he’d borrow his boss’s tractor and go to cut our grass one morning. I don’t know whether he’d discussed it with his boss or not but that wasn’t my particular concern. We drove him up there that morning but he was in quite an emotional state, going on about how he hated the job, how he hated the coaches, how he hated the boss, how he hated everything, how the boss had paid him £70:00 short on his wages once. It was a real emotional tirade from this young boy. I was sitting listening because if he really was going to throw in his job, that might make a vacancy for me. Talking about tatty coaches – I’ve driven tatty coaches in the past and it’s never bothered me. Tatty bosses, that’s never bothered me either too much so I was listening to all of this. We turned up at the buses place. The tractor with lawn mower attachments was still there. We all stepped out of the car and walked over to it

Having said that during the night, I was always very careful about whose coaches I drove. It was mainly for Shearings and its subsidiaries and one local coach company. And if I was operating “on my own account” the coaches only ever came from one company.

From several other companies I respectfully declined work, including the company who shared the yard from where our taxis operated.

Loads of medical staff have been by today. The doctor has stopped the perfusions because my legs are swelling and regrettably, after all my efforts, I’m gaining weight. So there will be probably something else that will keep me awake during the night now.

But it’s like I say – they give me some medication to cure something and it just creates a problem somewhere else in my body. I don’t think that I could have been assembled correctly in the factory.

The physiotherapist came round, took me for a walk, and then gave me plenty of exercises to do while I’m sitting down, many of which I was already doing.

So while I can certainly criticise the food, I can’t criticise the care that I’m receiving.

While all of this was going on, I’ve been listening to “Help Yourself”.

Effectively an artificial band created by Famepushers, the Entertainment Agency, as a support for singer-songwriter Malcolm Morley, they might be a London band but they have always been considered as honorary Welshmen following their participation in the “All Good Clean Fun” tour, their appearance at the Patti Pavilion with a whole host of Welsh bands at Christmas 1973 and the fact that on the drums was Dave Charles, who for many years was sound engineer at Rockfield Recording Studios in Monmouth.

Due to a failing memory I can’t remember where I met them but it was in the days when they had Ken Whaley and not Paul Burton on bass guitar, although it was Burton at the Patti Pavilion, I seem to remember.

Their claim to fame is the legendary track REAFFIRMATION on their album BEWARE THE SHADOW that just goes to prove that you don’t need to play a lead guitar solo of 10,000 notes in 10 seconds to produce something that is one of the best, if not the most bizarre, lead guitar solo in the history of rock music.

So right now that I’ve finished my notes I intend to go to bed, where I’m hoping to have the best, if not the most bizarre, dreams possible. Not that there’s too much chance of that with all of the noise that goes on around here, but we can always live in hope.

And tomorrow I’ll find out more about going home. But I can’t wait to be back there, if not for the food and decent internet.

Using a bluetooth tethering system is like going back 30 years to the days of dial-up and 14.4 kbs external modems. Click on a link and then go for a coffee and a walk around the village while it opens.

It really is doing my head in.

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Thursday 6th July 2023 – MY PHYSIOTHERAPIST …

… came round late this afternoon to tell me that he’s not going to be coming back again.

He and my neighbour have apparently had a dispute and she has told him that she doesn’t want to see him again. So he’s told me that it’s not worth his while to come out here just for me. It’s quite a way out of town.

Actually, it’s not as if I’m really bothered. I’ve said before that he has a kind of manner that I don’t really appreciate all that much. Anyway, he’s given me the phone number of a colleague and told me to contact him.

But we shall see. Because right now, I’m too tired to do anything.

It’s not as if I had a bad night either. Fair enough, I was in bed later than I intended but I’ve been to bed much later than this. And had more-restless nights too.

When the alarm went off I was stark out as well and it was a real struggle to haul myself out of bed before the second alarm.

No medication for me. I had a quick wash and brush up and headed out for the laboratory. I arrived bang-on 08:30 and found myself to be the only person there.

It was necessary to wait 20 minutes though. There’s a special test that needs to be carried out that involves a heated tube so I had to wait for it to be warmed up.

But the nurse found a vein and took a sample straight away first go without any difficulty at all. They are pretty good at this laboratory.

When I came out of the cubicle I found the place heaving with people. I’d arrived just at the correct time by the looks of things.

While I was out, I nipped to LeClerc.. Caliburn is running low on diesel and whenever I go to the supermarket there’s usually an enormous queue. It’s not often that I’m out early on a weekday morning so I nipped out that way to check. To my surprise, there was a pump empty so I bunged in 50 litres. That will do me for several months, I reckon.

Back here I had my medication and then spent some time unwinding. I had another call from the nurse. She couldn’t read the stuff that I sent the other day so could I send some different stuff.

Having scanned that and sent it off, the doctor rang me. He still hadn’t received it so I told him that I’d print it out and bring it with me when I go tomorrow. So I printed it all and then the nurse phoned me back to say that he’d now received it and I needn’t bother printing it out.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone during the night. And by the sound of things, I was literally in the Wars. There was a train that we had to go somewhere to board. I think that we were probably prisoners or something. Before I boarded the train I felt the urgent need to go to the bathroom but there wasn’t anywhere to go and I wasn’t able to go standing by the side of the train. In the end I just climbed aboard anyway. I opened a hatch and somehow managed to pull myself inside ready for the train to set off. I don’t know whether we were fighting the Turks or someone like that

We were in the War last night. We left our support trench to go to the Front Line. We had to charge. We swarmed out of the door into No-Man’s Land but didn’t go very far at all. We just took shelter once we were clear. The Germans started to lob hand grenades, really like explosive charges fitted into glass jars. They always seemed to be landing where I was. I had to dodge around quite a lot in order to escape being blown up by one of them. Just at the moment when I was at my least comfortable a German General came round the corner with a couple of orderlies. I don’t know who was more surprised, me or him. He actually ordered me back to my trench instead of wanting to shoot me or anything like that. Then our Colonel came up. He went over to the German General and handed him a file. It turned out that he had given him the whole information about our defences. When I asked why the Colonel said “another part of the Front is much weaker than ours. I wanted to encourage the Germans to go to attack that and leave us all alone

Then I was away somewhere on a voyage and had a really bad attack of cramp in my left calf again. That wiped away every memory that I had of what I was doing and where I had been

Finally I’d been round to see someone. Someone else came with me. This other person was an older person who lived on his own. We were in a car somewhere in Belgium. The first person whom I’d been to see asked me which way I’d come. I told him and he was trying to tell me a better way to arrive that was quicker etc. I wasn’t really sure about this. Then the other person turned up. We got into the car to go somewhere else . I asked him about the first guy “is he always like this?”. He replied “yes, he loves to take control”. Just then the alarm clock somewhere went off. This guy said “yes that’s my alarm clock. I wasn’t sure what was going to be happening so I went to bed and set the alarm for now but as it happens I got up earlier. It’s no problem”. We began to drive to where we were supposed to be going.

Having dealt with that I did some more work on my radio notes and then went back to the Labrador coast. I was interested to read that our hero Vaino Tanner told us a story that when he was in Cartwright he heard a tale of dogs that had attacked and killed a small child, and how all of the locals denied that such a thing had happened.

Yet there I was, out in the abandoned cemetery in the abandoned village of North River across on the other side of Sandwich Bay, looking at the headstone of the grave of Ephraim Williams aged 4 years and 8 months “who was killed by dogs”.

Not only that, looking even deeper into things, I came across the story of little three year-old Willie Davis down the bay at Long Point. His cousin Tom told a reporter that “These dogs come and fastened right into him. I don’t know if Mother was looking or if she heard something. When she started pelting rocks at them, all the proper dogs went away, all but this old black one, he just stayed there and tore away at Willie. “

So small children being attacked, and sometimes killed by dogs is nothing new. In fact, during the Influenza epidemic that almost wiped out the Inuit community of Okak up the coast, it was reported that “dozens of sled dogs grew wild with hunger and began eating the corpses or attacking sick humans”

As well as all of this I’ve been trying to revise the next batch of my Welsh but today it was more a case of fighting off an overwhelming urge to go to sleep. I’m really not doing very well.

Tea was another one of these quinoa and lentil burgers with rice, veg and some thick onion gravy. For some reason, the gravy wasn’t as nice as last week which was a shame. nevertheless, I did manage to eat it all.

Tomorrow I have my appointment with the nerve specialist who is going to do his worst, and I’m not at all looking forward to that. It hurts like hell, but I suppose that it has to be done. I’d better go and have an early night for once in my life.

Wouldn’t it be awkward if I were to fall asleep in the middle of his test?

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Thursday 29th June 2023 – I’D BEEN OUT …

… last night walking in the countryside and seen a car that was being pushed about by this enormous ginger cat, really enormous, probably bigger than the car. I watched it for a while then carried on walking. I came across a grey tabby, a normal-sized one. I began to stroke it and it seemed quite friendly so I asked it where its food was. It led me round to someone’s front door where there were a couple of empty bowls. I said “that’s why you’re friendly then is it? You have no food out”. I was giving it a good stroke when the alarm went off and awoke me.

As it happens, i’m surprised that I was in such a deep sleep because for some of the night I was in total agony.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I was out at the hops the other week I had a searing pain in my left leg followed by a heavy fall. While I was in bed I had exactly the same thing, and not once but twice. That was what I call agony.

When the physio came round this afternoon I told him about it but he was at something of a loss to explain it. But that’s no surprise really, I suppose.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bedroom I fell out of the bed when the alarm went off and went to perform my ablutions. And after the medication I came back in here to carry on with some work.

And I’ve been a very busy boy today and accomplished tons of stuff.

First thing was to go through and sort out the European Paper Mountain that has been building up, and file everything away. Not before time either because some of this stuff really did have whiskers on it.

Next thing was to do the accounts. Not only do I have to pay the cleaner but I have to do the paperwork that goes with it. I forgot last month so there was two months worth of that to do.

Next step was to fill in a form that my Belgian bank needed, and then to scan it and send it off. While I was at it I came across a couple of e-mails that I’d received and hadn’t answered so that was the next task.

While we’re on the subject of forms filling in … “well, one of us is” – ed … there was a form that the French Government needed. I could do it by going into my “personal space” but I don’t have an access key so I had to telephone them.

And when I finally made contact I was number 24 in the queue so I sat down to read “War and Peace”.

Eventually I spoke to a human and we did the necessary on the telephone. He reminded me that there was a payment outstanding so that was the next task, followed by a shower as the physiotherapist would be coming.

There was probably much more than that too, but I finished off by enrolling on my Welsh course for next year. Level one of the “Advanced” course, although it doesn’t seem much like it. I hope that all this stuff for which I’ve signed up throughout the Summer actually does me some good.

Right now I really don’t have any idea about what’s going on. I’m working on the principle that if you throw enough whatsit onto a wherever, some of it might stick. But that’s no way to run a business.

There was some more stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night. I was driving a coach for a local coach firm in Crewe for whom I did some work at one time during the winter when there was no work at SHearings. It’s the first time that I’ve driven a coach for nearly 30 years. I had to do a whole series of pickups around different places in Crewe. I suddenly realised that it’s 30 years since I’ve lived in Crewe. I don’t know where one or two places are and all the road layouts changed so what I might possibly have done years ago in order to go to the various places will all be different now. I don’t have a clue how I was going to do it. I got into the coach and drove it through the Flag Lane area and down Broad Street. When I reached the top of broad Street I had to do a right-left shunt into one of the streets there but I suddenly realised that it probably would have been better if I’d gone the other way but it’s a bit too late now. In the middle of all of this the owner’s wife called me up on the radio to ask me how long I’d be before I arrived at the pickup point. I was obviously later than I should have been. I just told her “a couple of minutes” but this was starting to become extremely uncomfortable one way or another with all of this that I didn’t know and hadn’t done for years.

After that I was in Brussels last night with a couple of people. One of them had a friend who worked for the European institutions. We were driving around the city. On the way back I pointed down the street towards the Parc Leopold, explaining that that was where the Parc Leopold was and where her friend worked. As we drove a little further on we went over into an area that was supposed to be Schaerbeek but wasn’t. I pointed out the beautiful Town Hall, which amazed them. We headed on back for my apartment.

At some point or other I’d become an MP and theyw ere discussing the thing that I’d done in my constituency. I explained that I’d been away for a couple of weeks but before I went I ordered a pile of tickets for some of them to visit the Parliament. I’d been to the bank to organise some money. I should really go to pick it up but at the moment I’ve only just come back and need to regroup my strength before I go out to do something like that.

Later on I was walking down a street somewhere last night. There were shops and everything, a new parade of shops set at 45° on to the road further down towards the end. I was on my way down there and noticed that one of these shops was full of old motorcycles that had been recovered from barns etc and were up for sale. I was just about to stop for a good look when I had a really bad attack of cramp in the left calf again that awoke me. Yes, fancy that! Just as I get to the interesting bit.

As it happens, I miss my motorbike. When I came to Belgium I had a little Honda Vision scooter and at one time a big Honda CX500. I enjoyed driving that around the countryside in Northern Europe and one thing going through my mind was to buy another one at some time.

I have a CZ 175 down on the farm but it’s not really suitable for what I had in mind. But now even that is out of the question.

While I was rummaging around in the Land That Time Forg … errr … the fridge, I noticed some soya, carrot and lentil burgers that the dinosaurs must have left behind. One of those with some rice, veg and a pile of very thick onion gravy made a lovely tea tonight.

That’s one thing that you can say about round here – no matter how tough things might be, there’s always some good food to eat.

Tomorrow if I’m feeling better I’ll walk into town for a bit of food and post off the cheque that I wrote out today. And then in the afternoon I have the meeting of the owners of this building. I must make sure that my 250/10,000th of this building is adequately represented.

So I’d better have an early night. Here’s hoping that I can actually have a good night’s sleep for a change.

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Tuesday 27th June 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… miserable day today.

Not that you would have thought so from the way that things began, because when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was actually up and about already.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I sat down to work through the Welsh lesson that we would be doing today. But once again, the Teflon brain made its appearance and nothing seemed to stick to it today.

It’s something that is becoming more and more of a daily occurrence, this. It makes me feel rather like Homer Simpson and “every time I learn something new, it pushes out something old”.

It reminds me of a discussion that I had with someone the other day on a Social Network group where I could remember the name of a family who lived in a certain house in village where I lived as a child, over 50 years ago.
“That’s pretty good going” said the woman to whom I was talking.
“That’s as maybe” I replied “but ask me why I walked into the kitchen 5 minutes ago”.

Anyway, the lesson itself was pretty dismal. I couldn’t remember anything and my head was full of spaghetti instead of any coherent thought. I was glad, if not relieved, when it was finished.

What didn’t help was the fact that I was desperately fighting off a wave of sleep. That’s the kind of thing that you can only do for so long and then at some point this afternoon I succumbed.

Out like a light too, and for quite a while. It was quite depressing today.

There’s a pretty good reason though why I was feeling so awful, as I found out when I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was at home on my own. Everyone else had gone out. I put my phone on charge and was sitting doing a few things here and there. The place was quite untidy. Eventually I took hold of the telephone to check that it was charged and opened the door into the corridor, but opened it really quickly so as to frighten anyone who might possibly have been loitering around outside. There was no-one there so I made my way down the corridor and began to go down the stairs. I heard the front door open so I quickly dashed down to the bottom to turn the lights on to make it look as if I was working down there. I came back up. It was my mother who was for some reason quite angry saying something like I hadn’t spoken to her since she left to go out earlier. I replied that that’s hardly surprising because she wasn’t here. She was out.

Later on I was out in Labrador again, wandering around an old fishing village inspecting what remained there or traditional activities. The harbour was there of course but everything else was closed or run down or depleted. The place was looking really sad and sorry for itself. I hardly recognised it from its heyday when it was in the photos in a lot of the newspapers etc at the time.

Did I dictate the one about going on a coach trip … “no you didn’t” – ed. There had been snow in the mountains. We were staying somewhere for a couple of nights. We were having lots of problems with the snow but it stopped. I thought that this would be the moment to try to leave this valley, up into the mountains and out the other side. We sent the passengers off in a coach. Apparently the conditions were so bad in the mountains that the coach became stuck in the snow. I had to walk all the way after it, rescue the passengers and bring them back down the valley by walking. It took several days to do this. I managed to chivvy them up into being a little enthusiastic about it but it was clearly not going to work and there would be loads of complaints. In the end we managed to struggle back to the hotel where we’d been. I just hoped that the landlord hadn’t re-let the beds so that people had a place to go back to rest while we thought of another plan. Someone said to me that they knew that I’d tried my best but that I certainly wasn’t any expert. I replied that I’m certainly the first to admit that I have an awful lot to learn about everything.

Then we were back in Labrador. There had been a table lamp set up on a table there that over the years had melted a hole in the top of the television. You could travel in and out of this hole and broadcast yourself to wherever you wanted to go so I went to Labrador and had a look around. I found that the Europeans were packing up and making ready to move off somewhere else. These items said something about having flights back to the local people but I thought that it was more like that the company had exploited the area for all that it was worth. Now there was nothing whatever left of the interest so they were disposing of the evidence basically by giving it to the Inuit and hoing that the Inuit would clean it up.

Later still I was with another driver from Shearings spending the night in a Bed-and-Breakfast in Welsh Row, Nantwich. While we were out in the evening we came to this Australian group of older people who were quite intoxicated and in a bad temper. They were looking for some fish and chips. I don’t know why my friend did it but he rounded them up and told them to follow us and come to have some chips at the pub. I thought it strange because it was the last thing that I wanted to do, to be associated with people like this. They followed up and walked past 2 or 3 fish and chip shops. They were protesting. In the end they came to our pub. We went up to our room for the night. You could hear these Australians whining and moaning at the bar. Next morning I awoke. It was 09:20 and we had to be on the road at 10:30. I thought we’d have to hurry. My friend had been up and out once. I heard someone talking about a Mausolina. I asked him what it was. He replied that it was something that was petit, petit, petit, petit as in “small”. I thought that i’d better dress quickly and see if there’s any food. I don’t want to talk about these Australians because I had a feeling that things hadn’t gone very well with them last night and I didn’t want to stir the pot.

And finally I was a pilot on board an HMS sailing ship that had put into Labrador. We’d left the ship and went for an explore in a settlement on the coast that was formerly some kind of European colony. I can’t remember very much at all of this from here on.

It seems that I’m spending a lot of time in Labrador during the night. It’s probably the effect of wading through all of these notes that I wrote or am trying to write about my trip there in 2017. And I need to push on with that.

Today though I’ve been wading through the working files on the computer and deleted or moved, would you believe, 60GB of data from the working drive – something that I should have done a long time ago. Despite how awful I was feeling, that was some pretty good work today.

The physiotherapist came round today and we went for a walk outside. I told him that things are going downhill as far as my mobility goes and he’s going to have a think about what he can do try and pump me up to keep going. But right now it’s quite a struggle to move around.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the stuffing that was left over. There’s still plenty for a chili sin carné tomorrow with some kidney beans added in.

While we’re on the subject of Welsh lessons … “well, one of us is ” – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was thinking about doing 2 Welsh courses next year. One course as the successor to the one that I’m doing now and another to retake the current course.

What has happened though is that I noticed a three-week crash course on a full-time basis offered by the Gwent College of Further Education. I’ve undertaken a few courses with them in the past and quite enjoyed them, so I’ve signed up for this one.

That will keep me out of mischief for the month of August, so with the one-week Summer Revision School in July and three weeks in August to do the course again, if I haven’t grasped it by then, then I never will.

All I need now is to wind up my brain, but that’s a pretty hopeless cause these days. I’m losing my braincells at a rather rapid rate of knots. All I have left are my marbles but I’ll be losing them before too long.

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Thursday 22nd June 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… depressing day today. And I bet that you are as fed up of reading about it as I am about living it.

My own fault though. I had a doctor’s appointment at 10:00 this morning so I decided that I’d be brave and walk – or, rather, hobble – down the hill into town on my crutches.

The idea didn’t exactly fill me with confidence but I had to do it. And it passed without any serious incident, which was good news. Just the occasional wobble here and there.

But as you might expect, I was well out of it this afternoon. Totally out of my tree in fact.

And that’s not really much of a surprise because apart from the fact that it seems to be par for the course these days whenever I go anywhere, when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 I’d been up for ages.

First thing that I did after the medication was to try to resolve a computer issue. I said yesterday that I’d fitted a new hard drive into this machine. A couple of my graphics programs weren’t functioning correctly so I left them in the end and went to bed.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, graphics is one of the reasons why I bought a machine like this big desktop machine. But it’s not a proprietary machine, it’s something of a “bitsa” with a collection of assorted bits and pieces for the best possible performance, and I’ve upgraded it since I’ve had it.

Consequently you’re wasting your time looking for a manufacturer’s upgrade.

After prowling around for a while in the innards of the machine, I found that it was working with the drivers for a Windows-generic video card and I couldn’t remember the make of the video card that we fitted. I had to work through quite a collection of drivers until I found the correct one.

It’s working so much better now, which is nice.

All I need to work out now is why although the operating system recognises the 32GB of RAM that’s fitted, only one bank of 16GB seems to be working.

Even so, with a Solid State Hard Drive powering the machine it’s working a lot quicker and a lot quieter too.

In between all of this I had a shower to make myself look pretty and then struggled down to the doctors for a check-up and for the prescription for the next lot of Aranesp. I mentioned the hospital in Paris and he says that it’s one of the best in the country with a famous nerve-centre, if you’ll excuse the pun.

But the good news, if you can call it that, is that because there is no obvious element that’s affecting my nervous system, he reckons that I’m classed as permanently disabled. He’ll type a report for me to pick up tomorrow and told me to go the the Mairie and tell them.

And so I did, and they gave me half a rain-forest worth of papers to fill in. And if I need any help I can call a Social Services rep to help me. I have to fill it in and send it to the Prefecture at St-Lô, and then prepare for a long wait.

But if I’m lucky, I’ll have a disabled parking pass, free transport on the buses (mind you, buses are free here in Granville anyway) and things like that.

Next stop was the Post Office.

Something else that I’d done this morning was to gather up the papers that I needed and to fill in my Tax Return. That needed to be posted and there was a recorded delivery letter to pick up.

Next week it’s the annual general meeting of the owners of this building and as I own 250/10,000 of it since April I’m invited. So there was another rain-forest worth of papers about that sent to me by recorded delivery.

There’s a new artisanal high-class bakery opened in town so I stopped off for some specialty bread for my cheese on toast. I thought that in view of the effort that I’d made, I deserved to pousser le bateau dehors as they might say around here.

Final stop was to go to the chemists to drop off the prescription. 6 months worth of Aranesp but they can only order it one month at a time. I have to ring her every 4 weeks to reorder it.

It was the nice cheerful girl who served me today. “do you want to pay for it now?” she asked.
“Just this four weeks” I replied. “Not all of it”
“That’s what I meant” she retorted.

It was a struggle to come back up the hill onto my rock and I was exhausted. I had my coffee and cheese on toast but that was really my lot. I was in no fit state to do anything else for quite a while.

Later on I did manage to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And it’s a surprise to me that I was up and about so early because I travelled miles. In fact, I probably got out of bed on my way back home from my travels. I started out in Labrador last night. I’d been to visit a spot where a member of my family used to live. There was some information that I gathered there that I knew would be of interest to someone else who was hunting down family relics. I made a note and brought the information or copies of it with me and met up with this guy back at his place where because of the way that whatever was written on this information that I had, it was all about snow etc which of course would be most unlikely in South Cheshire but it was a very complicated ritual involved in making sure that he had the information. Then I had of course to get the information from him that he had found out about my family so it was all extremely confusing about this Labrador in Cheshire kind of thing.

Then there was a tractor for sale at a rather cheap price. I went to see it but when I returned Nerina asked me about it. I told her that basically it’s been taken in part-exchange and they want rid of it quite quickly so they’ll do a good deal for cash. She was wondering why it wasn’t on the forecourt. I explained that word about this tractor would go around by word of mouth quickly enough. They don’t need to make any effort to sell it etc. There was one guy there who insisted on shouting me down, giving me his own interpretation of what was happening even though I’d just been to talk to the owner about it. he wouldn’t let up no matter how I tried to explain to Nerina. In the end I told her “the vendor knows exactly how much that tractor owes him, exactly how much it’s costing them to keep it on the forecourt”, all the little details like that. They’ll know exactly where the breakeven point will be so if someone comes along with the cash they’d let it go. But this guy was not having any of this at all. It was really strange how he thought he knew absolutely everything without even having been to see it and talk to people about it. He thought that I was totally wrong.

I’d also been out with one of my schoolfriends. On the way back we stopped at his house. I started to chat to his sister who I fancied (and I actually did too in real life). We had something of a flirty exchange as a couple of teenagers would. I happened to mention something about Saturday night. she said that she was doing something that night which was a shame because I was hoping that she might be free and want to come out somewhere. We continued this chat and she asked me “what are you doing Tuesday night?”. I replied “nothing”. She continued “do you want to come with me on Tuesday night instead?”. Of course immediately my ears pricked up. I asked “where are we going?”. She asked “how do you fancy going to church?”. I replied “if it means going with you, I’ll come”. She said “it’s every fortnight”. I replied “that’s not a problem. I can manage that”. We arranged to meet on the Tuesday night. I went outside after that ready to go home. My friend was outside so I said “you’ll never guess what I’m doing on Tuesday night”. He replied “you’re going to church youth club aren’t you?”. I asked “how do you know?”. he didn’t really give me an answer about that but he obviously knew that there was something in the wind. She didn’t really like me all that much in real life when we were at school, which was no real surprise. But she went to University in Manchester while I was living there and we did meet up a few times, but nothing much ever came of it.

I was at work last night. I’d gone into the office which was packed. I went to find the lift to take me up to my floor. There were dozens of people hanging around the lift, people making music and singing Christmas carols, a little choir etc. It looked as if everyone was preparing fo Christmas. I was hoping that I’d see my Irish friend so that I could talk to her about my date on Tuesday night (so I must have gone back into that previous dream) but I can’t remember what happened after that.

She was a nice girl too and I liked her very much. We went on a skiing holiday once together which was really good fun but she had far too much good sense ever to become involved with me

Finally we were in Iceland waiting for a ferry back to the mainland of Europe. There was a storm and the ferry was delayed. It looked as if it wouldn’t sail for ages. Everyone was dashing around trying to find accommodation but I had a cunning plan. I would hire a van and sleep in it for a few nights which I reckoned would work out a lot cheaper. There was a young girl there whom I liked very much. We’d spent a lot of time chatting. We were standing in the queue and I bought her a coffee. I asked her what she intended to do. Obviously if she didn’t have any accommodation i was going to invite her to share the van. She mentioned Tom, another guy on this trip with us. She said “I’ll be spending the night with Tom, my boyfriend. I’ve been spending the last couple of nights with him anyway so another night won’t make any difference”. Of course you’ve absolutely no idea how disappointed I was, or maybe you have, I dunno. It’s quite a regular occurrence during the night – me being confounded like this while I’m engaged in the evil pursuit of nice young ladies. Anyway that was that.

The physiotherapist came round today too and massaged my right knee which is now playing up after my walk. I’m wondering what is going to break next. I’m at the stage where I’m afraid to go to the toilet.

Tea was a big bowl of pasta and veg with the rest of that vegan bolognaise stuff from last week. I livened it up with some chili and garlic salt and that gave it a kick.

Tomorrow I’m off to town again for my Aranesp and a bit of shopping. That means that in the afternoon I’ll be flat out on my chair again. It’s becoming far too much of a habit but there’s nothing that I can do about it regrettable. Onwards and upwards, hey?

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