Tag Archives: place d’armes

Monday 28th April 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting at my desk in my office.

And there’s a huge red mark on my file “Leaving the Hospital Against Medical Advice”.

What has happened is that they want me to stay for another scan on my stomach. So I telephoned the hospital myself and spoke to the scanner and asked him "when could I have an appointment for a scan? I have a prescription from Doctor …" (luckily it wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant who saw me)
He paused for a minute and said "The next appointment is 1st of June".
My response was "Doctor … says that it’s urgent".
"It doesn’t matter" he said "We can’t do it any earlier".

So if anyone thinks that I’m going to sit around for five weeks kicking my heels in a hospital when I have so much to do, they are out of their tiny minds.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the medical staff and I have different aims. Their aim is to keep me alive as long as possible, clinging on by the end of my fingertips while they pump me full of morphine to deaden the pain. For my part, I wouldn’t care if I were to die tomorrow if I had had a full and active life up to that point.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the hysteria that took place at Leuven in 2019 when I told them that I was abandoning my treatment for three months while I went on an expedition to the High Arctic.

Anyway, that’s another story completely. Last night I had a much better night and after I finished my notes etc I went almost straight to sleep and there I stayed until all of 06:00 when they awoke me for a blood test.

After that I actually went back to sleep and stayed there until about 07:55.

When I awoke was in my Ford Transit. I’d been talking to my youngest sister. She wandered ff saying that she’ll be back in a minute. Ten minutes later she still hadn’t returned so I drove round to the club on Nantwich Road where she had gone. After another ten minutes she still didn’t come so I buttonholed one of her mother’s friends who was standing by the door. He told me that she was busy and wouldn’t be finished for a while. I was extremely angry and told the guy to tell her that she would have to stay there because I had things to do, and drove off down one of the side streets on the south side of Nantwich Road.

That sounds just like my family, but again, that’s all water that floated under the bridge a very long time ago. But I’ve still no idea why I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about Crewe. In total, I only lived there for about 12 years of my life.

After I’d washed and shaved (and went in search of my gant de toilette that the cleaner had taken by mistake) they served me breakfast. And once again, it was starvation rations and there was nothing that I could do about it. Apparently, the staff had been warned.

Next were the dictaphone notes. And there were piles of those last night. I was doing something with … I can’t remember what now but it was involving my brother and his wife and it was something to do with being disabled and someone at the centre turned up. In the end no matter what we were doing a friend of mine, a young girl who had a car, she said that she would take us all home. I was sitting in the back with someone and the girl was sitting in the front and there was a seat next to her. The disabled woman came out. She said that she could travel with us so she put her walkframe in the back of the boot so she told her that she could sit in the front so she ran round to the front so what she was doing with a walkframe ….. She had a big stool with her but found that it wouldn’t fit in so we said “why don’t you give it to us and we’ll hold it?”. So she climbed in and the girl drove and dropped off the two of us who were sitting in the back and went on to take Mrs Whateverhername is back to her bungalow. And the thing about this is that I was telling my brother about the dream and he was in it, telling exactly this dream to him

My family again, God bless them. And one of the women now from dialysis. This story is going out of hand, there’s no doubt about that. The interesting part though is that I was dreaming within a dream. That’s not something that happens very often with me. However, it does show that my nocturnal rhythms are settling down after a major period of disturbance.

There has been a lot of further contact between people in many of these dreams and that dream just now involved a girl who could play the violin. I didn’t particularly like her all that much but we needed a flute player as well and this girl could do them both so we had to be nice to her. That meant that she’d even come to see me in the hospital and when she went back to the hospital administration offices at the other side of the road from here there was no way of going home so we offered to drive her if she was feeling willing

There’s an interesting story about the girl with the violin but the World is not ready to hear it. However, her second instrument was the piano and maybe some power chords on a Fender Telecaster. I can say though that if in the dream I said that I didn’t like her, that is being somewhat “economical with the truth”.

And later on I’d gone to volunteer for certain hospital tests and they were busy taking some pulse from me. I was told that it would be a morning session and an afternoon session so I’d gone in the afternoon and time was really dragging on, like it was 18:00, 19:00, 20:00. I mentioned this to the doctor who was taking some samples from me. He eventually went to the ‘phone, by which time it was about midnight and telephoned someone. He told them the situation and I heard the reply, which was “these people come as volunteers and volunteer for certain tasks and so they have to stay until they are done. If he doesn’t like it he can clear off and never come back again, particularly after all of the trouble that we had last time with him”. I tried to think of the last time that I was here and what trouble I had caused, but I couldn’t think of any. Then I was put into a car, the car that does the hospital transfers. We drove into the town centre. There was a taxi parked at the side of the road. I wondered if the taxi had been ordered for me to take me home and they would drop me off here or whether I was expected to stay in the one that I was with and carry on. However the traffic lights were red and we had to stop and wait until they turned green before we could move on

It beats me, the significance of this dream. I’ve offered my services as a guinea pig to a couple of hospitals where I’ve been staying, but when it presents to you the possibility of having several handfuls of student nurses crawling all over you, who wouldn’t?

Later on I was in Chester. I was talking to some guys about music. We were working out some songs with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. We decided that the big solo that he would play would make a great track on its own so we were busy thinking of ways to expand the first track. I walked down by the river and walked to the car park and there was my car there, the old Mercedes that I had once. Parked next to it was a sleek black limousine with a chauffeur by it. I looked at the driver and I knew him from when I was chauffeuring. He looked at me and said “chauffeuring again?. I said “yes”, yes because I was driving for. So I told him that there was a British trade delegation. He looked at the car, this old Merc, and I said “yes, because they don’t have very much money because they didn’t do very much. I opened the door and there was a couple of people inside – the boss and one of the girls. I asked them if they were ready to go. They replied “no” – they were waiting for a third person. Meantime, the little girl who was in there, she opened her rucksack and pulled out a computer. “It’s not mine” she said. “It’s one of the training ones. I said “you’ll have to take it home and look after it tonight and take it back in the morning”. She was annoyed by that because she had all her contacts on it for chatting etc. I replied “it can’t be helped. You should really check your things if you put them away in the bag.

There is also a story about walking down by the river but the World is not ready to hear that one either. As far as Ian Anderson goes, the Ian Anderson may well be another Ian Anderson, a folk singer with whom I have had some correspondence at one time. He has an interesting claim to fame which listeners of my radio shows at the end of August may well discover. The story about the chauffeuring and the computer is bizarre and I don’t know to what that relates, except that I still have my old Mercedes, festering down the field on the farm next to a Ford Cortina and a Ford Transit ditto.

Meantime, the doctor came to see me. I told her that I wanted to leave after dialysis this afternoon
"You can’t" she replied
"Can’t I?" I said. "You just watch"

And then the argument began.

She gave me a very long speech about everything, the highlight of which was "this is not a prison, but …". When she finished, I replied "I’ve listened carefully to you and I’ve understood everything that you have said. But nevertheless I am still leaving."

The truth of the matter is that I have had news that my locataire loaded up a van with half of her possessions early this morning. She might even (although it’s doubtful) finish tomorrow and leave the apartment. Secondly, I have a visitor coming from this evening for a few days. Thirdly, I have a builder coming round on Wednesday morning. Fourthly, I’m going to Paris for a week at the other hospital on Monday.

And so the argument raged on and on until in the end she left. She came back with a sheaf of my discharge papers with the prominent red stamp upon it.

It was an ambulance with a stretcher that took me over the road to the dialysis centre where, apparently, amongst the nurses my rebellion is headline news. Julie the Cook, my allocated nurse, came for a chat to “make further enquiries”.

But proof that the hospital regime has done me some good is that there was only 1.4 kilos of water to remove from me so it was a three-and-a-half hour session. And afterwards, I had never felt so well for quite some considerable time.

While I was there I was in an exchange of messages with a friend of mine. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have an ongoing major project in the UK and a friend of mine from my Manchester days is handling it. He has a few days spare so he wanted to come over to see me.

He turned up at the dialysis centre just as I was being thrown out and he brought me home. We came the pretty way by the coast because it’s been a while since I’ve passed that way.

My faithful cleaner helped me up the stairs and after I left, I made stuffed peppers for two followed by chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert, all of which went down a treat.

Right now though, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about walkframes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a friend of mine telling me "Sony has brought out a new product for our generation"
"Ohh yes?" I replied, bitterly regretting it thirty seconds later
"It’s called ‘The Sony Walkframe’"

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Friday 25th April 2025 – I WAS WIDE-…

… awake this morning at, would you believe, 03:05. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a total waste of time really, going to bed early, because all it seems to mean is that I wake up correspondingly early.

And early it was that I went to bed last night – 22:20 in fact.

The dialysis on Thursday afternoon had left me thoroughly exhausted. So much so that I couldn’t keep on going at all. I skimmed through everything that needed to be done, despite going off into a trance at least twice, and then threw in the towel.

Once in bed, I fell asleep rather dramatically and there I stayed, dead to the World, until, as I said, 03:05. I lay around in bed, wondering whether or not I ought to raise myself from the Dead, until at least 03:20 when I happened to glance at the time, and quite a while after that too, but I must have gone back to sleep at some point.

There I stayed until all of 06:20 when I awoke again. That time, I couldn’t go back to sleep at all and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse.

After a good wash and my medication I came back in here to check on where I’d been during the night. I was talking to Julie the Cook during my dream. The discussion came round to checking over my apartment to have a look around and see what was going on for my ill-health. But as she said that she would come so I found the calendar and wrote in there that she was expected for the 29th of the month. Then I went back into the main room just to remind her and confirm that that was what it was going to be.

Julie the Cook has said before now that she will come to inspect my kitchen one of these days – in fact, she said it again on Thursday – but I will believe it when I see it. I don’t think that it’s ever likely to happen. However, the fact that I’m dreaming about dialysis and the people there tells me that I seem to have let it become embedded in my thoughts and that’s a depressing idea.

Later on I was round at my niece’s and her husband last night. They were sorting out transport and cars etc. I noticed that my niece was driving around in the old mini that she never usually drove. He husband asked her what had happened to the Riley. We went into the garage and there was a Riley 1.5 sitting there without the front radiator grille. She said that she’s hit a squirrel with the grill and had taken the grille off to try to remove the squirrel. The grille was currently in the back room. I had a look at the engine – it was an overhead cam engine with a chain pulley on the camshaft. I wondered “what on earth engine was this out of?”. Later on we went shopping and we were wandering around a big department store where there were loads of people. I suddenly saw a range of tissue … "he means ‘cloth’ " – ed … so I shouted to her “ahh … tissue” and she laughed. We went over and started to look through the tissue for my apartment. There was a really nice heavyweight deep red velvet type of embossed tissue there that looked really nice and was really heavy. She wandered off to the curtain range and came back with one of these Victorian-style curtains with frills and built-in lace nets and began to compare the two to see whether they matched

Whenever I think of overhead cam engines, the Ford Pinto immediately springs to my mind. I’ve dismantled and reassembled so many of them that I could at one time do it in my sleep – and I did too. However the camshafts in those are belt-driven and the pulley on the camshaft in the engine in this dream was definitely a chain-driven pulley, so I really don’t know.

Leaving aside the question of dreaming in French again, one of the things that I will be doing soon is to see the seamstress who has the little shop down the road whom I interviewed once for the radio. In her little shop she makes all of the dresses for the carnival queens and what I want her to do is to make the curtains for my new apartment, seeing as I don’t know who else to ask. I want to have everything just like I want it to be, right from the very beginning, because I’m never going to move again … "and we’ve heard that before, haven’t we?" – ed … and I don’t want to go through the bother of having to redo anything later.

Isabelle the Nurse came round and we talked about her trip to Avallon in Burgundy. Everyone knows about the story of King Arthur, allegedly mortally wounded at the Battle of Camlann in 537 and taken to the Isle of Avalon in Somerset to die. Just outside Avallon in Burgundy in the dim and distant past there was a battle in which the King of the local troops, Riothamus, was deposed and killed by the invaders. There have been several suggestions that this is the origin of the tale of King Arthur and that the Battle of Camlann is fictional. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall our reading of the book FOLKLORE AS A HISTORICAL SCIENCE in which the transplantation of folk tales by migrating peoples would facilitate such a confusion of memory.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK. And here we go again.

In all of the books and papers that I have ever read, I don’t think that I have ever seen a sentence with so many sub-clauses in it as "The general area, which at Windsor, Arundel, and Berkhampstead is oblong, to suit the contour of the ground, is here, as at Tonbridge, Tickhill, and Clare, where the ground is not strongly marked, nearer to a more solid figure, of which, in this case, two sides and the contained angle are governed by the line of the old Roman wall."

It took me several attempts to absorb this sentence and put it in a straight line. There is surely a more straightforward and direct route that the author could have used to express his thoughts and make them much clearer.

He’s also tying himself up in knots again. He tells us on the top of page 193 that "Two mounds, though not unknown, are uncommon.". Half a dozen lines later, he tells us that "Such subordinate mounds are not uncommon in earthworks of all ages,". I wish that he’d make up his mind.

Back in here, I began to work on my Woodstock programmes and pushed on with the Saturday events. There are just four more groups and the outro to write for that, and I’ll also have to think of a way of including Louis de Funès in my programme too. I can’t have a programme without a special guest.

There were plenty of interruptions. There were a couple of disgusting drink breaks, my cleaner put her sooty foot in here to do her business, and one of my neighbours, the President of the residents’ committee, popped in for a chat to find out about how things were and to tell me about her recent trip to New York.

Tea was a delicious leftover curry but the naan was not so good. It kept on falling apart as I was trying to flatten it for frying. The chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert more than made up for that.

So it’s bedtime now, ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. And there’s a footfest too, Caernarfon v Barry Town to see who will push on for European competition, and later, the Second Division Cup Final between Airbus UK Broughton and Trefelin. That will be an interesting match because Lee Trundle, at 48, still turns out every week for Trefelin. In the pre-match summary he’s raring to go. He also says that he has no plans to retire and will carry on next season. How I wish that other International footballers would turn out for their local football clubs to give something back to the community, rather than retiring to their island paradise to count their fortunes.

But that’s tomorrow of course. Tonight, it’s bedtime

And seeing as we have been talking about the Battle of Camlann … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of the American tourist who turned up in Castlesteads early one morning and buttonholed a local.
"Can you tell me when was the Battle of Camlann?"
"537" replied the local
"Damn" said the American, looking at his watch. "I’ve just missed it"

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Thursday 24th April 2025 – ONCE MORE, JUST …

… like yesterday I was op and about before the alarm went off. Not quite as early though. It was about 06:20 when I hauled myself out from underneath the bedclothes.

Considering that it was almost midnight when I went to bed last night, that’s some good going too. After my Herculean effort in the morning, staying awake and up and about until then was pretty good too.

So after I finished my notes, the stats and the backing up, I loitered around for a few minutes … "more than a few minutes" – ed … before crawling off to the comfort and safety of my own bed.

Once in there I was soon away with the fairies (although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) and only have the briefest of recollections of anything going on during the night.

It was a different matter round about 06:05 when I awoke. I couldn’t go back to sleep and I was actually crawling out from under the covers when I heard the water heater switch off.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. And then 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. Nerina had a Ford Cortina MkIII, a gold one. She wanted to keep it or she wanted to sell it – she couldn’t make up her mind so I advertised it for her to have some people come round to look at it to see what they thought, to make an offer and she could decide and take it from there. But everyone seemed to think that there were some pieces missing from it. I explained that we did actually have everything – it probably just wasn’t to have at the moment. I’d be able to sort it out in a short space of time

That’s something about which I know a great deal. I have four Cortinas down in the Auvergne, three of which are basically quite good. There are plenty of bits to fix those that need fixing but ask me where they are. I know that they are all there somewhere.

Later on, when I awoke I was back at home, Shavington or Davenport Avenue, with a huge bunch of screaming kids, some of whom were ours and some of them weren’t. One of them seemed to take quite a fancy to me and hung around with me for a while. However I awoke in the middle of all of that and so never found out what was going on.

With plenty of time left before Isabelle turned up, I did some housekeeping on the computer to bring that more up-to-date. But like most things around here, I seem to be taking one step forward and two straight backwards.

Isabelle breezed in and didn’t stop long, just enough time to deal with my legs and admire my new compression socks.

When she left, I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK. We’ve finished Leicester Castle, breezed through several minor piles and now we are at Lincoln. I’ve no idea what we are going to find there but we probably won’t be there long trying to find it.

Back in here I attacked the notes for the radio programme and in a mad fit of effort I almost finished them too. That was some effort, I can tell you.

My cleaner was late today and so it will come as no surprise to learn that my taxi was early. I was nothing like ready when he arrived and we had to keep the two other passengers in the car waiting for a while.

We arrived early at the hospital but then again so did everyone else so I was still last to be coupled up. Luckily it was Julie the Cook who saw to me.

They set the blood pressure alarm higher than usual so every half-hour or so, one of the nurses came over to check me. It was just as well because I hadn’t been feeling well at all all day, aching in every bone and muscle, out of breath and so on.

One of the doctors (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) came to see me today. I managed to obtain from her a prescription for an occupational therapist to come to my new apartment to give advice about installations for the handicapped and disabled.

This evening I was one of the last to be unplugged, and then I had to wait around for fifteen minutes for the last person to finish so that we could leave the dialysis centre and drop her off on the way home.

My faithful cleaner was there and watched as I staggered up the stairs into my room. First thing that I did was to have a disgusting drink break seeing as the taxi came early and prevented me from having one before leaving.

Something else that the taxi prevented me from doing was taking a naan dough out of the freezer. And so I’ll have that and my leftover curry for tea tomorrow. Tonight I had sausage and mash with vegetables and it was delicious.

It’s really early but I’m still not feeling very well so I’m off to bed where I intend to sleep for a week if I have the chance

But seeing as we have been talking about Ford Cortinas … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember when I was welding up the floor in someone’s Cortina when she was off to her mother’s.
She saw the legs sticking out from underneath the car so in passing, she reached under and … well … you can imagine.
When I came out of the garage with a G-clamp she had gone and my friend John from Stockport was nursing a lump the size of an egg on his forehead.

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Wednesday 23rd April 2025 – WHAT A PERFORMANCE …

… that has been today!

It actually started off quite well this morning but as seems to be the usual situation, it didn’t take all that long for it to descend into chaos.

For a change, last night I was in bed fairly early – round about 23:30. And that is early too, considering how things have been in here just recently. It’s even more surprising when you consider the wretched night that I had had after dialysis on Monday.

It didn’t take long to go off to sleep either, although I didn’t stay asleep for long. I have vivid memories of awakening a couple of times during the night, although they were just something brief and of the moment.

By 05:30 though, I was awake, and wide awake too. After a while of gathering my wits (and you’ve no idea how long it takes to do that, seeing as I have so few left), I gave some serious thought to leaving the bed and just as I was about to throw off the covers I went back to sleep again.

Once more, I awoke quite soon afterwards but even so, I had had time to go off for a wander around. I was making a start on digging the Dee Navigation, the stretch of the river that runs between Chester and the Dee estuary that was built in the – was it the Sixteenth Century? … "Eighteenth Century" – ed …to avoid the parts of the River Dee that had become silted up.

That’s why the border between England and Wales up around Queensferry and Shotton is nowhere near the river. It used to be, back in the days of old, but when that baron whatever-his-name-is … "Hugh Lupus" – ed … constructed the weir in Chester to power his water mill, the speed of the water slowed down dramatically and the Dee began to silt up with the incoming tide. Digging the new channel was a desperate final gamble to revive the fortunes of the port of Chester.

So when the alarm went off at 07:00 I had already been up, washed, had my medication and was sitting at my desk working. First task was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. Isabelle the Nurse came round last night. She wanted to treat me with something to do with my legs. I had to put on my shorts before I went for a shower so that she could sort out my legs. The only pair of shorts that I had were an orange pair. She made some remark about “flesh-coloured” that I didn’t understand. When I had my shorts on I then went to put on my trousers but I suddenly had a realisation that she was going to treat my legs so I took off my trousers again. Then we had a chat about the bathroom and various kinds of things. Then she wanted the living room tidied – it was rather a mess. I had a look inside and thought “where has she put the stuff that she’s just brought in?”. No-one seemed to know. I thought “never mind, I’ll pick up the vacuum cleaner and begin to vacuum”. I pressed the foot switch for the vacuum cleaner but it wouldn’t work so I began to go round and pick up things by hand. There was a kitchen roll of orange paper and a ball of wool on the floor behind the sofa. The kitchen roll had been savaged by the cat and the ball of wool had been spread everywhere and looked as if it had also been savaged by the cat. I picked that up and the cat was still in it. It was struggling so I tried to put it down on the floor and let the cat find its own way out of the mess that it had created. We began to talk about cats. There were these cats that lived on some kind of marsh. One had just died that had been born in 1993. I thought that that was an incredible age for a cat to have.

Yesterday, I forgot to mention that I’d been talking to my little great-niece (or great little niece) in Canada. She’s back home from University for a couple of weeks and when she arrived, she was mobbed by the three cats. When she went up to the mill to see her parents she was mobbed by all of the mill cats. Consequently she spent all yesterday filming them and she was sending me her little videos for me to approve and to go “aww”. I would love to have another cat but I shall have to wait until I’m downstairs before I make any plans. As for wanting the living room tidied, so do I but somehow I have a mental block when it comes to things like that.

Later on I was on board a bus or train last night with some people, some of whom I knew. We’d been discussing various things. I’d been sorting out my papers. I had a look through – it was all my Welsh homework. I saw that it was a real mess, totally untidy and scrawly and I couldn’t read some of it. I just wondered what was in my mind when I had written some. The handwriting was just a jumble of straight lines. We were sitting there talking and I was putting away my things. I suddenly looked at the clock. It was after 18:30 and our train to take us home comes at 18:45. I said “shouldn’t we better be moving?”. Everyone began to make themselves ready. I began to put away my computer. Someone asked “why are you putting away your computer? Why not leave it here until the morning?”. I thought that that was probably the strangest thing that I’ve ever heard, leaving a laptop lying around on the seat of a bus so I carried on trying to put it away, panicking about the fact that we are going to miss our train if we aren’t ready in a minute.

Are we having another panic and bout of indecision again? It seems to be happening more and more often, although this is the first “train” dream that we’ve had for a while. We were having them quite regularly at one time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and out again in a matter of a couple of minutes. She didn’t hang around long at all today. I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK. We have finished at Knaresborough and are now in Leicester, having made a very brief stop at Leeds Castle in Kent.

We seem to be covering quite a bit of ground on our travels and we aren’t a quarter of the way through the book yet. At some point we’ll have to be spending a long time somewhere, even if just to fill out the pages of the book, and hopefully, we might even begin to discuss military architecture.

After breakfast I came in here to begin work. First task was to look for some music that I had been trying to find yesterday. And this was when all of my troubles began.

Some friends of mine, who have been very helpful to me in some of my certain endeavours, had, well, let’s just say “a certain issue” and as a result, everything went with its mammary glands pointing towards the sky.

Between us all, we had to end up rebuilding a computer program, and it took us about seven hours to do it. And to write a computer program of 121mb in seven hours is some going.

In the meantime, I was desperately looking around for another alternative to keep me going, without a great deal of success, and I ended up falling miles behind in the work that I had to do today.

There were the usual interruptions. There were a couple of disgusting drinks breaks, my cleaner put in an appearance, and there was also the shower, nice as it was. However, I had to put the heater back on in the bathroom for half an hour.

There was also a ‘phone call that needed my attention. Another builder rang me up to talk to me about my little project downstairs. This lot sounded frightfully professional and I have a feeling that their prices will reflect their professionalism. None of this “I’ll just nip round for five minutes with my tape measure” lark.

By the time that I knocked off for tea, I had all of the music that I needed, all edited, remixed, paired and segued. No notes though – I’ll have to dictate them tomorrow, I suppose.

The computer program is up and running too, and it works. Although for how long, I really don’t know. I shall keep my fingers crossed.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow afternoon, I don’t think. I’m really not looking forward to it at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about falling behind … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling one of my friends about my problems earlier.
"Just like my local butcher" she said
"How do you mean?" I asked.
"Some woman came in and sat down on his bacon slicer" she replied
"what happened then?" I asked, bitterly regretting having done so.
"The butcher didn’t notice" she replied "and he ended up getting behind in his deliveries"

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Tuesday 22nd April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 04:15 you don’t have all that much time to go a-wandering by the time that the alarm goes off.

What is surprising is that despite the short amount of sleep, I’ve not been at all tired today, not even for one single minute. It must therefore be the dialysis and not the overall state of my health that’s causing these little “moments”. And as it happened almost every day before dialysis, we can narrow it down to something to do with my kidneys.

So last night, or, rather, this morning, after I’d finished my notes I wasn’t all that tired and found a few things to do but eventually I thought that if I don’t go to bed now, I never will and that’s no good at all.

It took an age to go off to sleep but once I did, I remember nothing further until the alarm went off. And then didn’t I have a struggle to leave the bed? Not that that was surprising because the stabbing pain in my foot had started up again.

For once in my life I couldn’t face the bathroom so I thought “tough” and went into the kitchen for my medication.

Back in here, I found nothing on the dictaphone so I spent some time making notes about the next radio programme or two to keep me occupied.

Isabelle breezed in, in something of a rush as usual on her first day back. She mentioned that she was off to visit the town of Avallon in Burgundy. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnation will recall that we visited it years ago as part of our quest for the legends of the Knights Templar

After she left, I made breakfast and then read more of MY BOOK. I was correct about not spending long at Kilpeck. This morning we arrived in Knaresborough.

As usual though, I was distracted. I spent more time reading about the conflicts between the Kings, usurpers and Barons in Yorkshire in Medieval times than I did about the castle. And then following up a clue, I managed to track down a copy of John Leland’s “Itinerary”.

Leland was one of the first travel writers and his book was written towards the middle of the Sixteenth Century, in which he described his ramblings around England and Wales. Its interest as far as I am concerned is that he was a big fan of castles too and described them in great detail. Our author Geo T Clark makes several comparisons between what Leland saw and what he saw 300-odd years later, indicating how much of the superstructure had disappeared in the interval.

After breakfast I began to make the series of ‘phone calls that I talked about the other day.

By the time that I’d finished, I had my summons for the hospital in Paris (and that was a job in itself). I’m expected to arrive there Monday 5th May between 14:00 and 17:00 and I’ll be there for a week. My dialysis is arranged here in Avranches for the Monday morning and I’ll be having it in Paris on the 8th. I’ll be back on Friday evening.

The taxi is booked too. Early morning on Monday from here to Avranches and then after dialysis, straight to Paris. They’ll wait to hear from the hospital for the return.

There’s someone coming to see me on Wednesday about my renovations downstairs. I had a lovely mail this morning from the letting agent "on further consideration, your tenant has decided that she will rent a storage box as of the 3rd June, put her affairs in store and move in with relatives."

She’s obviously received my letter of the other day and it has had the desired response. Consequently I’ve been advertising the work on some of these “artisan” sites run by the various professional bodies, designed so that their members can look at them and see what work is available. I’ve already had one response.

With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, this removal planned tentatively for the last week in August might even take place. Several friends have offered to come to visit and help out, and there’s always room for anyone else to lend a hand.

What I shall be doing is talking to a few workmen, having some kind of starting and finishing date, and then handing in my three-months notice to the letting agent. I don’t mind a couple of months’ overlap of accommodation. It’s far better than finding myself out in the street.

The rest of the day has been spent radioing. 260306 is a concert, as I mentioned a few days ago, 260313 is nothing special and 260327 is another concert, one that I caught in, of all places, Montréal where my cousin’s son-in-law was sound engineer.

260320 is going to be interesting though. 20th March is “International Francophone Day”. Leaving aside French rock bands like Magma and Gong, have you any idea how many rock songs by British and American groups there are that contain lyrics either wholly or partly in French?. I’m up to thirty-four and I’m still counting.

Remember the other day when we were talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us was" – ed …? I’m disappointed in my AI search engine, that only came up with three that would fit in my programme. I had plenty of ideas myself of course … "and about the music too" – ed … and a brainstorming session in an Internet forum came up with the rest.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Tea tonight was the stuffed pepper that I should have had yesterday, with plenty of stuffing left over for my taco roll and leftover curry, which shall be on Thursday this week.

And now, hardly tired even after the turmoil of last night, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I have my faithful cleaner coming to sort me out and apparently she’s bringing an assistant, so I’ve been told. I shall need to be on my best behaviour.

But seeing as we have been talking about house renovations … "well, one of us has" – ed … I hope that they turn out to be better than the last lot that I had.
When I moved back to Crewe from Winsford in 1981 I had some local builders in. One of them was pulling nails out of his bag to knock into the wall, but he was throwing half of them away.
"Why are you doing that?" asked his mate.
"They are defective" he replied. "Made backwards. When I pull them out, the heads are the wrong way round."
"You fool!" roared his mate. "They aren’t defective at all. They are to be used in the wall behind you!"

0

Monday 21st April 2025 – YOU ARE PROBABLY …

… that is – the night-owls who only come out after the Hours of Darkness (of which there are more than just a few these days) – wondering what happened to the usual “just before I go to bed ….” update earlier this evening.

The answer to that is that I was probably unconscious again. That’s right – “again”. It wouldn’t be the first time today (or, rather, yesterday).

All in all, it’s been something of a chaotic, catastrophic day, just as I thought that things were getting better. And it started off so well too.

It wasn’t a particularly late night either. By the time that I’d finished everything that I wanted to, sorted myself out and climbed into bed, it was midnight. So I was looking forward to having a good seven hours sleep.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already in the bathroom on my way to the kitchen for the medication. I’d been tossing and turning throughout the night trying to make myself comfortable without all that much success and in the end I gave up the struggle when I heard the immersion heater click off at 06:20.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise I had travelled miles. I started off by taking Roxanne around Crewe showing her a few of the places that were in the town. One of the things though was that there was some kind of measurement about the ribs of the town and that the ribs had only two types of measurement. Whatever they were, it was difficult to interpret what it was supposed to represent as far as the town was concerned. Certainly it was something to do with the fact that it was just an ordinary person and not actually a built-up area or anything like that so I’m not sure how Roxanne and I managed to see things all on our way around it, especially when we’d been told to just stay near the chest and not wander very far away.

It must have been an exciting trip, going round trying to show someone the sights of Crewe. And sights there are a-plenty too, but not the kind that would usually attract visitors. You can’t even have the guided tour of the public convenience on Crewe Bus Station (2/6d, or 2/7d if you want to see all of it) because that was flattened a year or so ago. As for the rest of the dream, it simply degenerated into the usual nonsense.

Then we went back into that dream again … "which dream?" – ed … and were building a new prison so all the female warders were interviewing the men about what the men thought about the new arrangements in the prison and whether there should be any improvement. There was an Artificial Intelligence chatbot standing there. He would give his opinion on the comments of the other patients.

It seems that Artificial Intelligence is becoming the theme of the moment. As we have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … AI can’t do anything that a human can’t do. However, it does it much quicker and much more thoroughly than a human. As we have seen though, it’s not infallible. Not by any means.

Later on I’d been driving taxis around Brussels. We’d gone into the office to cash up. It was my first day so I didn’t really know what to expect or how to do it so I was watching everyone else. They had already done all their calculations before they’d gone into the office. I hadn’t even handed my prices in over the radio. I thought that I’m going to have to learn to do this quickly. I was chatting to the other drivers while I was waiting. Then I suddenly realised that I hadn’t brought my clipboard up with me with all my jobs and prices on it so I had to go back downstairs to fetch it. One of the other drivers said “don’t worry. It’ll still be there. They’ll know who it is”. Someone else said “yes but if you leave stiff in a car with some drivers around here you wouldn’t ever see it again”. I’d taken off my shoes and socks . It takes me a while to put them back on again. I thought “should I nip down in my bare feet but the garage is dusty and filthy”. This was where I was back at some indecision again.

So I’m back to driving taxis again. I’ve had a couple of nights off just recently, which is more than I ever had when I really was driving taxis. One of the options after I retired from work in Belgium in 2004 was to go to drive for the limousine hire company. Another one was to go to drive for the local bus service, but I was overtaken by events when I went into the Employment Agency to see if they needed assistants for the 2004 Travel Fair in the Exposition Centre.

Did I dictate the dream where I was invited all of a sudden to play bass in a group that had a booking at my old school? … "no you didn’t" – ed … The person who invited me was Alan Dean. He was a bassist so I wondered what was going on here but I agreed and began to talk about rehearsals. Their response was “it’s all stuff that everyone knows and you should know it”. They didn’t even tell me the set list so I was going to be completely in the dark about this. I tried to find out more information but nothing was ever forthcoming. I turned up at school and everyone was there. Apart from him I didn’t recognise anyone else. We began to wait for the organisers to have the stage ready for us to put out our gear but no-one seemed to be doing very much at all. The school dance was going on and it was becoming late, towards 22:30. I thought “we’ll never go on at this rate”. In the end we all went for a lie down because this was going absolutely nowhere. One by one we awoke. This confusion and this school dance was still going on, people still dancing, the stage still cluttered and no-one had been to see us or to talk to us at all, when we would be expected to go on, what we would be expected to do. I didn’t know the set list even. We were just waiting around and no-one seemed to be doing anything whatever. I thought “this is the weirdest situation in which I have ever been”.

Why Alan Dean should come onto the scene when I haven’t given him a moment’s thought since 1975 I really don’t know at all. But the last two dreams are a repeat of the chaos and confusion that seem to happen quite often during the night. There is definitely an undercurrent of something going on in my subconscious about something and it’s not doing me much good. My survival depends on a stress-free environment because at the speed at which my heart is pumping, it can’t go on forever.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say today. He was in and out in a couple of minutes. It’s his last day today so I imagine that he wants to finish work as quickly as possible.

After he left, I made breakfast – porridge and the last of my delicious hot cross buns toasted and smothered in vegan butter – and settled down to read MY BOOK.

We’ve left Cydweli Castle and are now at Kilpeck in Herefordshire. This is another site that is not well-known and there is not much architecture left to examine. We aren’t going to be here long.

After breakfast I set out to make all these ‘phone calls that I promised but soon came to a shuddering halt. It’s a jour ferié – a Bank Holiday – isn’t it? You won’t find anyone answering their ‘phones today, that’s for sure.

Instead, I had a cunning plan about my radio programmes and began to do some research.

My cleaner turned up on time to fit my patches, and then I waited for the 12:30 taxi. And waited. And waited.

Round about 13:00 I rang them up … "what did you say just now about people answering their ‘phones?" – ed … I asked them if they had forgotten me.
"Oh merde!" came a voice. "I’ll send a car!"
To be on the safe side, I ‘phoned the dialysis centre … "what did you say just now about people answering their ‘phones?" – ed …and warned them that I would be late.

While I was climbing into the car I looked at the time. 13:55. It’s a good job that I had telephoned the centre to say that I would be late.

With all of the holidaymakers in the area the centre was full. They had had to rearrange the wards and the bed that they found for me could not have been farther away from the entrance if they had tried.

It’s a good job that it would only be a three-and-a-half hour session today because it was 15:00 when they’d finished plugging me in. I had had visions of being here all night.

What with one thing and another, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and was drifting in and out of sleep. With about five minutes to go, my head began to spin and I blinked my eyes. When I opened them I was surrounded by all of the medical personnel, the bed was flat rather than upright and my legs were raised.

"Thank God you’re back!" exclaimed one of the nurses. Apparently I’d been unconscious for several minutes. My blood pressure had been hovering around the 87-88 mark instead of the more usual 120-130.

It took quite an age to recover and they had to take me to the taxi in a wheelchair. It was a very quiet, sombre drive home.

The 25 stairs were too much for me tonight. I staggered up to the half-landing and then had to take the lift to the half-landing above and then walk down to my door. Once inside, I sat down and couldn’t move.

After my cleaner left I went straight to bed, fully-clothed, and there I stayed, totally dead to the World, until 00:05. And I didn’t leave the bed then either

Starving and tired, I managed some pasta and tinned mushrooms, and now having written my notes, I’m going back to bed. The nurses though are worried. They have a feeling that one day I’ll have one of these unconscious fits and not wake up.

But seeing as we have been talking about guided trips around Crewe … "well, one of us has" – ed … there was once a tour that took American visitors around some of the selected bungalows in the town.
One of the Americans said "bungalows, bungalows, bungalows! Why can’t we see any houses?"
"We can’t" replied the guide
"Why not?"
"Ahhh – that’s another storey"

0

Sunday 20th April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke. And that was a big disappointment. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend upon what happens during the night for any excitement that there might be to brighten up my boring, miserable days.

Things might have been different had I had a decent night’s sleep.

After I’d finished my notes, which wasn’t all that late, I dictated the notes that I had written for the radio programmes that I’d prepared during the week, organised myself properly (and you’ve no idea just how long that takes) and then went off to bed, just before midnight. So with my lie-in until 08:00 it would be a good night’s sleep.

As I said yesterday, I was good and ready for it too. After the dialysis session I was totally exhausted. So once I was in bed I was asleep straight away and didn’t move a muscle for a good while after that.

However, it’s a Sunday after a dialysis Saturday and regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens on a Sunday after a dialysis Saturday. And so at 08:00 when the alarm went off, I was sitting at my desk working.

What was so bad about that was that it had been another one of these “sitting bolt-upright” dramatic awakenings and at that point I was away on my travels, but the shock of awakening wiped absolutely everything out of my mind and I could remember nothing.

With over an hour to spare, I had a dive into that site that seems to know where all of the best Artificial Intelligence programs are, and after some practice I have now succeeded in being able to swap one face onto another person’s body with a reasonable amount of accuracy.

Add that to the voice generator with which I played the other week, my next trick is to go with a background remover. Then, with my PaintShop Pro (25 years old and still going strong) I can use the image that I created, transform the missing background into “transparent” with the aid of a green screen.

Once I’ve done that, I can superimpose it onto any screenshot from Street View (so I’ll need an Artificial Intelligence image enhancer for the screenshot) that I like, so I can have people doing strange things and saying strange things in any location in the World that takes my fancy…

There’s no doubt about it – amusing as it might be, it has some very dangerous undertones. I reckon that we will be hearing quite a lot more about Artificial Intelligence, and it won’t all be good.

The nurse turned up as usual and had a lot to say for himself. He was soon gone and I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’ve finally left Kenilworth and we’re now at Cydweli which, for the benefit of our geographically-challenged author, is in South-West Wales. And on page 154, without the slightest hint of irony, he tells us that "The new town, parts of which are of high antiquity … "

Back in here, we have football to entertain us. Stranraer were entertaining Edinburgh City.

Once more, today, I saw some more sad attempts at defending, with defenders standing around waiting for each other to clear the ball and watching as an opposition forward pushes it into the net, another shot fully covered by the goalkeeper until a defender sticks out a leg and diverts it into his own net, open goals by the dozen blasted wide or well over the bar.

For a change though, it wasn’t Stranraer doing all of this but Edinburgh City. How Stranraer managed to win this game 2-0 is one of those big mysteries that will forever remain unresolved.

We also had the highlights of the weekend’s games in the JD Cymru League. While highlights can be very, very deceptive, I do have to say that I have never seen a team look so disinterested as Y Drenewydd.

Relegated last week, I did nevertheless expect that their final game would be one in which they would go out with a bang but Y Fflint, deep in the mire themselves at one stage just recently, strolled through the game and the Drenewydd defence with ease. A 4-0 victory was nothing like representative of the hundreds of chances that they were gifted throughout the game.

Rosemary’s computer is now fixed and working. She reset all of the parameters for the internet connection and on one particular combination of settings, it made a Wi-Fi connection and we now have one very happy Easter Bunny, just as I was today at breakfast when I had two more of my delicious toasted hot cross buns smothered in vegan butter.

The bread roll that I made for lunch was perfection and made some wonderful toasted cheese and tomato bread roll halves washed down with disgusting drink, and then I came back in here.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent editing the radio notes. Programme 260220 is now finished (I just had to lose eight seconds) and 260227 is almost completely edited and assembled, the final track has been chosen and remixed and the notes written ready for dictation next Saturday.

There was a break to make some dough for the pizza. Two lots are in the freezer now and the third made probably the best pizza base that I have ever made. The pizza was delicious too, melted exactly as it should be.

So tomorrow, I have dialysis again. I also have to ring up Paris to find out what’s going on about this visit and also to ring around to find some workmen who want to earn some money. There’s a lot to do and time is getting short.

But seeing as we have been talking about Cydweli Castle … "well, one of us has" – ed … when our author Geo. T Clark went to visit it, he was totally taken aback by the most rude and offensive manner in which the castle welcomed him.
In the village pub afterwards he met the local doctor and talked to him about it.
"It was most offensive" he said. "All the time that I was there, it kept on shouting abuse, insults and rude word at me."
"It’s nothing to worry about" said the doctor
"Really?" asked our author.
"Ohh quite" said the doctor. "A psychiatrist came to see it a couple of years ago. Apparently it has Turrets Syndrome"

0

Saturday 19th April 2025 – THAT WAS EXHAUSTING.

Four hours in dialysis with the machine going full-tilt. It’s enough to finish anyone off. But at least I’m down to my target weight so with a little luck I might only have to stay for three and a half hours on Monday. We shall see.

Things might have been different and I might have been less exhausted had I gone to bed earlier instead of hanging about until some stupid kind of time, but there we are … "or were" – ed ….

To make things worse, it was a miserable night and I don’t think that I had much sleep, waking up here and there every half hour or so. At one stage I was even planning on leaving the bed but I gave up that idea quite quickly.

When the alarm went off I was however fast asleep and it was, as you might expect, a desperate stagger to my feet to beat the second alarm. And in the bathroom I had a good wash ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis, and I hand-washed my socks, undies and night attire.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone and to my surprise, I had actually been out and about on my travels during the night. A girl was being examined for some kind of issue with her legs. She’s on a kind-of operating table on her back with her legs in the air and they are examining them. The doctor tells her to put them into the neutral position which she tries. After a little manipulation … "PERSONipulation" – ed … the surgeon or doctor manages to put her legs into some kind of neutral position. He tells her “well, that’s much easier, isn’t it? Perhaps you should have done that at some kind of earlier point in the examination or even beforehand, but I’ll make a mark now to let them know where it’s all correct”.

It’s much easier for me – I simply press “CNTRL-Z” and that puts any selected 3-D object or character into a neutral pose. That dream did remind me somewhat of some of my 3D work when I was living down on the farm.

And then I was back in that dream … "which dream?" – ed … later on. Some thieves had stolen a train with the ammunition on it. They were heading off for wherever it was. They were taking their time, not in any rush, and had stopped to have a meal somewhere. In the meantime, a group of Indians had been removed from a town and were not happy. They found these men and explained to them what was happening and that there was a train on its way towards them. What they did was that they started up the train and set it to going back down the line with all aboard at the maximum permitted speed of seven mph. When they were just a few hundred yards away from a collision they leapt off the footplate and the trains ploughed into each other. Carriages were destroyed, carriages went everywhere. They were saying that over 200 people were killed, including 131 in one carriage. All the wagons ran loose and even sheltering behind the rocks was not saving them from the wagons rolling up on them. There was even a railway wagon that had come from Russia on board this train and it rolled to a stop right at the feet of one of these robbers.

That plot sounds just like a cross between the plot of THE WILD BUNCH and that of A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, two films that spend a lot of time on my playlist. As for the wagon though, whilst Russian wagons ring no bells with me, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we once encountered a railway box-car with “Alaskan Agriculture” on it.

Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I saw one.

The nurse was chatting to me this morning, telling me what I should do about the situation in the apartment downstairs. When he finished, I told him that I had a letting agent who was doing all of that. "But still …" he said, and started again.

After he left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still in Kenilworth Castle where, on page 147, this rather peculiar paragraph caught my eye. What do you make of this? "The character of the ground makes it probable that the Norman fortress had but one entrance. This could not have been on the east, west, or south fronts, as the ground was low and marshy ; nor on the north, where the ditch is wide and deep."

The next thing that caught my eye was on page 150 where he tells us "the succession of great events which led to the death of the earl, and the celebrated siege of Kenilworth, belong to the history of England rather than to that of Kenilworth, and form one of its most interesting and most valuable chapters. The subject has fallen under the pen of Mr. Green, and has found a place in the pages of the Archaeological Journal (vol. xxi. p. 277), where the course of the events is disentangled, and very clearly narrated, and their political significance and bearing upon the constitutional history of our country treated in a manner both brilliant and profound"

He then devotes several pages to telling us about the Siege of Kenilworth.

Back in here, I carried on with the remote repairing of Rosemary’s computer. She is now connected to the internet with the aid of an Ethernet cable (but not the Wi-Fi) and has an antivirus installed. She ran a scan of the computer which came up with nothing (which was a pity because I had hopes for that) and when my cleaner arrived to fit my patches and I had to go, she was performing a deep scan.

After the cleaner had fitted my patches I had to wait for my taxi and was packing my bags for my next Paris hospitalisation when it pulled up. It was the boss again and we had a chatty drive down to Avranches.

Late in meant late coupled up and with a four-hour session I could see that it was going to be late. The blood pressure is set to be tested every half-hour and every half hour the nurses had to come running because of the wailing machine, complaining about my unbelievably low blood pressure today

In the end they set the machine to every fifteen minutes, so they had to come twice as often.

While all of this was going on, I was trying to watch the football. Caernarfon were playing Cardiff Metro for the privilege of finishing fourth. There wasn’t as much skill as I would have expected but it was an exciting game that roared from one end to the other.

And if ever there was a game of two halves, this was it. The Met had most of the play in the first half and were leading 1-0, quite deservedly, at half-time. But whatever Richard Davies put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I could do with a swig of that myself. The Cofis came out of the blocks at an incredible rate, had most of the play in the second half and eventually won 2-1.

And I’ll have to be careful what I say at dialysis in the future. A nurse and I were talking about my diet and Emilie the Cute Consultant heard it from across the room and came to join in. I hope that she can’t hear me call her “Emilie the Cute Consultant” when I’m here and she’s there.

It was a very, very weary me who staggered to the car to come home and I was glad to be back. Coming up the stairs was a very long, hard trudge tonight.

So having had my tea of baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed. I don’t think that I’ll be awake long tonight and I’ll be surprised if I awaken early, but dialysis is a funny thing.

But seeing as we have been talking about acute hearing … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the snail, the tortoise and the sloth having a party when they run out of beer.
They draw lots and the tortoise loses, so they send him to buy more beer.
Three weeks later they begin to complain. "We should never have sent that tortoise" said the snail. "He’s so lazy and bone-idle"
"I know" said the sloth. "For all the good that he does, he may as well not be here"
Just then a voice from outside the door shouts "if you lot continue to bad-mouth me like this, I shan’t go for the beer at all!"

0

Friday 18th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a visitor today

My tenant has finally decided to present herself to me this afternoon.
"What do you want to do about the kitchen in the apartment?" she asked.
"If you look behind you" I said "you’ll see some kitchen units in boxes. I ordered them, paid for them and had them delivered a long time ago. It’s rather late in the day to tell me about yours"

She then began a long complicated spiel about the difficulties she was having with the apartment for which she has signed.

However, I cut her rather short. "That’s not my problem" I interjected. Then I proceeded to tell her what my problem was. I explained my medical issues, in rather forthright terms and how she was contributing to them. I told her that I had proposed an exchange of apartment but she had refused.
"But I can’t walk upstairs. I have this bad back"
"Madam" I replied. "In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve just walked up 25 stairs this very minute to speak to me. Your medical problems are obviously nothing like as bad as mine and I have to do that at least three times per week on crutches"

We carried on with that kind of chat for a couple of minutes and then I interjected once more, saying "I have nothing more to add to the matter. If you have anything further to say, you must say it to the letting agent" and I escorted her to the door.

Now she can walk the 25 stairs back down again.

She’s obviously not received the letter that I sent to the letting agent this morning because I have now decided on a course of action.

Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s certainly true, especially when you have had a lot of night in which to think.

Having dashed through everything last night, I was finally in bed by not many minutes after 23:00, which made a very pleasant change. Looking forward to a good night’s sleep, I curled up under the bedclothes and made myself comfortable

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I had been up for an hour and a half. So much for my idea of a good night’s sleep. Of course, it’s dialysis night but it’s usually Saturday night / Sunday morning when I have sleeping issues. So it must be my guilty conscience preying on me.

But when you are awake at 05:05 and don’t leave the bed until 05:28 you have plenty of time, all nice and peaceful, to think of a plan.

My plan was firstly to go into the bathroom and have a good scrub up. And then into the kitchen and have my medication.

Back in here, armed with a mug of instant coffee, I sat down and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I came home from school and found my mother doing her usual things, talking, and then our father came in. He was talking about a couple of things that he was intending to do in the future. One of them was “we have to pack because we are moving”. This took everyone by surprise. He said “we’re moving to London – I have a job down there. I already have the house and it’s all ready for us to move”. “Oh God!”. My mother and I were completely taken by surprise because he’d never said anything to anyone. We hadn’t put our house up for sale and there were still lots of little tasks that needed doing. The first thought that went through my mother’s mind was “I bet he hasn’t bought a house. He’s probably rented a room somewhere for us and the next stop will be two rooms and a bathroom then some kind of council house”. My mother was very dispirited. So was I. I said “I don’t want to go”. She replied “that’s not like you. You’re always wanting to move on”. I replied “yes but I want to move on to my place on my terms, not go down to south-west London”. My mother replied “you aren’t obliged to go, are you?”. I replied “no, but I’ll have to find a job, all that kind of thing, leave school”. My mother was worried about all kinds of tasks that needed finishing off, like the garage floor, all of that, but it never seemed to change anything and we were just extremely unhappy and dispirited by it all.

That is in fact just like my family. They never ever planned anything for the future. It was always a question of carpe diem quam minimum credula postero as Horace would have said and “make it up as you go along”.
.
Another intriguing thought is “why did I say “South-West London” “? I actually lived in Wandsworth once for a couple of months, that’s true. I was so fed up listening to someone’s sad tale of “never finding work” and having an excuse for every suggestion that I made, that I took action.

What I did was to place an advert in one of these local papers in South-West London – mainly because it was the only area of London that I didn’t know very well – and within 48 hours I had a room lined up. I caught the train down and found my room, dumped my stuff and went for a walk.

Around the corner was a pizza restaurant advertising for casual kitchen staff and delivery drivers (evenings) and a few doors down was an Employment Agency with an advert in the window looking for bus drivers to drive schoolkids around mornings and evenings. So within 20 minutes of arriving at my digs I was effectively in full-time employment.

It really was that easy.

When my mother said that not wanting to go was not like me at all, she was perfectly correct. I was always the adventurous one. If I had had my way, our family would have immigrated to Australia under the “ten-pound Poms” scheme in the 1960s.

After I’d finished, I sat down and wrote out my letter to the letting agents, the one about which I talked earlier. I set out all of my medical issues and all the action that I had taken to date vis-à-vis my tenant.

And here’s the crunch. The lease will definitely finish on the due date. And if she wants to stay on afterwards, she can do so – but on hotel terms and conditions and at hotel rates too. I finished with “these terms are non-negotiable. It’s ‘take it or leave it’ and I want to hear no more of the matter. The discussion is finished”.

The way she came upstairs and went back down after having rejected my home exchange offer eighteen months ago “on health grounds” has only made me more determined.

The nurse came round to sort me out and I asked me if he knew anyone in the Mafia. He seems to know everyone else who might be disreputable. It might come down to asking “Luigi and a couple of the boys” to help me do a home removal, and we’re not talking about my apartment either.

Once he’d gone I could make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. We’re still in Kenilworth Castle having a good wander around looking at the architecture. And nothing has happened that is controversial as yet.

But seeing as we have been talking about breakfast… "well, one of us has" – ed … my hot cross buns were absolutely exquisite. Just as they ought to be, in fact. This is a real success.

Back in here, there was more discussion. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I should have had a ‘phone call from the UK last week. However, due to a family emergency it never happened.

Today though, we had a very lengthy exchange of messages, discussing the finalisation of phase one of my project and the projected start of phase two. We’ve had an estimate of sorts for the work and we discussed other work that we could also include. All we need to do now is to save up some money

Next task was to finalise my LeClerc order and send it off. They had almost everything too, and acceptable substitutes for what was missing.

We haven’t finished yet either. My niece and a couple of my little great-nieces (or great little nieces) contacted me for a chat and we had a lovely time together. Amber has just finished her exams and is quite confident that she’ll graduate in May. It’s streamed live and so she’ll send me a link.

Her High School graduation was streamed live too and I enjoyed watching it. It’s really hard to believe that in December 2003 she was such a tiny baby and I was bouncing her up and down on my knee in a car in a howling snowstorm in the Appalachians of Maritime Canada.

My first disgusting drink break, late that it was, was interrupted by the arrival of my cleaner who set about her afternoon’s task

After she left I could make a start on my Saturday At Woodstock, but not for long because my LeClerc order arrived and I had stuff to put away. With the LeClerc order came the tenant, about whom I spoke earlier, so I had her to deal with too.

Finally, I had everything put away (well, almost) and so I sat down to restart my Saturday At Woodstock.

And no sooner had I started then Rosemary rang. Just a short ‘phone call today – one hour and thirty-eight minutes. I forgot to mention earlier that I’d been speaking via text messages to Rosemary throughout the day, helping her to fix her computer at a distance.

It’s hardly a mystery that she’s having so many problems. I finally managed to receive her “SysInfo”. Her OSbuild is 5371 and mine is … errr … 5737, 360 rebuilds later, and mine’s not new. And her operating system is dated Seventh August … errr … 2020.

What I suggested to Rosemary is that she comes to help me move (if I ever do) and brings her laptop with her. I’ll fit one of my spare 250GB SSD units in it and give it a clean install from new.

What with one thing and another (and once you start, you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) it was a very late tea of salad, air-fried chips and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. All really nice, that’s for sure.

So horribly late, I’m going to bed. It’s dialysis day tomorrow. But what a day that was today. I’m glad that it was a Day of Rest. What would it have been like had I been busy? Just about everything happened today and that makes a change from the usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about Italian restaurants … "well, one of us has" – ed … a new Italian restaurant opened in Crewe and I went for a job as a delivery driver.
Nerina thought that I was crazy going for that job and that I’d never have it
However I did succeed in my application and when I saw her in the street later I gave her a wave as I drove pasta.

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Thursday 17th April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I went for a listen.

Mind you, I’m not surprised. If you don’t go to bed until 01:30 and wake up at 06:00 you don’t have much time for travelling about

If I had put my mind to it, I could have been in bed much earlier but as usual I hung about for a while and when a Judy Collins concert came round on the playlist, I decided to stay up and listen to it. These days she’s not the same as she was 5o years ago but what she’s lost in her vocal power she’s more than made up for with her ad-libbing in her concert.

She has a very pleasant stage act these days and I have to make the most of it.

In bed, I took a while to go off to sleep and had something of a mobile night where I was tossing and turning, not being able to settle, and as it became light I gave up the struggle. I didn’t leave the bed until the alarm went off because I turned the heating off on Wednesday and hadn’t switched it back on again.

When the alarm went off I put my sooty foot out of bed and braved the cold as I dashed into the bathroom for a wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

And then back into the bathroom because I’d forgotten to have a shave and I was looking like the Wild Man of Borneo – not a good image if Emilie the Cute Consultant is going to be there this afternoon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone, which didn’t take very long at all, and then carried on with some personal stuff for a while.

The nurse was late today and didn’t have too much to say for himself. He was soon gone and I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our whistle-stop tour is continuing and we have arrived at Kenilworth Castle. Pages and pages of tour-guide information but nothing whatever about the military aspect of the place, and nothing at all that would excite comment. Oh! For the controversy that someone like T RICE HOLMES could bring to this kind of discussion.

Back in here I sorted out a plan for a couple of radio programmes in March next year (I really am that far ahead).

To my surprise, I found that for one of the dates I have a concert in my little … "not so little" – ed … stock that we recorded on a weekend in Den Haag years and years ago – and it’s NOT Golden Earring or Alquin either

It’s almost one hour and twenty minutes long so I reformatted and remixed it for the radio and then had a listen to it. It didn’t take long to make a list of the tracks that I want to use and it will make a nice concert of just the right length.

My cleaner turned up to fit my patches and after she left I went to have my disgusting drink but the taxi arrived before I’d even had time to wet my mouth.

We were the usual two passengers for dialysis with the driver and although we arrived early, there was quite a crowd already waiting so I was one of the last to be connected. And as I suspected, I had to stay here for four hours.

Although Julie the Cook wasn’t dealing with me, she came for a chat, and although Emilie the Cute Consultant was there, she sent an oppo to see me. There’s a problem about my calcium medication and I needed a substitute so he wrote out a different prescription.

Apart from that I was left pretty much to my own devices all afternoon and spent it making out my LeClerc order for tomorrow. When my nurse came to unplug me she fitted these new braces on my shoes to support my feet. Apparently Emilie the Cute Consultant is worried that I no longer have any force in my ankles

The driver who brought me home was quite chatty. He’s taken me to Paris a couple of times and he’s also a big football fan so we had a lot in common.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched as I climbed the stairs. She thinks that these braces are helping me up the stairs, which is a good thing.

Tea tonight was a stir-fry with a pile of the mushrooms that I have left that I forgot to put in the lasagna last night. I really don’t know where my brain has gone. But my chocolate cake is delicious.

So tonight I won’t be as late as last night. There’s a concert currently playing, involving John Cipollina, whom I met when he played with “Man”, and Nick Gravenites, Mike Bloomfield’s favourite singer who fronted “The Electric Flag” for a while. So when it finished I’ll think about going to bed. It won’t be as late as last night, but I bet that it won’t be early.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Judy Collins… "well, one of us has" – ed … she told several interesting stories during her act.
She told of Mae West who met a friend who was wearing a fur coat.
"My dear" said Mae West "Wherever did you get that fur coat?"
"I spent the night with a man who gave me ten thousand dollars" replied the friend
A few weeks later the two met again, but this time it was Mae West wearing the fur coat
"My dear" said the friend. "Did you spend the night with a man who gave you ten thousand dollars?"
"Well, no dear" replied Mae West. "I spent the night with ten thousand men and they each gave me a dollar!"

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Wednesday 16th April 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about my hot cross buns. They have risen up like the proverbial lift and look absolutely magnificent. It just shows the difference that having an accurate water gauge makes. All these years that I’ve had some very hit-and-miss baking …

Something else that was magnificent last night was the fact that I was in bed by 23:00, for the first time for ages. I really appreciated it too, having blitzed through everything after tea – the notes, the statistics and the back-up et cetera.

As well as that, it didn’t take long to drop off either, and there I stayed, fast asleep, until 06:55. Probably the best night’s sleep that I have had for ages.

When the alarm went off I was awake thinking about leaving the bed early but BILLY COTTON beat me to it. Surprisingly it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy to leave the bed.

In the bathroom I had a cursory wash (after all, it is shower day today) and then went 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. I had to meet Rosemary and we arranged to meet in London at one of the big railway station termini. She had a rough idea of when she’d be there. I was already in London so I said that I would be there or thereabouts. As the station is so big, I’ll just arrive there and we’ll contact each other by ‘phone or something. When it came time to go I set out on foot on my usual way. I suddenly realised that I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. Just at that moment I was walking past a house when a taxi pulled up. I asked the driver which was the best way to the railway station. He pointed out the way from which I had just come. Down at that end of the road was a dirt track that led through some kinds of fields or common. I asked “surely you don’t mean that I am to go past there?”. He replied “no, it’s a great big main four-lane road”. I realised then where I’d gone wrong – I’d gone wrong a long way before the junction back down the road. I asked “could you run me there?”. He replied “I can’t. I’m finishing work. I live here”. I tried to persuade him but it didn’t work. Another taxi pulled up so I asked him but the first driver told him not to bother – that I was going to walk. I was rather disappointed by the two of them. I set out to walk back and walked probably the quickest that I have ever walked in my life. Eventually I could see the railway station in the distance. There was a big road junction just before it. There were millions of cars milling around there trying to go through, totally ignoring the traffic lights and the pedestrian crossing but people just surged across. Some girl in a car tried to drive through the crowd and the crowd was quite irate. They made something of a demonstration about it. In the end I extricated myself from this mess but still had ten minutes of walking to go and I thought that I was going to be late yet again.

This all rings a bell with me. I’ve walked down that dirt road and across those fields and common before during one of my previous nocturnal rambles, quite a while ago now. As well as that, I can see the railway station now. I was up on the top of a hill, something like Highgate in London. The railway station was on a slight rise across a valley, with its huge arched train shed clearly visible. However, we are once again overwhelmed in confusion and anxiety in a dream. Someone has commented on my anxiety and confusion dreams in the past and suggests that it might be due to stress. All I can say is that if my life now is stressful, what must my dreams have been like 40 years or so ago when I was running my taxis?

Later on I went back into that dream … "which dream is this?" – ed … I was wandering around Crewe near the Square, talking to a friend of mine while I was typing out some notes for the radio. One of the things that I was typing out was the notes of something about the Blues Brothers. At that moment friend climbed into his car and shot off just like the Blues Brothers did. of course, at that moment, a police car appeared. The police car went to block him off on the Square. I could see it all perfectly from my vantage point but my friend’s vantage point was obscured by the old Marks and Spencers building. When he came round the corner there he found himself face-to-face with the policeman. Of course he had to stop, he couldn’t really do anything. The policeman stepped out of his vehicle and the first thing that he did was to close the bonnet of my friend’s car – it was one of these bonnets that hinges from the front, not from the rear. He would often leave it open as he drove around, held only by the security catch

That reminds me of a time 40 or 50 years ago when we were all out late one night (or early in the morning, more like) in Crewe when there was a heavy snowfall. My friend took his car onto the public car park, that was totally empty, and was spinning round doing doughnuts on the slippery surface. What he had failed to take into account that it was right next to the police station. Two constables came out and gave him a ticket for “using a car park other than for the purpose of parking”.

The nurse was in a better humour today and was rather more cheerful than yesterday. However he didn’t stop for long and I could get on and make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK.

Our trip around the castles of England (and Wales) is turning into a real whistle-stop tour. On some of these sites we aren’t discussing architecture of any type (never mind military architecture) because there are no extant remains, so I’m not convinced of the reason why we’ve even come here.

However, he does make an interesting observation when it comes to Huntingdon Castle. He tells us that "William the Conqueror was at Huntingdon 1068, when he ordered a castle to be built, evidently on the site of the old fortress restored by Edward the Elder in 918. The names in Domesday show how complete had been the removal of the larger English landowners."

We’ve talked rather a lot just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … about the ethnic cleansing that must have taken place as several waves of invaders overwhelmed the native population during the various invasions back in the early days of history and prehistory. So these “larger English landowners” – what happened to them? I can’t see them being allowed to remain, even as serfs and slaves, in the local area where they might command the respect and loyalty of their previous tenants and possibly incite a rebellion.

Back in here I had things to do that needed my attention, and then I cracked on with the radio programme. All of the notes for programme 260227 are completed and ready for dictation on Saturday night.

There was time for a disgusting drink break and to sort out my faithful cleaner when she arrived. And then I had a wonderful shower and found some nice, clean clothes so that I shall look fine for Emily the Cute Consultant tomorrow.

After my cleaner left, I had my second disgusting drink and then I had things to do.

After breakfast I had put some lentils and split peas into the slow cooker and after an hour and the water had boiled, I rinsed them and then put them back in the slow cooker on the lowest heat with some clean water. So after the afternoon’s disgusting drink break I began to plan my lentil lasagna.

First though, I had hot cross buns to make. And here I almost had a disaster. I didn’t have enough vegan butter.

However, any oil is good, as we have proved with our oil cakes, so why not use coconut oil? I made a really good mix of flour, coconut oil, salt, yeast and mixed spices with warm soya milk and melted coconut oil – the correct amounts of liquid – and left it to fester.

While it was festering, I fried a large onion and some garlic in my wok, tipped the lentils and split peas in after I’d rinsed them again, along with a pack of this soya mince in tomato sauce that I wanted to try. In went some tomato sauce and herbs and so on and I left it to simmer away.

The dough for the hot cross buns had risen nicely so I added some sultanas, raisins and some orange essence, and kneaded it all again.

After it had stood for a while and risen again, I moulded the dough into six balls, flattened them and put them on the biscuit tray. I made some thick flour mix and with my icing piper, piped the crosses on the buns and left them to rise again.

While they were festering, I assembled my lasagna and made a vegan cheese sauce that I poured over the top, and stuck it all into the oven.

When it was cooked I put the hot cross buns in and then had a quarter of my lasagne with some vegetables. And it was delicious. Even better, there are three more slices to go into the freezer for another time. It was the lst of the orange, ginger and coconut cake today too. Tomorrow I’ll start on my chocolate cake.

Rosemary had rung up while I was baking so after I’d finished tea and washed up, we had a little chat. Not very long – only fifty-four minutes.

Consequently I’m running really late but never mind – I’m off to bed right now. Tomorrow is dialysis day and shopping order too.

But while we’re on the subject of buns … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me that he had served in the Army in a regiment where the chief cook was Doctor Spooner’s brother.
"How interesting" I replied
"Very interesting" he said "especially when the Germans launched an attack on the kitchen"
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because Doctor Spooner’s brother personally led the counter-attack" he replied. "He went into action with all buns glazing"

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Tuesday 15th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a Day of Rest today.

Our Welsh class is on an Easter break this week and next week so I was planning on having a leisurely day today for a change.

What contributed to that particular idea was the fact that I had another very late night – long after 01:30 when I went to bed. But there again, a Marshall Tucker Band concert came round on the playlist and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have something of a weakness for Southern Rock and lead guitar solos that can sometimes last for as long as several weeks. After all, how many other Southern Rock bands can you name WHO CAN MUSTER UP A FLUTE?

So eventually I made it into bed and settled down for a good sleep only to awaken in a real panic when the alarm went off – sheets and bedding flying everywhere. For some reason or other I was convinced that I’d heard the alarm go off previously and that this was the second alarm.

As it happens, it wasn’t, because it went off five minutes later. So whatever that was all about, I really don’t know.

The sad part about that was that I was off on an interesting little voyage at that particular moment and in the panic, the whole lot was wiped away completely and I can’t remember anything at all about it.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and then into the kitchen for the medication. It’s a non-dialysis day so I remembered the disgusting powder that I have to mix with water.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had a car parked on the lawn somewhere and the front end of it had sunk into the grass. We were debating on ways to manoeuvre it out. I would have expected that we would have raised up the front, put it on a couple of planks underneath the wheels and then pulled it backwards. My father though was going on about changing the gearbox. Even if it had been a practical proposition to change the gearbox, I didn’t understand how that was going to help to move the car out of the trenches that it had dug for itself.

The car, I can still see it now. It was my red Cortina Estate that I came in when I immigrated to Europe, all of my wordly possessions that remained, crammed into the back. I still have the car today – inter-galactic mileage and needs the valve guides replacing but apart from a spot of rot on the scuttle underneath the windscreen the bodywork is perfect and, rare for a Cortina, has never been welded. It’s sitting in my warehouse in Montaigut quietly gathering dust with the 2000E saloon that Nerina bought me once and my Citroën “Traction Avant”.

The nurse turned up early for the start of his week’s shift. No surprise, because he doesn’t have the injections or the blood tests to do, by popular request of his clients. He was complaining that he didn’t have much sleep last night, but that’s a quite common state of affairs around here.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’ve finished our visit of Helmsley Castle and after a remarkably brief passage by Hereford Castle – a mere dozen pages devoted to one of the strongest fortifications in the Marches – we’re now visiting Hertford Castle.

Our author is once more tying himself up in knots. When talking about Helmsley, he tells us on page 106 that "it is possible that the whole may have been the work of Robert Fursan, especially as, remarkable as it is, it is not named in Domesday nor any early record"

However, on page 121, when talking about the town of Hertford, he tells us that the town of "Hertford was so held of the Confessor, and so accepted by the Conqueror, and entered in Domesday, which, however, as was not uncommon, makes no mention of the castle,"

So why is it remarkable that some castles such as Helmsley Castle aren’t in the Domesday Book, but not uncommon that others such as Hertford Castle are omitted?.

After breakfast I had some paperwork that needed attention and then I had quite an idle morning not doing anything except searching for items of personal interest on the Internet.

Something else that I did was to have another in-depth look at some Artificial Intelligence programs. Every day it seems that there are more and more slowly coming onto the streets every day. The latest one seems to be an automatic story writer. All you need is to write out the very basic outline of your plot, your main characters and their characteristics, press “send” and sit back to let the machine type out a book for you.

You can type as much – or as little – as you like for the story outline and so I had a little fun with it, testing out its limits and finding out what it could – and couldn’t or wouldn’t – do. But it’s going to spoil all kinds of creativity and imagination once it all becomes on-line.

While we are talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us is" – ed … I was told of a discussion between two people on the Internet about how someone, unable to find any secretarial assistance anywhere on the island where he lived, had engaged an AI bot to do all of the work for him and it seemed to be working fine.

Interesting as all of this might be, I couldn’t keep on doing that all day and in the end I began to concentrate on programme 260227 for the radio. First of all though, I checked over programme 250418 and sent it off for broadcast this coming weekend.

For 260227 I didn’t have half of the tracks that I needed so I had to hunt them down. One or two were quite obscure and took some finding but I found them in the end thanks to help from my Artificial Intelligence-powered search engine.

So all of the tracks are sorted out, re-edited and re-mixed, paired and segued. Tomorrow while my cleaner is here, I’ll write out the notes ready for dictation on Saturday night. For the rest of the week I can make a start on Saturday at Woodstock. There will also be a LeClerc order to prepare.

For tea tonight I searched through the freezer and found one of my aubergine and kidney-bean whatsits and cooked it with some pasta and veg, followed by orange, ginger and coconut cake and soya dessert. There is just one more slice of that cake, and then I’ll be into the chocolate cake.

Something else that I have to do tomorrow and not forget is to bake some hot cross buns. We can’t have Easter without toasted hot cross buns. The batch that I made last year weren’t particularly well-made but they tasted delicious all the same. I’m hoping that my new improved technique will improve things this year.

But now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed

But seeing as we have been talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … before I go I’ll tell you about the chat that I have just had with an Artificial Intelligence chatbot.
What I did was to ask it to tell me the funniest joke that it knew.
It came back with "A man takes his sick Chihuahua to the veterinarian. They’re immediately taken back to an exam room. After a while, a Labrador walks in, sniffs the Chihuahua for 10 minutes, then leaves. Next, a cat comes in, stares at the Chihuahua for 10 minutes, and leaves. Finally, the vet arrives, examines the dog, and prescribes some medicine.
The man is shocked and says, “That must be a mistake! I’ve only been here 20 minutes!”
The vet replies, “No mistake. It’s $100 for the lab test, $100 for the cat scan, and $50 for the medicine.”"
It finished by telling me " If you want, I can share more like this!" but I don’t think that I’ll bother. At least, when I remember a joke from the old “Plymouth Polytechnic” days (and that’s a story in itself) I don’t forget half of the story like my AI chatbot has just now. Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be. I’ll prefer natural stupidity any day.

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Monday 14th April 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about it going to be four hours today at the dialysis centre. It wasn’t anything complicated to work it out. However, it was a pretty close thing and they could, if they had turned up the machine a little, gone for three and a half hours.

However, I have a three-day break and it’s important for me to have as much water evacuated as possible beforehand so that I can have a head start when I go back on Thursday.

Four hours is probably all the sleep that I had last night too. Although I finished everything that I need to do – the notes, the statistics, the backing-up – at a not-unreasonable hour, there are always other things that I can find to do when a good concert or two come round on the playlist.

Last night, it was Robert Calvert’s final concert with Hawkwind, at the Ramsgate Marina Park in Ramsgate on 28th May 1984, all one hour, forty-seven minutes and forty seconds of it. The best front-man that Hawkwind ever had, and with Huw Lloyd-Langton on guitar, what more could anyone want?

Once it finished, I staggered off to bed at a little after 01:00. And ask me if I care.

Despite the short night it was fairly turbulent and I didn’t have all that much sleep, or so it seemed. When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and the dictaphone fell out with me so I must have been doing something at that point.

However, I went into the bathroom for a wash and a shave (in case I meet Emilie The Cute Consultant this afternoon) and then into the kitchen to sort out the medication for the morning. And my chocolate cake, that had been cooling overnight, smelt delicious.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. I’d been looking at new apartments. I’d seen different apartments and I found myself in a car with my cleaner or was it Rosemary? As we pulled up outside this old building we were going to have another look at that apartment that she didn’t like at all. We went in, and the door was difficult to open so I put my weight against the door to open the way into the building. Then we found the apartment and went in. There were some people in there doing some things and it was becoming dark so I turned the lights on but they didn’t work. It was as if the whole current was earthing out somewhere and absolutely everything electrical went completely dim. I could see the kitchen in the distance that looked huge. This room was a big, tall, Gothic place. I wasn’t really sure about this at all. Another girl there tried to open the door to go out but she couldn’t manage it. I said “lift up the catch” so she put her hand around the door frame and had a feel for the lifting bracket but I had a huge, big old mug hanging from there that I had in France when I was a teenager. She knocked that off and it cascaded down through the stairwell and hit the ground about three floors below. I said “that’s my old mug gone then, isn’t it?”. I was really disappointed. There was someone down there who went to have a look at it but they didn’t say anything. We were there in this apartment trying to sort something out, trying to arrange the kitchen, trying to think about these lights. It was another one of these dreams that went round and round in chaos as we were trying to sort out all of these things.

It seems to be the thing right now, looking at new apartments, but I’m hoping that my search for a new home all of my own will finish in two months time. But I can’t understand why I’d be travelling in a car with my cleaner. Rosemary is a much more likely prospect, especially as my cleaner doesn’t drive, but even so, Rosemary won’t be coming around here any time soon. She has other preoccupations. Even more interestingly, I did have a coffee bowl given to me when I was in France as a teenager but I imagine that it was left behind at home when I moved out

Later on I was back into that dream. It was something about everyone having to be careful because the scales were measuring in grams weren’t accurate unless the scales were in a certain position and the load was placed in a certain way

What the idea about scales and weights has to do with looking for an apartment, I really don’t know. But I suppose that that was my hope when I saw what figure the scales had registered last Thursday.

There was a song that appeared last night in a dream but I can’t remember what it is now. I recognised it at the time and knew which album it was from. We had to search through all of the music files to see if we had anything by this particular group. We had, and it turned out that it was something to celebrate our second anniversary together … "second anniversary together? With whom?" – ed …. I thought that maybe I could play this programme again with the special referencing included. I set out to try to adjust the sound for what I wanted but it didn’t seem to want to work … fell asleep here …

I was right about something happening with the dictaphone during the night when it fell out of bed with me. I fell asleep (well, you know what I mean) while I was dictating and I was presented with a sound-file that ran for two hours and twenty-six seconds. It only stopped because the memory on the machine was full, so I had to clear that up and back it up. But it was my second anniversary with whom? I wish that I knew

Isabelle the Nurse’s chatty mood continued this morning. And in mid-conversation I happened to mention my tenant wanting to stay on for a few more weeks. Her reaction was quite violent and told me in no uncertain terms not to even think about it. I’m beginning to wonder whether some people know something that I don’t

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We left Hawarden this morning and are now at Helmsley Castle in Yorkshire. And for a change, he has not said anything controversial today, apart from taking up a position in the School of “Saxon” Hill forts. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that that position was roundly stamped upon by most of the members of the Woolhope Naturalists in 1867 and by many more people since.

After breakfast I set about drafting another letter ready to give to my faithful cleaner to hand in at the letting agency. I’ve decided to let them deal with it all and not become involved. It is, after all, what I pay them for.

When my cleaner came to fit my patches I had barely finished what I was doing and so I had to hurry. And after she left, I began to cut up my chocolate cake but the taxi came early and I left it half-finished.

There were two of us in the taxi with the driver and I was dropped off first, early yet again. This time I was second to be coupled up and it would have been nice had it only been for three and a half hours.

There was quite a crowd around me while they were plugging me in – three nurses and Emilie the Cute Consultant, who had come along to watch and to chat about things. She came back later for a good chat too which I appreciated.

Julie the Cook was in the other ward and she came by to say “hello” too. I seem to be very popular right now. Do I owe them some money maybe?

It wasn’t all milk and honey though. Although I didn’t have a dramatic collapse like the one the other week, my head was spinning round now and again and it kept up for several hours.

When I was unplugged and ready to go home, we had a crisis as someone’s patch gave way. And we had to wait for fifteen minutes while they cleaned the floor and let it dry

Back here, still feeling unsettled, it was a slow, weary climb up here and my evening disgusting drink while my cleaner sorted out the medication that she had brought back.

Tea tonight should have been an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit but when the frozen lump that I had taken from the freezer defrosted, I saw that it was a Vindaloo Curry. It was even hotter than when I made it but still enjoyable.

But seeing as we have been talking about that Hawkwind concert … "well, one of us has" – ed … Robert Calvert told me later that he was certain that he saw a familiar face in the crowd
"That was Leonard Cohen, I’m sure of it" he said.
"What did you do?" I asked him
"At the end of the song that we were playing I pointed to him and asked over the PA ‘are you Cohen?’ "
"What did he say?" I asked
Calvert replied "he said ‘Too right I am. I’ve heard more than enough of this rubbish’ ".

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Sunday 13th April 2025 – A MANTELPIECE!

… "He means ‘Masterpiece’ " – ed …

Indeed I do. I’ve been a busy boy today, doing a pile of baking, and making use of my new scientific measuring gauge for the water. And everything that I cooked today turned out to be exactly as it is supposed to be – bread rising up like a lift, cakes actually looking like cakes and all of that kind of thing.

Probably, what contributed a lot to that was the fact that I’d had an early night. It was at about 23:05 when I’d finished everything that I would normally finish before going to bed, and then there was the dictating of the radio notes to do.

Even though I made yet another total hash of what I was supposed to be dictating, it was still all done by 23:40 and by 23:45 I was in bed. “Later than intended” I hear you say, but with a lie-in until 08:00, it can only be good news.

Mind you, what happened next does not need any explanation. It’s a Sunday after a Saturday afternoon dialysis session, isn’t it? And so by the time that the alarm went off, I’d been up and about for an hour and a half and was sitting at my desk working.

There had been the bathroom, of course, and there had been the medication. And next was the dictaphone. We were having a huge chat about adoption etc during the night. This conversation rolled on and on, and went on to the question of mutations and mutations of voice. There were other things taking place too. I know that on one occasion someone asked me a question and I answered “well, I’m not the busiest” or “it’s not the busiest, and it’s keeping me out of mischief”. However, I can’t remember what the question was now and that was disappointing.

Everything seemed to be in quite a turmoil during the evening. I have no idea what was going on there but it was certainly quite a mess.

And then I was in Wales somewhere. I had a lift with someone and they were driving me towards my destination. We went round a bend and there was this train, a tiny little narrow-gauge steam locomotive with a big parcels train behind it. It was just like that person had been talking about in a photograph. I said “you can drop me off here” because this was my destination. It was a narrow-gauge railway line and this was its terminus. They dropped me off and I wandered around the yard. I saw a locomotive with two carriages behind it. I thought “that must be my train to go”. I had to climb up onto the bank to climb into it. I became all dirty when I rubbed my shoulder against the boiler of the train. Then I had to find some treacle. In the end I found two tins of treacle but I was on the wrong side of the train. I had to throw these tins of treacle underneath the train and then walk round the front, hanging on to the front of the locomotive to make sure that I didn’t fall down the embankment. When I reached the other side, I heard a whistle, a steam whistle. I looked up and there was another train that I hadn’t seen, and a locomotive that was attached to three carriages. A double-decker bus just pulled up with a whole crowd of people on board. They were all heading towards that other train. I thought “maybe that’s my train” so I set out to try to run to catch it. Of course, I couldn’t run. I realised that I had no treacle, my backpack was open and everything was on the verge of falling out. I thought “I’m going to miss this train now and the next one is not for another several hours”. I was running and running and running towards this train. I couldn’t run and I was on my bad legs with no crutches. This was becoming a disaster

We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Yesterday in fact when we were trying to run in vain to catch a bus. Today, I’m trying to run to catch a train. I wonder what I’ll be trying to run to catch tomorrow? But the idea of it being a narrow-gauge steam locomotive is quite interesting. I’ve not had a run out on a narrow-gauge train for years, and certainly not with any tins of treacle. What did treacle have to do with it anyway?

While I was waiting for Isabelle I had a surf through the internet for the highlights of yesterday’s games in Wales. Colwyn Bay will be joining Llanelli in the Premier League next season after their win at Penrhyncoch. I also found the highlights of the game we watched yesterday BETWEEN Y DRENEWYDD AND ABERYSTWITH and Niall Flint in full flight down the centre.

Isabelle the Nurse had a lot to say for herself, mainly about dialysis and compression socks, as she dealt with my legs and then she wandered off, leaving me to deal with breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

A few days ago, I wrote about our author, Geo T Clark, not being able to make up his mind about the system of dating that he uses. Here’s a delightful paragraph on page 87 where he discusses the history of the castle at Hastings "Henry, the fifth earl, who died in the reign of Richard I., left an only daughter, Alice, who married Ralph de Essoudun, who in her right became Earl of Eu, and so died in 1211. Their son, William, elected to become a subject of France, and,29 Henry III., his possessions in England escheated to the Crown, and were granted to Prince Edward. As early as 1227 King Henry allowed to Robert de Aubeville 10 marcs, half his salary, as keeper of the castle. The college was retained by Henry in his own hands. In 5 Edward III., the dean and canons petitioned to have the castle wall restored, it having been injured by the sea. In 1372, the castle was granted to John of Gaunt,"

If he wants to continue to use both forms of date, then that’s fine. But how many times does he change from one format to the other in that one paragraph? He needs at least to stick to the same style in each paragraph.

He is also following the trend of many of our previous authors in contradicting himself, and this time, within the space of just a handful of paragraphs. At the bottom of page 89, when talking about Hawarden Castle (which, in a book entitled “Medieval Military Architecture in England”, is actually in Wales), he tells us that "At Hawarden, the course of action seems to have been different. Here are no traces of Norman work or of the Norman style, and though the keep is unusually substantial".

However, over the page, not even half-way down, he tells us that "The entrance is at the ground level on the north-east side, from the main ward. It is marked by a broad, flat buttress, rather Norman in character,"

And to show you just how times and appreciation have changed since he published his book in 1884, also on page 90 he tells us that "the modern brick and stone wall replacing the battlement is rugged and broken, but in parts about 12 feet high, and intended to give elevation to the keep. The building thus made extensively visible has become a sort of parish cynosure, and, however irregular its appearance, it would scarcely be in good taste to remove the addition."

Can you imagine that? Early medieval stonework disfigured by modern brickwork and it would “scarcely be in good taste” to remove it?

Back in here, we had Stranraer away at Stirling Albion, and I totally despair. Stranraer were miles on top of this game and at 1-0 up at half-time and well in control at the hour mark looking as if they could score another goal or two at any moment, they then go and hand the Binos not one, not two, but three of the easiest goals that they will ever score in their whole lives with a series of schoolboy errors that defy any kind of description from me. If you really want to see how bad it was, THEN IT’S ALL YOURS

My bread roll for lunch was absolutely wonderful, made with just the right amount of water. It could not have been better and the new cheese that my cleaner brought finished it off a treat.

Back in here after lunch I attacked the radio programmes for which I dictated the notes last night. And by the time that I was ready for tea I’d completed the final track for programme 260206 and assembled it all so that it’s one hour long. I just had to remove eight seconds of text.

And then I finished programme 260220 as much as I could – edited the notes for the ten tracks, assembled the two halves of the programme, chose the final track and wrote the notes ready for dictation next Saturday night.

If you are wondering where programme 260213 is, that’s a concert that I dealt with years and years ago.

Despite all of that, there was baking. A sunflower-seed loaf and a chocolate oil-cake. The loaf, like the bread roll, is also wonderful and the cake is excellent too. The oil in there is half neutral vegetable oil, half coconut oil, and there’s orange essence and desiccated coconut in there too. All of the baking is cooling off ready for cutting and storing tomorrow morning.

Tonight’s pizza was another one of the best that I have ever made, cooked just right. If I could make the pizza every week just as I did tonight, I would be really happy

But that’s not for now. I’m off to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow, worse luck, and I’ll probably be there for four hours.

But seeing as we have been talking about adoption … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a friend of mine being called for a discussion with his parents.
"Son we have to tell you?" said his father "did you know that you are adopted"
"Really?" said the boy. " Could I ever meet my birth parents?"
"We are your birth parents" replied his father. "Now go upstairs and pack. Your new family will be here to pick you up in ten minutes"

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Saturday 12th April 2025 – WE ARE BACK …

… amongst the painful dialysis connections. After a few sessions of comparatively painless connections since Emilie the Cute Consultant did her stuff, they have been gradually worsening and today we were back in the agony stakes. So I’ve no idea what’s going to happen now.

Another thing about which I have no idea now is this story about early nights. I cracked on rapidly to finish everything last night and managed somehow to finish relatively early. However I was as usual side-tracked by a couple of really good concerts on the playlist and it ended up being long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change it was a comparatively decent night. I slept right though until the alarm sounded with only the vaguest memory of awakening in mid-sleep.

It was a struggle to rise to my feet when the alarm went off but I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After the wash I set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. For once, I managed to fit everything into it but it probably wasn’t a good idea because it struggled with the weight. I need to wash my clothes more frequently – or wash fewer clothes more often.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I should have been going into work with Nerina. We were on our way to catch our bus at the top of Mill Street. I was walking on my crutches and Nerina was with me. Nerina suddenly remembered that she had a prescription to pick up at the chemist’s across the road. She said that she would go and pick it up. I told her to be quick so she dashed off while I continued as quickly as I possibly could, which wasn’t very quick at all. I saw the bus come up Mill Street to the traffic lights and turn right. I knew that I wasn’t going to catch it. I saw Nerina come out of the chemist’s and run across the road. I thought “at least she’s caught the bus”. When I reached the bus stop she was standing there. She was saying that she had seen that I wasn’t there and so had waited for me. I told her that that was a silly thing to do. She should have caught the bus and gone on into work anyway on time. I would follow as best as I could. She would have been on time but now we are both going to be late and there isn’t another bus for hours so we are probably going to end up missing half a day. That was a strange decision.

Why I should be going to work on the K43 to Nantwich (that was the bus route where I was) is a total mystery, as is why I would be coming from the general direction of the railway station. And I wouldn’t be on crutches in Crewe either. Furthermore, I reckon that Nerina would have had far more sense than to have missed the bus in order to wait for me if I were going to miss it.

There was also something about being on board a yacht. There was some boy there who seemed to be very well-educated from a good family but that was far from the case. He was very insistent on his rights etc. He was going on wanting this, wanting that and everyone was annoyed with him in the end. They decided that they would teach him a lesson. When he made some more demands, someone reminded him that he was hoping that we’d move back into more traditional ways that were all good and proper a hundred years ago. They put him on a bed face down, removed his trousers and spanked him with a slipper. Every time he protested, they reminded him that he was hoping for a return to the Good Old Days and isn’t this just the kind of thing that he would have wanted? When his parents came back they were outraged by what they saw but everyone on board said “well, he was asking for this – it was literally what he wanted, a return to the Good Old Days of a hundred years ago and he’s receiving exactly what he wanted. None of us can see what the problem is”.

There have been some very, very strange dreams in the past but I don’t think that there has ever been one quite as strange as this. It quite possibly relates to an argument that broke out on the Internet a while back when someone posted "the problem with today’s children is that they don’t seem to have the sense of fear that the sound of a leather belt being withdrawn quickly so a series of belt hoops on a pair of jeans would instil into them.".

Isabelle was in quite a chatty mood today and talked incessantly about nothing whatever as she organised my legs.

Breakfast was next, with more of MY BOOK. We have left Harlech and are now at Hastings Castle, discussing the finer points of corbels and arches, with the odd flying buttress thrown in for good measures. A flying buttress is the equivalent of half an arch, leaning against the outside of a heavy stone wall to stop the wall falling outward. But does our author tell us that? Of course he doesn’t. He describes the buttress’s more elegant points from an artistic point of view and that’s about it.

Back in here I spent a couple of hours drafting a complicated letter to my tenant downstairs, but after having had a couple of chats with a couple of people and having had second thoughts, it’s all becoming far too complicated for words and so I’ve decided that she will leave at the end of the current lease. I’m too old, too tired and fed up to start to negotiate complicated deals and arrangements.

My cleaner turned up on time and fitted my anaesthetic patches and then I tidied up the kitchen while I waited for the taxi. I didn’t have long to wait either. And I was the only passenger in the car so we arrived at the dialysis centre quite early.

For a change I was second in and second to be coupled up. Despite the patches and despite the new procedure and despite the ice pack, it still hurt, and it was hurting throughout the session.

The good news is that if they had the machine on max and ran it for three and a half hours, it would leave 200 grams behind. After a discussion with the doctor today, I decided that it would make more sense to go with three and a half hours, and have a look at how things are on Monday. Four hours would probably be better then, and bring me down to an ideal weight ready for my three-day break.

There was football on the internet as I mentioned earlier – Y Drenewydd v Aberystwyth. And for once in my life in the Welsh Premier League, I saw a team play the way that I would play my team against any team that has a rather pedestrian central defence.

Y Drenewydd were desperate to win to keep alive any possible hope of avoiding the drop, so they went on an all-out attack, However Aberystwyth, who have clearly been reading my training manual, played with the rapid winger Niall Flint at centre-forward. Every time Aberystwyth won the ball in defence they kicked it upfield over the head of the central defenders and Niall Flint ran after it.

He was causing panic in their defence all through the game. And while Y Drenewydd scored two goals, Niall Flint scored two of his own for Aberystwyth, he hit the post twice and only some desperate defending kept him out on another couple of occasions. And when Aberystwyth scored a third as the game drew to a close, that, I’m afraid, was that for Y Drenewydd.

During pre-season I’d seen Y Drenewydd play against Hednesford Town, and what I saw prompted me to enter into correspondence with the Drenewydd club secretary. On the 5th of August I finished my correspondence with "I can see it being a long, cold season ahead"

At least the Chairman of Y Drenewydd was quite frank after the game. "We lost some very good players in close season but didn’t replace like with like". That is no surprise at all. What is a surprise is that he didn’t do anything to redress the balance.

The boss was waiting for me when the dialysis was over and he brought me home through the immense traffic queue as the Parisians desert their city for the Easter break. Despite dropping off another passenger, I was at home for 18:15 and I wish that I could do that every time.

My cleaner watched as I climbed my weary way upstairs where I relaxed for an hour or so.

Tea was as usual baked potato, vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet, followed by cake and soya dessert. Now I’m having a little break before dictating my radio notes and going to bed. A lie-in until 08:00 in the morning and then I have baking to do. Bread, more bread and a chocolate cake. Let’s see how the new water measurer copes

But seeing as we have been talking about football … "well, one of us has" – ed … tomorrow there’s a live football match in the Women’s League Cup – Caerdydd V Llansawel.
In the previous round Llansawel beat a team representing the Walt Disney Fan club. It was quite an easy match for Llansawel so I asked them why
"It was as if that Disney team only played with ten players" explained the Llansawel manager. "They had a player on the pitch called ‘Cinderella’ but she spent the whole ninety minutes running away from the ball"

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