Tag Archives: psychiatrist

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

… of mine seems to be starting to bear fruit. At dialysis this afternoon, I was asked "do you still want to do three sessions per week of three hours, or to try two sessions of four hours and see how it goes?".

As a consequence, for the foreseeable future I have my Saturday afternoons back, assuming that all goes well. Of course, if it doesn’t, they will think again but let’s enjoy the moment for now.

It’s about time that I had some good news because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

It wasn’t such good news last night, though. Once more, despite trying my best, I was late going to bed. I really don’t know why I can’t seem to concentrate on things like this these days.

And once in bed, I might have been asleep quite quickly but it wasn’t for long because I was wide-awake again at 03:10. At some point I must have gone back to sleep but I awoke again at about 04:30 and that time, it seemed to be for good. I lounged around in bed for some time but at about 05:30 I called it a night and left the bed.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, I went into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to accompany my medication. That drink really is wicked

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was something like a LORD OF THE RINGS adventure. Several people had gone into a large cave deep underground to liberate some kind of sacred, heavy chain. When they took out the chain, they made something of a noise and several enemies began to appear. These were the typical gruesome Middle-Earth type of enemies and these people were involved in some kind of battle. But I missed out something in the middle, which was when they pulled out this huge chain, there were plenty of other things too. He ordered his men to pick these other things out and pass them to him to keep. However, many of his men wouldn’t. Some of them did, but they were definitely not happy. One of them dumped a load of this stuff onto him, over his head, as a gesture of defiance after he had made a huge noise lifting up this chain. For some reason, this attracted the evil spirits and it became a fight to the death. Eventually, someone shouted “cut!”. It was of course a Hollywood-type of movie thing that had reached the end of a scene.

Wouldn’t that be nice if it were to happen in real life – finding yourself in a really sticky, unpleasant situation and all that you need to do is to shout “cut” and it would end? But what’s going on that a situation like this has suddenly appeared?

There was also something about going on an office trip somewhere. I was going with two or three other people and we decided that I would take my cat and one of these other people would take their dog, a collie. We asked a girl whom we knew if she was coming with us. She said that she couldn’t because in the evening when they would come back, there would be nowhere to park on the market. We found that to be a strange decision and tried to persuade her, but she was adamant. We set off walking through Crewe and were at the bottom end of Victoria Street. Someone said “well, it’s at the back of the fruit shop”. So we wandered our way up Victoria Street through an alleyway into the rear of the fruit shop, which used to be the old road that went down to the Ritz Cinema. There was a marquee there, and we went in. This was where everyone was assembling to go on this office trip.

What is surprising is that I can still remember where Perry’s Fruit and Veg shop used to be in Crewe Town Centre after all these years. As for the back entry that led into the street that dropped down to the Ritz Cinema before it was all swept away in a mad fit of demolition, the dream was actually perfectly correct.

The Ritz Cinema was great though. I’d fixed the projectionist’s motorcycle once so we had free admission. We’d go there in the late afternoon fifty and more years ago to watch the brilliant films of the day. Quite often, we’d be the only people in there but when we left in the early evening, there would be queues all the way down to the old Co-op.

The nurse turned up early today. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my feet. After he left, I should have gone for breakfast but I was engrossed in something else. In the end, it was a late breakfast.

Having finished AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE by Margaret Carrington, I’ve started reading MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington.

She was Henry Carrington’s second wife after Margaret Carrington died. She was however at Fort Phil Kearny as the wife of Lieutenant Grummond, one of the soldiers who was killed with Fetterman. It will be interesting to read her take on the situation.

It has to be said though that, in marrying Carrington in 1871, just four years after the death of her first husband, she can’t have borne Carrington any ill-will.

After breakfast, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and that’s now ready. I then went and uploaded the utilities to the computer’s new drive. I’d forgotten about them.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then, while awaiting the taxi, I crashed out completely, hunched over the kitchen table. I was far-gone too and I had a real struggle to bring myself round when the taxi arrived.

We had to pick someone up at the hospital, and then we drove down to Avranches.

To my surprise, they put me in a room on my own today. And no sooner had I been installed when one of the doctors (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me and made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

It’s all conditional, of course. It depends on how much water they need to remove and if the machine can do it (it’s limited to 950 ml/hour) in the time allowed. Otherwise, it’ll be back to three sessions.

Today, they kept me for almost four hours and extracted every last drop in order to give me a head start and we’ll see what happens on Monday for my next visit.

There is a down-side to all of this, though. The reason why I was in a private room was that they sent the psychologist to see me. Never mind about what she wanted – she blanched when I described my week’s medical appointments to her. I think that she needs to see a psychologist herself now.

She told me to let her know if I want to see her again, but I think that my problems will just make her feel worse.

They eventually let me go and I was late arriving home, as expected. They had kept my blood pressure sheet so I told the nurse not to bother coming round this evening. He was delighted by that.

It took a while to sort myself out once I arrived home, but then I made tea. I wasn’t all that hungry so I had mashed potato, peas and a vegan sausage followed by a piece of this delicious ginger cake that I have made.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about FE Smith, Lord Birkenhead, just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … his off-the-cuff remarks were legendary.
When he was Lord Chancellor, a newly-appointed judge came to see him for some advice about sentencing in a case that he had been trying.
"What do you think I should give to a man who allows himself to be b****red?" asked the judge.
"Well, " said FE Smith. "Thirty shillings, two Pounds – whatever you happen to have on you at the time."

0

Monday 28th October 2024 – I’M FED UP …

… of this blasted dialysis and the pain that it’s causing me. Everything that could go wrong at the Clinic did go wrong today and during my three and a half hours coupled up to the machine I was wracked with non-stop pain.

What made it worse was that of the three teams there, it was the team that I consider to be the best that was there on duty this afternoon.

There’s going to have to be some dramatic improvement in the way that things work in there because if it carries on like this, I shan’t consider the 18 hours per week that I waste going to the Clinic to be worth the effort.

It’s all very well saying that they are doing their best to keep me alive, which I’m sure they are, but if I have to spend the rest of my life in pain like this three times per week, then I’d rather not bother.

One consolation though was that I was in bed before 23:00 last night, which was really nice. In fact, it was a good half-hour before and that was something for which I’d been longing.

However, I failed to make the most of it. There I was, wide-awake at 06:00 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, even applying a liberal helping of deodorant. I know that Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, but that’s no reason not to make an effort. I even changed my clothes.

Back in here I had a bash at transcribing the dictaphone notes. This was another one of these chaotic houses with lots of things happening and lots of people living there, all their lives intertwined etc. People kept on changing beds and bedrooms for some reason or other. I know that a couple of girls changed their bedding and ended up in a bed where I had slept. I pretended to forget that it was a bed where I was no longer sleeping, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, but I’m not!. Next morning there were the usual things that needed doing but I was quite looking forward to the evening because I hoped that the beds would be like they were last night and I could carry on. I had a whole variety of tasks that I needed to perform. Round about mid-afternoon I decided that I’d sit down and put my feet up for five minutes because I was tired after having had very little sleep the previous night. I sat down and put up my feet, and the next thing that I remember, it was bright sunlight and there were a lot of people about. I looked at my watch and it was 07:35. It must have been the following morning and I’d slept. I went in and everyone was having breakfast. I thought “I’ve missed my chance again, haven’t I?”. While I was wandering around looking for people I ended up in some woman’s room. She was sitting there. She’d had an accident, her glasses were broken and roughly where her glasses were broken there was a huge scar in her head. She looked quite a mess. I told her what had happened but of course I left out the part about in bed, just the part about me falling asleep. She thought that it was quite funny and told one or two other people. It was really quite funny too, especially the way that it stopped me doing what I was hoping to do.

Actually, it wasn’t all that funny. For once in my life I managed to Get The Girl … "not ‘arf ‘e did!" – ed … and then miss out on the second occasion due to crashing out. It really is unbelievable although regular readers of this rubbish will recall the unbelievable part of it being that I actually had some good luck for a change. Quite usually the second part of that affair is par for the course where I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But chaos? It sounds just like home.

And then the vogue of child painting was starting to come into effect, people having their children painted by well-known artists. Where we were living there was the occasional quest, seeing as my wife could do painting and I could write verses etc. Then of course we began to receive real-life commissions. One of them was this small child aged about three. I sat him down and tried to make him calm etc but it was clear that mathematics was just not his thing. He yowled and yowled all through this ceremony and made a right mess of this photo because there was never ever a correct moment to take it

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … although I’m asleep when I’m dreaming and dictating, I usually have some kind of vague recollection that is triggered when I’m typing out the notes. But for this dream, I have no recollection at all. Not a single bit. I’ve no idea at all what to make of this.

Finally, another dream in the long-running saga of new houses. I finally moved into my new house and was slowly settling in. I’d had a look at the one that I’d had in Winsford and they were in a terrible state so I had a look at the windows of mine and they could do with some attention if not replacing so I took out the two at the back of the house, the dining room and the rear bedroom. I began to clean up the one in the dining room and made a pretty nice job of it. I fitted it back in ready to paint but I noticed that now the sun had gone in and there were really heavy storm clouds. It was starting to rain so I took the ladder to go to fit the window back in the bedroom but the rain beat me. We had this torrential rain but I continued, trying to make this ladder work against the rear of the house but I was having so much trouble because I can’t do with ladders very well. The rain went and the rain stopped so in the end I tried to go round to the front of the house but I couldn’t work out how to get there. I tried a couple of ways but there was no obvious way to go round to the front.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve had several dreams about new houses, in one of which I had actually bought two new houses and couldn’t make up my mind in which one to live. But it did remind me of my house in Winsford and while I was at the Dialysis Clinic I came over all nostalgic about my little house. I wonder how my life and my future would have panned out had I not moved to Gainsborough Road in Crewe and stayed in Winsford.

But that’s not all, although you wouldn’t thank me for posting anything else, especially if you are eating your meal right now. As Thomas Allen Reed once said, "It was fortunate for my reputation that it never afterwards saw the light"

Isabelle the nurse came round and she collided with my cleaner, and they both came in together to assail me. My cleaner wanted my health card for the chemist and the nurse wanted to deal with my legs. They both did what they needed to do in here and left together.

After they had gone I had breakfast and read my book. We’ve now finished the speeches and we are having a lecture on geology. And I have to say that if anyone wants to take up the study of geology, they’ll do much worse than read this lecture because it’s fascinating.

In fact it’s the first geology lecture that I have ever seen where mathematical calculations are well to the fore, but if you don’t want to carry out the calculations you’ll have just as much interest looking at the diagrams.

Back in here I spent some time going through my live concerts and dating them as best as I can, and then I made a start on my Welsh homework. Even though there’s no lesson tomorrow (half-term) I want to crack on.

My cleaner came early to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s just as well because the taxi was early once more.

And here hangs a tale, because it was a driver who has taken me before. She’s usually quite chatty but today she hardly said a word and was rather snappy when she did. She had one of those auras that I could sense before she even said anything, and it wasn’t a good sensation at all.

At the Dialysis Clinic the nurse connected me up painlessly, but the machine didn’t work and nothing that she tried would make it.

With the aid of the portable x-ray machine they worked out that the needles hadn’t gone into the tube in my arm so they took them out and tried again. By this time though the anaesthetic had worn off.

Eventually they had a good contact but the machine still wouldn’t fire up. They eventually managed it but only if the pipes were in a certain position so they taped them in that position to my arm. At one stage I had five nurses and three nursing assistants standing round my bed and it’s a shame that I was in no condition to enjoy it.

That’s all very well, but you try lying like that for three and a half hours without moving your arm even half an inch. Eventually, they were so fed up of coming to deal with the plaintive wails of the machine every time I winced with pain that they rigged up a cradle with some kevlar padding.

Then I had no choice but not to move my arm

When I could I read through my Welsh and then finished off my “Curious Church Customs”. I’ll have to find a new book to read, something like HORRID CRIMES OF BYGONE CHESHIRE to see if any of my relatives are in it, and not as victims either.

The trick cyclist came by. She asked me if I was OK and when I replied that I was, she cleared off elsewhere and left me alone, which suited me fine.

With all of the excitement everything was running late, and when they came to unplug me, the compression on my arm failed again and once more the place was like a slaughterhouse

It’s no surprise that I was glad to see the back of the place and climb into the taxi to bring me home. It was another new driver and I ended up having to give directions after she took a wrong turn

My faithful cleaner was at her post again to help me out of the car but I managed the first flight of all thirteen steps without using my hand to lift my leg. If I can do that for a whole week I’m going to try the second flight up to my front door

And she had some news for me. One of the medicaments that I need is on special order and the chemist has had to send away for a box. So what’s the betting that that will be changed in a few days?

In the absence of a pepper, I made an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit for tea. I had one helping with pasta and veg, and there are three more that are destined for the freezer

The apple-cake has almost all gone now, so I might persevere with a cake in the air fryer. The chocolate cake which I cooked and which is almost all gone now, ended up being something of a success despite the misgivings that I had at the start.

So now I’m going to be brave and go to bed, even though my arm is quite painful. I’ve warned my cleaner to take her ‘phone to bed and expect a phone call because I’m not convinced at all about how this compression is going to work. I don’t suppose that I shall have a wink of sleep.

But there’s a guy who comes to the Dialysis Clinic in an ambulance because he has lost both his legs.
He was looking on with interest at this pantomime this afternoon and eventually we struck up a conversation
"have you been coming to the Dialysis Clinic for a long time?" I asked him
"Ohh no" he replied. "I lost my legs during the War."

0

Monday 14th October 2024 – AT THE DIALYSIS …

… Clinic this time, with one of the usual nurses on duty, things went so much better today and she managed to avoid drenching the room and everyone in it with my blood.

Mind you, there’s still a few hours before bedtime so plenty of time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet. I’ve told my faithful cleaner to stand by.

So last night was another late night – although it could, and should, have been an early one by the time that I’d finished what I had to do. However, the next two radio programmes that I need to do are also going to be celebrating special occasions and will involve a lot of work, and so the quicker I start, the quicker I’ll finish.

Consequently I put on my researcher’s hat and set to work. The preparatory stuff led to quite some progress so even if I did have to burn the midnight oil, it wasn’t wasted. And I’ll have to become used to it because I reckon that that’s how it’s going to be for a week or two.

And isn’t that a change from two or three months ago?

Once I finally made it into bed I didn’t need much rocking and there I slept until about 05:30. It was another phantom alarm call but I recognised it as such and was back to sleep quite quickly though – it hardly disturbed my rhythm.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I fell out of bed and hauled myself off to the bathroom for a good scrub up and to apply the deodorant. I didn’t bother with a shave because I don’t think that Emilie the Cute Consultant loves me any more

Having washed my undies I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and see if Zero had come back. But no Zero last night. Instead, there was a strange dream about all of the women in our family being lined up and undressed. When they were totally undressed everyone stood in some kind of queue to welcome the arrival of the Roman legions. There was more than that in the dream but going back in the return of this dream is really all that I remember and I can’t remember anything at all about the actual dream itself which is a shame

In fact, no it isn’t and I’m glad that the dream stopped there because, had it carried on, it would have quite put me off my breakfast. If I’m going to be present when women are stripping off, I’ll choose them myself, thank you, not have them imposed upon me. Knowing my luck it will be a bunch of retired Bulgarian female weightlifters rather than the female members of an Olympic beach-volleyball team.

We had my white Passat estate and we decided that we’d put it back on the road. We went over it, made a list of everything that needed doing including the bodywork, bought all the pieces and began to clean it and weld it. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be and we did the most important parts. We found that we could drive it but the brakes were binding. I’d adjusted the handbrake but my father was going to climb underneath it. I said that it was either a 17mm or 19mm spanner. He felt it and thought that it was bigger than that. I noticed that he was trying to undo the void bushes so directed him to the correct area. Later on we were having a look. We’d done the rear of the boot but the sides of the floor needed patching so we bought some body panels for that and were busy measuring, preparing to cut out the old rot and fit the panels when the alarm went off.

Ahh yes! Good old Saltofix. A company in Oswestry that made replacement body panels and tailored patches for cars. The amount of stuff I bought for the Cortinas we were running must have kept them in business. There is still a stack of body panels and patches down on the farm that must be worth a fortune, especially the two rear quarters for a Ford Cortina MkIII in the back of the Luton Transit that are worth a King’s ransom. I wonder how much any body panels for the Vanden Plas in my barn would cost me these days. I should have bought them when I dragged the car out of that scrapyard in Belgium in 1998

Isabelle the nurse came along later. We decided (or, rather, she did) that we should try with just two plasters on my legs today. Like I said yesterday, I do admire her optimism. However she thinks that there’s a dramatic improvement already but I remain unconvinced.

After she left I made breakfast and read READ MY BOOK. Thomas Wright has now left Stonehenge and gone to look at the remains of Old Sarum down the road.

However before he left he made an interesting remark. Although it seems to be assumed that no archaeological excavations took place at Stonehenge until Aubrey’s excavations in 1666, he seems to be aware of an ancient book that states "in 1620 the celebrated Duke of Buckingham , King James’s favourite , did cause the middle of Stonehenge to be digged, and this underdigging was the cause of the falling down or recumbencie of the great stone there ."

Back in here later I made a start on my Welsh homework and in a mad fit of enthusiasm I worked my way non-stop all the way through two-thirds of it, leaving just one-third for next week. It’s not like me to race ahead of myself. usually I’m always struggling, miles behind relevant deadlines.

Having done that I carried on with my research into the next programme and I’m now beginning to choose the music that I want to feature. It should actually mean slightly less work because one track is over 17 minutes long and I’ve been waiting for an appropriate moment to feature this.

The cleaner fitted my anaesthetic patches onto my arm and stayed for a chat for a while. The taxi that came for me was the luxury car that’s usually driven by the boss’s daughter. However the driver was a guy who has taken me to Paris in the past and we had a really good chat.

Just five patients in the Dialysis clinic today. In fact the staff outnumbered the patients by about four to one. The young nurse who looked after me, Julie, is a self-taught pastry cook and she showed me photos of some of her creations. And I had to say that I was well impressed.

She was also quite good at wiring me up to the machine and I hardly felt a thing.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today, but she kept her distance and didn’t even come within my range of vision. I merely caught a couple of glimpses of her down the corridor.

Instead, it was the senior doctor who came to see me. "I have some good news for you" he said. "We can cut out one of the medicines that you’ve been taking".
However, without hardly drawing breath, he went on to say "but that will create a couple of side-effects so I’m going to give you a prescription for three more to counter the effects."

So is that now 36 per day? Or 37? I lost count a long time ago and quite frankly, I couldn’t care less. I’m sure that there are more medicines in this apartment than in the chemist’s shop in town.

As for the famous confrontation about the plasters and the compression socks, the doctor didn’t even bother. Julie the Cook took down (not “off”) my socks, took off the plasters, cleaned the legs with antiseptic and put the new plasters on. Exactly the same that the nurse does.

So I don’t understand any of this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day that I crowed about having driven the trick cyclist away. However it’s a mistake to underestimate your enemies. She’s made of far sterner stuff and was back today.

We had all of the usual pregnant pauses to try to provoke a response, so I showed her MY TRAVEL WEBSITE instead.

Because I don’t have a password to access the intranet I had to show her on a ‘phone instead of my laptop. And the result of this is that I now have a log-in and password to access the intranet. The World’s my oyster!

In recompense I suppose that I shall have to throw her a sprat and say how much I’m in love with my mother and how as a baby I had uncomfortable feelings about my nurse. She probably is a follower of Freud.

During the process I fell asleep – not a crash-out but a gentle slide into somnolence and a gradual fading out. And while I was asleep, Castor came to see me. She just stood there, at the foot of the bed without saying or doing anything, almost as if she was watching over me like a guardian angel. And I had a great wish to reach out to her but pipes and tubes in my left arm, a blood pressure brassard on my right so I couldn’t move. Can you imagine?

The unplugging was also painless and without complications and I was soon in the taxi to come home. In fact, it was the earliest that I’ve ever been out of there and after my cleaner watched me up the stairs (I managed seven before I had to use my hand to lift up my leg) I actually had some free time to myself.

My cleaner thinks that I’m much more motivated, much more enthusiastic and much more switched-on than I was before all of this started. If that’s the case, I wonder what I’ll be like in twelve months time.

Tea tonight was as usual, a stuffed pepper. Just as delicious as usual and with plenty of stuffing left over for the rest of the week. It was followed by a slice of apple cake with coconut-flavoured soya dessert for pudding. And nice it was too.

So bedtime now, ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow.

Before I go though, seeing as we have been talking about psychiatrists … "well one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of one particular person who went to see a psychiatrist
"And what can I do for you?" asked the psychiatrist
"I’m having terrible trouble" replied the man. "I keep on thinking that I want to kill myself. What should I do?"
"You should start" said the psychiatrist "by paying me in advance"

0

Thursday 19th September 2024 – DAY FOUR OF …

… my dialysis today, and the trick cyclist came to see me. They are obviously taking this really seriously

And she’ll come back to see me in a fortnight, she says. "Maybe you’ll feel differently about the needles and tubes and so on by then"
"If I’ve not grown accustomed to tubes and needles over seventy years" I said "fifteen days isn’t going to make much of a difference"

God alone knows where they find these people.

If you had come by my apartment last night at my official bedtime of 23:00 you would actually have found me in bed. And asleep too because it didn’t take a fraction of a second before the light went out in my head.

As usual there were a few awakenings and tossings and turnings during the course of the night but nothing too much to disturb me. When the alarm went off I really was miles away.

When the second alarm went off I was on my way to the bathroom with an armful of clean clothes. Who knows? I might meet Emilie the Cute Consultant so I have to look my best

That meant a shave too, and then I washed my trousers and undies in the sink so that they’ll be ready for another time. I have to keep abreast of my clothes because I don’t have many here.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night. At 04:30 the front doorbell rang. I awoke thinking that the nurse will be here in two minutes. Why hasn’t the alarm gone off? Then I looked at my watch and it was 04:30 and I’d obviously dreamed the doorbell going again. At that point I was actually somewhere else, doing something within a small family. There was a little girl who’d been fostered there for some reason. She was chatting away and suddenly announced to everyone that it was me whom she’d dreamed about the previous night. Of course I was extremely interested to know what the dream was but we never actually reached that point because of this doorbell

So now, as well as phantom alarm calls we’re having phantom doorbells. I’m really not doing too well with things like this. But then again, maybe it was a real one, although I doubt it. And being the subject of someone else’s dream? I wonder what it was all about. It’s a shame that that dream ended.

We were at a police station and someone had been brought in for questioning. He was proving to be rather difficult and wouldn’t answer any of their questions hoping that he could sit and sweat out the 24 hours and then be let go. We were listening to it – I can’t remember what we were supposed to be doing – we were far more interested in what was happening in this room. When the interview was paused so that the interviewer could go off somewhere I went in to see him, the interviewee, and began to chat with him thinking that maybe if he were more relaxed he might actually let loose a couple of hints but the alarm went off at this point – the real one.

And that’s a well-known interviewing trick – to pause the interview but send in someone sympathetic to the victim. It was almost de rigeur in World War II with captured prisoners and everyone was warned against it, but hundreds still let their tongues run away.

The nurse came along and didn’t stay long. He moaned about my puttees and said that tomorrow we’ll try the elasticated socks. Well, it will give me something else to hand-wash, I suppose.

But I wish that he’d cheer up. He’s supposed to be helping me improve my morale but it’s not working when he looks and acts like a wet weekend in Weymouth.

After he left I made breakfast and went to read my book for a while. We’re discussing Roman funeral monuments today and that’s something that I know something about, having been on one of these free courses from Oxford University.

Yes, that’s right! I’ve studied at Oxford University! Not that it’s done me much good.

Back in here I spent the morning going through yet more of my live concerts trying to find the dates. And apart from being able to identify another half-dozen or so, there won’t ‘arf be a big surprise in due course

My cleaner came round at lunchtime and put on the anaesthetic patches for me. And then she put on one of these tubagrip bandages over the arm to hold them in place and stop them falling off

The taxi came a little early so it was a bit of a panic to prepare myself. We had someone else to pick up out in the back of beyond so we didn’t go straight to Avranches.

The driver today didn’t have anything at all to say for herself so the three of us drove all the way there in silence. I’d given up trying to stimulate some conversation.

But by God! Didn’t she go down some of these narrow lanes at a hell of a rate? Not that it bothered me because it’s how I drive – but only when I’m on my own. Nevertheless wouldn’t we have had a problem had we encountered a herd of cows or a harvester?

It was a different nursing team on duty today and they had, well, issues trying to come to terms with the equipment and it all descended into something like chaos.

And I remain convinced that they deliberately waited until after the two hours when the anaesthetic wears off before they came to deal with me.

But the cleaner and her tubagrip bandage did its job. The patches were still there and it only hurt … errr … somewhat. Nothing like it did on Monday

They gave me a kind of echograph test and told me that I have six litres of water still in my body, despite all of the medication that I’ve taken. Whatever must I have had before?

And then the trick cyclist turned up. Painted-on, forced smile and patronising discussion. She probably thinks that I’m some kind of old, doddering has-been or, perish the thought, maybe even a coconut (no comments, please)

She had the typical psychiatrists’ trick of these long, pregnant pauses that are designed to embarrass the other party and make them feel guilty, thus encouraging them to talk. But having had the family and the upbringing that I’ve had, nothing embarrasses me any more and she’ll have to try harder than that.

But of course these people are professionals and even a stony silence will tell them something.

After about 15 minutes she asked me if I’d like her to come to see me again.
"I’m here to be cured" I said. "If the doctor thinks that I need it and sent for you, it’s for him or her to decide"
"No-one sent me" she answered, turning her head and whistling into the breeze. "I come to see everyone."
"Well you’re the professional" I replied. "If you think that I need it …"

And after more pointless, aimless discussion she agreed to come back in a fortnight. And why not? It’s free and I may as well have my money’s worth. But God help her when the going gets tough.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there as well and she waved at me – with all four fingers raised, not just two. But she soon P155ed off when they threw me out of the clinic

The driver on the way back didn’t have much to say for herself either – maybe she’d been warned about me – but she was friendly enough

There was something of a reception committee here when I returned. My cleaner was here to keep an eye on me as I climbed the stairs and she was chatting to another neighbour who had just come home from work.

Tea was something out of the European Burger Mountain with pasta and veg, with roly-poly and soya cream for pudding.

So now I’m off to bed. I have bread to make first thing in the morning as I have now run out, and my cleaner will be here to check the medication before she goes into tow,

But the story of the psychiatrist reminds me of why we have ten commandments

Jehovah appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai and said "hey, Moses! Do you want a commandment?"
"How much are they, my Lord?" asked Moses
"To you, Moses, they are free"
"Well in that case I’ll have ten"

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Monday 19th December 2016 – AND SO …

… I went to the hospital this morning.

But if you think that this was exciting, you should have been here last night, for what a night that was!

I had crashed out well-and-truly by 22:00 and apart from two brief awakenings I remember nothing whatever until about 06:30 when I awoke bolt-upright.

Saying that I remember nothing is perhaps an understatement. I was on my travels again – and how!

We (a little group of us) were in a hotel at the seaside – a large expensive kind of hotel too but our room was dreadful – just a couple of big double beds and no other facilities. All of our stuff was lying around on the floor, on the beds, and we were planning to leave, chucking-out time was 11:00 and all of our stuff was still lying all over the place wit no urgency whatsoever.
From here I was in a car with Alison (her debut appearance on my nocturnal voyages, I believe) and we were driving along Thanet Way talking about my mother’s two Aunts – Auntie Dolly an Auntie Gertie – who lived there (we actually did have a discussion like this on Saturday). Auntie Dolly lived in Birchington and Auntie Gertie lived somwhere just off Thanet Way and I couldn’t remember the Aunt who lived in Ham Street who had the cats called Katapus and Redpus (it really was Greypus and it was Aunt Mabel by the way). But we stopped at a row of terraced houses on an embankment at the side of the road and eventually found our way to the one that we needed. A couple of hippie-types lived there and they showed me to a room, which was a very poorly furnished ground-floor room with an unused front door. I waited there for quite some time but nothing was happening so I forced the door open and went outside. There was a very early Austin A30 (or was it a A35?) saloon there with no number plates, and at the end of the front garden was the drop to the road but I couldn’t work my way down the bank so I went back. By now, some other male person had occupied my bed and had a baby with him so I went back to the main room, said how much I liked the car. We then discussed fetching my stuff. I had some modern up-market computer stuff and I didn’t want to bring it in but they were encouraging me to do so, telling me what equipment they had which would work with it. But their stuff was all out-of-date and wouldn’t be compatible with mine, and so I declined the offer.

I was thoroughly exhausted when I awoke, and that was a bad sign. In fact I had taken my medication up to the kitchen and forgot to take them – shows you just how confused I was.

But anyway the wal, up to the hospital did me some good and I wasn’t the least bit worn out when I arrived.

The place was crowded with people today and we even had bread rolls with the soup, that made a change. And as for the results, my blood count has improved to 9.7 and the protein loss has “decreased” to 1.96 (it should of course be less than O.15).

The doctor who saw me – well, she can come and inspect my kidneys any time she likes – tells me that I have to stop taking my protein supplements. She’s wondering if my body can’t absorb the proteins and that’s why it’s being excreted. It’s noted that the amount has gone up since I’ve been taking the bulghour and gone down when I’ve been at home or elsewhere where I’ve not been taking it.

The psychologist came to see me too and we had a chat,but she doesn’t seem to be adding to what I already know about my condition or my general state of health.

The upshot of all of this is that I have to come back in 2 weeks – 2nd January 2017. I’ve been asked if I’m going back home for Christmas but I’ve decided to stay here instead.

Liz was on line later and we had a video chat. I took her on a guided tour of the building so that she now knows where I live and how I’m living. And then I crashed out for a bit.

For tea, I threw something together quickly, for I have plans for the next few days as far as food goes. And quite right too!

So now it’s another early night. And I hope that my travels are as exciting as last night’s.

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Thursday 28th July 2016 – WHAT A DEPRESSING …

… night that was. I can’t remember now how many times I had to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit to go off down the corridor, but it was certainly more than three or four. It’s that kind of thing that’s making me feel so fed up right now, as well as the perpetual coughing and the streaming cold.

Mind you, I did find the time to go on a nocturnal ramble. Firstly, I remember seeing a young black girl walking along the street and we ended up having quite a chat about something although I can’t remember what it was now. From here I went off to my hotel room, which actually had two beds, and the second bed was now occupied by some guy from Eastern Europe. The rooms were small and poorly-furnished but the sheets and the quilt were white. There was one shelf, which was over my bed, to put suitcases and this other guy was going through some weird acrobatics in order to put his suitcase up there – standing on the windowsill, on the foot of the bed, anything except putting his foot on the bedding. I then had to go off to the bathroom but there was quite a queue and I was in something of a rush, so I was very glad when it came to my turn. When the person before me came out, I made some kind of light-hearted comment about having to wait, and of course it was totally misunderstood, as you might expect. As for the bathroom itself, the only word that comes to my mind was “disgusting”. It really was quite poor and I was dismayed by that.

It’s not the only thing that I’m dismayed about right now either. I had a lengthy chat with Hermione this morning. The good news is that there’s no problem with the lymph nodes in my stomach, according to the scan, but there is still plenty of infection in my lungs. And not only that, the treatment that I was told initially would be over by mid-September is the chemotherapy treatment that is too violent for me and which they stopped. This new treatment has quite a different time-scale and they can’t say for how long it will go on.

Not only that, I’m going to have to be followed up by the hospital for the rest of my life. I did ask what she meant by this – did she mean once every six months (which I could cope with without too many problems) or did she mean once per week, which would be devastating for me – but she couldn’t give me an answer to that until she sees how the treatment progresses.

But anyway, it looks as if my idyllic life in my rural retreat is rapidly coming to an end and you have absolutely no idea just how gutted I am about that. I can see my regular voyages to Canada coming to an end too and that will be just about the end.

The hospital seems to be taking it quite seriously too because after lunch I had a visit from the hospital psychiatrist. She wanted to have a good chat to me about my future and unfortunately I wasn’t able to say very much. Without knowing what the hospital has in store for me for the future, I can’t make any plans at all, as I explained to her. We ended up having a desultory kind of chat about not very much, which was finished when she said “well, see you next week”. That sounded rather ominous to me – I’m hoping to be out of here in a day or two.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, no matter what it might sound like. I managed to eat a good lunch and they were so impressed by that that they have taken me off the intravenous drip. Now, I’m not connected to anything at all which is good news for me.

Furthermore, Alison came to see me for a chat. She brought me a couple of packets of vegan crisps and a bag-full of clothes. She had taken the time to do my dirty washing for me, something that I found really nice of her and which I appreciated a great deal. I may not have many friends, but of the ones that I have are the best in the world.

So that’s enough of this rubbish. I’m going to knock off and spend the rest of the evening worrying about my future – if I have one, that is. I really am dismayed by the news today.

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