… a heroine.
She came in yesterday, as I mentioned (with no little embarrassment) yesterday and I gave her a shopping list for her weekly visit to Leclerc – there are several things that I need that aren’t available on home delivery.
There are plenty of really nice vegan recipes floating round, like the one for vegan sausage roll stuffing, that rely on chestnuts to give the food some flavour. I have a spare puff pastry roll left over from Christmas so some vegan sausage rolls would be nice but of course I have no chestnuts.
The issue with fresh ones is that you have to take off the outer skin and that’s a complicated procedure so I wanted some ready-cooked ones with the other skin removed.
And sure enough, even though I’ve searched everywhere in the shop and never found them, she’s put her hand on 2×200 gramme packets of steamed and vacuum-packed chestnuts.
So once I buy some mushrooms at the weekend it’s sausage rolls-a-gogo. Making those should keep me out of mischief for a while, I reckon.
And during the night I’d thought that I’d kept out of mischief too because I had another really good sleep and didn’t remember a thing about anything
When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and too k my blood pressure again. 17.2/10.2 this morning compared to 18.3/11.3 last night
After the medication I went and gave myself a really good scrub in the bathroom so that I’d be fit and proper for my Welsh class, and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes.
And to my surprise, there were quite a few, considering that I knew nothing about last night. There was a Dutch rock group that was quite well-known. One of the musicians was taking quite a lot of medication so they were going through different kinds of medication to sort something out for him in a the same way that they are doing for me at the moment. This became quite a habit for there to be a lot of medication about but during Wold War II this was complicated but they did their best to keep him supplied with the medication that they needed to keep him alive. One day the Germans raided the group and a concert and wanted to go along and arrest them all. There was no indication as to how this ended but there was one person who helped this group a lot with their paperwork and administration and in some respects looked after the medication of this musician. After the war, no-one ever found out what had become of him. They interviewed a lot of people who were leaving the concert hall at the time. They can remember the Germans trying to frog-march someone out of the building but who collapsed and went lifeless during this frog-march so they ended up carrying him away. The suggestion was that this guy had bitten the cyanide capsule in his hollow tooth to do away with himself to avoid interrogation.
But talking about the medication, I’m sure that that’s what they are doing to me – trying various cocktails of medication to try to find one that works.
That’s not a criticism of the hospital by the way. We’ve all seen the reports that this illness is so rare that there is no approved treatment plan and that each case must be dealt with individually. So I give them full marks for wanting to try.
Anyway, after all of that, I had a visitor during the night again – and to think that I could remember nothing about it. Yes, Percy Penguin came round last night. The two of us went out. We were in Crewe Town Centre but I couldn’t remember where to go. Not that that would be a problem in real life because in Crewe I had a whole family who would be quite willing to tell me where to go, and probably did too. Anyway, wherever I was going to, I’d forgotten the way so I dropped off Percy Penguin in Delamere Street, did a beautiful U-turn and she climbed back into the car. We carried on through Market Street and Mill Street. We were talking about my health. She asked a whole variety of questions to which I didn’t really know the answer. She asked me if I’d had a picquire – injection for this and a picquire for that. I told her “no” so she told me that she was licensed to take blood so what she’d do about this mess was to make me a really good meal and then take my blood pressure and then take a blood sample, not just from the usual areas but also from areas that were different from anyone else to see what that’s like. I told her that I was extremely doubtful for a variety of reasons but she seemed to be quite confident about the idea and quite willing to have a go so I thought that I’d let her get on with it.
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I wonder whatever happened to Percy Penguin. At one time she was the only light that shone through some very dark times.
One thing I’ll always remember was putting on a tape of QUADROPHENIA. on the cassette.
"What’s that?" she asked.
"It’s “Quadrophenia” by The Who" I replied. "Released in 1973"
"1973?" she snorted. "I wasn’t even born then!"
Yes, I keep on forgetting that I’m an Ancient Monument.
So having dealt with all of that, I prepared for my Welsh class. But not before I’d made a few phone calls.
And as a result, I’ve cut all my ties with Leuven. I’ve cancelled the appointments that were arranged for this week and told them that there’s no need to reschedule them. It’s pretty pointless if I can’t go there.
That’s a real shame. I loved the hospital, I loved the town, I loved the year or so that I spent living there and it goes without saying that I loved seeing Alison and the others who would travel up to see me from all over Europe.
But that trip in September killed me and I’m a lot worse than that now. Even if I were to make it there, I wouldn’t make it back. And there’s no point whatever in having the best treatment from the best hospital in Europe if the journey to and from is going to negate the effects of it.
The Welsh lesson went surprisingly well, so much so that I put Plan B into operation.
It’s half-term next week but browsing around the LEARN WELSH WEBSITE I found that Coleg Aberystwyth is running a two-day revision course on Monday and Tuesday for a level well down from where I’m supposed to be.
Nevertheless, it’s just what the doctor ordered, I reckon and it’s just £15 and there were 6 places left. That might fire me up a little. Only 5 places left now.
The advantage is that with it being Aberystwyth, it’s teaching the North Wales syllabus.
If you look at a map of Wales, you’ll see that there are two mountain masses divided by the valleys of the River Severn, Afon Dyfi and the Afon Mawddach. That’s a natural route from England to the Welsh coast and which invading armies have taken for 2000 years.
All of the fortifications that have been built there over that period have effectively divided the country into two and so the language has evolved differently in each area.
Curiously, some of the words that I’d learnt from my grandmother were “south-id” words rather than words from north-east Wales, and it wasn’t until I found her old Welsh family Bible after she died that I found out that her family actually came from the south in the past – presumably moving north like many families did when Gresford Colliery near Wrexham opened in 1908.
That was terrible, that. After she died all of her possessions went into a skip, including her ancient family Bible, written in Welsh, with her family tree in it going back several generations. I had to climb in after it to rescue it and many of my family wished that I’d stayed in the skip.
This afternoon the first thing that I did now that I’m nice and clean was to change the bedding. And when I took it off the quilt and pillows it walked into the bathroom on its own. I really ought to take much more care of myself and my hygiene that I do. I keep on overlooking some of these basic things that I ought to be doing so much better.
And then the cleaner came round with my shopping – and I wasn’t in the … errr … smallest room this time either.
But anyway, now I have more peppers, tiny tomatoes and vegan cheese as well as my precious chestnuts. Yes, I don’t know where I’d be without her, that’s for sure.
After all of that and my mid-afternoon hot chocolate, I carried on writing my radio notes and I’ve almost finished this programme now ready to dictate on Saturday night.
Tea tonight was a lovely taco roll filled with some of the leftover stuffing and accompanied by rice and veg. But this couscous stuffing seems to work quite well, better in fact than bulghour or quinoa so I might continue to use it. I’ve added couscous to my “list of favourites” on my Leclerc on-line shopping site to remind me.
It’s actually an advantage because couscous is available on-line whereas bulghour and quinoa – at least in loose form – are not.
So now having done my notes, it’s time for bed in my nice clean bedding.
Well, actually, it isn’t. There’s the blood pressure and the medication to take so it’ll be a while before I can rattle my way back to bed.
Nothing is easy these days with all of this, but we have to keep on going. What else is there to do? Bear Grylls, the adventurer and TV presenter said of his exciting travels "Life doesn’t reward the naturally clever or strong but those who can learn to fight and work hard and never quit", and I’m not going to quit until I’ve done the blood pressure, the medication and been to the … errr …. smallest room, preferably without the cleaner coming in.