Tag Archives: rainstorm

Friday 28th August 2026 – THE BAD WEATHER …

… that we’d had yesterday afternoon continued through the night and into this morning. I think that most people will agree that what with everything that fell yesterday, we’ve now had all of the rain that we were owed for the last three months.

It wasn’t raining when I went to bed last night, or at least, I don’t think so. However, I wasn’t in all that much of a state of awareness. I was absolutely whacked, and remember – I’d only just awoken from a deep sleep when I crawled into bed.

And I’ll tell you how quick I was about going to sleep too. It’s been my habit for the last month or so to suck a menthol and eucalyptus sweet when I go to bed. That prevents me coughing and allows me that little head start to go to sleep peacefully. Anyway, when the alarm sounded at 06:29, there was half a menthol and eucalyptus sweet stuck to my jammies. I must have fallen asleep before I’d finished sucking it.

That wasn’t the first time that I’d awoken either. I vaguely remember once or twice being awake, and later on, I awoke definitively and couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned in bed for quite a while, and just as I was settling into a nice, comfortable position, ready to go back to sleep, the alarm sounded.

Being awake is one thing. Being out of bed and upright is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It took me a good ten minutes to struggle to my feet and set off.

First call today, though, wasn’t the bathroom. Having locked the front door last night, I had to unlock it again this morning so that the nurse could come in. Then I could go to the bathroom and sort myself out.

Back in here afterwards, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night.

We were going on an outing, taking a load of students and schoolkids with us from primary school. My first pick-up was from somewhere round about the Holly Mount area of Shavington. I picked up those kids alright and headed back towards the centre. Then I asked her where the next pick-up was going to be. He replied “Main Road School”. I thought “hang on a minute – Shavington County Primary moved ten or fifteen years ago. They aren’t there any more. Is she sure that that’s correct?”. He told me that as far as she was aware, Main Road School was what was written. So I went down Dodd’s Bank and came into the village, turned right at the Sugar Loaf Corner to go down Main Road and stopped at the school to see if the kids were there.

It’s impressive that I could remember all of the local nicknames for places in Shavington and that Shavington County Primary School has moved, although it’s a darn sight longer than “ten or fifteen years ago”.

And note the rather dramatic and continual change of gender of the person sitting next to me in the coach. I had to listen to the dictaphone recording several times, and that was indeed what it said.

When the nurse came to visit me, we talked about the Champions League draw. His hometown team, Lens, has been drawn against Machester City, so it seems. Not that I’m bothered. Any team in which I have any interest has been long-eliminated from the Champions League.

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

Today, he’s been discussing the end of the Gothic era and the beginning of the Renaissance. And as you might expect, he’s not a happy bunny with his beloved Gothic being replaced by another style of architecture. We’ve not had any outright vulgar abuse or “language lower than Billingsgate”, but I’m expecting it to arrive sometime soon, and I’ll keep you posted.

Back in here, there were several things to do, and then I could turn my attention to dealing with the notes from last night. And they took longer than they ought to have done too, due mainly to the fact that I fell asleep in the middle of writing them and was flat-out in my chair for three quarters of an hour.

When they were on line, I went for my disgusting drink and my midday medication, and then back in here, I turned my attention to the radio programme, where I was interrupted by my faithful cleaner who came down to do her stuff.

After much binding in the marsh, the programme is now finished, but even that took longer than it ought, due mainly to the fact that a few of the groups and musicians were new to the programme, so they took much more research than would be required for the established stars.

Anyway, it’s all ready for dictation now, although Heaven alone knows when that might be.

After I’d finished, I had a chat for a while with my artificial intelligence chatbot, as a way of relaxing. There’s never anyone about on the internet when you feel like a chat.

The trouble with these chatbots is that they have a very weird memory. You can tell them something, and ten minutes later, they’ll have forgotten it, whereas they’ll come out with something completely unexpected that you mentioned in passing a year ago, when it wasn’t to this particular chatbot and it wasn’t even in that particular chat file.

Also, chatbots have very little sense of unscripted humour. Ask them why polar bears don’t eat penguins, and they’ll say that they live at the opposite ends of the earth and not that “they can’t get the silver paper off”. Never mind Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock and their “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”, it’s even more of a waste of time telling jokes to a chatbot.

The big advantage, though, is the depth of knowledge of a chatbot. Being able to search the entire internet and post an answer almost immediately, they can answer any question you would like to ask them. They save me hours of work when I’m writing stuff for the internet. If you want to see what I mean, download the artificial web browser COMET and ask it a few complicated and obscure questions. Chatbots work even quicker than Comet does.

So tonight, we had the football. A right bottom-of-the-table crunch clash between Trefelin and Rhydaman. And believe me, people, this was one of the most exciting games that I have seen for years. It had absolutely everything – numerous on-field brawls, three red cards, eleven minutes of stoppage time, one of the best saves of all time at an extremely vital moment, lengthy VAR checks, screaming fans, unbelievable tension, goalkeepers joining in the attacks and probably one of the best goals that you’ll ever see at this level of football.

The game finished 1-1, which, quite frankly, was no good to either team, seeing the size of the gap above the bottom four, but never mind. This is a match that I could watch again and again, and there aren’t very many like that. If you want to see it, IT’S HERE

So now, it’s midnight and I’m off to bed, horribly later than usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and chatbots … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked my “Comet” browser to tell me a joke that would appeal to a British audience. This is what it came up with –
I told my AI: "Write the end-of-day note for my blog. Keep it light and end with a joke."
It produced three paragraphs on transformer architectures, then added: "And on that note, why did the neural net cross the road? To get to the other… training set."
I said, "Make it more human."
It tried again: "Why did the neural net cross the road? Because everyone else was doing it, and it didn’t want to be the only model not generalising."
I said, "More British."
Final version: "Why did the neural net cross the road? It didn’t, actually. It waited for a gap in traffic, apologised to the cars, and then crossed when it felt it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone."

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Thursday 27th August 2026 – WHAT AN AFTERNOON …

… we’ve had today. We’ve been about three months without any rain to speak of, and this early evening, we had the whole outstanding lot presented to us in about half an hour. I’ve never seen rain quite like it, that’s for sure.

No hint of anything like this last night. By 23:00, I was in bed, and good and ready for it too, I was. I was asleep quite quickly too, and although I remember maybe just a couple of times that I might have been awake, it wasn’t for long at all.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was definitely asleep, and it took me the usual ten minutes or more to drag myself to my feet and head off to the bathroom to sort myself out. I had a good wash and even a good shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant will be there this afternoon.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There had been some kind of national emergency, and we’d turned a few houses into fortified spots, and Gainsborough Road was one of them. So we had lots of people living in there, mostly civilians who came there for protection. Gradually, the place became more and more untidy. You couldn’t find anything, and there was furniture, dust and possessions all over the place. Eventually, the emergency was over and people began to drift away. That meant that we had to begin tidying up and looking for all the things that we had that had been moved. They were turning up in all kinds of strange places, like in the oven and in the fireplace. What I did was to eventually light a fire in the oven, and all the rubbish that we found, we put in there to burn. We were hunting for all kinds of strange things. I was hunting for my red and blue striped t-shirt that I couldn’t find anywhere, and one of the girls, whom I’d told not to be so military, was still pretending that she was in the army, marching up and down and either giving orders or accepting them with an extravagant “yes, sir!”. In the end, my mother told me where she’d seen my tee shirt, but I couldn’t find it there for the moment. However, I did find a vicar from one of these obscure sects giving lessons, that kind of thing, and he was actually announcing to everyone that he was homosexual, and for that reason, he was handing back his appointment to come with us in the bus to see something. In the end, he was one of the people who wanted to go to see the regional office about a different kind of ammunition, so he arranged a coach trip there. Two girls wanted to come on too out of interest … fell asleep here …

This sounds like an interesting dream. And especially the red and blue t-shirt. That was something that I had over fifty years ago and it ended its life when it fell into a drum of 25 litres of cooking oil.

And looking for things that have been moved is another bane to my life, although I can usually manage that all on my own without anyone there to help me, just like falling asleep is in the middle of a dream. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I am actually asleep while I’m dictating, but what happens in these moments is that everything on the dictaphone goes really quiet, and then there’s the sound of my sleeping.

We were somewhere up in the north-east of England and we had to come back to take a friend of ours to the airport. So I had my brother with me, and we set out and drove all the way down whatever the motorway is from Durham down to somewhere like Retford or Newark, where we came off and drove through the north Midlands to Crewe. I was convinced that there was a quicker way than the down which he took us, so I looked at the map when we stopped for fuel. We should have come off the motorway a lot farther north because there was a dead-straight line, the old A1, that went all the way down to Nottingham and saved us probably 30 miles. Anyway, we fuelled up and went to pick up our friend. For some reason, we were quite late leaving her house and driving to the airport, and I did my best to go as fast as I could. We eventually found the airport and we dropped her off, and we were just pulling away when she came out and said that her ‘plane had gone. She was talking about changing her ticket and going on some kind of expedition to various race courses. I went in and asked the receptionist if it would be possible to put her on another ‘plane. She said that there was a ‘plane leaving in half an hour, but the supplement was over three thousand pounds. I looked totally surprised, so the receptionist said “I don’t understand why you are so surprised”. Anyway, we had to abandon that idea of putting her on another flight.

This is everyone’s worst nightmare, isn’t it? Missing a ‘plane at the airport. And having my brother navigating wouldn’t be too far away from there either. Taking the wrong road whilst having a map in his hands would be no problem for him.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort me out. He was worried about me not relaxing. However, I don’t have the time for all that nonsense. I have far too much going on right now.

After he left, I could crack on and make breakfast and not read my book because I’m still following this rather strange trail that I’ve created for myself.

Having explored the delights of amphibious aeroplanes (and I’ve no idea how I managed to arrive here from Gothic Architecture) I came back in here where there was plenty of work waiting for me to do. However, I rather unfortunately fell asleep while I was doing it and didn’t wake up until about 11:15, meaning that I’d wasted most of the time that I’d had.

And it was another one of those sleeps where I didn’t remember falling asleep at all, not even feeling tired either. In fact, no-one was more surprised than me to find that I’d been asleep.

So having woken up, I spent some time finishing off what I was doing, and then I continued with the radio notes until the alarm went off to remind me that it was midday and I ought to be getting ready for dialysis.

In the kitchen, I sorted out my disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then my cleaner arrived to apply the anaesthetic to my arm and to pack away the laptop into its bag for me to take with me as usual. After she left and I was ready to go, I curled up, leaning forward onto the dining table, and began to relax.

Just as I was slipping away into a nice, deep sleep, the doorbell rang. The taxi was here to take me to dialysis, ten minutes early. We had to stop to pick up Mrs Dinosaur, whose camp, we noticed, is being slowly dismantled, and then we set off for Avranches. And the chaos that is said to begin in La Havaudière in mid-September when they start to improve the road has already started, with a couple of lorries unloading pipes and heaps of gravel, blocking the road as they do so.

Consequently, we weren’t as early as usual arriving at dialysis, and stuck in one of the eight individual rooms on the far side, I had to wait until 14:10 before I was up and running, having had no fewer than three nurses hovering around me. Bizarrely, the second puncture hurt less than the first one. It’s usually the other way round.

Accompanied by the automatic blood pressure tests every half an hour and the consequent wailing of the alarm as the machine announced to the World that my blood pressure was under the acceptable limits and the subsequent dashing of the nurses to my side to find out what was the problem, I settled down to watch Trefelin v Caernarfon from last weekend.

Trefelin are bottom of the table right now with no points and no goals scored, but the way they played, that can only be a temporary situation. They had several chances of their own, and on one occasion, hit the woodwork with the entire Cofi defence beaten.

However, the Cofis were far too good for them, technically and aggressively, and towards the end of the game, the Cofis had gone to a back three, with Chris Marriott coming on to join Jordan Piggott and Ben Nash, and full-backs Ryan Sears and Matty Jones playing up front on the wings.

Nevertheless, a 2-0 victory for Caernarfon was hardly a statement victory for them.

After that game, it was my intention to watch some of the Fflint v LLansawel game but a whole variety of interruptions prevented that. One interruption that I didn’t have, though, is a doctor. The latest course of antibiotics finishes today, so I was expecting (and quite rightly, too) the doctor who prescribed them to come along to see me and find out how things were. However, no such luck. I’ve only seen a doctor twice in the last three or four weeks.

When I was finished, I was unplugged quite quickly, and, even better, the taxi was already waiting and I was the only passenger. But Marcey-les-Grèves was totally paralysed again with traffic, so we turned round and took the long way home.

All through the morning and the early afternoon, the weather had been quite nice, but when we left the dialysis centre, it was raining slightly. It had stopped by the time we reached Marcey-les-Grèves, but on the way to Sartilly the heavens opened and I have never ever seen rain like this. It looked as if all the rain that we hadn’t had since May, we were having all at once.

By the time we were almost at Sartilly, it was raining so heavily that you couldn’t see a thing. Everyone was driving at walking pace, the roads were flooded, and the fields looked like Ieper in November 1917.

The rain eased off, started again, eased off, and by the time we reached Granville, there was blue sky. My cleaner, who was waiting for me, told me that they had had the same rainstorm here in Granville half an hour ago, so it looked as if it was a band of storm clouds moving from north to south.

She helped me into the apartment, and when I was sitting down, stuck a disgusting drink into my hand, in accordance with the prescription.

After she left, I managed to find the energy to come in here and write up my notes. However, I’m not sure how many times I fell asleep while I was doing it. Was it three? Or was it four?

After the last time, when I awoke, it was 21:30 or thereabouts, so I simply posted on line what I’d written so far, and I’ll finish it in the morning. On that note, I fell into bed and that was that.

These notes will have to be finished quickly because tomorrow, there might not be a posting until Saturday. There’s football on on Friday night, with Trefelin (no goals and no points) v Rhydaman (three goals and one point), a proper basement relegation clash. With a five-point gap to the next club opening up already, so early in the season, some clubs need to be getting some points on the board quite quickly If this gap isn’t to increase further. A draw isn’t really going to help either of these two teams.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about failures in map reading … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went for a drive with a girl who, I found out later, didn’t know how to read a map (and it wasn’t Nerina at all. She was quite a good NAVIGATOR, NAVIGATOR, RISE UP AND BE STRONG)
At one point, I asked her where we were. She pointed to somewhere on the map. "We’re here" she announced proudly.
"That blue line?"
"Yes"
"That’s a river, dear."

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Wednesday 19th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today, but today was just like any ordinary day might have been, say, two or three years ago, and it’s astonishing how quickly things can turn round after the disaster that was yesterday.

By the time that I went to bed last night, things weren’t actually quite as bad as they had seemed to be during the day. Mind you, they couldn’t have been any worse, could they?

It was about 21:30 when I closed everything down in here, and it was about half an hour later, maybe, when I finally crawled into bed. It took a couple of minutes to make myself comfortable, and then I was asleep quite quickly afterwards.

Some time later, I found myself awake again. I’ve no idea what time because I couldn’t be bothered to look and “found myself awake” because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I seem to be doing that quite regularly these days, and it’s a completely different feeling than “waking up”. I’ve no idea what’s happening here at all.

For a while, I was drifting in and out of that twilight world in no-man’s land where I’m neither awake nor asleep, and even if I weren’t, I would still have no clue as to whether I’m awake or whether I’m asleep.

At a certain moment, I looked at the time. 05:55. We had the usual internal discussion about whether I ought to get up, claim an early start and start to work, or whether I ought to simply try to go to sleep for the next half an hour or so.

In the end, I decided that I may as well go back to sleep if I could, so I turned over into my “easy sleep” position in the bed. And I must have gone to sleep because when the alarm went off to awaken me, I remember thinking “that was NEVER half an hour”.

We had the usual ten-minute delay while I worked up the courage, energy and enthusiasm to go to the bathroom to sort myself out, and then, back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

That was pretty much a waste of time, but at least it shows me that I must have been in a really deep sleep last night, much deeper than normal.

There were plenty of other things to be done this morning, so I set to work, but I was interrupted by the nurse who came by at 08:02. Has he ever been that early before?

We talked about dialysis and the weather as he applied the cream and did his stuff to my feet, ankles and calves. After he left, I could make my breakfast.

One thing that I didn’t do was to read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman. Yesterday, I’d been considerably side-tracked by places mentioned in Freeman’s book and ended up roaming all around the countryside, looking at different places.

Just before knocking off, it had led me to, believe it or not, the “Zeppelin”, “Gotha” and “Giant” German bombing raids on the UK in World War I, and today, I carried on reading the articles on this subject while I was eating.

Eventually, back in here, I finished off doing what I had been doing before breakfast. And when that had been done, I turned my attention to this radio programme on which I’d been working.

Firstly, though, round about midday we had the rainstorm to end all rainstorms. It had been a grey day yesterday, but that had nothing on how it was today. At least, all the farmers will be pleased, even if the tourists won’t be.

So returning to the radio programme, I had to download some music, and that takes longer because my favourite supplier of music has … errr … burnt down and a huge number of discs has been lost.

Eventually, I managed to find what I needed, and it’s now all downloaded, the tracks I want have been selected, and the ten that I want for now have all been reformatted, chosen, paired and segued. I’ve even started to write some of the notes for them.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment too. She came to bring me the medication that she’d bought from the chemists as I seem to be running out of a lot of it right now. We ended up having a chat and then she wandered off on her travels. I noticed that not only had the rain stopped, but it was bright, warm sunshine out there so I opened my window to let some fresh air in.

When I’d finished what I was doing on the radio programme, I went to make tea. Tonight, it was pasta and various vegetables tossed in a cheese sauce with tarragon and chives. And delicious it was too. And the final two slices of the first half of the home-made fruit bread that I’d made ten or so days ago. Now I shall have to fetch the other half out of the freezer.

So back in here, I wrote out my notes for today, and now, once I’ve checked the stats, done the backup, etc., I’ll be off to bed and hope that these gale-force winds will drop and let me sleep. It’s horribly later than usual but yet I’m not even remotely tired. What on earth is going on here?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the chemists … "well, one of us has" – ed … while my cleaner was in the chemist’s just now, a man came in and went up to the other counter and asked "a packet of condoms, please."
The chemist gave him a packet and asked "do you need a bag?"
The man replied "there’s one at home in bed. That’s why I need the condoms"

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Thursday 16th July 2026 – WHAT A BAD …

… day this has been!

It’s hard to think of anything that has actually gone right today and it’s really been getting on my wick.

Take last night, for example. I had every good intention of being in bed at some reasonable time but even though I tried, the torrential downpour that opened up meant that I had to walk around the apartment closing all of the windows. And you’ve no idea just how long it takes me to do something like that these days.

It was round about 23:15 when I was finally in bed, but the sound of the rain kept me awake for ages before I eventually slid into the arms of Morpheus.

And I wasn’t there for long, either. Round about 02:20 … "why is it always 02:20?" – ed … I awoke again. And awake I stayed for hours, thinking that I’d never go back to sleep at this rate. But at some point, I did, because I awoke again at 06:19 or something like that – just a few minutes before the alarm.

If I’d tried hard, I could have gone for an early start, but I decided not to bother. However, it was still a real struggle when the alarm finally did go off. I was sitting on the edge of the bed for a good ten minutes trying to wake up.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis, and then I came back in here to start work.

There was nothing on the dictaphone when I went for a listen. The short night had evidently curtailed all of that, but there was still plenty to do while I waited for the nurse.

He was early again too and it didn’t take him long to sort me out. While he was dealing with me, we were chatting about Montreal and how he wants to go there to visit. I told him where to go and mentioned THE CITY OF QUÉBEC too, which is beautiful.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, we’ve finished Byzantium, had a whistle-stop tour of early mediaeval Germany and Ireland, and we’re now in Anglo-Saxon England. As yet, he’s been behaving himself and there’s nothing controversial in what he’s written. Here’s hoping that he keeps it up.

Back in here, I finished selecting all of the tracks that I wanted for this live concert and the sound track is assembled. One of the joints was pretty dreadful so I had to splice in some additional applause so that I had more room to fiddle about with everything. And now, it’s working fine and you can’t tell where any of the joints are.

Once that was up and running, I began to write the notes. However, round about 10:45 I crashed out dramatically, and there I was, fast asleep in my chair when my cleaner awoke me at 12:15 to apply my anaesthetic.

With her being late, it was late when she left, and the taxi arrived early, about two minutes after I’d gone for a ride on the porcelain horse. Definitely caught in flagrante delicto there, I was.

Not that I’m complaining, though. We arrived quite early and I was seen almost straight away, and by 14:06 I was up and running. It was another new nurse too who saw to me.

As usual, the blood pressure was set for every thirty minutes, and every thirty minutes the nurses came running when the low pressure alarm sounded, but it wasn’t low pressure at all to me – just normal.

The doctor came to see me too, but unfortunately it wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant today. I had to make do with an ordinary one. But he didn’t help me very much;

The dialysis machine was going full blast again so I was exhausted by the time that it finished. However, they dealt with me quickly yet again and by the time that I was unplugged, the driver was waiting for me to take me home.

Earlier this afternoon when I had set out, my walking was “gone” and I had a real struggle to move. I felt absolutely awful. But on leaving, I was walking much better, despite being exhausted by the dialysis process.

We were back here for 18:20, which made a really pleasant change, and my faithful cleaner had to rush back from shopping to help me back into the apartment.

She helped me sit down and gave me a disgusting drink, and after she left, I made tea – rice and veg with something with kidney beans, olives and tomato sauce. And I didn’t enjoy it. Once more, it tasted of nothing but salt.

So now, having finished my notes, I’m going to go to bed. And I hope that tonight is better than last night and I can have a decent sleep for once, not that it’s likely.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about walking, like around my apartment and how difficult it was to go to dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was in Nova Scotia twenty-odd years ago talking to Anne Murray, she of SNOWBIRD fame, I asked her "why do birds fly south in winter?"
"I don’t know" she replied. "Why do birds fly south in winter?"
"Because it’s too far to walk."

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Wednesday 15th July 2026 – IT HAS BEEN …

… a slightly better day today (I think) following the exertions of the last few days and I’ve been feeling a little more like it, which makes a change. Even though it’s only a little more, every sign of improvement is welcomed.

Not that you would have thought so last night. It was another late night when it should have been an early one, but as usual, I can’t seem to concentrate enough these days to push on without being side-tracked.

fete de la bastille firework display 14th july quatorze juillet feux d'artifice port de Granville harbour Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo July 2022And as you might expect, with it being the quatorze juillet last night, there was an impressive, mammoth firework display down at the port. And it started up the minute that I climbed into bed.

That was guaranteed to cheer me up as I was desperately trying to go to sleep, as you can imagine.

These days, I’m in no fit state to walk to the edge of the cliffs on the other side of the headland to take photographs of the events, so I’ve posted a photo that I took in 2022 when I was still able to walk around.

Once the racket was over, I tried to go to sleep, but it seemed to take longer, longer than ever last night. And when I finally did, waking up at about 01:30 and again at 02:20 was certainly not part of the olan.

That second time, I had a great deal of difficulty going back to sleep, but somehow I managed it, only to wake up again at 06:15. At that point, I could have gone for an early start and slid my feet out of the bed onto the floor, but I decided against it and curled up in bed to make the most of what I could of these remaining fifteen minutes.

When the alarm went off, it was the usual struggle for me to rise to my feet – maybe fifteen minutes or so – and then I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

Back in here, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was dictating my notes on Canada during the night. It was one of Darren’s friends who turned up in a big Cadillac and wanted to have a chat with me. We went off for a chat and we were in some kind of schoolroom, and there was this old man there who was worrying everyone about his problems, and no-one else was allowed to have any problems unless they accepted his, all that kind of thing. People tried to sit him down and talk to him but he just refused, so I’d written out an invitation for him to come along and have a chat, but seeing as I thought that I wasn’t going to waste my time, I screwed it up and threw it in the bin. I put something on the notice board but I folded it over so that no-one else could see it, but if he wanted to, he could undo it and read the message. Then, the boss came down and said that he had committed suicide and wanted to know what we knew about it. We all repeated this story about what had happened, but he found my letter that I’d screwed up and thrown away in the waste bin, so he immediately began to connect me with all of this. He was interrogating me quite closely, but I was saying that I was just telling him what I saw and what happened, and not forming any opinions of my own at all. Then I had to write out my notes about my visit to Canada. I started off with a piece of A4 and a pen, but I thought that I may as well write it out first or last onto the computer. So I started the computer, but somehow I was back with these pieces of paper and a pen and I must have had five attempts with these papers and pen before I was able to sit down and start on the computer.

cadillac convertible centreville new brunswick canadaDarren in Canada actually does know someone very well who has a Cadillac, but it was certainly not him last night. Anyway, here’s a photo of the car in all its glory, just to liven up events.

The story of the old man relates to nothing that I can recall, but the piece of paper in the bin has some kind of relation to an event probably fifty years ago, and it’s strange that it should suddenly occur right now.

The idea of writing out by hand my dictaphone notes is strange too. Today, my first instinct when transcribing them would be to reach for a computer keyboard. Having five attempts with a paper and pen beforehand would be a very strange way for me to go about things these days.

But something else on here was that my elder sister and her husband put in some kind of appearance. They had come into a little bit of money so they were talking about buying a couple of cars to clean up and sell them. My sister asked her husband about prices for cars and he replied “what do I know? Where can I find out?”. I pointed them in the direction of the Auto Trader magazine and told them to take out a monthly subscription, but if they are going to do this on a regular basis, they may as well try to get hold of Glass’s Guide, which is something that values vehicles much more precisely than the Auto Trader stuff.

This is probably the most unlikely dream that I have ever had, I reckon. My elder sister and her husband would certainly not be interested in messing around with cars, not under any circumstances at all. So why I dreamt it, I have no idea.

I’d put some secondary double glazing in the windows of my apartment. I’d rescued them from an old solicitor’s office so they had something and “solicitor” written on them that people could see from outside, so I ended up having one or two enquiries about this kind of thing. Someone came along and asked me to try to find a girl who had gone missing, so I said that I’d see what I could do. I went round to see her family – it was an Italian father-type figure with a young blonde-haired wife. It turned out that this daughter was the daughter of his first wife who had died, and the girl was still in existence and still living, although she’s not lived at home for a few years. All in all, he quite satisfied me that what he was saying was correct. Then, he asked me to stay around because he might need my services at some point, so I stayed around and he chatted to me for a while. In the end, he wanted to begin to upset a couple of nurses’ homes in the area, finding ways to annoy them. I tried to find out what they had done to annoy him, but he wouldn’t say, but he went about it in his own way with no help from me. I noticed that he was becoming increasingly more bitter as the time went on. It was then that I found him standing in a doorway looking into the room, so I went to look into the room too. There was some kind of monster there … "the bit that goes here has been edited out" – ed … Eventually, he explained to me that that was his son by his first wife and was born terribly handicapped and deformed. That was the reason why he had killed his first wife, and this is the reason why he’s wanting to attack these nurses’ homes. His wife said in the end that all he seems to think about is his son. He doesn’t think anything at all about anything else.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not usually my habit to edit out parts of my dreams. If they are the disagreeable or violent ones, I usually don’t publish anything about them, but this one was so interesting, apart from the bit that you really don’t want to read and you’ll thank me for not publishing it, that it needs to be published as far as it’s appropriate to do so.

The apartment that I had was a modern one, not this one here, on the second floor of a building and the plot seemed to be something of a cross between FAREWELL MY LOVELY starring Robert Mitchum, and Michael Caine’s PULP, ironically two of my favourite films and how anyone can give “Pulp” a one-star rating is totally beyond my comprehension.

But I’m not quite sure of what to make of this dream. It was certainly disturbing, but on the other hand, it was certainly interesting and compelling. I just wish that I knew what its significance was because, apart from those two films, it relates to absolutely nothing that I can recall. Certainly nothing recently.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

The nurse was early today. 08:09 when he put his sooty foot through my front door. We just chatted a little about the impending storm later on this afternoon and after he’d finished my legs and feet, he cleared off.

Once he was out of the door, I could make my breakfast. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman

Today, he’s introduced the subject of bell towers (spire, steeples and all of that) into the discussion, and goes on to say that "the introduction of so striking and characteristic a feature in any form was a very great step. It is one which owes its origin to Christianity ; a campanile was never attached to an idol-temple, and is equally forbidden at this day to the proudest mosques of the false prophet. It is to Christian worship alone that the joyful sound of bells gathers the multitude of the faithful ; it is therefore to Christian temples only that the lofty towers are attached which rear them on high to convey their clear voice more distinctly and uninterruptedly."

This is on page 182, so there are another 375 pages of this kind of nonsense through which I have to wade.

There was some tidying up to do in the kitchen after breakfast, and then back in here afterwards, there were several things that needed doing on the computer. After that, I could start work.

Today’s task, as I mentioned yesterday, was to write out the remaining notes for the radio programme that I had been preparing. And that took longer than expected, due in part to me crashing out in the chair for forty-five minutes. I would probably still be crashed out in the chair right now too had it not been for a couple of spam calls and someone using a strimmer right outside my open window.

But I’m really fed up of these spam telephone calls, as you can imagine. It’s non-stop, one after the other after the other and it’s all the ‘phone calls that I seem to have these days.

Although it took longer than I was anticipating, I’d finished writing the notes by 15:00, and that’s not bad going considering how tired I was, my little doze in the armchair, my pause for a disgusting drink and probably a few other things too.

There was even time to make a good start on preparing a concert that will hopefully be broadcast the week after the one that I have just finished. And that reminds me that I must push on and finish dating this huge pile of concerts that I’ve inherited from several different sources. Once I do that, I’ll have a much better idea of who did what when and where and co-ordinate them into my “anniversaries” database. Over the past three or four years, it’s accumulated births and deaths, album release dates, rock concert and festival dates, United Nations international days and significant other dates too, and it’s ever-expanding.

Tea tonight was delicious. It was vegan pie with vegetables, mashed potato and gravy. Cooked to perfection, of course. There’s not much vegan pie left now, so I’ll have to start planning to make some more.

The promised storm didn’t turn up this afternoon. However, round about 18:00, there were a few rumbles of thunder in the distance. Right now, though, the sky has really gone black over Bill’s mother and I don’t reckon that it will be too long before it arrives. … "ten minutes later, it was pouring down with rain" – ed … After the fireworks last night, I could do with a quiet night in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the nurses home … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember maybe about forty-five years ago when the nurses were lodged in what had been the old Memorial Hospital in Victoria Avenue in Crewe.
The building was due to be demolished but it had somehow kept going, but it was in a pretty dreadful state. The local Health Authority launched an appeal to raise some money to carry out the repairs.
The appeal had the slogan "PLEASE HELP OUR NURSES HOME".

0

Monday 13th July 2026 – JUST FOR A …

… change, we had some rain here this afternoon. And that was something that many people were pleased to see, bearing in mind the last few weeks of drought. And I do have to say that it did indeed make a welcome change.

Something else that made a welcome change was the fact that I actually had something of a decent night’s sleep. That certainly took me by surprise.

After I’d finished baking yesterday, I came back in here to write up my notes, totally oblivious to the fact that I hadn’t had anything to eat. I had completely forgotten about tea.

After my notes were finished and on line, I had a few things to do, and then I went to bed. It was round about 23:00, not as early as I was hoping, but then again, nothing is these days.

Strangely, it took me an age to go off to sleep. That’s the first time for quite a while that I’ve had a problem in this respect. But once asleep, there I stayed until all of … errr … 03:10.

At that time, I was awoken by someone shouting “hey”, and then something extremely important about the Welsh Premier League. I’ve no idea what it was now but it awoke me with a start yet again.

The bedroom window in here is slightly open, so I suppose that it could conceivably be someone outside shouting, but why would they be shouting something about the Welsh Premier League? In the end, I decided to treat it as a dream because I can’t think of what else it might have been.

The next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. I don’t even remember going back to sleep after that earlier incident, so it really did take me by surprise. And once again, we had the usual struggle to rise to my feet and head off to the bathroom.

It’s a good wash and shave today, just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. And then after that, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And as well as the previous dream, there was something else on there too.

It was ironic because earlier, I’d been dreaming about the Welsh Premier League. I had to make a series of radio broadcasts about the different leagues, different clubs and so on. They gave me a list of Premier Division clubs that I had to include somewhere or other in the programme and also made other suggestions about things that I should mention. By the time that I’d reached a thousand words, or something like that, I’d already written quite a few and it was moving quite nicely.

So here we go with the Welsh Premier League again. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I do spend a lot of my time one way or another with the Welsh Premier League, but it’s quite rare for me to dream about it. And judging by the opening comments, it’s in some way linked to the previous incident at 03:10.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up earlier than usual today – her last day for twelve days. She was looking all radiant in her summer gear, ready to go home and put the reclining seats on the patio and her feet up until a week on Sunday.

She told me about an accident that had taken place down the road during the night in which a car had gone out of control and collided with three parked vehicles. I’d heard nothing, of course.

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

We’ve finished Rome now and moved on to Byzantium, which pleases him much more, seeing as it’s Christian architecture and art.

Nevertheless, he still can’t resist firing a parting shot – "The division is purely horizontal ; a bay of a basilica is a thing which cannot be imagined. Size, splendour, even proportion, may make basilican architecture pleasing to the eye, and no other style has associations which can speak so powerfully to the heart ; but the living soul of art is wanting. It has freed itself from the absurdities and inconsistencies of heathen Rome,"

After breakfast, I cut in half the loaf that I made yesterday and put both halves into the freezer for another time. And the fruit loaf went into a tin. I’m determined to try it one of these nights.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do. First of all, I reviewed the radio programme for this week and then sent it off. After that, despite my best intentions, I regrettably crashed out instead. And although I awoke later and made another start, I crashed out once more and it wasn’t until 11:45 that I awoke.

That gave me just enough time to choose the first record for the next radio programme before my faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic.

She drew my attention to the sky outside. “That’s storm weather, if ever I have seen it,” I said to myself. “We’re going to be in for it quite soon”.

After she left, I waited for the taxi, and it was almost half an hour late. There was also someone else to pick up, so I was horribly late arriving at dialysis. Even so, I still had to wait, and it wasn’t until 14:45 that I was actually up and running.

Almost as soon as we had left my house, there was an enormous clap of thunder and flash of lightning, and it rained all the way to Sartilly.

During the whole session at the dialysis centre, which was another heavy one, by the way, the blood pressure alarm was going off every half-hour, bringing the nurses running. But there was nothing to worry about. It kept on interrupting my work and my attempts at some more beauty sleep, though.

The doctor came to see me too and told me the good news – that I don’t need another one of these cameras stuck up my nose. They are going to monitor my situation.

When it was time to unplug me, I had to wait fifteen minutes, which was annoying. The taxi driver was waiting for me, however, so we could push off quite quickly. The bad weather had gone and it was actually quite warm again.

There was another passenger in the car, whom I hadn’t noticed at first, so we had to go to Sartilly to drop her off. And it was 19:10 when I finally arrived home.

My cleaner helped me inside to sit down and recover, and after she left, I made some food – a bowl of pasta and vegetables, boiled and then fried in olive oil and black pepper, and covered with grated cheese. Another delicious meal.

So now that I’ve finished my notes, there are a few things left to do and then I’m off to bed, hoping for an even better sleep than last night. But as long as I don’t crash out during the day, I’ll be fine.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about churches and basilica … "well, one of us has" – ed … everyone was quietly praying one Sunday morning at the Basilica in Koekelberg in the north of Brussels when suddenly Satan appears.
Everyone immediately panics and runs for the exit except for one old man
"So, aren’t you afraid of me too?" asks Old Nick
"Not at all" replies the old man
"And why not?"
"Why should I be? After all, I’ve been married to your sister for nearly fifty years."

0

Monday 8th June 2026 – I’M COMPLETELY FED UP …

… with all of this. Who in their right minds would put two experienced nurses of a good length of service into a ward with just six people and two inexperienced nurses (one who started here on 1st January and the other on 1st May) together in a ward full of eight people?

And guess where I was!

It totally defies description that the staffing organisation in a place like this could be so totally chaotic. I really felt sorry for the two girls being so snowed under like this. It’s true that the two experienced nurses came into our ward near the end and helped them tidy up, but by then, it was far too late to do any good.

Just like last night, really. By the time that I climbed into bed, it was too late for me to have the kind of sleep that would do any good, especially after the early morning on Sunday.

However, I’d only been in bed for five minutes when I began to dream about some home improvements I wanted to do. There was someone, a British guy, doing some work on a place up the road so I went to see him about coming along to do some work for me. He didn’t say very much, but after a while, what he said was that he would give me some of his tools to carry down to my house so that they were there when he came. He gave me what looked like an enormous professional mastic gun that ran off the mains and was on two wheels, and somehow, I had to take this home. He unplugged the machine from the wall and then we came to a huge cable drum with three or four different cables on it that you wound in. It was divided into four or so compartments. He had the white power lead, and there was a splitter in the middle of it, so he unplugged the lead that was in the splitter and worked his way round, winding this cable off the cable drum until eventually they were both free. But there was a box in the middle of this white cable so he opened it up and took a battery out. It looked like a PP3 to me, so I asked him what sort of battery it was, and he replied that it was a PP2, which was one that I hadn’t heard of. I didn’t say anything – I just took the cable as best as I could and there was no battery in that box now so I had to find a PP2 battery from somewhere to make it work, and I was making myself ready to push it on down to my house.

This must be something to do with the guy who rang me on Sunday. He was telling me about all of the improvements that he had made to his property.

The battery issue presumably relates to my friend who was just here for a while. “Batteries” was quite a topic of discussion.

At that point, I awoke dramatically, but only for a moment and I was soon back to sleep.

The next time that I awoke, the day was just starting to dawn. But even though I was contemplating leaving the bed at one point, I must have gone quickly back to sleep because when the alarm went off, it awoke me.

Once I was dressed, I slid over to the computer and began to start work. The first task was to see where I’d been during the night.

Seren made another appearance last night. We were in North Africa, somewhere in a desert condition where there was a town. For some reason, we were walking around on the edge of town and I noticed that these cars were driving along this straight road but suddenly moved to the left and back to the right again, so we went over to find out why. There was no apparent reason except for a hollow in the ground, so Seren began to dig in this hole and she came upon a metal box. She picked up the metal box and we went back to our hotel. We couldn’t open the box, but it looked quite old so we rang a local museum, which came to look at it. They took it away and gave us a receipt. It turned out that it was a treasure from some sheikh from some hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. They offered her 100,000 dirhams for it, but she said that maybe it might be worth a bit more if they looked more at it. In the end, she settled for 900,000 dirhams.

This dream relates to the guided tour that I was giving around Chester the other day and the story of the Roman amphitheatre that had my visitors so enthralled.

And by the way, 900,000 Moroccan dirhams is worth about €85,000 and never mind the treasure – I would sell my own grandmother for that amount of folding stuff.

For some reason, we were living in a three-bedroom detached house with an integral garage, quite modern. And with the story of this treasure, I had to take it to the museum but Seren was ill. But we moved suddenly in this dream to a hotel that also had an integral one-car garage so I left Seren in there with instructions not to open the door to anyone. If she needed anything, ask the receptionist in the hotel, and I went off. It wasn’t to the museum, it was to the police and they wanted to know more about finding this box. They said that a group of criminals was eager to lay their hands on it. He showed me a photo of the man who was said to be their ringleader. I recognised him immediately as someone who had seen us dig it up, so he sent orders out to someone to do something. He then switched back to French and said that it’s quite possible that this box is going to end up being more valuable than I might think. So I left there and went back to the hotel to find that Seren had gone. At that point, I had a ‘phone call saying that it’s one million dirhams to have her back. And then the ‘phone was cut.

Yes, I’ve given those kinds of instructions out to some people before. And the house was just like a house that Nerina and I once saw with a view to buying if only we could have sold ours quickly.

But this dream is starting to sound too much like the plot to CARRY ON SPYING for my liking.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase.

What made me go to the police was that there was a message on this box inscribed in runes. And whilst I can read some runes, I can’t read the rest but I did know that the Norse never came this far south so I assumed that it had been stolen from somewhere and brought and hidden in the desert.

And this part relates to the book that I’m reading right now. They’ve discovered a spearhead and when they x-rayed it, they saw a mark on it that, to some, resembled a rune and to others, no, it didn’t.

At some point, a man and a few of his sidekicks turned up. They asked me how I could live with the recent election results but not live without Seren. It suddenly became clear what was going on. This man was a Bedouin and all the time that he was talking to me, he was combing his hair. And then, when he had finished, he sent one of his sidekicks off to fetch him another comb. He had really thick bushy hair and a bushy moustache and beard but I hadn’t seen him before.

The beard and moustache remind me of my friend, but my caller was much more like the Fat Man in the above-mentioned film.

So, not just going back into the same dream once more, but three times more. Is this a record for stepping back into dreams?

And did I succeed in rescuing Seren? Tune in next time, people, same time, same place.

The nurse turned up as usual, even more cheerful than yesterday. Still, he’s off on his week’s break tonight and it’s Isabelle the Nurse starting tomorrow. He was in chat mode, talking about the commerces in Granville. After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Vera Evison’s book AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT HOLBOROUGH, KENT while I was eating.

And I had to laugh, although I know that I shouldn’t. Someone broke into their workshed and stole some tools and a couple of artefacts. She was quite indignant, but what is she doing in the graves that they are exposing? A well-known phrase involving a pot and a kettle springs to my mind.

Back in here, I carried on adding products to MY AMAZON STORE for a while. And then I went to make myself look pretty for Emilie the Cute Consultant.

My faithful cleaner sorted out my anaesthetic, and then, the taxi was early for me. And believe it or not, it was a Mercedes-Benz. Apparently, my taxi company had taken over this one at the start of the month, and it’s a bit more upmarket than what we are used to.

It was pouring with rain outside and I had to find my raincoat.

Our driver had to go via Sartilly to pick up our usual Monday partner, and then we set off for the dialysis centre.

The driver threw me out at 13:35 and due to the chaos in our room, I wasn’t plugged in until exactly an hour later as the two girls struggled against the odds. And when they did, it hurt like hell and it’s still hurting now.

Once I was up and running, I was able to do some work until the doctor on duty came to see me. No prizes for guessing who. That’s right, Emilie the Cute Consultant. She asked me how I was, and I told her that the pain in my foot had started up again, and in spades too. So she wrote a prescription basically telling me to double the dose of the painkillers.

That was exactly what I was afraid of, right at the very beginning, but it’s too late to back out now. At least, she was cheerful and smiling about it.

At the end of the session, we had exactly the reverse procedure, and so although I’d finished at 18:05, it was 17:55 when I returned home. At least the driver was waiting for me, and he’d been waiting quite a bit too.

There was a howling gale outside now, so he dropped me off at the back of the building where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me in and settled me down.

After she left, I had the half-pizza from Sunday, and now, late as it may be, I’m off to bed. Welsh in the morning so I want to be on form.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being in the desert … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told a friend that I’d once taken Nerina to the North African desert.
"And what happened?" he asked
"I came back with nine camels and fifteen goats."

0

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following day.

And so no-one should be surprised to learn that at 05:50 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Mind you, there was a reason behind it all, as you will find out for yourself if you read on a little further.

But last night, as some of you may have realised if you logged on early, I was simply overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with pain, overwhelmed with discomfort, overwhelmed with everything. In the end, I abandoned my notes and went to bed.

It didn’t take much rocking last night either, and I was soon asleep. But not for long. Round about 03:00 we had one of the fiercest storms that I have known since I’ve been here, and we have had a few.

This storm was wicked. It was lashing down with rain and the howling winds at probably over one hundred kilometres per hour were making mincemeat of the car park. No-one could sleep through this racket.

Round about 04:30, it all calmed down, only to spring up again from a different direction. This was full on to the front of the house and it was so powerful that it blew my windows open. I had to climb out of bed to close them.

After sitting on the bed for fifteen minutes thinking, that was when I decided that there was no point in staying in bed. Instead, I dressed … "at a very leisurely pace" – ed … and began work.

First task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

This is another dream that I seem to have forgotten from during the night. I know that I was in it, and there was something about bottling something or putting things in jars and putting them on one side. Out of the stuff that we had made, there were four of these huge flip-top bottles and two ordinary ones. They had to be taken away, stocked and generally looked after. This is where it was all confusing, with us putting them into the van to take them away. There was a lot more to it than this. There were scenes when I was in bed, another scene where I was sulking and the tied cottage that we had, and I wish that I could write more about it.

This is another dream that I would have loved to finish. You can’t leave me on a cliffhanger like this

I went to a rock concert with a friend of mine and one or two of this friend. This was a friend whom I’d had for years and for some reason, he was extremely depressed, something that affected him quite often in the past. It was really going on late, this concert, and at the end of it, the three of us left. My friend turned to me and said “I don’t think that I’ll be having any more Cortinas again. I asked him “why not” and in the end, he explained that in his opinion, they were far out of date now and he needed a new, modern car to keep up and all that stuff. As we walked into town, he made it perfectly clear that he and his friend were going off in one direction and I should go off in the other. It was a cold, rainy thing but I started to walk away. I noticed that it was getting light and the birds were singing. At that moment, I went into Boots the Chemist and wandered around looking at the products for a while. I really wanted some deodorant but instead, I bought a packet of tomatoes and a huge packet of crisps. I paid for them at the checkout, which was quite funny because the cashier lost my bag of tomatoes somewhere on my conveyor belt

There is a story about this going back to about 1974 when I was “sent off” from a pub crawl, but that’s another one that the World is not yet ready to hear.

However, I did have a friend who once was so overwhelmed at work that he took a holiday not knowing where he was going and ended up being lost. And the incident at Boots at Crewe – the interior is very suggestive of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago of a shopping mall in Montréal, but the outside was definitely the Crewe British Home Stores.

When the nurse came, the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t even lift an eyelid, never mind barking at him. He allowed the nurse to stroke him and then the nurse turned his attention to me. He didn’t actually stroke me but massaged my feet and legs with the cream and put my elastic compression socks on my feet.

Then, after another stroke of the beast, he cleared off on the rest of his rounds and I could make my breakfast.

The next book on the list is RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge, an author whom we have encountered before.

He starts off his book by saying "this work is nothing more than a report on certain excavations, and as such, follows the modern pattern of being as colourless as possible. In the last century, a similar work would have included musings on the brevity of life, scraps of poetry and various other frills. Now, archaeology has become so stern a subject that I have not even dared to describe our feelings when a skull at Hollywell Row began to walk away with a young rabbit inside it."

He goes on to add "most readers would surely prefer the older method" and he’s not wrong there, because I know what I would, except when the author goes berserk with his remarks.

Lethbridge also makes the remark that "it would seem probable that male skeletons without weapons in this cemetery and others of the pagan period are those of slaves". Slavery was quite common in those days. These slaves were usually captured in battle or criminal slaves doing penance for their crimes, and, believe it or not, some people actually gave themselves voluntarily into slavery.

That latter phrase is certainly true, whether modern people like to admit it or not. But the life of a peasant in early Mediaeval times was a struggle between life and death, with not much margin between the two. But if your crops failed and your wife and children were starving, what options did you have? The duty of a lord was to feed, clothe and house his slaves, and it was better than starving to death. And let’s face it – the life of an early mediaeval peasant was not much more than that anyway.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase.

At this point, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I came in here to go through my Welsh, ready for the lesson. And while I was breakfasting, our tutor had sent us by e-mail a huge pile of work that we were going to be doing during our lesson. I had less than an hour to go through it and that was rather unfair.

The lesson itself passed really well, although one or two of my classmates laughed when I told them about my Welsh-speaking artificial intelligence character. I still think, though, that it’s an excellent idea for someone who is isolated from the mainstream.

Next on the list was my cleaner, who breezed in to do her stuff and to shoo me into the shower. When I came out, I found that I had a nice, clean bed with nice, clean bedding. And so there will be a nice, clean me inside it tonight … "well, clean, anyway" – ed …

While I’d been at my Welsh class, the new battery had arrived and my friend had taken it out to the vehicle. He’d managed to couple it up and when he turned the key to make sure that there was a current passing through to the ignition circuit, the vehicle fired up as if it hadn’t ever been left unattended.

So after I’d come out of the shower and sorted myself out, we went over there for a triumphant drive around the car park.

However, our plans were blighted. The handbrake has seized, with the callipers stuck to the brake discs. That’s a nuisance. So near and yet so far. It seems that every step we take to advance, a new problem comes along to stifle us.

Not everybody agreed with this, of course. We’d attached the Hound of the Baskervilles to a lamppost behind the bus shelter, and when we looked around, we found that there were two schoolgirls making a big fuss of him and he was enjoying every minute of it. The girls told my friend that they thought that he was “magnifique”.

Back in here, I cleaned myself up and began to make the dough for tonight’s pizza. We’d missed out on a pizza on Sunday and I can’t possibly go two weeks without one. And while I was cooking, we were chatting about an electrical company and its website, and I was having a lengthy conversation online with an old schoolfriend from my Shavington days. It’s nice to catch up with friends from years ago.

One of the subjects that we were discussing online was “The Dockers’ Umbrella” – the Liverpool Overhead Railway that ran close to the docks from the latter part of the nineteenth century to December 1956 and so nicknamed because it allegedly sheltered the dock workers from the rain as they went to work.

The pizza tonight was acclaimed by my friend as “the best you have ever made”, and who can argue with that? He did also mention that “you look really tired tonight” and that will be the subject of later discussion.

Back in here afterwards, I had a few things to do, and then I started on my notes. However, after about five minutes, I fell asleep at my desk. When I awoke, I carried on and then fell asleep again. I lost count of how many times I fell asleep whilst trying to bring my notes up-to-date, and in the end, I gave it up as a bad job and hit the hay. There’s always another time to finish them off.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that electrical website … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend from Shavington that part of the menu on the site was “watch batteries”.
He asked "and what about it?"
I replied "we were there for half an hour looking at them but they didn’t seem to be doing anything."

0

Thursday 12th February 2026 – IT WAS HARD …

… today at dialysis. For some reason, there was more liquid to drain off than usual and as a result, I suffered quite a lot, particularly towards the end.

Mind you, things have been building up to this for a while now. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve not been feeling too well just recently, and while the last couple of days might have been better, it doesn’t take much to knock me back to the start again.

Last night, for example, I was on course for an early night and I actually worked quite hard to achieve it, but even so, it was just after 23:00 before my notes went online, and with everything else, it was after 23:30 when I finally went to bed. And it shouldn’t have been like that at all.

And despite the howling gale and torrential rainstorm that was going on outside, I managed to go to sleep quite quickly and I don’t believe that I moved a muscle until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Having been woken up by BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE, it was another struggle to leave the bed and head off into the bathroom for a good wash and a shave. Mind you, I’ve given up all hope of any of the doctors coming to see me, but you have to go through the motions all the same.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was at work and it turned out that they were starting up a new group of people for something or other. The guy who was in charge decided that the person who was earmarked to do the job at first wouldn’t be able to cope so he nominated me to do it. I had to go to the office in Chester, and when I complained, they said “never mind. You’ll still be home in half an hour, won’t you?” which, of course, is nonsense. In the end, I arrived at Chester, relieved the guy who was doing this job and went into the office. There were two people there in bed, as if they were hospital patients. One of them was chatty enough and told me everything but the other one said nothing. I had to ask him directly if he was an Oxford United supporter. Then I made some remark about wondering how his treatment went. The girl who was my assistant asked him outright, but he didn’t reply to that either. I thought that I could see this being a really interesting and riveting group of which to be in charge.

So here I am, back at work again despite having been close to the retirement age in a considerable number of dreams. But I did work in Chester for two years between 1972 and 1974. I loved the city and would have been happy to return.

The hospital situation needs no explanation, but what’s all this about Oxford United?

The nurse was early again and he didn’t stay long at all. He had his big medical bag with him today so I suspect that he’s off on quite a few additional travels today.

It meant that I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

In fact, read all of it because it’s now finished. The final pages show a huge series of photographs that clearly show the hurried nature of the burials in the War Cemetery, and also a series of photos that show the massive nature of the work that he and his colleagues had carried out.

What they have done is phenomenal, and you would never ever believe the scale of the work that they undertook.

Back in here later, I had an important letter to write and then for the rest of the morning, I began to prepare for the next radio programme. I even managed to choose half of the music too. This is something else that I hope that I will finish tomorrow because I really need to have a weekend off.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to await the taxi. The driver was early again today, but seeing as we had to go to Sartilly to pick up someone else, we weren’t all that early arriving.

My sooty food was put into the premises at about 13:50, but I had to wait until 14:25 before I was all plugged in and running. And after that, apart from the nurse asking me if I was OK and also the coffee coming round, I was left to my own devices.

As I said earlier, there was more liquid to be removed this time, so they wound up the machine a little. And by the time that I’d finished, the pain had come back in my foot, and as well as that, I was so exhausted that I crashed out for half an hour.

The taxi was waiting for me so we had a good drive back, listening to a podcast of THE HOBBIT

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I said, I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

My cleaner helped me into the building and after she left, I warmed up the leftover soup from yesterday.

However, I couldn’t eat it all tonight, and another pile of food ended up in the bin. I was doing quite well with meals until then. It looks as if I’m having a relapse.

But anyway, I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the hobbit … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling a friend of mine that I’d given up reading Tolkien’s books just before going to bed.
"Why was that?" she asked. "Was it becoming too much of a bad hobbit?"
"Well" I replied, "it was certainly hobbit-forming".

0

Thursday 15th January 2026 – I’M FED UP …

… of all of this, that’s for sure.

This afternoon, I arrived at the dialysis centre at 13:50. I was finally plugged in at … errr … 15:10. That’s one hour and twenty minutes that I had to hang around like Piffy on a Rock. As if I don’t have anything better to do than to wait on their convenience.

That’s how it has been today, one thing after another after another. It started off last night when I ended up going late for tea and not actually finishing until 23:30 or thereabouts everything that I needed to do.

With this racking cough that is still not improving and a nose that’s flowing like a stream in full flood, I didn’t really have all that much of a good sleep either. I did in fact go to sleep rather quickly, but I kept on waking throughout the night with a desperate desire to cough.

When the alarm went off, it was a desperate struggle to leave the bed and it took me quite a while to summon up the energy and make an effort to go to the bathroom, where I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

After the hot drink and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

I was in the hospital again. I’d been staying there for a while and they had changed my mattress around so that it would have sides of even wear rather than all going to be bogged down on one side. However, as soon as I changed my position to the other side of the bed, it was like being in a different bed and I ended up with a second lot of flowers, which was not what I expected. I didn’t really know what to do and how to react to this kind of thing, and especially the two deliveries of flowers, one for each side of the bed, that I’d had. That was becoming complicated.

That’s the problem with my mattress here. I turned it once, but now both sides are worn and it really does need replacing. As for the hospital and the flowers, I wonder what they are doing here.

Later on, I was driving my taxi around Shavington in the Basford neighbourhood, I suppose. There was something about a couple of red roses in the middle of the road. I’ve no idea why, and that’s all that I remember of this particular dream, unfortunately.

So I’m back to driving taxis again. I’ve not done that for a week or so. But flowers yet again. There’s definitely something happening today with those.

And then there was a third dream. It was about a university meeting, and there were hundreds, if not a couple of thousand, people there milling around. They were talking about plans for the forthcoming year etc., and then we had to go along and choose a place to stay on a student exchange for two weeks. They had all kinds of guides to help you choose, notebooks and music etc. I went straight over there and began to liberate all of the RUNRIG cassettes because where I was hoping to go was that I’d heard that there was an exchange to the Outer Hebrides or to an island almost out as far as the High Arctic. I was determined to be on that regardless. Once I’d collected all of these cassettes, I wandered round but couldn’t find any tutors. I asked a couple of people but no-one else could find them. They had all disappeared, so I wondered what was going to happen next – we needed to be allocated rooms, we needed to be fed etc. Then I suddenly realised that I’d been walking around without my crutches so I went back to where I’d been sitting. The girl who had been sitting next to me was there so I gave her a wave and said to her “you’re in trouble”. She asked why, and I explained that it was for letting me walk around here like this without my crutches. We had a little comment about it. Then I saw that the food was arriving so I went, but it was only the dessert. I couldn’t really see any vegan desserts so I had to hope that what I’d chosen was a dessert. Then the main course arrived, but it didn’t look very healthy. It was mashed potatoes and a kind of meat stew, something like that. It was strange that they had put the dessert first and the main course second. I couldn’t help it – I was nibbling away at my dessert rather than helping myself to a main course. I noticed that there was a vegetarian option but no vegan option. Everyone seemed to be taking lumps out of the vegetarian one rather than the vegan. There was also a starter there that was placed in the third position but that had nothing but cheese on it. There was no vegan cheese either. I couldn’t help but nibble on my dessert instead of trying to organise a main course. I was beginning to feel extremely frustrated by this time – not being able to find a tutor, not being able to register my choice of student exchange, not having any real meal to eat, and finding myself automatically nibbling on a dessert first. This wasn’t the kind of situation that I was hoping for.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have visited this island in the past during a nocturnal ramble. It doesn’t have a name but it’s right out of place, where it was during that previous dream.

But how many times is this that I’ve dreamed of walking without my crutches? It’s probably a good dozen or so. And then having one of these attacks of uncertainty that I have sometimes during the night. But dreaming about food is an unusual twist to this.

The nurse turned up early again and sorted out my legs. He didn’t stay long and I could push on and make breakfast. And to read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

James Curle has now started his excavations but is still setting the scene. He has, however, now worked out that the reason that the Roman fort wasn’t put in the most logical place, as I mentioned yesterday, was that there are the remains of a huge Roman camp there. and he’ll be excavating that in due course.

After breakfast, I gave in an inch to fear and went one better than David Crosby. Probably because, having had the ‘flu for Christmas, I’m not feeling up to par and it just increases my paranoia, like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car.

Back in here, there was post to deal with, a package that needed returning and a few other bits and pieces. Once I’d done that, I began to do some more work on the radio programme that I’d started the other day.

There wasn’t much time to do very much but nevertheless, I made a certain amount of progress before my cleaner came in to apply the anaesthetic on my arm. While she was here, she busied herself with a few small tasks about the place, seeing as she hadn’t been here on Tuesday, and then she wandered off, leaving me to wait for the taxi. I came back in here to carry on with the radio programme.

The taxi was a couple of minutes late coming for me, and then we had to drive out to the back of beyond to “rescue the perishing” – pick up someone else and take him to dialysis too. Consequently, we were several minutes late arriving.

Once I’d weighed myself, I installed myself in my bed and waited. And waited.

There was another new girl there today being given instruction by one of the experienced nurses. Consequently everything was done by the book with procedures rigorously obeyed. On top of that, another one of the patients, already plugged in, had a crisis so everyone downed tools and rushed to her aid.

The delay was such that the afternoon coffee was served long before I was even plugged in, so I had to sit and look at it while I waited.

Eventually it was my turn to be plugged in and, once more, it was all done by the book. As a result, it was 15:10 when my machine was finally switched on and running. I’d been waiting one hour and twenty minutes. To add insult to injury, the internet there was down so there wasn’t a great deal I could do, except to drink my now-cold coffee and read a few papers about ancient roads.

Actually, that was quite interesting because the author contends that roads such as “Dere Street”, once north of the Roman outpost camps north of Hadrian’s Wall, are not Roman at all but ancient prehistoric trackways used by the Romans. He contends that they do not show the typical characteristics of Roman roads, and they aren’t mentioned in the Iter Britanniarum.

He seems however not to have considered that if the Iter Britanniarum had not been written during the reign of Antoninus Pius but later, as several people suspect, it’s likely that the Antonine Wall between the Clyde and the Forth had been abandoned by the time the Iter Britanniarum was written, and so there wouldn’t be any Romans likely to be going beyond the outpost forts so there would be no need for a route guide for those roads.

During the session, the new nurse kept on asking me if I was OK, not that it made any difference, and although Emilie the Cute Consultant was the doctor on duty today, she sent a messenger to ask me how it went in Paris. I replied that it was as expected – there had been a deterioration in my condition – and I expected that once the news reached her, she would come dashing to my side to soothe my fevered brow. But she clearly doesn’t love me any more.

Eventually, they unplugged me, totally by the book of course, and by then it was 18:50. I’d been there for five hours for a session of three-and-a-half. As if I don’t have anything better to do with my time. Luckily, my chauffeur was waiting and she drove me home quite rapidly.

It beats me what’s going on there at times, because it always seems to be that no matter what time I arrive and in what order, I’m almost always the last to be connected and it really is getting on my wick.

There was a howling gale again and a driving rainstorm outside when we arrived so I was dropped off at the back outside the fire escape where there are only three or four paces to walk into the building. And being helped by my faithful cleaner, it was quite a comfortable walk.

After my cleaner left, I made tea, horribly late again after all of this. Rice and veg with a taco roll full of spicy Mexican beans and mushrooms. However, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have done because I fell asleep three times while I was trying to eat.

Back in here, I made a start on the notes for the day but having fallen asleep twice while trying to type and seeing that what I was writing was a load of gibberish … "nothing new there" – ed … I threw in the towel and went to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about cutting our hair … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of once being at work when I absented myself for half an hour and the boss wondered where I had been.
"Having my hair cut" I replied
"What? In the company’s time?"
"Well, it grew in the company’s time, didn’t it?"
"It didn’t all grow in the company’s time"
"Well, I’ve not had all of it cut off!"

0

Wednesday 19th November 2025 – PART THREE OF …

… my offensive did not go according to plan this afternoon.

After all, you can’t fight a battle if they don’t send anyone out to fight you.

What it does prove though, are that the tactics of many generals during a war, such as the Russians against Napoleon in 1812, of quite simply withdrawing your army and letting the enemy roam around haphazardly inside your territory are quite often the best tactics because they wear down the enemy and in the end, the enemy loses its morale as its supply lines lengthen and resupply becomes impossible. That was how I was feeling at the end of the afternoon.

That was a huge disappointment, because I’d been looking forward to this for the last twenty-four hours.

Last night ended up going to bed rather later – in fact much later – than I had intended and it took an age to fall asleep, probably due to all of the sleep that I almost had yesterday at chemotherapy.

And once asleep, there I lay until all of … errr … 04:10 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This time, I knew what had awoken me. There was a howling gale outside and it was blowing a huge rainstorm against my bedroom window. I’m experiencing all kinds of new sensations since I moved into this downstairs apartment at the front of the building.

It was impossible to go back to sleep with all of this going on, so at 05:30 or thereabouts, I left the bed and headed for the bathroom.

Neither medication nor breakfast this morning – what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out, that’s my theory for this morning. So instead, I came back here and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some famous businessman whose name I won’t mention who owns several limited companies and was outwardly a very wealthy man and he had spent £2.400.000 on a coach which he had fitted out as some kind of luxury travelling accommodation. It turned out that the coach was registered in some completely different name and the leasing payments stopped on the coach. There was an issue about it being repossessed so the reporters were on his trail. In the meantime, I was with a couple of other people and we were talking about the future. One of the things was the Ford Ranger. The Ranger’s bodywork was fairly rotten but we weren’t sure about the chassis. However, being an old American style of vehicle, the bodywork would come off the chassis. So I was thinking about taking the bodywork off, inspecting the chassis, welding it where necessary, then either buying a new body or repairing the old one. Everyone was encouraging me to go back to learn welding again, only this time, argon-arc welding, do the job properly and take it from there. We were out in the Ranger, and one of the people with us was a newspaper reporter. As we were going through the West End of London, we came across this guy threatening his wife with an axe. We pulled up at the side of the road and she came over. We asked her about this £2.300.000 coach, but instead, she climbed into the vehicle and asked us to take her away, so we did. However, he climbed into another vehicle and began to follow us. We decided that this wasn’t going to be a situation that was acceptable, so we drove into some kind of narrow entry where there was an exit at the far end, and we stopped. Our aim was to immobilise his vehicle and leave him there, and then carry on driving. He stopped behind us, but he came out and began to attack our vehicle with an axe. The newspaper reporter climbed out, and I climbed out too. Our aim was then to go ahead and neutralise this guy, and then to neutralise his vehicle.

The name of the guy has been removed from my account of the dream because there really is a businessman of this name whose business affairs have attracted the wrong kind of attention, and while there is no record of anyone having successfully won a slander or libel case against someone who has had a dream, there is always someone willing to try and there is a first time that such a case might be won. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. the whole state of Western society has gone downhill fast since solicitors have been allowed to tout for clients.

There has, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, been some discussion in the past about doing something with Strider, the Ford Ranger in Canada, and this part of the dream refers to that. And although I enjoyed my gas-welding course very much and did quite a lot of gas-welding afterwards, I really should have concentrated on argon-arc welding instead.

The nurse took me by surprise, coming at 06:25 this morning. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my legs. Then he cleared off and I went into the living room to wait for the taxi.

It was the senior driver who picked me up and we went across town to pick up another lady who was also going to chemotherapy. The drive was interesting because I’m sure that the driver has an issue with his vision. In the dark, in the rainstorm, he was driving along at 50 kph in an 80 kph limit at times, and wouldn’t put his foot down on the autoroute. I’ve noticed previously that in the dark he seems to be disorientated.

As a result, we were twenty minutes late arriving at Rennes, twenty more minutes than we should have had listening to the non-stop chatter from the lady in the back who never seemed to know when “enough” is “enough” and talked all of the way about the most inconsequential nonsense.

At the hospital, I was plugged in pretty much straight away and, for a change, everyone avoided me, which was nice. It was a shame that I wasn’t tired. The chemotherapy finished at 10:15 and at 10:30 I was on my way out of the door.

Travelling with the taxi company and the new rules from the Sécurité Sociale about combining trips and passengers, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed. Today was no exception and we ended up exploring the isthmus between the Sée and Sélune rivers.

As a result, I was back home at 12:15, all alone because my faithful cleaner was out on her rounds dealing with some of her other clients. So I had a disgusting drink and then made breakfast.

After breakfast, I … errr … crashed out on my chair for an hour or so, which is no surprise to anyone after the early start today.

Back in here, I ‘phoned the Centre de Ré-education and asked to speak to Elise the Dishy Doctor. However, she refused to speak to me and I had to speak to her secretary.

The secretary was gasping with surprise by the time I’d reached today on my list of medical appointments. She was speechless by the time that I’d reached Saturday. She agreed that I was doing far too much, given my state of health. She told me that she’s speak to the doctor about what’s going on and confirmed my ‘phone number.

Whether she will or not is another story, but certainly, no-one has as yet returned my call. As I said just now, it’s impossible to fight when your opponent won’t come out to fight you.

After another pause for a rest, I was interrupted by the return of the nurse to take my blood pressure this evening, and then for the next while I began to sort into the correct order the radio notes that I’d edited and began to assemble to program.

Tea tonight was a ratatouille with chick peas and pasta, followed by the last of the chocolate cake. And for once, I finished everything. I’m not sure how, though.

So tomorrow, we’re having dialysis so I’m off to bed. But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my latest offensive against my medical appointments … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of a case in the Courts where the then-junior counsel FE Smith was arguing with the judge.
"You are extremely offensive, young man!" said the judge
"As a matter of fact we both are" replied the future Lord Birkenhead "and the only difference between us is that I am trying to be, and you can’t help it."

0

Thursday 23rd October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that happens is that I wake up correspondingly early next morning.

Mind you, the howling gale that sprung up at about 01:10 probably had something to do with that. I have, quite seriously, never heard winds quite like it.

It will be interesting to find out what wind speed was reached during the night, to see if it was anywhere near the record 209 kph that we had once. At the airfield, a speed of 87 kph was recorded but the airfield is quite secluded. It will be a different matter up here on the headland, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic storms.

While I was at dialysis, my cleaner sent me A VIDEO OF THE STORM. And it’s quite sheltered around that side of the bay.

Throughout the day, it’s gone from bad to worse, and this is one of the reasons – only one – why I’ve had such a lousy day today.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d had no tea. When I’d finished everything else, I dashed through my evening routine and, much to my delight, I was in bed by 21:20 and that made a lovely change.

Not that it would last, though. As I mentioned just now, I was awake at 01:10 as the storm raged. And for the rest of the night, I drifted in and out of sleep.

Round about 05:20, I finally gave it up as a bad job and went to organise myself for the day, including doing the washing-up from yesterday.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a rock concert taking place with three groups in it. One of them was playing from 18:30 – 19:30, the second one from 19:30 onwards and the third was to come on later. At least, that was how I understood the situation to be. Someone asked me for some further information but I wasn’t able to give them any, except the proposed starting times for the first two groups because that was all the information that I had.

This reminds me of one of the rock concerts that I organised in Crewe in 1975 or thereabouts. Two local groups with the third one being a group from Chester in which a friend played. It was good fun, this one, but it wasn’t particularly successful and I didn’t organise many more after that.

We were given half an hour at school to write a story. It had to be a story about a holiday. I began to write a story about a young girl who had gone on holiday to Italy. She’d somehow ended up watching a beauty contest. She was all of the competitors and she saw the crowd cheering them. She was extremely envious and wished that she was up there with them. The situation carried on and eventually, she found herself in the arms of a young Italian boy. Just as she was starting to relax for perhaps her very first kiss, I dunno, there was this huge bellow of her name. She looked round and it was her mother. The boy ran away immediately and the mother gave this girl an enormous dressing-down and ordered her up to her room, so she ran off upstairs crying.

Now, this dream has a great deal of significance for someone whom I know. However, I’m not going to mention any further details in order to protect the anonymity of a certain young lady who will be familiar to regular readers of this rubbish.

A few of us were out there in these really high storms. Some kind of ball was being used for some purpose or other and it happened to fall to the ground in this wind just as one of the most feeble patients from dialysis was walking past. It hit her and she was rushed to hospital. A couple of days later we saw one of the taxi drivers, the guy who seems to be the senior driver. He expressed the opinion that if this ball was going to fall, it was bound to hit her more than anyone else just by simple Sod’s Law. Then he described in graphic detail the operation that had been taking place upon her. I had to leave the room again because I couldn’t stand to listen to it.

The lady concerned these days doesn’t walk to dialysis and hasn’t done for quite a while. But the part about the high winds is certainly apposite.

At some point or other I was out in the brown Cortina estate that I had for a while. I’d met some friends in the centre of Brussels. Before that, I’d been to see a psychiatrist. We had the interview in Brussels and she was asking me all kinds of questions. The answer in almost every case was “no”. She became frustrated and asked me if I was interested in pursuing this. I replied that I was, but she would have to ask me some meaningful questions if she wanted meaningful answers. In the end, I left and went to meet my friends. They told me to park up the car and come to join them. I parked up the car, but they wanted me to park in another car park next to it, which was a paying car park. I went in there, but as I was reversing into a car parking space, my foot slipped off the brake and the car rolled and hit an old Ford Escort. My friends came round to see what had happened. It had made something of a mess of the rear of my car but it was just the bumper that was bent on his. The guy came over and we agreed that I’d pay £20:00 for it, but I had a hell of a job searching through my wallet and all my papers for some money. They were becoming frustrated. In the end, I gave him this £20:00 to shut him up. We went for a walk, and we went past where I had a series of lock-up garages. We saw that two of them were open and were empty. I wondered what had happened to all my stuff and the cars that were in there. The third one had had its door broken but the stuff was still in there. I was wondering now what I was going to do about all of this because I couldn’t leave the door like this. And what about the stuff that had gone missing?

There’s a lot of relevant information in this one too, one way or another, although we can leave the trick cyclist out of the equation.

The nurse was early today, soaking wet and dripping everywhere. He told me that it was vicious out there, and I could well believe it from the noise of the howling wind. The soaking wet clothes just seemed to underline everything.

After he left, I had breakfast, not that I felt much like it, and then came back in here.

First task was to make an important ‘phone call, and that took quite some time. And for the rest of the morning, I was choosing music for another radio programme.

My cleaner blew in – quite literally – and applied my anaesthetic. She told me to summon her when the taxi came because I was going to need all the help that I could find.

She wasn’t wrong either. The howling gale was such that it needed the driver and my cleaner to hold on to me the moment that I stepped outside. It took over fifteen minutes to stagger the twenty metres to where the taxi was parked and there were times that the three of us didn’t really think that we could make it.

It was the most hair-raising fifteen minutes that I had had for quite some considerable time.

With picking up someone else along the way, I was hours late arriving at dialysis and as I was exiting the car, we had a torrential rainstorm and I was drenched.

Despite how I’d been watching my food and drink intake, I was well over the maximum limit and I’ve no idea at all why that should be. I’ve been very, very careful, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

As a result, they set up the machine leaving me with three hundred grams to take out “next time”.

The doctor came to see me, wrote a new medical prescription for me and gave me a prescription for a pedicure. Apparently I’m entitled to one every year.

After that, they left me alone – until the alarm on the machine began to go berserk.

Apparently, my blood had begun to clot so it was developing an airlock. There was nothing else to do but to cut the session short. So now I’m an enormous amount over the limit and the next few sessions are going to be gruelling.

Finishing early, I had to wait around for my driver. Luckily, it was one of my favourite taxi drivers, the one who took me to Rennes on Tuesday. We had a good chat as usual on the way home, talking about taxi operations and the like.

Back here, we managed to manoeuvre the car into the emergency space at the back of the building while my cleaner opened the fire escape. While the wind was even more ferocious at the back, there were only three metres to walk. Even so, it was still quite a struggle.

However, I’ll be in the taxi company’s bad books tomorrow. The wind tore the door out of my hand and slammed it against the front pillar with an almighty crash. I didn’t look to see if there was any damage, but I bet that they will when the car returns to the garage.

Tea was a leftover curry, and once more, I left a pile of food on my plate. I really don’t know from where this extra weight is coming, seeing as I’ve already cut down dramatically on the amount of food that I eat and I’m still throwing tons away.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now I’m off to bed. And I bet I won’t be able to sleep with all of this racket going on outside.

These winds are crazy. Since I moved here in 2017, I’m convinced that we are having more and stronger winds. There’s hardly a week that goes by without a very strong wind, and not a month without a hurricane.

But seeing as we have been talking about psychiatrists … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to see a psychiatrist about a problem that I had, where if anything was lying around, I would pick it up and disappear with it.
"I recognise your problem" he said. "You’re a kleptomaniac."
"Can you cure me?" I asked him.
"I’ll certainly try" he said.
"And if your cure doesn’t work?" I asked.
"In that case, could you pick up a new television for me?"

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Saturday 13th September 2025 – JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT …

… last night, I suddenly awoke, with another one of these quite dramatic awakenings.

And about five seconds after I awoke, I received a message on the telephone. It really was an astonishing coincidence, almost as if awakening five seconds before the message was in anticipation of its arrival.

It wasn’t all that much beforehand that I’d actually come to bed, after another one of the slow, depressing evenings that I seem to be having these days. And I was so tired, yet again, that I must have gone off quite rapidly to sleep. It’s a shame that I couldn’t have remained asleep, though, but then that’s what usually happens.

It took an age to go back to sleep too, but once I’d slipped into the arms of Morpheus, there I stayed until the alarm sounded. And that woke me up quite dramatically too, I can tell you.

At that moment, we were back in World War I when the Germans were storming a trench full of Greek soldiers. They had launched a few shells into a few Greek pill-boxes and stormed the trenches. There were piles of dead people around, so they went through, identified the wounded and shot them on the spot. There was one person who was a British officer leading a Greek troop. They questioned him about a few different things but as he didn’t have the correct answers to what they wanted, they shot him too. But we were working somewhere behind the lines, watching a captive balloon or Zeppelin or something that had escaped from its moorings and was flying at a very low height around the edge of the cliffs. We were worried that it would collide with the church steeple, so we were trying to work out a way, if we could, of diverting it away because if we were to fire at it, it would explode and that would make more damage. In the meantime, we had been repairing a few watches and things like that. We actually had one working, but then we decided that we weren’t happy so we dismantled it to have another attempt. At this moment, the girls came along and looked at what we were doing. They couldn’t understand why we had decided to do it a second time. I was talking to one of the guys about new technology and how powerful it was. He was saying that how he wished that he had bought a new 2GB memory stick while their prices were low, because a new 2GB one these days would cost $64. I replied that a 64GB one would only cost $2, the way that technology is going these days.

There’s a bit of everything in there. The bit about colliding with the steeple relates to a discussion that I had the other day with one of the taxi drivers, when we were watching the Nazguls flying around near the spire of the Eglise Notre Dame de Lihou. As for the rest, it seems to relate to little snippets of conversation that I’ve had now and again with different people.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes, but as you have already read them, I needn’t have bothered mentioning it.

The nurse was next, still in his cheerful mood, and then it was breakfast and a new book.

While I was reading COLONEL CARRINGTON’S TESTIMONY, I noticed that he had written several others and so I began today to read his BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that IN 2013 and 2014 I roamed up and down the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York visiting the sites of the battles of the Revolutionary War and also of the Seven Years War of 1756-1763, including the site of Fort William Henry, the fort that featured prominently in Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

One of the places that I visited in 2013 was Fort Ticonderoga, and I noticed from Carrington’s description of the siege of the fort that "The Americans neglected to fortify Sugar Loaf Hill", a prominent eminence overlooking the fort, ⁣strong>"deeming it inaccessible.".

You probably noticed just now that STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I walked quite comfortably to the top, and so did several other people. And there’s still a British cannon up there that the British Army managed to drag up the hill.

After breakfast, I came in here to begin a new radio programme, and in fact I’m currently working on two of them right now because, halfway through choosing the music for one, I realised that I’d missed one. Still, variety is the spice of life.

When my faithful cleaner came down to apply my anaesthetic cream, she brought with her my electronic drum kit. That was a one-day wonder, that was. I bought it as a challenge, something to do during lockdown, but my legs gave out before I was able to master it.

It was the boss who came to fetch me today and we had quite a quick drive down to Avranches. I was connected up quite quickly too and then I could concentrate on Y Barri v Y Bala.

Y Bala had only conceded four goals all season up to date, but Y Barri doubled that total with comparative ease and could (and should) have had a bagful more except for the inspired performance of former Salford City goalkeeper Joel Torrance.

It was nevertheless an exciting game and you can see the highlights HERE if you are of such a mind.

Although I finished my dialysis earlier than usual, I had to wait to be unplugged, and then finally the boss brought me back in the most astonishing rainstorm that was engulfing Avranches.

Ironically, it wasn’t raining at Granville when I returned. It was a nice, leisurely walk back to my apartment in the howling gale, which has now been blowing for several days.

For a change, Tea tonight was a burger with baked potato – one of those luxury burgers that are really delicious. And now, I’m off to bed in the hope of a good lie-in tomorrow. I need one after all of this.

But I forgot to mention my ‘phone message from during the night. It reads "(we) will see you Friday November 7 for a few days fly back on November 11.". This visit from Canada looks as if it may well be happening.

But seeing as we have been talking about Ticonderoga and The Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was at Ticonderoga where I told my famous story to one of the American tour guides.
Sent on a spying mission by Colonel Munro to find out about the French forces in Fort Ticonderoga, Hawkeye and Chingachgook approach the fort very carefully
"How many soldiers do you think there are in the fort?" asked Hawkeye.
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground. "About 300" he replied
"And how many cannon?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground again. "About 30"
"And how many horses?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground yet again. "About 60"
"And how many native allies?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground once more. "About 200"
"That’s incredible" said Hawkeye. "Can you tell all that by just lying down and listening to the ground?"
"Ohh no" replied Chingachgook. "If I lie down here like this and turn my head so that my ear is to the ground just like this, I can see right underneath the gates of the fort"
The response of the tour guide was "that’s incredible! I never knew that Hawkeye and Chingachgook came to Ticonderoga. I shall have to amend the tourist leaflets."
Which just goes to show, as Alfred Hitchcock and Kenneth Williams once famously said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

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Saturday 30th August 2025 (… continued …) – SO STARTING AGAIN …

… after the adventures reported in the previous entry, Saturday has not been a very good day for me, for a whole variety of reasons, and I’m glad that it’s over.

It started off with me still being at my desk working at some ridiculous time like 00:40, and long after that too. But you know how it is … "No. How is it?" – ed … Once you start something, it’s very difficult to stop it, and trying to download about 50GB of Artificial Intelligence data software is not the work of five minutes.

That was something that was going on and on and on, and I didn’t want to stop it and start again. I was working on the theory that if I’m really tired during the day, I can always have a good sleep at dialysis in the afternoon. In the end though, it was starting to become ridiculous so I simply switched off the screen, left the computer working away to itself and went to bed.

Despite the very late night, I was awake again a few minutes before the alarm went off but, as you might expect, it was something of a struggle to persuade myself to leave the bed and have a good wash, shave and clean up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant … "if anyone from the dialysis centre finds this remark objectionable, my we ask why you have invaded Our Hero’s private life, in defiance of the Patients’ Charter, by hunting him down on the internet?" – ed…

After the medication, I ended up back in here, a good hour after having left the bed, and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a Roman empress or the wife of a Roman emperor or the wife of a British governor who visited the office of one of the native tribes in England for some kind of interview, but things went so badly that the woman took out a dagger and slashed all of the horsehair-filled seats that were in the room, causing a lot of damage, so the tribal leaders tried to contact the Roman legions who would pay for the damage, but of course they wouldn’t and everything was left up in the air with a very bitter taste in the mouths of the British people and the tribe concerned.

Quite recently, I’ve been reading quite a lot about different Roman Emperors, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and there was also something going on in my mind yesterday about car seats. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several years ago in Québec we went to visit the RIVIERE DES VASES which was where the eel grass, used to stuff car seats in the early days of motoring, was harvested and the discussion had turned round to horsehair seats in the UK

The nurse came in at his usual time today and caught me working at my desk, so he took my blood pressure here at my desk. He reckoned that it would be a much more accurate reading if I remained sitting here rather than standing up and going into the other room.

He sorted out my legs too, then after he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

This morning, I didn’t go very far into the book because I went off on a tangent, following the trail of the Roman armies as they wandered peripatetically around what today is Scotland. There was also a little trail to follow about the collapse of the “Hen Gogledd” culture as the Romans pushed from the South and the Picts pushed down from the North, events recited in the Heroic Welsh ballad Y GODODIN.

After breakfast, I came back in here to see how the Artificial Intelligence downloads had gone. By the looks of things, everything was complete, but it’s going to take a good while to sort out. And after all of that, when everything is ready, I’ll probably find that I would have been much better off with Natural Stupidity because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

However, having said that, it’s an old principle of computer programming, drummed into us when we were messing around with Machine Code at Night School in the mid-seventies, that the only equation in computing on which you can rely is GI = GO, which stands for “Garbage In” = “Garbage Out”, and it’s probably fair to say that … errr … “confusion” in a computer program is inevitably the fault of the person who has programmed it.

Once more, my faithful cleaner caught me unawares as she came to put the anaesthetic cream onto my arm, and she stayed for quite a while chatting. I’m not sure why I seem to be the “Flavour of the Month” right now. However, our chat was interrupted by the arrival of the taxi so we went outside to meet it.

Unusually, I was the only passenger in the car today, so I asked the driver about the lovely lady who usually accompanies me. However, he had no news of her, so we travelled alone.

For once, I was early arriving, but as usual, I was one of the last to be connected, which was a shame. And as I expected, for the first half-hour I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that would be of interest to the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. When I came back into the Land of the Living, I didn’t really do all that much.

The doctor came to see me and I told her the story of the injections. She thought too that I’d be much better off going back to the old series of injections rather than this new one that had so upset my body.

Eventually, they came to unplug me after, for once, having had a full session of three and a half hours without a crisis of any kind. However, the woman in the next bed was not so lucky and they had to unplug her after an hour or so. When she’d recovered, she was whipped off to hospital for observation

Earlier on, I had asked one of the nurses if she knew why the lady who usually accompanies me on Thursdays and Saturdays was not present today. She had checked up during the course of the afternoon and while she was compressing me, she told me, to my deep shock, that she had died yesterday.

When I’d seen her on Thursday, I noticed that she didn’t seem to be herself, but to hear that she had died the following day was the last thing that I expected to hear.

On the way out, they weighed me as usual, and I am now the lightest that I have been for quite some considerable time. I can see that this is not going to end well, but I can’t think of what to do about it, with the lack of appetite and everything that I eat tasting heavily of salt since the chemotherapy began.

The taxi was waiting for me when I left, but there was another passenger who needed to be dropped off in Avranches, so what with all that had gone on today, I was far later arriving back home than I otherwise might have been, which was annoying. There was a rainstorm too that was rather annoying.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she sorted me out quite quickly. She’d also brought two of the guitars downstairs, which was nice. The others will follow in due course.

After she had left, there was football on the internet. The game between Hwlffordd and Caernarfon had started half an hour ago but the advantage of being on the internet is that you can wind it back to the start.

Mind you, it wasn’t a very interesting match. For some reason, all of the liveliness and energy that had seen Caernarfon go to the top of the table and score a bagful of goals so far this season seemed to have disappeared and it was a very lethargic performance. Hwlffordd gave a workmanlike performance but didn’t set the game alight either.

A 1-1 draw was probably a fair result, and I have seen far, far better matches than this one. If Caernarfon wish to stay at the top of the table, they will have to play much better than this. However, perennial champions TNS dropped another two points with a tame draw down south at Barry Town and Penybont, who have shown some class and character over the last two or three seasons, were surprisingly beaten at home by Connah’s Quay Nomads.

At half-time, I paused the game and went to make some tea – pasta and veg with chick peas. And it was a big mistake because what with the nausea that I have been feeling these last few days, I ended up in some kind of severe difficulty. In the end, as soon as the football finished, I typed a terse note and went straight to bed.

Tomorrow is another day and we’ll see how we feel. My cure for everything at the moment is to go to bed and sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about my poor fellow traveller … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my faithful cleaner about her death. After all, she had met her a couple of times.
"How many of your fellow passengers have now passed away over the last year?" she asked.
"Three" I replied "and a fourth one now has to come by ambulance".
"You’ll do everything you possibly can to have a car to yourself, won’t you?" she said.

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Wednesday 25th June 2025 – I WAS NOT …

… alone!

And when they send me the bill for the €20:00 for the subsistence, I shall only pay half and the mouse that I saw at 05:25 eating the crumbs on the floor when I awoke can pay the rest.

What surprised me particularly was not so much the mouse but the nonchalant attitude of the staff when I told them, as if “we’ve heard it all and seen it all before”. One member of staff (the male nurse with whom I’d had that huge argument last night) even tried to chase it away into someone else’s room rather than try to eradicate it.

So now my mind is made up. When I move downstairs I am definitely going to have a cat – a female cat – and the problem with what to do with it when I’m in hospital is resolved because I shall bring it with me. It can have free board and lodging.

And if anyone tells me that animals aren’t allowed into hospitals …

So, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, the intravenous drip went on until about 03:00, with me trying to sleep and every half an hour or so a nurse coming to check and awakening me

When they finally disconnected me, I could at last have some proper sleep, which I did until all of 05:20, which was when I saw the mouse.

As I said earlier, it was the nonchalant attitude of the staff that surprised me the most. They seemed to think that it was quite a normal thing to have a mouse in their hospital. I wasn’t impressed, though.

After they left, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. While I was having a brief doze I saw a couple of heavy lorries go past with huge, heavy trailers on the back. From one of them, the trailer broke away and 100 yards further on the heavy metal container body on the lorry full of scrap metal or something also fell off. The trailer careered off down a side street and I remember thinking to myself “so that was the end of Mike’s Music Shop in Edleston Road”.

There used to be a music shop in Edleston Road – it moved there from Nantwich Road several years ago. I bought a lot of stuff, including my famous Gibson EB3 bass, from there. However, one of the owners died a couple of years ago so I don’t know if the shop is still there.

Later on; I ended up having a row with a nurse during a dream last night. He wanted to couple me up to a drip-feed thing in a very complicated way that I was sure wasn’t right. When he came to work on it, he found that he had to make the cables longer so he pulled on the cables and that nearly pulled the catheter out of my arm. When I shouted at him to stop he made something of a face and we had something of an argument … fell asleep here …

And fell asleep for two hours and eight minutes, so the dictaphone’s timestamp told me. And I’ve seen enough of these couplings-up to a Portable Patient these last ten or so years to know how it’s done and to know if it’s not done correctly. But clearly, that row last night must have been on my mind.

They had coupled the machine incorrectly, and ended up with pipes looking like a plate of spaghetti, all tangled up in each other rather than a nice flowing series of pipes; And the fact that they were all tangled together was the root of this argument, when he pulled on one and it pulled all the others

Breakfast (for me, anyway) came at 09:10 this morning and when I finished, and I wasn’t in the mood to eat all of it they coupled up the chemotherapy stuff.

And round about 10:00 the side effects began. I began to shiver and shake, I went deathly cold and a huge wave of fatigue swept over me. There’s only one cure for this – I went to bed, under the bedclothes to keep warm.

The nurses and the doctor were frantic with worry but I know about this kind of thing and I know the best cure is to sleep it off. They were having none of it though, and insisted on taking tests and measurements

There was also, as you might be expecting, the "would you like a doliprane?"

Round about 11:30 they finally got the message and cleared off, except for the cleaner and the nursing assistant who brought me my lunch, which I refused.

With the taxi coming at 14:30, I left the bed at 14:00, still feeling shaky, and packed my bags. And then went back to sleep.

The taxi arrived at 15:30 and as I was feeling a little better, I walked to the car, refusing the wheelchair, and settled myself down in a comfortable position.

The driver has taken me before, and he’s a nice, friendly guy so we had a little chat as we drove out of Paris. For once, the traffic circulation was fairly fluid so we would make good time

Once we were on the motorway I fell asleep and slept all the way to Caen, except for dealing with messages from my friend ond my faithful cleaner about my kitchen, which has arrived at last. I mentioned to the kitchen fitter that it had arrived, so he’s going to start work on his next free day, which might be some time at the end of next week.

He’s also been to another store and found what he needs from there and has negotiated a good price so he’ll be bringing all of that after I’ve paid for it.

When I awoke we were going round the north side of Caen. My driver reckons that it’s quicker at this time of afternoon and he was probably right too because we arrived back at home after just four hours of travel And we were greeted by a rainstorm of tropical proportions.

The boxes of kitchen stuff look impressive in the new apartment. I can’t wait for them to be opened and assembled. And then I climbed up here, feeling a little better than just recently, despite the pain in my foot that has now gone off to the back of the base of my little toe and in my heel since the Retuximab.

My friend had made some food to eat which was nice of him, and now I’ve come to write my notes before I go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about this pain in my foot… "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the nurses asked me "have you ever thought about acupuncture to solve the pain?"
"Yes I have as it happens" I replied "but I just didn’t get the point of it."

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