Tag Archives: rhydaman

Saturday 29th August 2026 – THIS WAS A

…rather uneventful day today, except that I had some good fortune at dialysis without even having to ask for it.

Well, I thought that it was good fortune, which it was at the time, but I changed my mind somewhat a little later.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons, as they say around here. Last night, it was about 00:30 when I finally settled down under the bedclothes, and I know that I must have been asleep quite quickly because when I was dictating something in my sleep, I could tell that I was still sucking on the bedtime menthol and eucalyptus sweet.

And by the looks of things, we were back to how things were a week or two ago — waking up at some uncomfortably early hour and not being able to go back to sleep again. For the last week or so, I’ve been having a much better kind of sleep, but it’s not lasted all that long, has it?

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I dragged myself to the edge of the bed, but it still took a superhuman effort to haul myself upright, go to unlock the front door, and then head into the bathroom to sort myself out. Today, as well as a good scrub-up, there was a shave too, just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, but I’ve not seen her for ages.

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

And while there was something on it, for sure, it’s something that the World is not yet ready to hear, and you in particular don’t want to hear it, especially if you’re eating your breakfast right now. Let’s just say that I was in the World War I trenches in Northern France and Belgium as a lieutenant with a Scottish company, and we were under heavy shelling. However, at some point, Zero put in an appearance.

So how long is it since one of my three favourite young ladies has put in an appearance? I thought that they had all dropped off the end of my dreaming sequence just as The Vanilla Queen did a few years ago, but at least we’ve managed to have Zero back.

The nurse turned up again and we continued our discussion about football from yesterday. I told him about the Trefelin – Rhydaman match last night, but he didn’t seem interested. Anyway, THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE NOW ON LINE although they show nothing like all of the tension ane emotion that there was in this game.

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

Well, not so much of it, because he started to talk about Peterborough Cathedral so I went off to do some research. I knew that the abbey had been founded on a false and fraudulent charter that was only ever noted in the “Peterborough” version of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE and none of the others, so I was interested in what else I could find.

And, of course, as Nansen once famously said, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on" and I ended up at Edith Cavell. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to live just around the corner from where she was executed, and a few years ago, I POSTED SOME PHOTOS ON LINE of the place.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again, just like the above. 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.

Back in my office here in the bedroom, I had a few things to do, and then I began to work a little on the radio programme that I’ll be preparing next week. Not that I managed to go very far because midday came around quicker than I was expecting and I went off to prepare myself for dialysis. But not before having identified several pieces of music that I need to track down.

My cleaner came along as usual to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and after she left, I waited for my taxi to take me to Avranches. But the waiting was not without incident.

Last night in the match between Trefelin and Rhydaman, Trefelin, with a one-man advantage, pushed big burly veteran centre-half Louis Gerrard up front to make a nuisance of himself in the Rhydaman defence, and it was indeed he who scored Trefelin’s goal. So while I was curled up leaning on the table and dozing off, I dreamt that he was up there again, and at a corner, he rose up above everyone to head home. And just as his header hit the back of the net, instead of the referee’s whistle for a goal, the taxi driver rang the front door bell to say that he was here.

It was in fact a carbon copy of the goal by Euros Griffiths for Rhydaman, which was interesting, but it was definitely Louis Gerrard in his black and red Rhydaman strip who scored it.

Mrs Dinosaur and her exhibition have now departed so I was the only one in the car today. So even though we set off from here ten minutes later than we usually did, we still arrived at dialysis relatively early, and I was up and running by 14:00, having had two nurses around me to plug me in, which was nice.

They set the machine to the correct amount to eliminate the excess fluid, but after a while, they noticed that the extraction limit was stable and not going down (which, I suspect, was due to the coffee and orange juice that I’d just had for my snack, but I was saying nothing), so my nurse simply wound up the extraction by another 300 grams without me actually having to ask for it, and that seemed to work fine, although I was hit by cramps near the end. Not that I’m bothered – 300 grams extra is 300 grams less to extract on Monday.

Once everyone had gone and I’d settled down, I began to watch another football match. Today it was newly promoted Llandudno v Hwlffordd. Llandudno are doing really well this season up in the Premier League, although they have only played one team of any real quality, but Hwlffordd, usually one of the stronger teams in the division, have had a wretched start and have no points and no goals to their name as yet.

The game went as the league table suggested it would, with Llandudno winning 2-0. However, we had the usual VAR excitement, players sent off and brought back on, players sent off and staying off, and some exciting, fluid and skilful play on the wings degenerating into a midfield slog. Still, it was worth watching. And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … some of the newly promoted teams are simply in the league for cannon fodder, but that’s not the case with Llandudno.

The doctor was there too today – the new one who prescribed the useless antibiotics ten days ago. She went to chat to a couple of patients but she walked past me, apparently not interested in a follow-up of her diagnosis and treatment. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I often have the impression that, for the terminally ill patients like me, they do the minimum to keep us alive and don’t bother with the rest of any treatment.

You can tell that from the chemotherapy. The chemotherapy last year failed and the professor who is supposed to be dealing with my case hasn’t bothered to contact me since. I’ve had one appointment with the neurologist there after the chemotherapy, back at the start of the year, and there’s been no further contact from him either since then.

By now, it was time to set me free, and I only had to wait for ten minutes before my nurse came to unplug me. And riddled by cramp, I weighed myself to find out that it had all gone according to plan and Monday might be a little easier.

The taxi was waiting for me and I was once more the only passenger, so dodging the occasional showers, I was home fairly quickly.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink in my hand once I was sitting at the table. I was still hungry afterwards, so I decided to make myself a meal – a burger on a bap with baked potato and salad. But the salad was off so I had vegetables instead.

The problem was, though, that hungry I might have been, but I was also exhausted. So although I managed the burger, I’d fallen asleep at the table long before I’d finished the baked potato.

In the end, what was left of the baked potato ended up in the bin and I ended up in bed. I’ll write my notes tomorrow

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cathedrals … "well, one of us has" – ed … a new priest was appointed as curate to Brussels cathedral, and so he went for a walk around the city to see what his diocese had to offer.
As he was walking past a dark alley near the Gare du Nord, a figure slid out of a dark alley and whispered "twenty-five Euros for a quickie, father"
This happened several times as he walked around the Gare du Nord, so back at the cathedral, he asked the bishop "what’s a quickie, Monseigneur?"
"Twenty-five Euros from the girls at the Gare du Nord, my son."

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."

Saturday 22nd August 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a calamity at dialysis today, and it’s as if the World had come to an end. For quite a while, I wondered if I would ever survive the shock.

Yes, that’s right. They forgot to bring the coffee round to the room in which another woman and I were being dealt with. Luckily, we had a very understanding nurse, and once we mentioned the problem to her, she went off and did the necessary. But it wasn’t half worrying.

That’s not been the worst of my worries either, but more of this anon.

Last night, after the football, I spent some time writing my notes, but as it became later and later, I began to think that I’d never finish them at this rate and I’d be here all night. So I called it a day round about 23:30, finished off what needed to be finished off and I was in bed round about midnight.

At some point in the middle of the night, I think that I awoke, but once again, it was the same as has been happening just recently – I wasn’t sure if I was awake or not, if I was still asleep or dreaming or anything like that. It reminded me of that line in THE PRISONER – "by the time we’ve finished with him, he won’t know whether he’s No. 6 or the cube root of infinity".

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.

However, I was definitely asleep at 06:15 when someone opened the door to my apartment. I shouted “who is it?”, but the response was that whoever it was closed the door and cleared off. I can see that I’m going to have to take “certain steps”, which might include involving a bucket full of whitewash.

And then we had the usual struggle about hauling myself out of bed and going to the bathroom to sort myself out. I managed to have my feet on the floor before the alarm went off, which counts as an “early start”, but the rest isn’t quite as easy. In the end, I managed it, including a good scrub-up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

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

We went to see some friends who lived in a small seaside port. We noticed that there were three shipping containers sitting on the quayside here waiting to be picked up by some kind of boat. There was a guy there too, and I didn’t like him, but he definitely sounded like some kind of underworld villain, and he was pointed out by my friends as having a place somewhere in Argentina where he’d go to hide every now and again. A few weeks later, there was an article in the local paper about a British guy who lived in Argentina who had been arrested and the police were still looking for three shipping containers. I said to Nerina “I know where they are”. A couple of months later, I was at an auction sale which took place on behalf of the government that was to sell the possessions of this guy, and one of them was his interests in taxis in quite a few councils, so I went along to see what was happening. It started surprisingly cheaply, so much so that I could make an offer and I could bid on it at one time, but the bidding went slowly out of my reach, and eventually some guy had part of it knocked down to him. He wanted an option on the rest, but he needed to have the support of 50% of the people. A lot of people put up their hands but he said that he was one county short. I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound”, and I put my hand up. He said “right, yes, Cheshire! That’s all I need!” and the whole lot was knocked down to him. Then he had a meeting of all of his supporters afterwards, and I went along to see what was on offer. He started to tell us a few things that had nothing whatever to do with taxis, so I wondered what on earth his game was.

This little port, I’ve seen it before on several postcards and photos, but I just can’t put a name to it. It’s a tiny port, and it beats me how they would ever manage to sail a ship into here to take away one container, never mind three.

Argentina doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, but the story of the crook who had interests in taxi businesses all over the UK rings a familiar bell if you were to turn the clock back thirty or forty years and is probably still continuing today, for all I know. But Arsenal FC supporters will be much more clued in to this than I am.

There had been a whole group of us staying somewhere in Spain in a hotel-kind of place, and some friends of ours in the neighbourhood came to visit too. We stayed there for a couple of days, and when we were on the point of leaving, some Spaniard turned up in a strange kind of van. It had some kind of maker’s name on the side that was in initials and we were trying to identify it. I reckoned that it was a Japanese clone of something. It had no roof and no sides where the driver sat, and he was complaining that the starter motor didn’t work and a couple of other things didn’t work and the quality was rubbish. We were there with a dog, and a policeman came. He had an Alsatian, and this dog of ours took a great deal of interest in the Alsatian, and the Alsatian, which was a female, ran and hid. We thought “our dog’s found a new girlfriend, has he?”. In the end, we all piled into my van and we set off for home and to drop off these people on the way. For the past two or three days when we’d gone down this road, there had been some girl struggling to get on her pushbike, and she was still there today, struggling. When we reached the bottom where I’d normally turn left, I did a U-turn and came back up the hill. Everyone was wondering why. One or two people were complaining, but I said “don’t worry, it’s only going to put a couple of extra seconds on your timetable” and I stopped back outside the gates of this house again. Instead of asking someone to open the gates, I had a strange kind of hook made out of an old garden rake. I put that over the top of the gates, climbed up it and went over the top, then dropped down onto the garden. What I’d come to check was to see whether a friend of mine who was supposed to be coming but never turned up had finally made it, because we could intercept him on the way home, but if we went a different way home, we’d miss him for that five minutes while we were getting back on the correct one, so I wanted to make sure that he hadn’t come before I set off again in the hope of trying to meet up with him.

Strangely enough, this is pretty much the same scenery as in the dream a few days ago when I was living up on the Czech/Austrian border

The van could be any one of a dozen French microvans that are on the road today, or maybe one of those tiny Japanese vans that were common on the roads forty years ago. The dog, of course, needs no explanation.

The rest of it, including the girl struggling on her bicycle and my weird “garden hook”, must have some explanation somewhere, and I wish I knew just what it was.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. He didn’t stay long, and once he’d left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Our hero is now back discussing a few foreign edifices of a religious nature, but concludes with "Certainly when we compare these edifices with our own contemporary ones, we can have but little hesitation in esteeming England to have been, during the fifteenth century at least, the chosen abode of Christian art"

He then goes on to list several marvellous examples of European Gothic work but remarks "Our buildings never run into the same senseless extravagance, where nothing but mere excess of ornament is left to supply the place of real art"

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I was hoping to be reading a book on architecture, not a book on art.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on the notes from yesterday. And they took much longer than they ought to do, because from about 10:30 to 11:15, I was asleep on my chair. And I remember nothing whatever about falling asleep. No-one was more surprised than me when I awoke.

By the time I’d finished and put them online, there wasn’t much time for anything else. I had to go to prepare myself for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic as usual, and then I had to wait for the taxi.

And not for long either, as it was here for 12:40. We had to go to pick up Mrs Dinosaur and then we set off nice and early for Avranches, only to be stuck in a traffic queue at Marcey-les-Grèves due to the autoroute being blocked in both directions with holiday traffic coming and going.

However, at the dialysis centre, I was seen to pretty quickly, so by 14:05 I was up and running and could watch Rhydaman v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

There’s no doubt that the Nomads were in a class above Rhydaman, but the latter managed to defend heroically for much of the match and even had several good chances themselves. But even so, a 2-0 victory for the Nomads was only to be expected, and Rhydaman could be proud of their performance.

After that, I was going to watch a second game, but there were too many interruptions and disturbances, not to mention the Quest For The Coffee.

As luck would have it, when I was finished, the nurse was doing nothing much so I was unplugged straight away, although she had jammed the catch on my backpack with my laptop inside it. My taxi was waiting too, so I was home by 18:00.

My cleaner was there to stick a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt, and after she left, I came in here to begin my notes and watch this evening’s football match. However, after I’d fallen asleep for an hour on the chair, I booted that idea into touch, wrote a terse note on my blog and went to bed. It was 20:20.

Now, it’s 05:00, I’ve been up for an hour or so, finished my notes, and I’m now going back to bed to await the arrival of the nurse.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about traffic jams … "well, one of us has" – ed … apparently the queues on the autoroute were caused by an accident. A golfer playing on a golf course at the side of the road had sliced a ball which crashed through the window of a coach, hitting the driver, causing him to swerve and have a fatal accident.
Later that same day, the gendarmes were interviewing the golfer "due to your negligence, you caused a road traffic accident which killed the bus driver, fifteen schoolkids and one accompanying adult" they roared. "What are you going to do about it?"
After a minute’s thought, the golfer replied "Perhaps I ought to tighten my grip, take a shorter swing and incline the golf club head more to the right."

Friday 14th August 2026 – WHAT A BIZARRE …

… night that was last night!

It was one of those strange nights where nothing seemed real at all, and I don’t have a clue about what was going on.

Although I wasn’t feeling much like it, I actually managed to finish and post on line my notes from yesterday. I don’t know where I found that strength and energy, that’s for sure. And after the notes, I had a few things to do. It can’t have been much short of midnight by the time that I crawled into bed.

Once in bed, I remember nothing at all about going to sleep. Usually, I have some kind of idea as to whether I went to sleep quickly or whether it took a long time, but not last night.

Whatever it was, it can’t have been for long. I awoke because of another mega-coughing fit, but I couldn’t be bothered to check the time, so I’ve no idea what time it was. And then after that, I had no idea what was going on. I know that I coughed a lot, but whether that was in a dream or not, I don’t know

In the past, there have been a few evenings and nights where I was never really sure of when I was awake or when I was asleep, and this one was certainly one of the best examples of that.

One thing that I do know for sure is that I had another one of these dramatic awakenings when I sit bolt upright. Although it was dark, I checked the time and found it to be 06:19. Still dark! How times have changed over the last four weeks. Anyway, I took full advantage of this and had my feet firmly on the floor of my bedroom when the alarm went off at 06:29 so that I could claim an early start.

Having my feet on the floor is one thing, being up and about is something else completely different. It took me quite a while to negotiate my way into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day. But eventually I was washed and dressed, and I came back here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night.

I was in the middle of Crewe with a friend of mine, and we were looking around at the shops. I was saying that when you live here all the time, you don’t notice the changes. Gradually, one shop moves, another one closes down, something takes over, and it keeps on going like that. But if, like me, you’ve been away from Crewe for well over thirty years, I immediately notice the difference. We were discussing this, and there were these two men standing nearby us, tall, blond and in raincoats drinking coffee. I happened to mention something about Eastern Europe, so this guy stuck a coffee in my hand, one of these two guys, and a piece of money. I looked at it, and at first I thought that it was Croatia, but when I looked closer, it was Poland. Anyway, these two guys had cleared off. The coffee that he gave me was disgusting, and I don’t know how anyone could drink it. Anyway, we carried on walking and we bumped into these two guys again. They told us that they had heard us talking about Eastern Europe, and one guy seemed to fasten onto me and the other seemed to fasten onto my friend. The one with me said “come with me,” so I followed him and we had a chat about different things and ended up in the police station. We went up several flights of stairs and at the top under the eaves were a few bedrooms. He asked me what I thought about this and I replied “it’s a little more comfortable than a cell, isn’t it?”. He had loads of interesting books and papers, and I was having a read of some of them. Then, he dropped the coffee that he had made all over his most important papers and had to run off downstairs with this paper to try to save it. Then we went back out onto the streets where he met a few people whom he knew and said “hello” to them. We were just walking around and walking around until we were out on the edge of the town. Then he said “come and meet my mother” so we went back into town and met the people to whom we’d been talking just now. He asked one “is she in?” and this woman replied “yes”, so he went into a building and I followed him, and we went up these creaking, rickety stairs, each stair having a huge flight to it. It was more like mountaineering than climbing stairs. He just walked into this dingy room where this little old lady was sitting. I followed in, and this woman had this old black cat. I stroked the cat and picked her up, and I began to talk to the woman about my cats.

The first part of the dream is certainly true. For someone who knew the town intimately after all these years as a taxi driver, every time I see a photograph of the town, I have to look it up to see where it is. Crewe is nothing at all like I remember it.

As for the two guys, even in the dream, they are the type of people who stand out a mile in any crowd and have “Police” written all over them. I wonder what their interest in my friend and me might have been.

And even now, I can see the interior of this dingy building, with all of the notices written by disgruntled tenants talking about the dangers of living in this building, the stairs being just one. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first came to Granville in 2017, I stayed for a week in a house that had stairs like that.

The British Government was planning on taking some kind of action against another country for some reason and was busy out there trying to drum up allies. I was with a friend of mine and we were having a chat about this, noticing that not a single country had rallied round to whatever cause it was that the UK was trying to fight, and the battleship that they had sent out to sea in an effort to make some kind of spectacle to attract the people was just sitting there in the open doom, I think. Then, it was announced that the Queen was going to hold a garden party at Windsor Castle on one of the days that this marine event was going to take place, so everyone was far too busy laughing at the complete failure of the British to actually go ahead and do something concrete about this

This story is somewhat along the lines of a discussion that I was having yesterday with the taxi driver who brought me home. Regardless of your feelings about Brexit (and mine are still as strong as they were in 2016), the days of the independent nation-state are long over. With aggressive globalisation and selfish power-grabs, you have to be part of a powerful economic alliance to survive these days, or the big boys will pick you off one by one.

I know that we were in our car planning to go somewhere, and we set out. My friend noticed that we had no warning lights whatsoever and wondered what else in the electrical circuit had broken down. I wanted to push on and get to where we were going, but he insisted on stopping to try to find out what this electrical problem was and to see whether we could repair it.

This story could relate to almost anything that I’ve ever done in the past involving motor vehicles. Back in the old days when things weren’t as strict as they are these days, I shaved all kinds of corners off the road traffic regulations and done other things that I wouldn’t even dream of doing these days

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to see to my legs and feet. She’d been doing her accounts last night because tomorrow is her last working day this month, and she needed my health card. However, because my 100% disability ran out at the end of July, the card was no longer valid. She asked me to have my cleaner sorted out today and she’d deal with my card tomorrow.

After she left, I went to make my breakfast, and while eating, I read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once again, apart from banging the drum for “England”, he’s steering well-clear of controversy today. That’s a shame, because I’ll have nothing to moan about.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then suddenly, I awoke and saw that it was 11:05. I must have dropped off to sleep without even realising it, and I’d been gone for about an hour. With the wretched night that I’d had last night, it’s no surprise that I’d gone to sleep again. However, it looks as if we’re having a return to the bad old days of pre-dialysis when I’d go off for an impromptu and unexpected sleep at the drop of a hat at any old time of day.

Once I was awake, I carried on with what I was doing, and when I’d finished, I attacked the radio notes, and despite the usual interruptions of a disgusting drink and midday medication period and the arrival of my friendly neighbourhood cleaner to do her stuff, not only had I managed to finish and have the notes ready for preparation, but I’d also found some time to sort out the next programme too.

The next programme after the one I did today is going to be a concert. I only have an hour for my radio programmes, and for this concert, I have almost two hours’ worth of music and introduction, and I need to cut it down to about fifty-eight minutes so there will be room for my commentary on the front.

So far, after careful snipping and editing, I’ve got it down to about fifty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds, and it will end up even smaller than that once I segue the five pieces of music that I have selected.

Then it was teatime, and the usual sausage, chips and baked beans with black pepper and cheese, followed by two of my slices of home-made fruit bread

When the tea things were cleared and washed away, it was time for the football. Airbus UK Broughton v Rhydaman. These two promoted sides are having very different fortunes in the JD Cymru League. Airbus seems to be doing OK – they’ve already beaten their points tally and number of victories from when they were in the league the last time a few years ago. Rhydaman, on the other hand, are struggling near the foot of the table with just one point.

This was another game played at a frenetic place where I ended up out of breath just watching it. And Airbus had a lovely spell of ten minutes, shortly before the half-time whistle, that I really enjoyed watching.

All in all, Airbus won 2-0, but that doesn’t reflect their superiority. They had two goals disallowed for offside and hit the woodwork three times as well.

Rhydaman also had a glorious opportunity. An attacker, just outside the penalty area, was in possession of the ball when the Airbus defence just froze. It looked as if the attacker had a week to make up his mind what to do with the ball and, in the end, his shot hit the woodwork with a shot so loud that you could hear it here in the apartment without the aid of a TV camera.

Even better, there are two live football matches to be broadcast tomorrow. Y Barri v Cardiff Metro – a win for the Mets will see them back on top of the table – and Caernarfon Town v Colwyn Bay. That game last season attracted the fifth-highest league crowd ever, and I imagine (or hope) that it will be another bumper crowd with the two best-supported teams in the league, only an hour or so away from each other, facing off against each other.

When everything had finished, it was 23:15, so later than usual, I headed for the hills. Here’s hoping that I can have a decent sleep for once.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about policemen … "well, one of us has" – ed … two policemen were called to investigate a shooting.
Shortly afterwards, they radioed back to the station "some old woman here has just shot her husband. Apparently he walked on the kitchen floor while she was cleaning it"
"Have you arrested her?" asked the dispatcher.
"No" replied the policeman.
"Why not?"
"The kitchen floor’s still wet"

Sunday 9th August 2026 – THAT WAS WHAT …

… I would call “a good Sunday” – that is, once the early part of it was out of the way, because the early part of the day was nothing at all to write home about.

As I mentioned yesterday. I abandoned my work early and fell asleep at my desk, and for quite a long time too. And when I awoke, I dragged myself into bed, and that was that.

Well, that was that until about 01:25, when I awoke, thanks to another good coughing fit. And despite trying my hardest, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there watching the clock go round and round and coughing all the time while I was doing that too. But as the day slowly started to dawn, I must have fallen asleep again, for I was awoken at about 08:40 by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

She’d brought with her some cuttings of rosemary, thyme and lemon thyme, and while she was doing my legs and feet as I was lying in bed, we talked about the herbs.

After she left, it took me quite a while to leave the bed, and after I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, it was 09:20 when I found my way into the kitchen.

The first job was to prepare my breakfast – porridge, black coffee and the last two home-made croissants. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Or, rather, I wasn’t. As usual, I found myself running up a side alley to the church at Barnack to look at the tower and steeple, and that led me on and on to several other places too. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this was why I didn’t receive a very good grade from university – I was being continually side-tracked and spent more time learning the things that were important to me rather than the things that the examiner wanted to know.

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to finish off. That took longer than it ought to have done too because I was continually drifting off into that semi-consciousness when all kinds of hallucinations drifted before my eyes. However, they are online now … "the notes, not the hallucinations" – ed … for you to consult at your leisure.

Once the notes were out of the way, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I was with a former girlfriend last night, and there was something about going to hospital. And when she came back out, I built this big plastic greenhouse out of one of these kits that you buy from a DiY shop. It was absolutely impossible to anchor it to the ground with its plastic outer coating applied, so I tied two wires from front to back and two wires from side to side, and where they intersected, I dropped a row of paving slabs on it from the door to the inside, and the paving slabs held down the wire and stopped the greenhouse blowing away.

This story about my girlfriend in hospital and the plastic greenhouse and the unique method of holding it down reflects a remarkably similar situation that is currently or has recently occurred elsewhere in a different plane of existence than in a dream. However, this is yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There was something about an Indian, a young man who came round to me for some tuition in something or other, but in fact I ended up giving him some tutoring in English. There were things that he didn’t quite understand, such as “why is it ‘tutoring’ and not ‘tuting’?”. I did my best to explain and gave him a few other examples. He asked me whether it would be possible for him to come again. I thought “well, why not, if he’s keen and interested in learning?” so we agreed that this kind of tuition could continue for a couple more weeks and we’d see where we end up.

This sounds quite similar to one of the guys to whom I taught webpage design in Brussels twenty-odd years ago when all you have to worry about was HTML 5.0 and *.css. And these days, I’m still using them, with a little bit of IFRAME and JavaScript added on for good measure.

I was with a friend of mine, and we were walking around the edge of some city that I knew well. There were several big tower blocks there, so we went for a walk. One thing we found was a small cat trying to jump up to a window to climb into a house, so I went over to try to pick it up and help it, but at that moment, a woman opened the window, so I had a laugh and a joke with her and then moved on. In the shopping arcade underneath these big buildings, there were all kinds of shops that we were looking at, and we picked up one or two things from there. But round another corner was the Woolworth’s shop. I said to my friend “here’s something that I haven’t seen for years,” so he agreed, and we dug our way through the bombardment ruins and found our way into the supermarket. It was really nice and clean and small … fell asleep here … but my friend was talking at one time about us being in a hotel a while ago. It was one of these very posh places, and we’d been on a course of some kind. I’d been interviewed for something or other, so I was late returning to my table. The desserts had been cleared away, so I didn’t bother too much about that. In the end, they announced that they were wanting nominations for someone to be the hospital ambassador, I suppose, for the forthcoming year. But you can’t nominate yourself – you need six people to nominate you, so I decided to let nature take its course at that. I had a black Mk III estate, a 2000E, and I wanted to put that back on the road, so I wanted to do some work on it, but I ended up talking to two guys from the hotel. One of them wanted some documents signed, and the one who was with him, he ended up saying that my music was really great and that if anyone had any problems moving cars and leaving after the conference, they had a mechanic on site They would suspend paying the bill until the problem had been fixed. I mentioned all of this to my friend, and he told me that it was not really as simple as that. He’d had a problem with a motorbike, and what they had done was to push it off a trailer, left it for a while, started it up, told him that it was fixed and charged him €16:00. That made me go to think about if I were to advertise this car mechanics service, just explain that it was for basic things and nothing really major.

This housing estate could have been any one of a dozen housing estates around which I walked in Moscow and Leningrad when I was there with the coaches in the 1980s.

It could also be where I used to live in Brussels, where we did indeed have a little shopping centre on the ground floor of one of the blocks of flats nearby. However, there was no “Woolworths” in that shopping centre, neither in Moscow nor in Leningrad either.

The conference sounds like one of the Open University Students Association conferences, although we weren’t ever likely to be allowed to stay in an upmarket hotel. Not on your Nellie!

Once everything else was out of the way, there was football. I had the match from yesterday to watch, and when I went to restart it, I found that I’d only just about managed to watch half an hour of it, so I settled down for a long session.

There’s no doubt that Colwyn Bay played the prettier, more technical football, but there were plenty of nice touches from the Rhydaman players too. Rhydaman’s players were also the most aggressive, and although I’d left the match on Saturday with Colwyn Bay 2-0 up, by the time the game was over, it was 2-2 and some of the Colwyn Bay players were quite close to losing their cool.

Later on, there was a baking session. And something that I have learnt today is that my fruit bread doesn’t keep for much longer than a week. When I went to look at it today, at two weeks old, it looked as if it needed a shave, so it went the way of the west.

That meant as well as a loaf, I also had to bake more fruit bread. The two loaves that I ended up making look wonderful, both risen up like lifts. But what I’m going to have to do with the fruit bread is the same as with the ordinary loaf, and that is to cut it in half and stick one half in the freezer to pull out when the first half is eaten.

There’s no tea again tonight. I’m off to bed as soon as I’ve written these notes, backed up the computer, etc.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about herbs … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once lived in the same building as a girl who was studying for a degree in cookery.
One night she told me that her best friend had been expelled after failing her exams
"How come she failed?" I asked her.
"She had to cook a dish of fish cooked with herbs, but the examiner didn’t like it."
"Why not?"
"The examiner told her that this was neither the thyme nor the plaice for this kind of thing."

Saturday 8th August 2026 – THIS WAS ANOTHER …

… really bad day at dialysis, like all of them see to be becoming these days. More than enough things went wrong today to convince me that maybe I just ought to be doing something different. We even had a world record low blood pressure, if you think that the 68 a few months ago wasn’t low enough.

And last night, it didn’t help much either. After the football had finished, I wasn’t in the least bit tired, so despite what I had said on the previous day, I stayed up and wrote my notes, and then I put them online before finally going to bed a good few minutes after midnight.

Once in bed, I can’t remember going to sleep, and I can’t remember waking up either. It was simply a case of “why is it suddenly 03:30?”.

It wasn’t 03:30 for long because I must have gone back to sleep once more without realising it. And there I was at 06:29 when the alarm went off.

Once more, it was the usual struggle to force myself to my feet and head into the bathroom to sort myself out, but I had a good scrub-up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

Back in here afterwards, I had a listen to the dictaphone to try to find out where I’d been during the night.

Round about 04:00 we had another one of these false alarm awakenings. What made me realise that it was a false alarm was waiting for the second one to go off five minutes later, but it never put in an appearance. Nevertheless, I still awoke, thinking seriously that the alarm had gone off.

This is something of which I have no recollection at all. I know that I was awake at 03:30, but I suppose that I’d gone back to sleep when this dream happened

There was some kind of tournament going on, like the Welsh Cup. The draw had been made, but a lot was being said about the fact that some teams really consisted of just one good player and ten other ordinary ones. Those clubs had named their teams after the player rather than the club, so we had to go through afterwards and find which clubs they were and change their names back, although trying to find the last one was extremely complicated, and we didn’t manage to do that until just before the kick-off.

This is something that is presumably related to the latest news coming out of the Football Association of Wales this week, something to do with the fact that in the Women’s Welsh Cup draw, no fewer than 4 clubs have been included that don’t even have a ladies’ section, never mind a ladies’ team, entered presumably by speculating fans.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, her usual chatty, cheerful self. We talked about her garden, and that too has been devastated by the drought, including some plants that her father planted in his garden to celebrate her birth.

She did, however, say that some of her herbs were still going strong, and she’s promised me a few offcuts of rosemary and thyme for my little aquaculture project.

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

Today, he has Augustus Pugin, the celebrated architect who led the “Gothic Revival” in the UK in the 1840s and 50s, firmly in his sights. "Surely then the segmental arch, which springs from the jamb at a sharp angle, is both more horizontal and less elegant than the four-centred, in which the angle is rounded off”, and the arch in the best specimens rises as gracefully and gradually as the simple pointed. Above all things it cannot be consistent in Mr. Pugin, who in his own buildings employs the segmental arch usque ad nauseam, to speak of the four-centred as a sign’of debasement. At the same time it is undeniable that the four-centred arch was in the last days of Perpendicular applied where it should not have been, just as the segmental was sometimes, though less frequently, at an earlier time."

Back in here, I had a few things to organise, but somehow, I managed to run out of time before I’d even started work. My midday reminder rang so I had to go into the other room and sort myself out with the laptop and other things that I need for dialysis, put on my shoes and sort out a disgusting drink with the midday medication.

My cleaner put in an appearance too. She applied the anaesthetic to my arm, and we had a little chat about this and that before she went back to her own apartment. I curled up in a kitchen chair, slumped over the table, and went immediately to sleep.

When the taxi arrived, ten minutes early, I was in such a deep sleep that I didn’t know where I was when I awoke … "nothing new there" – ed … and I was quite unsteady on my feet for a few minutes. My driver was a Ukrainian refugee and came to pick me up in a B-class Mercedes. The taxi company that I use has recently taken over another company in a nearby town, and this is one of their vehicles. It makes a change to travel in luxury rather than a base-model Skoda Octavia.

We had to go to pick up Mrs Dinosaur from her exhibition (even some of the taxi drivers are now referring to her as Madame Dinosaur) but even so, we were still a few minutes early. I had to wait a little while to be connected, but by 14:15 I was up and running, with the machine once more nearly on “flat-out”.

There were doctors on duty today, but while they went to talk to some of the patients, they seemed to be deliberately steering well clear of me. I wonder what it is that they don’t want to tell me. I could crack on and watch a football match that I hadn’t quite finished the other day, and then I began to watch Rhydaman v Colwyn Bay.

That was a match that I was hoping to finish today, but I crashed out long before half-time, and so that was that. But my sleep didn’t last for long. Firstly, the “low blood pressure” alarm was going off constantly and at one stage it had dropped to a new world record low of 67. And that’s with a pressure booster too. God knows what it would be like without one.

And then, we had the needle failure. It didn’t actually fail completely, but the alarm was saying that the pressure was not reaching what it was supposed to be. The nurses suspected that there was a blood clot forming in the needle and they tried everything that they could to free it, but it was back again by the time the next check was performed – and so on after that.

In the end, there was no choice but to abandon the session, and so, ten minutes before the appropriate time, with a couple of hundred millilitres of excess fluid still on board, that was that. I was hoping that at least I’d be down to my relevant dry weight, but no such luck.

My nurse unplugged me quickly, which was good, but I had to wait ten minutes for my taxi to arrive. And once it arrived, we had to go to the taxi depot to change car and driver, and so all the time that I had gained over the course of the afternoon disappeared by the time that I returned home.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, for which I was very pleased because I wouldn’t have done it on my own. She gave me a disgusting drink and then left me to it.

Once I’d managed to find the energy, I came back in here to write my notes and maybe watch some more of the football, but it didn’t work out like that. I could feel myself becoming more and more tired and more and more ill, and soon afterwards, I gave up the struggle and posted online what I had managed to write so far.

After that, I’m not quite sure what happened. However, at something like 23:00, I awoke, curled up comfortably in my chair, and how surprised was I? I didn’t even remember falling asleep. At that point I just slid over onto the bed and fell in. I hadn’t even switched off the computer, as I discovered later.

Silly me was thinking that I was so tired that I’d fall straight asleep, but unfortunately it took me a while, and that’s something I can’t understand at all, seeing how tired I was. But in the end, I managed to go to sleep, wishing that I’d gone to bed a darn sight earlier than this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Mercedes taxis … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old woman hopped into a Mercedes taxi. She looks at the Mercedes emblem on the bonnet and asks the driver "what’s that for"
"Well," said the driver, thinking that he can have some fun with this old lady. "that’s my sighting device. If I want to move a few pedestrians or cyclists out of my way, that’s what I use for sighting them. Watch!"
The driver swerves towards a pedestrian walking along the side of the road but at the last minute swerves away. However, he hears a loud “bang” from the back of his car.
"That sighting device of yours is rubbish" says the old lady. "We’d have missed him completely just then if I hadn’t got him with my door."

Saturday 20th January 2024 – THIS BLASTED DRINK …

… that they have prescribed me to alleviate the excess potassium in my kidneys really is driving me mad.

Last night I had a drink of it before going to bed and was stark out of everything, including my head, for several hours once I’d gone to bed. Fair enough, it was after midnight when I finally retired but until about 03:20 when I awoke, in exactly the same position as when I went to sleep, I remember nothing whatever.

And then after the helping this morning I was slumped over my desk fast asleep until 11:20, and then it took a good while before I felt in any condition to stand up and make my cheese on toast.

There should have been a helping at midday too but I eschewed that. I just couldn’t imagine the idea of being stark out for several hours during the afternoon.

And so as you can imagine, I haven’t done very much today . And surprisingly, I didn’t do much during the night either. I was working on the radio at one point night and was trying to prepare a programme. We had a visitor, a little girl rather like Shirley Temple, come along so naturally I let her do a little here and there and I played a song for her etc. A few people gathered around the doorway to watch. After we’d done about 3 or 4 songs I said that we were going to continue the programme and I’d play a song for one of the girls standing at the door so I wanted everyone to be quiet. That brought something of a dispute and discussion from some of them. I thought “this isn’t going to be very good radio at all”. Eventually when I had everyone quiet I was just about to play the song when the girl … shall we say … made a noise. Of course the whole studio dissolved into a huge fit of laughter. I thought “God, this is no way to run a radio station with all of this kind of thing going on”.

Later on, my friends from the Wirral and I were out in the red Cortina estate going somewhere when I needed to stop for fuel. There was a little wayside pump at the side of the road so we stopped there. There was no cashier, no owner’s sign and no price displayed. By the time I went to fuel up it had transformed into a proper fuel station with shop, cashier, café etc. My friend told me that he’d paid so I began to fuel up. The car was quite empty so it needed a lot of fuel. I asked him how much he paid but he didn’t answer. Instead, a figure of £91:37 flashed up on the screen. I didn’t realise the significance of this so as he hadn’t answered I asked him again. Again he didn’t reply but once more the figure of £91:37 flashed up on the screen. After another couple of times of asking I suddenly realised that the figure of £91:37 was what he’d paid. The actual total was less than that. He and his wife said “I didn’t realise that you were so poor”. I asked what he meant and he said “the car stereo – you’re using something different and DAMNATION ALLEY is playing. I actually had a micro-card reader with memory card plugged into the aux socket of the car stereo. I reminded him that he needed his change but he seemed to walk away so I had to remind him to collect his change. However we ended up going into a little shop on the site. We had to queue to go in so my friend’s wife reminded me to look for some marmalade. When we finally reached the head of the queue my friend asked for a tin of something that was displayed on the wall behind the cashier. It was written in Chinese characters and was a kind-of duck-egg blue. He studied the tin for a while and said “I think the type that I have is a darker green colour” so the guy pointed to another one on the side wall. It looked the same to me and my friend’s wife whispered to him “never mind. We’ll go to (a shop name). We get more points there anyway”.

And when I awoke, “Damnation Alley” was indeed playing on the computer. How about that for foresight?

And the red Cortina estate again? It’s probably tired of sitting in the warehouse and needs a run out. It’s not been run since 2000 when I drove it from Brussels to Montaigut towing a scrap MkV Cortina on an A-frame.

That was an adventure and no mistake. No rear brakes on it either so I came at night down the autoroute in the darkness and was only stopped once by the Police

But it’ll make someone a lovely, and valuable vehicle. It needs the head refurbishing, especially the valve guides replacing as it burns a cloud of oil when it starts up, which is no surprise due to its intergalactic mileage. But then the head will need refurbishing anyway to comply with “unleaded” standards.

There are no rear brakes, as I said. There’s a strange vibration from the back axle that vibrates the rear brake pipe and fractures it at one of the cylinders so it leaks fluid. The easiest answer is to blank off the brake line and drive carefully.

The wheels need refurbishing too. They are alloy wheels but they are letting out air.

Apart from that, it’s all original, never been welded and it’s a beautiful car that’ll look really nice on someone’s drive or on a Summer Sunday drive.

But I digress … "again" – ed …

So that was the story of my night. When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and took my blood pressure – still slowly rising and I don’t have a clue why – not that I am too bothered because I can’t do anything about it anyway so why worry?

Then we had the usual pantomime of me trying to dress and then I staggered off to find my medication, including this blasted drink stuff.

Back here, as I said, I crashed out for several hours and then I wasn’t in much of a state to do anything.

When I finally started work, whenever that was, I carried on with de-duplicating my computer . I disposed of quite a few files that were duplicates or earlier versions of ones already there and one of the directories (yes, I grew up with DOS 5.0) is looking a little tidier now.

While I was searching for something I came across a live football match – Pontypridd United v Cardiff Metropolitan. And I’d watched 55 minutes of it before I realised that it was from last year and I’d seen it before.

There was football later on – TNS v Abertawe under-21s in the final of a cup competition run by the Football Association of Wales.

Not that I’m a big fan of TNS by any means at all – quite the reverse, and for a variety of reasons too that would take far too long to explain. But when they are up against one of the five teams that turned their backs on the Welsh pyramid when it was created in 1992, I’ll be their biggest fan.

Of course, it’s quite true that TNS, based in Oswestry, are in effect an English club But there’s a huge Welsh heritage in Oswestry , which was part of Wales until comparatively modern times and a survey taken in 1972 indicated that a return to Wales would be popular. And the situation has intensified since.

However the big clubs have turned their backs on their country and continued to play their football in the English leagues purely for financial reasons

It’s a long and complicated story but to cut things short … "hooray" – ed … Abertawe’s under-21s made it to the final where they met TNs and I am delighted to say that TNS stuffed them 5-1 in a historic result.

Down the centre of the field it was all pretty much even but TNS’s wingers tore Abertawe’s full-backs to shreds, which you’ll see in due course when the presenting company posts the highlight video.

In the meantime, HERE’S AN INTERESTING MATCH in the second tier between Caerfyrddyn and Rhydaman. I don’t think that I have ever seen so many “sitters” missed in one game in the whole of my life.

Tea tonight was delicious baked potatoes done to perfection in the air fryer, and a vegan salad and vegan burger.

And I’ve reached a crisis because I’m running low, very low indeed on the burgers that I like, the vegetable mash type that are covered in a kind-of battery breadcrumbs. I shall have to smile sweetly at Liz and pick her brains on a way of making them. We had an interesting chat this evening and I should have asked her then.

Or anyone else’s brains if anyone else has any ideas too. Someone always comes up with something.

So that’s it for today. I’ve done enough. And no baking tomorrow means that I can take it easy. But what a life, locked in my apartment and daren’t go out in case I can’t climb the stairs on the way back.

But I’ve been thinking about this nerve issue. I’ve said before that after I’ve had a fall I always seem to feel worse.

And so I’m wondering if it’s not the fall that causing the sudden dramatic deterioration each time, but the dramatic deterioration that’s causing the fall.

Remember when I was at Noz a few months ago when I had that sudden, stabbing pain in my left (the good) leg that caused me to fall down? Maybe it’s that that’s happening in the right leg but because the senses there are dead, I can’t feel it.

If you can imagine an electric discharge or shock in your system for example that scorches down your leg and burns out a nerve, something like that.

So I’ll talk to the specialist when I see him on 14th February. Meantime I’m off to Paris again on Tuesday to have a Holter machine fitted – a machine that monitors your heartbeat on a permanent basis.

Rosemary thinks that that’s the first step before having a pacemaker fitted. I suppose that they’ll have to try to do something to keep me alive, even if it’s just to watch THIS RARE BING6NEEL SYNDROME advance through my body.

"It’s just like you, that is, not to have a simple illness like everyone else" she complained.

Friday 24th January 2020 – THAT ISN’T …

… the news that I was hoping to hear. Not at all.

My blood count is down to 8.8 – something that will not surprise any regular readers of this rubbish because they will recall that I’ve been mentioning over the last couple of weeks the fact that I’ve not been feeling myself … “just as well” – ed.

Worse though is the fact that my kidneys are now playing up again. They want me to see a kidney specialist the next time that I come.

It looks as if I’m starting to break up. But that was something that was always on the cards. People start to die of this illness after 5 years, and although I was diagnosed with it only 4.25 years ago, there’s no telling how long I had been suffering before I was taken to hospital.

Last night, despite the comfortable bed, I had a very mixed sleep. Tossing and turning around, waking up, all of that. There had been time to go on a voyage or two though.

We started off on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again and we were all having to get off to go for a coach drive. There were crowds of people in this square waiting for the buses and there was a lot going on. Some people who we were with decided that they weren’t going to do as they had other things that they really wanted to do. Anyway it was to see the statue of Sir John Slessor . They asked me if I knew anything about Sir John Slessor. I said “yes, he was an Anglo-Irish guy who was associated with Polar Exploration at one time”. I told a bit about a story but I can’t remember the bit now. There were crowds of people milling around and someone came up to me and asked me if we were going on a train. I said “no, we’re going on a bus”. Someone else asked the same question. There were loads and loads of Arab kids around and every time that I got up to go somewhere they would sit at my seat and I would have to go and grab my seat back again from him. We were sitting there waiting for these buses to come. I had some rare church relics with me – a box of something and a china – porcelain cross, white with blue edgings and I was afraid that one of these days I was going to break these, the way that I’m picking them up and putting them down. I can’t remember who I was with now but I was with some woman or other on this trip.
Later on, I was at the radio and I’d interviewed a rock band. It was an interview that I had done by chance with no plan in mind and I’d had a call or something for one of these programmes so I sent them that.

The alarm went off as usual and I was out of bed before the third alarm which is good news. And after the medication and breakfast, seeing as my appointment isn’t until 13:30, I attacked some radio stuff.

Not one project, but in fact two. The music for the first one is chosen (except the last track of course) and I’ve chosen half for the second one. I may as well use my free time here profitably.

There was a break while I went to the Spar shop for some bread.

At the back of the Condo Gardens here in the Windmolenveldstraat it doesn’t look good at all – or at least, it didn’t. But it seems that they are making a concerted effort to tidy it up so that it looks pretty.

The new fence looks really nice – and what a pity some low-life character has decided to leave his mark on it. That’s the kind of thing that makes me quite fed up.

A little further on down the Tiensestraat there are some exciting signs of activity.

They are using a stone-cutter to slice huge chunks out of the pavement and they are installing tactile pavement right by where the kerb drops are for the pedestrian crossings.

As an aside, I once had a female friend who worked for the Royal National Institute for the Blind and she reckoned that she had some of the responsibility for introducing tactile pavement into the UK.

Back here, I made myself a butty or two and round about 12:00 I headed off up town.

Straight away, back in the Tiensestraat, I was interrupted by an old car.

We haven’t seen an old car in a while so I reckoned that I had better photograph it. According to the badge, it’s a Lotus 7, and according to its front number plate, it was registered in 1965.

But these are things that you can’t take for granted. Many Lotus 7s were sold in home-assembly kits and there were several other clones doing the rounds too. So you accept with care the “evidence” of the badge.

There’s the little open-air fruit and veg market today in the Herbert Hooverplein.

That was my immediate destination as I wanted an apple and a pear to take to the hospital with me. But having waited for about a week while the assistants served a couple of the slowest customers that I’ve ever seen, I rather lost patience.

Yes, I gave it up as a bad job and abandoned my prospective purchases and carried on the the hospital.

Regular readers of the rubbish will recall what I’m going to be discussing next because we’ve been keeping an eye on these.

We’ve looked at the Hospital Sint Pieter here in the Brusselsestraat. It was built for the French community here in Leuven apparently but they left to go to Louvain-le-Neuve.

This became a huge white elephant and was never ever used to its potential. The respite care was here and so were the guest rooms, where I stayed for a while when I first came to Leuven.

Now it’s empty and they have made a start in demolishing it.

We’ve also seen the big hole in the car park in the Sint Jacobsplein.

As to what they were doing with this hole, I really have no idea. And I don’t suppose that I shall ever find out either because by the looks of things they are now filling it back in again.

Had I come by here two weeks ago when I should have been at the hospital, I might have noticed. Anyway, it will probably be fully restored the next time that I come.

This is something that we haven’t seen before.

The road by the traffic lights in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan is closed off and they have been digging up the road right here. It looks as if they are doing something to the drains and sewers but I’ve no idea what.

It does make me wonder if it is connected in some way to the hole that they dug in the St Jacobsplein car park. That would make a lot of sense I suppose.

The final thing of note is also in the Monseigneur van Waeyenberghlaan.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that sometime last year they completely gutted this block of flats – stripped it right back to the bare concrete. They now seem to be well-advanced with the renovation, and there was a lorry delivering a load of insulation.

The ground floor has been done out into shops so I’ll be interested to see who moves into them when they are ready.

At the hospital they are giving me yet another new treatment. Something called IQYMUNE which, according to Helena, is the bee’s knees. So we shall see.

And it had better be too if it’s to arrest this sudden decline.

Most of the time that I spent here, I was asleep. And it took the doctor an age to awaken me when he needed to talk to me about my kidneys.

My butties had unfortunately disintegrated inside my bag so I ate what I reasonably could, and then spent 15 minutes in the toilet on the way out cleaning bits of tomato, lettuce and hummus from the inside of my rucksack. What a mess!

On the way home I didn’t loiter. Just picked up my fruit and a tin of lentils from the Delhaize and came straight back. One of the side effects of this new medical stuff is “fatigue” and if I don’t have enough problems with that already!

Tea was the second burger with pasta, tomato sauce and vegetables. Followed by peach halves and mango sorbet. Totally delicious, it was too.

And then the football. Rhydaman v Caernarfon Town.

Rhydaman had comfortably disposed of Carmarthen away in the previous round and while Caernarfon are a different proposition to Carmarthen, the home advantage should normally count for something. Especially when I saw just how packed the ground was.

But Carmarthen were undone by four magic moments of Trundlemania and when we saw that Lee Trundle wasn’t playing tonight, then any advantage evaporated.

The game was littered with errors from start to finish and Caernarfon will have to improve dramatically and work on these silly mistakes if they want to push on into Europe. But even so, they had more in the tank than Rhydaman did.

They were 2-0 up by half-time and later in the game when Rhydaman tired, Caernarforn went on the rampage and scored 2 more, exactly as I had predicted to Johan Gallon in my interview with him a few days ago. Not even the introduction of the veteran Andy Robinson by Rhydaman could turn the game around.

Anyway, as this medication is responsible for fatigue and tiredness, I’d better hurry up and finish this before I …

ZZZZZZZ.

Wednesday 11th December 2019 – I WAS RIGHT!

This afternoon while I was out and about I noticed a movement out to sea, right out on the horizon near Jersey.

Not being too sure what it was – it might even have been a rock for all I knew – I took a photo of it with the big Nikon lens at full stretch, with the idea of blowing it up (the photo, not the object) back in the apartment.

Nevertheless I had a sneak preview on the camera’s monitor and although I couldn’t see clearly, it looked as if it had the outline or silhouette of Thora setting out to come here.

And sure enough, when I went for my evening walk tonight, I noticed that there anchored in the inner harbour tonight at her usual mooring place next to Marité and underneath the crane is Thora.

Crept in on the afternoon tide while my attention was elsewhere of course. There must be quite a lot goign on right now because she’s made quite a few trips over here just recently in rapid succession. It’s good for trade, that’s for sure.

As for me, I was right about having a late night. Long after any time that I wanted to be up and about, but can’t be helped. There’s a lot to do.

Eventually though I crawled off into the stinking pit. Straight into the Arms of Morpheus and also, simultaneously, off on a voyage or three.

One more I had this group of young escapees with me (have I had them with me before?) and there was one in particular being lodged at my house. Someone connected with a political party – the Labour Party – thought that this was inappropriate and the Party started to run this kind of campaign to get the situation changed (…now doesn’t this all sound remarkably familiar?…). Their tactics including running some kind of spurious article or poll or something in the local newspaper, including a photo, about some girl or other. This girl wasn’t any younger than the girl who was staying with me and was probably older too, but even so, that situation didn’t go down very well with me, particularly after I had read all of the articles about it. They were all completely irrelevant and so far from the truth even though they weren’t actually supposed to be about the particular girl but some other spurious character, but there was very little truth in any of it.
Yes, this all rings a big bell about a certain incident in the past, doesn’t it? They say that old sins cast long shadows!
However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I ended up a little later back on board a ship last night. It might have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, I dunno, I didn’t recognise it and even in the dream I didn’t recognise it. This voyage was all about dreams again and how my dreams were getting all mixed up about people and things and so on, in parallel to how mixed up these things seem to be being in life right at the very moment. For once even though the tracks were muddled up and I didn’t know which track went where, all that kind of thing I seemed to have some kind of better arrangement about sorting out these tracks. And what would I give in real life to have a method like that?
Later on I was playing football for Crystal Palace last night, don’t ask me why. There were high balls being pumped into the penalty area and I had to bring them down under control. Qite bizarrely, I was doing much better with the difficult ones rather than the English were doing with the easy ones, just like being a multi-million pound footballer or something, and isn’t that pretty much how I’ve been talking about Lee Trundle just recently after his one-man show for Rhydaman the other night?
And that’s not all either. There was also something going on about one of these extreme right-wing Fascists, something about the roundabout up near LeClerc and I’m not quite sure what. He was down by the Post Office in the Cours Jonville and a British policeman as it happened came over to talk to him about his book saying that if he was going to publish it he needed to submit it to magistrates first to be reviewed. 20 magistrates would look at it rather like they did with Marguerite Radclyffe Hall’s book The Well of Loneliness to decide whether or not it was obscene or fit for publication. Apparently he’d been witnessed kicking some kind of Pakistani or immigrant, something like that but the immigrant had refused to press charges so the police were powerless, but they were intending to stop him somehow.
Ironically, when I was dreaming this, I remember thinking that I was actually awake so it wasn’t a dream so I had no need to dictate it. But then the alarm went off and awoke me, so I must have been asleep at the time.

Yet again I beat the third alarm quite comfortably and that led of course to an early medication and an early breakfast.

With all of that out of the way I sat down and with an air of determination I bashed out all of the 4-odd minutes of text for the live project that I’m preparing. I overran somewhat but it all fitted in so well that I had to do some editing of the music. And believe it or not, it sounds so much better now.

Talking of things sounding better, I listened a couple of times to the teaser that I had prepared yesterday. I decided that it needed some amendment so I re-did that too. That’s much better now but I’m convinced that I can make it even better still. But that’s a job for again.

All of that took me right up to almost lunchtime, would you believe, so I went for a nice long walk around the harbour, the long way round seeing as the gate was closed so the walkway was open, and went to pick up my dejeunette.

With the gates being closed and the tide being right out, the sluice hate is open. This discharges water slowly out of the inner harbour into the sea. Not enough to drain it of course, but to lower the level so that the harbour gates can be opened a good deal before high tide when the water level will of course rise again.

And with each tide being of a different height, some kind of regulation of the water level is necessary.

And have you noticed the tidal depth gauge by the way?

The way back was via the rue des Juifs as usual.

That gave me an opportunity to have a good look at the Christmas decorations that they have set up in the street. And … well … it’s not exactly going to set the town alight, is it? They could have done so much better than this, I reckon.

On the way back up the street I bumped into one of the guys who was at that strange meeting Monday evening. We had a little chat and then I came back here to eat my butties.

Feeling in a productive mood, I sat down after lunch and attacked another one of the projects I need to do. And now that it’s 23:30, I’ve just finished it and I’m having a listen to it.

All that remains is to send it off and then I’ll be right up to date for the New Year, and then I can get on and do stuff properly and make an attempt to catch up on this ever-increasing backlog.

As well as all of this, I had a little five minutes away on the new comfy chair. It’s doing the business, this is.

But I managed to pull myself together long enough to go out for my afternoon walk.

And if you think that I’m having trouble with the weather and the gale-force winds, then how about these two guys? They’ve decided to go out surfing at the Plat Gousset. And all I can say is “good luck to them” because you wouldn’t get me out there in any water less than 37°C. Not even if Castor and Pollux were in there ready to catch me.

But one advantage of the miserable weather was that there was no-one around so I could have an extra run without being observed.

The surfers weren’t the only ones out there taking to the waters.

We had one of the trawlers from the port out there too. Well, in fact there were probably a dozen of them at least but there was this one right outside the harbour on its way in. In view of the rough weather that it was having to face, I reckoned that it deserved to have its photo taken.

And on that note, I headed back into the apartment to carry on work.

But not quite straight away because there was something else that needed doing.

There’s the old Municipal building in the Place Cambernon that has been empty or thereabouts for as long as I’e known it, although just recently iy’s been covered in scaffolding, covered over and there have been workmen in there.

But today it seems that its cover has gone and we can actually see some of the work that they have been doing to the building. And it’s looking quite good. I can’t wait to see what they are going to do with it when it’s finished.

Later on this evening I went out for my evening walk – and another run too as there was no-one around. I have to keep up the pressure.

As well as Thora I was also looking to see what else I could see of the Christmas decorations. There’s a certain point where you can see right up the rue Couraye to the railway station and I reckoned that if the Christmas lights are going to be good from anywhere, they’ll be good from that place.

Seeing the lights and seeing Thora meant that I had to take a slightly different, longer route. And when I finished, I found that I was on 95% of my daily effort. And so I did another lap around the block to reach the 100%.

Quite right too, because I had a big tea tonight. A pile of steamed veg with falafel and cheese sauce. Totally delicious it was too, especially when followed down by some of Liz’s apple cake with sorbet.

So another very late night, and I do need to be up early. The indications are that my morning train to Paris might be going (well, it’s not shown as cancelled) and my train from Paris to Lille is running too. But from Lille to Brussels it isn’t. So the plan is that I cancelled the bus trip and I’m relying on the trains to get me to Lille at least (if I can’t negotiate a trip direct to Brussels).

If I can only get as far as Lille there may be some public transport to get me across the border to Mouscron or Harelbeke in Belgium, and then a local train to Brussels. But if I’m confounded here at Granville, I’m going to go in Caliburn. My appointment isn’t until 13:30 on Friday so there’s plenty of time to do it in two stages

So I’m off to bed. I need to be ready for my adventures tomorrow.

surfers plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Friday 6th December 2019 – I HAVE JUST SEEN …

… one of the strangest football matches that I have seen for quite some considerable time.

It’s the Welsh Cup this weekend and there are several banana skins lying aound. One of those is Carmarthen Town v Rhydaman, and this was shown on the live internet feed tonight.

Carmarthen are at the foot of the Welsh Premier League and struggling whereas Rhydaman, one division below them in the pyramid, are in 5th place and having a good run of form. Not the match that I would have picked – I’d have gone for Colwyn Bay v Airbus – but’s good enough. It’s the kind of game where you can smell that someone is in for a scalping.

And a scalping there certainly was. Rhydaman, playing away from home at Carmarthen, ran out winners. And not just by the odd goal either but they won 0-4.

You would have thought from the scoreline that this was a right spannering, but that was very far from the truth. Whilst Rhydaman were the better side, they weren’t all that better. The difference was that we were treated to 4 magic moments of Trundlemania

Yes, Lee Trundle. He must be 45 now if he’s a day but still proving that he can cut it with the best and while he’s slowed down considerably as you might expect, he still showed the kind of magic that made him a multi-million pound footballer in the days when multi-million pound footballers were still quite thin on the ground.

I mean – just HOW do you defend against something like this?

Despite a reasonably early night, I missed the alarms again. Not by much – only a few minutes in fact, but missed them nevertheless.

Not only that, although there was nothing on the dictaphone, I had a vague recollection that during the night I’d been on a voyage and found something that was way beyond exciting – the same feeling of elation that I had when I I came across that Santana concert after 42 years of searching.

But what it was, we shall never know now.

After the medication and breakfast, with no dictaphone notes to do, I attacked a couple of digital music files to break up into tracks.

One of them took me four hours to do, and for a variety of reasons too. It was an album of a live concert and with this digital sound analyser program that I have, I could see that it was a series of individual tracks that had been artificially joined together – and by a blind man by the looks of it too.

16 tracks altogether so it took me quite a while to edit all of the joints together properly so that it actually looks like a live concert as well as sounds like one too.

Then I had to break the file down into 16 individual tracks and save each one of those individually, but not before I’d copied about 15 decent applause tracks (some of which went on for half a minute and more) from the file, cut out any speech and unnecessary noise from them, boosted the volume in what are called “S-curves” in places to hide the difference in volume in the joins where I’ve cut things out, and then saved them to disk as 15 individual files.

Applause tracks are good and I love them because I can do all kinds of exciting things with them. But you need a good number of them from the same concert because if you “mix and match” applause tracks from different concerts, the applause doesn’t sound similar and it gives the appearance of being false. And if they are long applause tracks, you can cut them down and that gives you even more opportunity to make something different.

Round about 12:45 I knocked off for lunch.

No bread here and no lettuce either so a walk into town was on the cards. And quite right too. Past the docks where the harbour gates were open sothe trawlers could come inside to unload.

And Charles-Marie is still over there with her winter wrap on.

The gates to the harbour can’t have been open all that long because there were several fishing boats on their way into port right now.

This one coming into port just here gave me a good opportunity for a photo-shoot but as I took a shot, my photo was once more bombed by a blasted seagull.

They get absolutely everywhere, these perishing things.

At the Super-U the lettuce was extortionate. €1:39 for a small one. That’ll teach me to forget one at LIDL, won’t it?

At La Mie Caline I picked up my dejeunette and walked across to the Place general de gaulle to see what was going on.

Nothing right now as you can see, but clearly something will be going on in the very near future because we seem to have acquired a stage.

That’s going to upset a few of the marketeers tomorrow. It’ll quite take the shine off their sausages, now that they can begin to roast them again with charcoal following a recent Court decision.

But what about our famous ski slope in the town?

No room for any humans on there because we seem to have been overrun by animals. I can understand why they might want to use animals as decoration, but why beavers … or … errr … Castors to the French people around here.

What does a beaver have to do with the festive season?

This is much more like the kind of thing you would expect to see at Christmas, isn’t it?

We have a sledge here and a reindeer pulling it. Presumably there will be a Father Christmas around somewhere to travel in it.

But I have a cunning plan and I shall be having a word with Strawberry Moose in early course and we will go for a little walk together late one night for a photo opportunity.

Yesterday I mentioned and indeed showed you a photograph of the Christmas decorations that they were unloading at the Square Potel in the rue des Juifs, and I remember saying that I would go for a butcher’s today.

So here I am in the Square Potel with the decorations and I do have to say that I’m considerably underwhelmed by it all.

Mybe it’s just me I dunno, but I was expecting much more than this.

After lunch, I attacked the sound mixing desk for the vocals for the current project. It took me hours to figure out again how to record anything with it because I had forgotten what I did last time. And then I had to clean out all of the test files, set the volume levels and the like, and then clean out those test files too.

And then I could start.

The recording level is quite low using the built-in mike but my sound analyser program enhances that with no loss of quality. But there is a major problem with it, in that there’s no “pause” facility. So every time you stop for a think or to clear your throat, it restarts with a new track.

Trying to edit out about 40 of those into one coherent track and then split that down into tis segments is going to take me an age.

But I have made a startling discovery, and that is that the mikes that I bought for the mixing panel, using the adapter that came with them I can plug them into the dictaphone, which DOES have a pause facility. And also an output for headphones.

In view of this, I see a whole new world opening up for me here. For although the sound is somewhat tinny, it seems to be of a much higher quality.

One thing that I didn’t mention today is that the high winds are back. And with a vengeance too.

There was quite a storm raging out offshore and so even though the tide was on its way out, the waves were still rattling down on the rocks.

Not too many people out there today and that’s hardly a surprise given the conditions.

But overcast and miserable and foggy it might be here, over across the bay on the Brittany coast they were having a different kind of weather.

Low cloud, yes, but on the periphery there was bright sunshine and it was creating a most unusual lighting effect over there.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it could do the same thing around here on this side of the bay?

Going around the headland was taking my life in my hands with the wind that was sweeping around there.

narrowly avoiding being squidged on the pedestrian crossing, I went round the cliff to see what the waves were doing on the sea wall.

Not a lot, because the tide was going out rapidly. It must have bee quite impressive an hour or so ago.

Nothing changed at all in the chantier navale today, and Normandy Trader had sodded off too … “that was quick” – ed … so I stood and armired the waves for a little longer.

Every now and again there was a wave more powerful and deeper than the others, and that was providing me with some exciting entertainment.

But after a while I gave it up and headed for home and coffee.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking features quite regularly in these pages. Here’s another example.

I’d seen her pull up as I was on my way home with my lettuce and bread, and I thought to myself at the time “she’s not going to leave that car there, straddling two places and with 6 feet of room in front, is she?”

But yes she is. Gets right on my wick it does.

Back to the sound files and then a break for tea. I made a curry with the leftovers again and there were so many leftovers that there are some leftovers left over. That’ll be a tea for another night then, won’t it?

This evening it was raining when I went out so I didn’t hang around. I had my run though, right up to the top of the ramp and another 20 paces further on. It was feeling good today.

Then we had the football and now, considerably later than planned (like 01:45) I’m off to bed. I’m a busy boy tomorrow and another task has reared its ugly head as well.

Where will I find the time?

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality