… a busy boy again today and accomplished quite a great deal of stuff. So it’s hardly surprising that I’m feeling pretty much whacked right now.
Not that it’ll make much difference as I have a great deal to do tomorrow and Friday, and maybe even Saturday morning too. It’s all go here!
What I need is another early night like the one that I had last night where I was in bed a good few minutes before 23:00, and when I can do that, things are looking up.
Last night, for some reason or other I was finished by 22:20 and even hanging around for a while didn’t make it too late. I was asleep quite quickly too, with the hatches battened down until the morning. I don’t think that I moved at all
At some point during the night there was a young girl who was living on her own and having attendants, rather like the juvenile Queen of a country somewhere. I don’t remember very much and I can’t have gone very far into this dream when the alarm went off. However it was another one that could have been extremely interesting and it was a shame that it finished so abruptly.
It took me a while to gather up my wits – I can’t believe that they spread out so far so quickly – and when the room stopped spinning round I could stand up and head to the bathroom.
After the bathroom I headed off to the kitchen for my morning drink and pile of medication, which doesn’t seem to be shrinking any
Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what happened during the night. I was back in the early modern era. I was in bed and trying to rise up but every time I tried to dress something came along to interrupt me, like a visitor or something like that so I had to dive back into bed as they came. This happened two or three times with someone like that coming along and me having to dive back into bed
Later on I was out walking with someone last night (so I’d obviously managed to finally leave the bed) and we’d walked miles. We’d been in the hills and had slowly started to come down out of the hills, just following a map. We hadn’t really all that much idea of the terrain at all or of the route except that which the map showed us. There was a path shown on the map so we followed it as best as we could. We didn’t meet anyone at all until we’d come down quite low when we saw some people wandering around. They took a track which led down into the valley. I asked my friend if that was ours. He replied “no, it’s the next one”. Then we had to think of a way to cross the motorway. We looked down and there was a motorway along the floor of the valley. We pushed on and when we were a little further down we saw a path that branched off from our farm track or cart track and this went straight down to the valley. There was a fence and then a footbridge over the motorway. We thought “we’re obviously not the first people to have come this way and to have found the utility of there being a bridge across the motorway here”. This bridge took us to the railway station which was on the other side of the motorway. We said to ourselves “well, when we arrive in town we’ll deserve a really fine meal. We’ll have a right slap-up nosh at tea-time after all our exertions”.
There was also something somewhere about going back to the family (as if that is ever likely to happen), wondering how long it’s going to be before they actually notice that I’m walking without using my crutches and things are all back to normal but I don’t know where that fits in at all
My long-term ambition, whether it’s feasible or not, is to recover the use of my legs and walk again. No-one seems to be able to work out what’s happening to my legs, or if they have, they haven’t told me. But every six months, as regularly as clockwork, they change the medication in the hope that they stumble on something that works, and who knows? One day they might!
The nurse was early again today. Of course, he doesn’t have any blood tests or injections to do. His poor oppo has been loaded with all of that and so she runs about half an hour behind.
The first thing that he did was to grab hold of my bread with his fingers, so he departed quite quickly with a flea in his ear. I couldn’t believe that he did that and he won’t do that again and walk out of here unaided.
After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK
He’s still shacked up with the First-Nation people, observing their habits. He notes that "It is a very singular and remarkable circumstance, that notwithstanding the striking similarity which we find in the persons, manners, customs, dispositions, and religion of the different tribes of Indians from one end of the continent of North America to the other, a similarity so great as hardly to leave a doubt on the mind but that they must all have had the same origin, the languages of the different tribes should yet be so materially different. No two tribes speak exactly the same language; and the languages of many of those who live at no great distance asunder, vary, so much, that they cannot make themselves at all understood to each other."
That’s something that I could readily understand. When I was in the Arctic I tried to learn some Inuktitut but it wasn’t really helpful because the Inuit in one bay would speak one language, you’d go 100 miles into the next community and they would speak a different form, and then a third further on, and then a fourth and so on. I was always one bay behind.
It was quite astonishing really that even in the 21st Century there has been so little mixing of the different Inuit communities up there in the Arctic. But I suppose that with the rapid warming of the climate, so evident up there in the North, it’s even less easy to move around than it was, as the ice doesn’t freeze over so much.
Once my leisurely breakfast was over, I came in here and began work. And by the time that I’d finished for the evening, I’d bashed out all of the text for the next radio programme, ready to dictate on Saturday night for editing and finishing on Sunday. That was some work, I’ll tell you.
There were several interruptions too. A friend of mine from school who now lives in the Orkneys wanted to test whether or not he’d configured an on-line video program correctly so we’d agreed that he could use me as his test bed.
Sure enough, he’d done what he needed to do and we had a really nice video chat, seeing each other for the first time for about 45 years. It’s really nice to see and talk to old friends, and new technology makes it oh! so easy.
Lunch was next – a slice of flapjack and some fruit, with water to wash down the midday medication.
My faithful cleaner turned up too, of course, to do her stuff. And that included helping me to have a shower. That was lovely of course and I can’t wait to be downstairs in my own place with a proper walk-in shower where I can shower whenever I like
After she left I went one better than Dave Crosby, presumably because it’s getting kind-of long. I could have said it was in my way. But I’m not giving in an inch to fear, because I promised myself this year I feel like I owe it to someone
And then Rosemary rang for a chat. And we’re definitely losing our touch. That chat was just 46 minutes long. More like a nod and wave across the street rather than a chat.
As far as the Christmas cake goes, I tried to explain to my cleaner what sugar I needed to make the icing for my cake, and Rosemary helped me out too. So hopefully, next week I’ll end up with what I need. It’s really awkward when I’m not able to go out and about.
Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread. And for once, the naan was deliciously cooked to perfection. I think that after all these years I’ve finally cracked the method of cooking them. You fry them, of course, but on a low heat, neither too low or too high. And don’t over-fry them
The ginger cake and soya dessert were lovely too.
So now I’ll loiter around for a short while before going to bed. I might even read some more of Isaac Weld.
He talks about religion and the conversion of various tribes to Christianity but notes that "some of the tribes have much less devotion than others; the Shawnese, a warlike daring nation, have but very little fear of evil spirits, and consequently have scarcely any religion amongst them. None of this nation, that I could learn, have ever been converted to Christianity"
Missionaries have been sent among the Shawnee and, commenting on another vice of the First-Nation and Native American people, "great pains have been taken, both by the French and English missionaries, to represent to them the infamy of torturing their prisoners;"
However, even the missionaries were not spared this. Amongst the Shawnee the first missionaries who went there ended up in the cooking pot hung over the fire.
The Shawnee performed a ceremony of dancing around the fire and the pot to celebrate the arrival of their next meal, but every few minutes one of the Shawnee would break off to slap the missionary across the face.
After a while the chief called him over and shouted "Stop that! We don’t humiliate our captives in that way!"
"But chief!" exclaimed the brave
"What’s the matter?"
"It’s that missionary!" said the brave. "Every time your back is turned he starts to eat the potatoes!"