Tag Archives: ross county

Sunday 26th April 2026 – I AM OBVIOUSLY …

… feeling a little better, because as I begin to write these notes, it’s 20:20 And I haven’t gone to bed yet.

Mind you, after all of the sleep that I had yesterday, it’s hardly a surprise. As I said yesterday, I was totally wasted by about 18:30, and it wasn’t many minutes after that that I was underneath the covers.

It took a few minutes for me to go to sleep, and there I stayed until I don’t know what time, when I awoke. It was still totally dark outside but the electric water heater was on, so it must have been some time between midnight and 05:00, and my money is on earlier rather than later.

So for a few hours, I lay there, coughing my head off, and then I must have gone back to sleep because the next thing that I knew, there was bright sunlight streaming in around the edges of the shutters.

When the nurse arrived, I pretended to be asleep, but once he’d gone, feeling wide awake, I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for the bedroom to come to a halt. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that it took me seventy-five minutes from first sitting on the edge of the bed to going into the kitchen. That’s what kind of state I was in this morning.

For my medication, I took a mouthful or two of orange juice again and then made breakfast – the last two of my home-made croissants. I shall have to make some more now – after all, they do taste nice with porridge and strong black coffee.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, but believe it or not, I forgot to check the dictaphone. Consequently, you’ll need to check back tomorrow to find out if I went anywhere last night.

After that, the first job was to write out yesterday’s notes, which are now online, following which I attacked some more of my Welsh homework. There’s not much now left to finish tomorrow morning before I need to send it off.

We then had a little footfest.

Firstly, we had Ross County v Greenock Morton, and I do have to say that I have never seen such a shambles. Bottom-of-the-League Ross County made short work of thrashing Morton 4-0, and it was well-deserved too. Morton were totally dreadful.

Following that, we had Stranraer at home to Stirling Albion. This game finished 1-1 but Stranraer should have been down the road and out of sight a long time before the final whistle, given the number of clear-cut chances that they created.

And then, I had a little wobble for a while. Not exactly crashing out, but one of those situations that I have every now and again when I can’t seem to move a muscle. And that was how I stayed for over forty-five minutes before I was able to go into the kitchen for a disgusting drink.

The day was finished off with the second of the two European play-off semis. And in a change from yesterday’s poor game, we had two teams going at it hammer and tongs, playing as if they actually wanted to win it.

Y Barri took the lead early in the game from another one of these “let’s play it out from the back, boys” calamities that we see so often in modern football, and Hwlffordd equalised with about fifteen minutes to go.

So, once more, we had a penalty shoot-out, and as far as Y Barri goes, a well-known phrase involving a stringed musical instrument and the nether regions of a ruminant animal springs to mind. So next week, it’s Penybont at home to Hwlffordd.

But it should have been a totally different story had the referee awarded to Y Barri the two penalties that everyone else in the ground except him and a linesman would have awarded them.

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready to fight the good fight again next week and see where we end up. I need to pull myself round and crack on with something. I can’t continue like this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about waking up … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once told me that he had one of those things that used to make a screeching noise when it was time to wake up, and made you a cup of tea.
"So what happened to it?" I asked
"Ohh, nothing much." he replied. "I got divorced so in the end, I just bought a Teasmaid."

Sunday 16th November 2025 – WHEN ISABELLE THE NURSE …

… came round this evening, she made some remark about the delicious smell in the kitchen.

It wasn’t me, of course. I was in the office. However, I did reply, saying "I’m not surprised. There’s a cake baking in the oven."

That’s right, people, I’ve been a busy boy yet again this afternoon.

Not that I felt much like it, however. I’ve been feeling better today than I was yesterday and on Thursday, but not by much. However, if I don’t do things around here, no-one else will.

With it being a Sunday, I was anticipating having a decent lie-in. After all, Sunday is a Day of Rest and the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59. And if it wasn’t for the nurse coming round, it wouldn’t be going off them.

So last night, I made a determined effort to be in bed rather early, and once again, I failed miserably. By the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing, it was just after 23:15 when I finally slid in between the sheets ready for my long lie-in.

But so much for that. Despite going to sleep quite quickly, it was all of … errr … 06:15 when I finally awoke. That’s an early start for a weekday, never mind a Sunday.

Anyway, I hauled myself out of bed and into the bathroom for a good scrub up. Next, I went into the kitchen to make my hot honey, ginger and lemon drink, and used it to wash down the medication.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been out with someone, a guy. We’d been roaming around everywhere. He suggested that we went round to the house of his family to stay the night seeing as we were in the area. We made our way to his house and walked inside. I went in, “I’m so-and-so’s friend. My name is Eric” but I stopped in mid-speech because there were probably about thirty people in this living room, young people of all different age groups. It seemed that they were spread out over sofas and chairs and everything as if they were somehow camping there to spend the night. We had a brief chat with them, and people squeezed up to let us perch on sofas and arms of settees. Somehow, we all managed to drop off to sleep. Next morning, it was fairly late when I awoke and there were a few other people still asleep, a few people awake and talking. I remember someone saying, while pointing to a young girl at the far end of the room, that she spent much of the middle of the night talking about her family in Australia. I replied “I don’t remember anything about that because I crashed out straight away until right this minute”. They all replied “yes, we noticed”. Later on, we were out and the guy with whom I’d been wandering around the previous day was showing his photos to me, all these beautiful buildings. I didn’t remember passing those buildings with him, and I wish that I had taken some of those photos because the buildings were really beautiful. We ended up in some kind of big shop and I bought a baguette, a long baguette but it was very soft. Then, I looked around and one or two other people from this had bought baguettes too and were walking around with them. But I’d been nibbling mine in between because I was really hungry by this time. The dream then moved on and I was in a hospital. I took advantage of an empty bed by sitting in it, starting to write my blog for the previous night because I remembered that I hadn’t written it yet. I began to write it out by hand but then thought “should I fetch the computer?” but I looked around, and no-one else in this ward had any computer or anything like that so I went back to start to write it out by hand. However, I wasn’t comfortable and couldn’t read my own writing in the end. I noticed that one by one, these people were being called for interviews. I thought that these beds must be here for a doctor’s queue or something, and people could lie down on the bed while they were waiting. I wondered what would happen to me once everyone in this hospital realised that I’d been there for a long time trying to write out my blog and didn’t have a single medical appointment at all.

Later on, I remembered that one of the reasons why we’d gone out next morning was for me to go to the van to fetch my rucksack with the computer etc in it.

This was an interesting dream, right enough. Regular readers of a previous version of this rubbish will recall that I once stayed in a house like this with so many other people staying there that we had to chisel out a little corner of floor space for ourselves.

The hospital, I imagine, relates to how we are arranged at dialysis. But the photos and the baguette don’t seem to relate to anything much, although in the past, I’ve been on trips with people and their photos have been so radically different from mine that I was certain that they had taken them in different places to those that we visited together.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and took my blood pressure while I was seated in the office. It saves her having to wait five minutes after I’ve moved about, because if I move, the blood pressure needs time to stabilise.

She also sorted out my legs and left to carry on with her rounds. I could go to make breakfast – porridge with two of the croissants left over from last weekend. And the croissants were delicious. I shall definitely make more of those.

After breakfast, I had a footfest to watch. I’d seen all of the matches in Wales, but there was Stranraer v East Kilbride. East Kilbride, having been promoted from non-league for this season, are making Scottish League Two look easy.

And despite Stranraer’s improved form of late, East Kilbride hardly broke into a sweat but still managed a comfortable 3-1 victory.

Greenock Morton are also having a poor season. They were playing Ross County last night and the game was televised. Once more, Morton made it look easy and ran out comfortable 3–0 winners. So why can’t they play like that every game?

After a disgusting drink break, there were things to do.

The array of back-up disks isn’t working very well at the moment. It’s switching on, but cutting out before it begins to run. It’s difficult to know which USB cable powers it because there are (at the last count) fifteen plugged into this computer.

Consequently, I unplugged all of them and, by plugging in one at a time and checking the File Manager, I managed to work out which was which.

And so I unplugged them all again and this time, I labelled them before I put them back. And having plugged the array into a USB 3.0 connection instead of a USB 1.0 as previously, everything worked fine.

For half an hour or so, I played with the radio programme, dictating the notes that I wrote to the other day ready for editing.

Later on, I went into the kitchen. I had bread, pizza and cake to make. I’m going to keep up with this idea of a high calorie, high carbohydrate cake to fill me up when I’m leaving other food on the plate.

Today’s cake was ginger, almond and coconut.

The bread and the pizza were excellent, and the cake is magnificent. When Isabelle the Nurse came back for the evening’s blood pressure, she said that she thought that it smelt excellent. When I took it out of the oven, she said that it looked excellent too.

While I was eating my pizza, I was chatting to my niece’s eldest daughter. She was at home, sitting on her sofa with her dog just chilling out before she goes to make supper – roast chicken with mixed vegetables. I haven’t seen her for ages, and it must be her turn to come to see me soon.

But I’ll worry about that another time because I’m off to bed for a good sleep … "he hopes" – ed

But seeing as we have been talking about cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe went to the doctors.
"Doctor" she began "It was my birthday yesterday and my friends made me a cake. But ever since I ate a slice, I’ve lost the vision i my left eye."
"I’m not surprised" said the doctor. " I can see what’s wrong from here. When you go to eat another slice, blow out the candles first and remove them from the cake."

Sunday 13th July 2025 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… that Sunday is a lie-in where the alarm doesn’t sound until 07:59. Otherwise, had it been a normal day with the alarm at 06:29, it might have been, in the words of the Duke of Wellington when talking about the Battle of Waterloo, "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life" to failing to be an early start.

When my feet touched the ground this morning, it was 06:27 precisely, and it doesn’t run too much closer than that.

It hadn’t been a particularly early night either. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was not far short of midnight when I fell into bed, a liberal application of heat treatment and an ice pack strapped to my knee.

Once in bed, I was dead to the World and didn’t stir an inch, all the way through to the moment that I awoke.

And the proof of that is in the fact that there was nothing whatsoever on the dictaphone from any nocturnal voyage. And that’s sad – I thought that I’d left that little barren spell of a few weeks ago well behind me.

After a good wash, I went into the kitchen for the medication, and once more, I took my time. There wasn’t any great rush which was just as well because I couldn’t find the motivation to exert myself.

Back in here, I dictated the radio notes for “Woodstock Saturday” or “Saturday Woodstock” – whichever you like. It took an age because there ended up being over twenty-two minutes’ worth. Of course, they will be edited down to make something more manageable, but I’ll be looking for a way to fit a programme with a running time of one hundred minutes into just one hour exactly.

What compounded the issue was the fact that for some reason, I’d missed off half of the first paragraph and I’ve no idea why. I had to dictate another twenty-two seconds’ worth of notes.

The nurse turned up early again, applied some more heat treatment to my knee and then dealt with my legs and feet.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Yet again, he mentions some very interesting anecdotes, such as "a baker named John of Stratforde, for making bread less than the assize, was with a fool’s hood on his head and loaves of bread about his neck, drawn on a hurdle through the streets of this city"

He also talks about the sinking of a water pump "near on Lime Street corner; for the placing of the which pump, having broken up the ground, they were forced to dig more than two fathom deep before they came to any main ground, where they found a hearth made of Britain, or rather, Roman tile, every tile about half a yard square and about two inches thick."

Back in here, there was a load of correspondence with which to deal, and several bills that needed paying, and that took all morning.

Part of the problem was some of the correspondence needed information from my former employer in Belgium, and they have gone totally and obsessively security-conscious to such an extent that it can only be described as “paranoia”.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, thanks to my University studies, I hold a couple of Diplomas in computing that I have put to extremely good use over the passage of time. Nevertheless, it took me several hours to figure out how to find my way in to the work’s Intranet service. And I’m not convinced that I’ll know how to do it a second time either.

How a pensioner, who is not computer-savvy, is going to manage to access the Intranet is totally beyond me.

It’s probably to do with the fact that some wag somewhere back at work has worked out that the Intranet will be totally safe from hackers if no-one at all is able to access it.

There was football on the internet this morning too, Stranraer playing their first competitive match in the League Cup against Ross County. The Staggies, relegated from the Premier Division to League One at the end of the season, were clear favourites against an inexperienced Stranraer side at the wrong end of the Scottish pyramid last season, but it ended up as a creditable 1-1 draw with Stranraer going on to win 5-4 in a penalty shoot-out that took about fifteen kicks to complete.

As well as that, I’ve been speaking to my kitchen fitter about my kitchen and how we are going to proceed next. He reckons that he’ll be here tomorrow to carry on, which will be good news.

The rest of the day has been spent editing the radio notes, which are now almost completed, and also closing all the windows when the thunderstorm to end all thunderstorms erupted. It was a shame that it happened on the day of the annual brocante here in the walled city. It certainly made the visitors scatter and seek shelter in their cars on the car park.

Tea tonight was a delicious pizza, not as large as usual because my appetite is still very much diminished and anyway, now that my weight is down, I have to think about keeping it down.

So although it’s early, I’m tired and so I’m going to bed ready for the kitchen fitter and my Welsh Summer School tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about bakers … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man walks into a bakery carrying a 30lb cod.
"I say" says the man "I don’t suppose that you happen to make fish cakes, do you?"
The baker looks at the cod. "I’m afraid that I don’t" he replied
"What a pity" sighed the man with the cod. "It’s his birthday next Tuesday."

Thursday 18th September 2014 – WHICH FINISHES WITH OUR HERO ALL AT SEA

st lawrence harbour cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014

I was wide awake at about 06:30 this morning, having had another one of the best night’s sleeps that I’ve had for a while. However, leaving my stinking pit was quite another story and it was probably a good hour or so later that I heaved myself out, to make myself a coffee and to finish off the notes from yesterday.

Now that my notes are up-to-date and having taken a couple of photos of my overnight spec, the harbour at St Lawrence and this is another good find with which I am very impressed, I can head for the hills. Or rather, the coast, for my days in the mountains are over for the moment.

dingwall cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014Further down ther road there’s a sign here for Dingwall, so Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly decide to go down there to see if Ross County is playing.

In fact the team doesn’t seem to be at home but here’s the view from the end of the road and it’s magnificent as usual. Just like most places along the coast here at the nothern end of Cape Breton Island.

white point cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014I find the Coastal Loop a little later, and this takes me to White Point.

There’s a camper just gone past me down there that’s from the same company as the one with which I was playing leap-frog along the Trans Canada Highway on Monday. It isn’t the same one though, because when I arrived at the bottom of the hill I had quite a lengthy chat with the couple. They were from the UK and they’ve been on a long exploratory voyage on trains planes and campers all over Canada and were on their way back from Newfoundland.

And the weather, out of the wind, is absolutely gorgeous. The sun is beating down and there’s a perfect blue sky. What more could any man desire? Apart from Jenny Agutter and Kate Bush of course, to sooth my fevered brow.

cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014That’s the view from Lakies Head whoever Lakie was when he was at home, if he ever was. And at this scenic turn-off (why don’t they ever have scenic turn-ons? It’s much more appropriate) there was a Park Ranger standing behind a sign saying “chat to me”. And so I did. As if I ever need any invitation …

And just a few hundred yards further on from here I was overwhelmed by the smell of damp seaweed. I haven’t smelt it quite as strong as I have just here so I don’t know what’s going on about that.

aspy fault cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014At Ingonish Harbour, not the harbour at Ingonish, that’s somewhere completely different, we’re back at the mouth of the Aspy Fault, the faultline that links up with the Great Glen in Scotland.

Here’s probably the best view of the fault line, the cleft between the mountains that stretches right into the interior of Cape Breton Island and maybe even far beyond. It’s quite astonishing that this fault line stretches all the way to Scotland and that these two land masses might even have been connected in the dawn of time.


Many years ago I read an ancient travel book which described inter alia someone’s nightmare drive over the desperate road over Cape Smoky. While it’s certainly exciting, I wouldn’t say that it was terrifying, but these days, the road around the Cape is hacked out of the cliff face.

old road over Cape Smoky cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014Here, where the modern road is about to swing round to the left to descend one of the steepest parts of the trail, a section that has been hacked out of the cliff, we can see what may well have been the old road straight ahead continuing to climb into the mountains.

The descent on the new road is stiff, as I said, and if this is climbing away from here, then the descent on the other side must have been phenomenal, at least twice as steep as the modern road. It’s hardly surprising therefore that people became so worked up whenever the road over Cape Smoky was mentioned

descent modern road cape smoky cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014If you want to see what the modern descent is like, we can travel maybe half a mile to a pull-in and if we peer through the haze that’s rolling in off the sea, you might be able to see it.

It just goes down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down, all the way to sea level right down there.

From the bottom of the hill I’m caught in a whole series of road works all the way to Sydney. One after the other and it takes hours to arrive in the town. At the shipping company offices I do the necessary and then go for a wander around to stock up with supplies.

abandoned railway station north sydney cape breton island nova scotia canada september 2014But here’s a sad legacy of the railway here at the port. Many years ago there was a rail ferry over to Newfoundland from here but the entire railway system in Newfoundland was demolished in this ruthless Canadian Government anti-rail programme – there’s not an inch of Government track left in the province – and the rilway network here is abandoned too.

Here’s a very sad-looking former railway station at North Sydney and the rails from beyond here down to the port have been lifted.

So now I’ve had a leisurely evening and I’m taking my place in the queue at the port for the next stage of my journey.