Tag Archives: Roxanne

Tuesday 4th August 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a much better day today than any other day in the very recent past. I’m not sure why, though, because it isn’t as if I’ve had any more sleep than usual.

Believe it or not, by the time that I made it into bed last night, it was after midnight. Long after midnight too. I mustn’t ‘arf ‘ave been letting it all hang out last night. But once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, lying in the position that seems to ease my coughing.

However, round about 03:30, I was awoken yet again by one of these phantom alarm calls that I’ve been having just recently. And once more, it seemed so real that I almost climbed out of bed with it at that point. Although it was fairly cool in here, I was drenched in sweat for some reason. That’s not easily explained.

Once I’d realised that the alarm call was a phantom call and there was no alarm going off anywhere else … "and just who else would have a BILLY COTTON alarm call?" – ed … I tried to go back to sleep, but without much avail at first.

During the period in which I was awake, I checked the time a few times. I saw 05:20, and then the next thing that I remember was 05:50. Then 06:09 and I thought that I’d get up in a few seconds once I’d relaxed, but the alarm going off at 06:29 scuppered that idea.

As usual, it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy and the motivation to go into the bathroom … "but not as much as usual, surprisingly" – ed … but once I’d finished, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night.

Seren and I were doing something around the house when Nerina turned up. We decided to show her what we’d been doing, which was to build a game something like Snakes and Ladders where you advance down a street towards the town centre or you are derailed up side streets and sent backwards. We developed some kind of kiddies’ slide to slide the die down to tell us the number, but for some reason, I couldn’t fit underneath the bar so I had to stand and watch. Then, the coin or admission token didn’t work very well and we needed to give it quite a bit of force to make it move, and then the water in the watermill would come over and … fell asleep here …

Surprisingly, this would not be the first dice game that I invented. After Roxanne had been to see the film “Jumanji”, I invented a game called “Jumanji”. Our floor where we lived, throughout all the apartment, was tiled. We chose six of her favourite stuffed toys and numbered them from one to six. We put them at the start line by the French windows in the living room and we then threw a die. If the die came up with, say, a “four”, we’d move stuffed toy number four forward one tile, and so on. The first stuffed toy to reach the window in Roxane’s room was the winner.

Interestingly, the two cats played too. Each would have his or her turn “throwing” (or batting around the room) the die, and when we eventually found it, the number on the upper face would tell us which stuffed toy to move.

It was all totally anarchic.

As for the rest of the dream, it deteriorates into the usual nonsense.

Did I finish that dictation from the previous one about the die? It would slide down a kiddies’ slide thing and tell us the number but we’d made it a bit more complicated than it should be and the first two occasions that we tried it, the die shot off the end and disappeared off up the far end of the kitchen

“We’d made it a bit more complicated than it should be”… "nothing new there, then." – ed …

But it seems that at some point, I stepped back into that first dream and even managed to present us with a different ending.

Isabelle the Nurse came round as usual. I told her about Monday at dialysis and she told me to “take it easy” this morning. Chance would be a fine thing.

After she’d left, I made breakfast and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, I’ve not really found any controversy in anything that he’s written. But that might be because I was side-tracked quite a few times. There were several occasions where I’d skipped into the situation of the church at Barthomley, Heighley Castle near Keele and the old racecourse at Woore.

And on a few other occasions, I was off with the Black Prince on his chevauchée around Western France during the opening days of the Hundred Years War.

Back in here, there were a few things to do, as usual, and then I made another start on the radio notes. They weren’t easy either because a lot of the artists and albums are new to my programmes so I have to prepare their notes right from the very beginning.

There were several interruptions too, such as the disgusting drink break and the arrival of my faithful cleaner to do her stuff. And while she was at it, she chased me under the shower and I was able to have a good scrub-up and make myself look pretty.

One more, I needed no help to go into the shower and none for helping out either, so I was in the bathroom all on my own. It meant that I could even go into the shower as nature intended.

Once all of the notes were completed … "as indeed they were" – ed … I could make a start on the next radio programme.

This one is going to be a concert so it’s much easier to work. But where editing the sounds and the tracks of the concerts might sometimes be difficult, I managed to do that before I knocked off for tea. So “press on boldly” tomorrow to write the notes.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and I made a different filling tonight. Apart from the usual tomato, mushrooms, onions and garlic, we had lentils, spinach and bulgur. And it was totally delicious. It made a nice change, and there’s still some left for next week.

So now that everything is finished, I’ll be going to bed ready for a good day’s work tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us has" – ed … A lady wanted to make steak and mushrooms for a dinner she was giving, but when she saw the price of mushrooms, she abandoned the idea.
Her husband told her "go and pick some in the field, from down by the river. I’ve seen all kinds of animals eating them so they must be okay"
She goes down to the river and picks a basketful and hands them to the cook to prepare the meal. When the cook thinks that the meal is ready, she gives some of it to Rover the Dog. Then she dishes up the food to the guests and the host and hostess.
Half an hour later she goes back into the dining room. "I’m afraid Rover the dog is dead, ma’am."
"Ohh God, no!" she exclaims. "Did he have any of that meal we ate?"
"Yes ma’am, he did."
So in a wild panic she calls the emergency services and a fleet of ambulances takes the guests to hospital to have their stomachs pumped.
A couple of hours later, still feeling weak and groggy, they go back to the host and hostess’s house. There, they are met by the cook.
"I was telling you about Rover when you all dashed off like that" she said. "And do you know what? The car that hit him never even stopped."

Monday 1st June 2026 – AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS …

… of lovely, pain-free feet, the pain in the sole of my right foot suddenly erupted again at dialysis and erupted in spades too. I’ve been in pain for most of the afternoon and evening, and I wish that it would go away.

What’s worse is that I really had thought that I’d finished with all of this, but “no”. It looks very much like “back to the drawing board, Cecil”.

Not like last night, though. I was late again going to bed. After midnight, and more, I reckon. But I didn’t need much rocking last night either and I was soon asleep.

And there I lay, dead to the World, until about … errr … 06:00 when I awoke. When the alarm should have gone off at 06:29, I was up and about at my desk working.

First thing to do was, of course, listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

We were back in Roman times again, and this time, it involved a girl whom I knew who was taken in somewhere where they took them because of her mental health issues. She’d been seeing demons and all of that kind of thing. She told her daughter that they needed to be placed somewhere to be looked after. This is one of these dreams again where I reached for the dictaphone and fell asleep again before I began to dictate it so I don’t know really what I’ve missed.

It’s a shame that I didn’t catch all of this dream, because this is another one of those dreams with a story behind it that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There was a group of four of us who used to hang around together. There was me, Laurence and a couple of other people. We’d all been told that we needed couselling. We went to see a counsellor who told us that we could attend a group meeting on such-and-such a date at such-and-such a time. We’d no idea at all what to expect but we made ourselves ready at the appropriate time for this counselling. However, one of our members dropped out and left an empty space so we decided to sign Roxanne up and see what she made of this so we added her name on the paper and we had to go back to the doctor’s for another interview and he interviewed Roxanne while we were there. He decided that she was fit enough to go so the four of us were ready, but Roxanne seemed to be quite enjoying it. So we turned up, and it was this village hall. It was huge, with probably 200 people there. But as the meeting started, my crucial role was diminished and diminished. So we sat there and we were listening to this guy on the stage talking, brining up his friends one by one to add to what he’d been saying but the hall was so noisy and there were kids running about so it never ever reached our ears. So sinking to our knees, we got into these bowls with our knees and tried to move forward but we couldn’t. One by one, he was inviting people down to give their witness. On one occasion, he said that this one is a judge now amongst everybody. Then he called out the Venerable Harry Dean. As this guy walked down towards the front, Roxanne looked at me and said “the vegetable Harry Dean?” and everyone around us burst into laughter.

This is just the kind of thing that I can imagine Roxanne doing. She would ask a question in a very innocent way but there would be a smile behind her lips that it wouldn’t surprise me if she knew exactly what was going on and had made the mistake deliberately.

The dream, though, reminds me of one of these revivalist meetings in the Deep South of the USA. I never actually managed to visit one, but I heard all about it.

There were a few other things that needed doing, such as checking my e-mails. And amongst them was the monthly report from the shipping group whose “Bay of Granville” shipping detector is installed in my apartment. The little set-up here is apparently covering an area of over two hundred and sixty-three square kilometres, which is not bad going for the equipment that I have.

When I heard movement from the kitchen, I went in there to see what was going on and ended up with a mug of hot coffee and my morning medication. And for some reason or other, we ended up having a lengthy discussion about computer passwords.

The Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t bark at all when he heard the doorbell with Isabelle the Nurse on the other end. Mind you, he did look up when he had a belly rub, as if to say “don’t stop! Don’t stop!”

After Isabelle left for her week’s break, I made breakfast. And while I was eating, I was also reading the last of NOTES ON SOME OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF FRANCE by Charles Roach Smith.

To finish off his book, he’s reading some Carolingian tombstones found in a cemetery in Amiens. That’s a long way from the Cher Valley, but never mind.

Back in here, I began to revise my Welsh for tomorrow, but my body had different ideas.

While I was sitting down at the computer this morning, I dozed off. I dreamt that I was in Crewe and someone had brought into town an articulated lorry with goods in it. When I arrived in West Street, the driver climbed into the passenger seat and I took it over. I drove down West Street and turned into Underwood Lane. We had to drop something off at a factory in Selworthy Drive so I had to drive past Selworthy Drive, he had to climb out and stop the traffic behind me and I had to reverse the lorry from Underwood Lane into Selworthy Drive and then straight back into the factory that was there so that they could unload it, and then the driver who had brought it into Crewe could then take over and carry on with the round that he was doing.

There are no factories in Selworthy Drive, nor have there ever been, nor will there ever be. But stopping the traffic for a reversing lorry is par for the course in industrial areas.

There was still time to do some work, so I pressed on but was overtaken by events when my cleaner arrived. She dealt with my anaesthetic and then tidied up a little before leaving. My friend and I hung around until about 12:55, when we went out into the sun to wait for the taxi.

The girl who picked me up is quite nice and chatty, so we talked all the way to the hospital, where we picked up someone else who wanted to go to Avranches, and our chat, which had now become a three-way chat, continued all the way to dialysis, where I was dropped off.

Today, I was in a different bed than usual, but that’s not a problem. This dialysis isn’t about “seeing all of Normandy in a taxi” or “seeing all of the dialysis centre from a different bed”.

As usual, I was the last to be plugged in, but they had a temporary nurse in from St Malo and he was quite efficient, aided by another nurse who applied a “manual garrote” and the freezing spray to numb the forearm.

There was a third nurse in there too and she’s quite chatty. She came over to see how I was doing, which was nice of her. She has a cousin who’s married to a Welsh guy so I’m secretly teaching her a bit of Welsh so that she can shock him when they meet.

During the dialysis, though, I began to feel nauseous and the head began to spin. The blood pressure seemed to be fine, so it must be me. And it certainly was when the pain in the foot started up. That was a flaming nuisance. I was in agony.

There was some kind of relief when Emilie the Cute Consultant came by. She didn’t stop, but she managed a cheerful “Bonjour, Monsieur Hall”. No-one else received such a greeting, so I considered myself honoured.

Last in, last out as usual but at least it was one of my favourite drivers who would be taking me home, and she was already waiting for me. We had another passenger with us who wanted to be dropped off at Sartilly. After that, we chatted all the way back home where, amongst my comité d’acceuil – “welcoming committee” – was the Hound of the Baskervilles.

My driver fell in love with him straight away and she spent ten minutes giving him a lot of fuss. And he enjoyed every minute of it too. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … why don’t some of these women treat me like that?

Back in the apartment, there was a lovely meal of beans, chips and a burger with a bap and also a pile of garnish. My chips were especially good so I asked my friend the secret. He tells me that he parboils them first for ten minutes, so I shall have to try that.

After I’d done the washing up, I came in here to write out my notes, but I was becoming more and more ill as the evening worsened, so in the end, I said “sod it”, abandoned the notes and went to bed. There’s always another time.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about passwords … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend that I once knew a guy who went to use the name of … errr … a certain part of his body as a password.
My friend asked "what happened?"
"He received an error message" I replied. "Sorry, password not long enough."

Saturday 14th March 2026 – MY VEGAN CHEESECAKE …

… is magnificent!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I posted on here a few days ago about the dessert that I should make once my birthday cake is finished. And while most of the suggestions that I received were totally unprintable in a family-orientated blog, there wasn’t a one that made any suggestions about making a vegan dessert.

Consequently, I had to put on my thinking cap and try to invent something.

It’s a good job that I didn’t have my thinking cap on last night, because I probably would have ended up with even less sleep than I actually had. Despite pushing on as best as I could and trying all I could to avoid distractions, it was 23:30 exactly when I crawled into bed.

As usual, I managed to go off to sleep quite quickly, but once again, it wasn’t for long. At 04:20, I was wide awake again, awoken by a stabbing pain in the foot and a desperate fit of coughing.

An hour later, I was still wide awake, but I must have gone to sleep at some point because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from a really deep slumber.

When the alarm went off, I was round at my father’s. He had an old Ford Transit van and had completely emptied it. He was going through, scraping all the mud out of the body panels and recesses because he was going to weld a new floor into it. When I had a look, I thought to myself that it’s not before time that he’s doing this. He was finding all sorts of stuff. Then he was talking about a transport company called Fitzgerald’s – apparently, I’d met them once at some kind of party but I didn’t remember. He said that Fitzgerald had told him that the company was going under. My father said that he wasn’t surprised because they were very expensive and, of course, freight has become a cutthroat industry these days. He poured a cup of coffee for me, which I drank, but it tasted weird. Then he asked me if I would make another one, so I went to wash the pan in which he’d boiled the water, and there were all the remains of boiled tomatoes in it. I thought “no wonder the coffee had tasted awful” so I went to wash it in the swimming pool there. There was a girl there who might have been Roxanne so I just picked her up and threw her into the pool and then tried to wash the pan. However, the pan was caught around the tap, and the handle broke off. I thought that this was a catastrophe. I played “peek-a-boo” with this little girl for a minute, she diving her head under the water and me ducking my head down so that I could see her under the water through the glass. Then my father came along and said to the little girl, “Eric must have put a lot of effort into throwing you into that swimming pool. I could see him straining every muscle”.

In the past, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, our family has owned all kinds of disreputable motor vehicles, many of which wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a public highway today and probably shouldn’t have been back in those days either.

However, my father was a motor mechanic by profession and in my earnest desire to out-do him, I learnt quite quickly by experience, and I also took night school courses in welding, paint spraying and lathe operation. Between us, we could keep almost anything on the road and running, although the hydraulic tappets on that Vanden Plas 4.0 with the Rolls-Royce engine had us beat for a long, long time.

When Laurence, Roxanne and I used to go to Spain to visit Roxanne’s grandfather, I used to throw Roxanne into the swimming pool on regular occasions, especially when she wasn’t expecting it. She used to squeal but she loved every minute of it.

As for making coffee with water in a dirty pan, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to struggle to my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom for a good wash. There were also the undies to wash. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s important for me to keep on top of the washing of clothes like that.

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

I was doing something with several sheets of glass last night, picking them up off different piles, each pile that represented a country in the EU. I was washing one of them so that I could build some kind of fortress somewhere on behalf of each of the countries, but that’s all that I remember of this.

A fort made of glass wouldn’t be of much use now, would it? It makes me wish that I could remember the rest of this dream so that I could find out what happened.

Later on, I was watching a football match involving Pionsat. Twice, from corner kicks down in the far left-hand corner, the Pionsat winger kicked the ball far too hard and sent it completely out of play on the full on the other side of the pitch. I thought that Pionsat couldn’t afford to waste all of these little moments that they have, because they aren’t a very good side and they need all the breaks they can get. A high ball into the penalty area can cause enough confusion to enable them to sneak a goal every now and again, particularly when they have all the players running in as the ball is kicked. But no, both of them went way out of play on the full without bouncing.

This is one thing that bugs me in a lot of football matches these days. The quality of freekicks and corners is pretty abysmal. As I said during the dream, a high ball right into the centre of the goalmouth can cause chaos and panic, and every now and again, something will come out of it.

But most clubs these days seem to want to mess about with the ball in all kinds of fancy tricks, most of which usually lead to them losing possession.

However, dear reader, read on ….

The nurse turned up as usual, just as I was in the middle of a really interesting chat with a couple of friends. I had to go off instead to have him see to my feet.

And today, he managed to avoid touching my really bad right foot. Instead, he dropped the heavy stool right onto it, and I was in agony for hours.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re reading about how the Marquisate of Boudonitza held out desperately against the Ottomans for many years until 1414, when the Sultan Mohamed I finally captured it. Now, we’ve moved on to discuss Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus, if we are to believe the Ancient Greek authors.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I made a start on editing some radio notes that I’d dictated a while back.

After a while, I had to stop because there was football on the internet – Y Fflint v Y Bala.

This was a game that Y Bala had to win if they were to have any chance whatever of avoiding relegation, and so they went at it hammer and tongs. Y Fflint could also have done with a win to haul themselves further away from the relegation zone, but for some reason, Y Bala’s aggressive start to the game knocked Y Fflint out of its stride.

Y Bala had the ball in the back of the net but it was ruled out for an offside, something that was disputed by many people in Cae y Castell this afternoon. Y Fflint took the lead – from a high ball floated in from a corner – but Y Bala equalised, from a high ball in from the wing.

So we had two poor teams rampaging at each other from one end to the other throughout the whole ninety minutes and playing the game as it ought to be played, in my opinion.

But a 1-1 draw? Leaving aside the “offside” goal, in the immediate build-up to Y Bala’s goal, I saw a handball by Y Bala’s Australian striker Jacob Tarasenko, and I would have awarded a penalty to Y Fflint for a blatant shirt-tugging that prevented a Fflint player from reaching a ball in the penalty area.

However that wasn’t all. Another thing that really gets my goat is this modern fascination of “playing it out from the back”, which has led to more disasters and calamities than games that it has won.

But not Joel Torrance in the Bala goal. The former Salford City keeper just kicked the ball as far upfield as he could, and that caused continual panic and chaos to the Fflint defence throughout the game. Why more teams don’t do this, especially against TNS whose central defence is … errr … somewhat “pedestrian” I really don’t know.

Y Fflint’s manager, Lee Fowler, was very dismissive of the game, but I for one quite enjoyed it.

After the football, I went into the kitchen to make my cheesecake.

This was a recipe that I saw in a magazine, and when I looked at it, I reckoned that I could transform it into a vegan recipe with no problems at all, especially as I now have a regular supply of aquafaba, now that I know that it can be frozen.

And it worked too – and in spades. When I sampled some for pudding later, it was absolutely delicious and I’ll make some more like that too.

One thing that I needed was some soya yoghurt, but my faithful cleaner couldn’t find any yesterday. However, just as I’d put it into the oven, she came in waving a pack of six around.

While I was at it, I made some more croissants too. And these also worked in spades. They didn’t have any of the really cheap flaky pastry, so this is the next price up – and it seems to make all the difference.

There was still an hour or so for tea so I finished off editing the radio programme, preparing the two halves, choosing the joining track and preparing it, and then writing the notes.

Tea tonight was falafel with vegan salad and baked potato with cheese, followed by cheesecake. And I’m still not enjoying the first course as much as I used to just recently. I think that my appetite might be changing again.

But not now, because I’m off to bed, ready for my important Sunday lie-in, if the nurse doesn’t drop anything else on my foot while I’m in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cars … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of an American who was in a bar in Ireland doing his usual American stunt of “showing off”.
"Your farms are so small and pathetic" he said. "Why, back in Texas, I could get into my car and at the end of three days’ driving I still wouldn’t have reached the boundary of my land."
"I know exactly how you feel there." replied a local at the end of the bar.
"You do?" exclaimed the American, incredulously.
"Oh yes" replied the local. "I used to have a car like that myself."

Wednesday 17th December 2025 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

… we had another horrible night, when I was awake at some ridiculous hour.

Don’t ask me what time it was, because I didn’t dare look. I didn’t want to demoralise myself even more than I already am, but judging by how long I remained awake afterwards, it can’t have been any later than yesterday.

It’s difficult to understand why I’ve woken up so early just now. I’ve been really exhausted at the end of the last couple of previous evenings – last night, I crashed out for forty-five minutes as soon as I’d finished writing my notes – and so by rights, I ought to be flat-out until the alarm goes off, as on Sunday morning.

And so, what with my unexpected forty-five minutes away with the fairies, yesterday was another late night, much later than it should have been.

Although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long and I was soon awake. And there I lay, just as on the previous morning, tossing and turning, trying to make myself comfortable so that I could go back to sleep again.

It must have worked to some degree because the alarm going off at 06:29 awoke me. I’ve no idea when I fell asleep, but it can’t have been very long beforehand.

As usual, it took a good few minutes to raise myself from the Dead, and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good scrub up.

After the medication and the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was at a football match somewhere in Scotland. When I saw the reports of the game afterwards, I saw that the number of points that each team had gained at that game was 224. I thought that it was a really unusual number so I wondered how they had managed it. I remembered bits about the game but not very much, but most of the action was on the terraces between the spectators, where there were some confrontations. I remember two opposing supporters being frogmarched up to the back of the stand by a group of the other supporters and pinned against the wall there. The thing that really caught my eye about this was, just outside the ground were some tenement flats, and a group of football supporters made a couple of kinds of these human pyramids up against the wall, as high as the fifth floor of these tenements. When someone had climbed up to the top, they could knock on the window and some other young kid living in that tenement could wrestle a window open because it was really tough and climb out, climb back down the human pyramid and go off with his friends. And it wasn’t just once that it happened – it was twice.

Football is another one of those subjects that seems to be recurring quite often in my dreams. The rest of it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but the story of the human pyramid reminded me of a real event in Crewe forty or more years ago when a new “singles disco” opened in the town. There were fifteen guys and just one girl who attended, so we all had visions of the men forming a human pyramid to dance with the girl.

I had a visit from Zero last night. There was a lot of tidying up that needed doing in the basement so I was down there moving all the books around. One box of books fell from the top shelf so I picked it up and threw it back. However, it didn’t land quite correctly – it fell down again. When I picked it up and went to throw it for the second time, I didn’t have the strength. My brother came down with another box of books. I told him to leave it here and I’d throw it onto the top. We began to talk about the work that I was doing down there, which was tidying up the clothes and tidying up the face image gallery. He wondered whether I ought to be doing something else, but I told him that this was what I had been told to do and this was what I was doing. So I was busy trying to sort out these boxes and everything else, and then I decided to spend ten minutes on the clothes. I began to sort them out and move them around and came across some of Roxanne’s dresses. I put them on hangers and hung them up in the cupboard. Just then, Zero came down in this beautiful, gorgeous peacock-blue dress, a kind of formal attire. While I was sorting out these other dresses, I handed a hanger to her to put her dress on. She told me that she wanted to keep on wearing it. I told her that it might be damaged if she’s playing about in it and it will be ruined. She’d be far better off hanging it up. She replied that she’d go to check with her mother. She left and then came back five minutes later while I was still sorting out these dresses and these faces and throwing these boxes of books onto the top and not being able to. She said that her mum had said that she can continue to wear it throughout the evening. In that case, I gave her a peck on the cheek and we carried on talking for a while.

So welcome back, Zero! It’s nice to see you again. I can still see the dress that she was wearing, and it really was lovely. Far too nice to wear as a casual dress. But we actually did find a few of Roxanne’s dresses – her confirmation dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and an evening dress with a jacket – here when we unpacked an old suitcase that had been lying around for ages since the Duysbergh days. There were a couple of her dolls too.

And as usual, someone from my family comes along to spike my guns just when things are becoming interesting.

The nurse turned up as usual this morning. I asked him if he knew of any chiropodists because I have a prescription for one to come here to sort out my feet. He said that there’s one with whom he co-operates, and he’ll put her in touch with me.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

We’re at the Wansdyke in South-West England and he’s going against the prevailing trend at that period, suggesting that the dyke was built after the road, rather than before it, as most people back then thought.

As it happens, he’s probably right, because when part of the dyke was excavated in modern times, they found a couple of late-Roman coins on top of the level of the underlying ground underneath the dyke, indicating that the dyke was built on top of the coins.

He’s still struggling with his forts on one of the Itineraries – trying to locate them somewhere along the southern shore of the Severn whereas today, they have been pretty well identified with places in South Wales.

After breakfast, I came in here where I had things to do, and then I set about writing the notes for the radio programme for which I’d chosen the music the other day.

There were numerous interruptions, such as the disgusting drink break and a telephone call from the chiropodist. She’ll be coming round on 30th December at 10:00, which is good news.

When the notes were finished, I had a letter to write and an order to send off to an online retailer for some more supplies, including the handrails for the shower. I’m hoping to have those fitted in early January so that I can be much more autonomous in the shower. In fact, there are a few things around here that need doing, so I’ll need to contact the guy who installed the kitchen.

With the time that was left, I began to choose the music for another radio programme. I want to try to do two programmes a week now that I’m settled back in here and there’s no chemotherapy or Centre de Ré-education to worry me.

In the end, I only finished about half of that because, as you might expect, I fell asleep for forty minutes on my chair.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in a spicy tomato sauce. It should have been with ratatouille, but to my surprise, I found that I’d forgotten to order any tins just now. The fruitcake and soya dessert were nice too.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …. but before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my visit from Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember saying to her how much I missed her.
"I love you terribly" I said
"I know" she replied "but I’m sure that you’re doing your best."

Tuesday 12th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… some visitors around here this morning, which is always very nice.

However, can you imagine how embarrassing it is when you make coffee for three and suddenly realise that, due to the slow moving-house process that has already seen a pile of stuff move downstairs over the last ten days or so, you only have two coffee mugs up here?

Yes, Bane of Britain strikes again, doesn’t he?

It was something of a “Bane of Britain” night last night too. I’ve no idea what exactly happened but I was still eating my evening meal at about 21:45, and there is no particular reason for it being so late.

Consequently, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out yet again, with a good few minutes before I actually crawled into bed.

Not that I stayed there too long either. At 02:10 exactly I awoke with a streaming head-cold of most embarrassing proportions and I had to leave the bed to find a roll of kitchen paper. Ordinary paper tissues did not suffice.

Nothing seemed to calm it down either. In the end, I smothered my chest and the lower part of my face with some eucalyptus vapour rub, wishing that I had some Olbas Oil handy.

Eventually, I managed to go back to sleep, where I remained until … errr … 05:20. And this time, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep. After about half an hour of trying, I gave it up as a bad job and, clutching my roll of kitchen paper tightly to my chest … "this is becoming ridiculous" – ed … I staggered off into the bathroom.

The medication was next, and then I staggered back into here to listen to the dictaphone, thinking to my self that I’d be lucky if there was anything on it after such a short night.

However, you never know your luck. Not that it was an awful lot but there was something last night about being in bed and looking at one of the walls in my hospital ward. It was tiled, with tiles that were 30cms by 60cms laid horizontally. They were laid one directly above the other directly above the other rather than staggered with half a tile over the top of one and half a tile over the top of that. You can hardly see the join above the tiles but you could see where the door into the room was – that was right on the edge of some of the tiles.

No prizes for guessing to which subjects of recent discussion this relates. And the tiles are indeed 30cms by 60cms. Whether they will be laid horizontally or vertically, or in straight vertical lines or as overlapping tiles depends very much on the plumber. I have given no instructions. Incidentally, where the builders of 1998 have built, the joints are an absolutely disgraceful mess but when we found some of the original wall, all 1,200mm thick of solid Grès de Chausey granite, you could indeed barely see the very neat and precise joints made by the builders of 1668.

Having done that, I started to think about the radio programmes that I want to finish today. There’s one where I need to rewrite the notes because the ones that I wrote and dictated at the end of last week aren’t long enough, and then there are the notes to finish for the one that comes afterwards.

However, Isabelle the Nurse arrived just in time to interrupt the proceedings. We had a little chat while she sorted out my legs, and then she cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast.

This morning, I finished THE OLD ROAD. Belloc has now arrived at Canterbury and was in the cathedral in time to celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Thomas A Beckett.

The book was extremely interesting, that’s for sure, but Belloc didn’t really go into his subject very deeply. He barely scratched the surface of many of the places of interest that he passed along the way, and his description of the route itself was somewhat brief. I would have liked to have seen much more, but then again, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I am famous for never writing just one word when a hundred would do the job just as well … "quite!" – ed …

The value of the book lay in its anecdotes, just as did John Stow’s, but I’m sure that Belloc had many more up his sleeve that he could have imparted to us.

Before he finished though, there were a couple more points of interest that caught my eye.

He wrote "I came to wish that all history should be based upon legend. For the history of learned men is like a number of separate points set down very rare upon a great empty space, but the historic memories of the people are like a picture. They are one body whose distortion one can correct, but the mass of which is usually sound in stuff, and always in spirit."

This is, of course, the theory of Laurence Gomme whose book FOLKLORE AS A HISTORICAL SCIENCE we read back in March. It’s also something that, while I don’t necessarily agree completely with Belloc and Gomme, I would consider to be an excellent starting point, and would use scientific means of unravelling history as a tool to investigate the folk theories, rather than as a means unto themselves.

The second point is his remark that "I thought I should be like the men who lifted the last veil in the ritual of the hidden goddess, and having lifted it found there was nothing beyond, and that all the scheme was a cheat ; or like what those must feel at the approach of death who say there is nothing in death but an end and no transition."

We all know that feeling of extreme disappointment when we end up after many years of toil with exactly what we wanted, only to find out that it wasn’t what we needed, or that it didn’t live up to expectations, and we wonder why we went to all that trouble.

The next book on the list is THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

He was the Chairman for many years of the Great Western Railway during their period of immense prosperity, and I’ve been looking forward to this book for quite a while.

But here we go again. Gooch talks about the loyalty that one should have towards one’s employer, that "you can be relied upon steadily to persevere in the pursuit of their interest, and so identify yourself with them that they can rest assured you are not ever seeking for a change, because you thus might earn a few pounds a year extra.", and "It ought to be every man’s greatest happiness and pride to say, ‘I have been associated with the same men through life.’ And to my mind, nothing speaks stronger against a man than for him, in describing his past life, to go through a long list of changes in his business associations,"

He then proceeds, several pages further on, to recount the enormous list of employers and employments that he had had during his adolescence.

The editor of his diaries tells us that during the “battle of the gauges”, with “God’s Wonderful Railway” trying unsuccessfully to persuade the other companies to adopt their Broad Gauge, Gooch "alludes with justice to the gain which the country reaped from this conflict of the gauges, putting on their mettle, as it did, the engineering giants by whom the conflict was carried on, and leading through their rivalry to improvements in speed, economy, and comfort which might otherwise have been long postponed."

It’s a well-known saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” … "not Frank Zappa" – ed … Technology and science make massive strides during wartime, for example, when the pressure is on everyone to push farther and farther ahead of the enemy as quickly as possible, and when we were discussing the dominance of TNS in Welsh domestic football the other day, I mentioned the dramatic improvement in standards in the JD Cymru League as clubs struggle to catch up.

After breakfast, I sat down at the desk to do some radio stuff but my visitors turned up. The lady who does the curtains brought her husband round. He’s a musician and wanted to see my guitars. As expected, he drooled over my Gibson EB3, which most people do. I sold my soul to buy it back in 1975 and I won’t ever part with it, even though I have been told on more than one occasion to name my own price. I hope that whoever inherits it after me will look after it carefully.

It was interesting to welcome my guests though. The electric door opener doesn’t work – YET AGAIN – so I had to go down the stairs on my own to open the front door, and then somehow work my way back up here without assistance. I could well do without this. I’m trying to cut down the number of times that I go downstairs and back up again.

There was a huge parcel delivery too, but I had warned the plumber and he had managed to intercept it at the door.

Once everyone had gone, I could press on with the radio programmes. The notes are now finished and ready for dictation, which I shall do the next time I have to leave the bed at 02:10.

However, listening to one of the soundtracks, I’ve noticed several imperfections. It looks as if someone has had a go at editing it before it came into my hands. At the end of every track, in the middle of the applause, there are small blank moments of a couple of hundredths of a second and the volume of the succeeding piece of applause is slightly different from the preceding one.

It seems that someone has done a “cut and paste” job on this, even though the running order matches the official set list, and the applause sounds similar and consistent so it’s not several concerts merged together to make up one complete one.

Anyway, I was there for quite some time cutting out the blanks and playing with the volume adjusters to make everything match.

There were several interruptions too. My friend from the UK who is managing my project over there wanted a good chat, and then my cleaner came in unexpectedly.

While she was going through my cupboards the other day sorting out some things to take downstairs, she came across some things of Roxanne’s that were left behind when she and her mother moved away and I can’t bring myself to throw away. After all, she was the only daughter that I ever had, even though it was for only three years.

Time, the damp of the farm and so on have not been kind to them so my cleaner had taken them away so that she could work her magic. She brought them down this evening and she had made a magnificent job of them. I really must take steps from now on to keep them in a better condition than I have been doing.

Thinking about Roxanne later, as I sometimes do, I began to think that I should have had another daughter. I would have been a wonderful father and she would have been spoiled rotten.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg and home-made garlic mayonnaise. And now, later than usual … "again" – ed … I’m off to bed, hoping for a better night than last night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the end of the journey not being what we would want it to be … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the story about the team that was sent in search of the very last Giant Prawn of the Galápagos, teetering on the edge of extinction.
When the team returned to the Natural History Club in London, the members crowded round and asked the leader "how did you find it?"
"Mmmmm. Delicious" he replied.

Sunday 15th June 2025 – WHAT A LOVELY …

… day that I have had today. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve had such an interesting day.

Well, actually, that’s not really fair. A friend of mine was over here for a couple of days several weeks ago and we had a very good and interesting time. And today (and these last few days in fact) were just as interesting and enjoyable.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t have many friends, but those whom I have are the best in the World. No-one has better friends than I do.

So last night, I had another gentle meander around in cyberspace, sometimes looking for things on the internet and sometimes even writing my notes. But in any case it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change, I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until all of … errr … 05:10 when something awoke me. I’ve no idea what it was but anyway, I was awake and that was that.

“Being awake” is of course not the same thing as “leaving the bed”. That is something quite different. So there I was lying there vegetating when I thought “hang on – I have things to do” and left the bed. This was round about 05:30.

Everyone else was asleep so I sat down and began to transcribe the notes on the dictaphone. They were laying out some young girl last night, a 3D model of one. She had died. They were dressing her in whatever funeral clothes that they could find and making her ready for burial.

This was quite a morbid theme for the night when I’m supposed to be relaxing. And even now, I can still see the scene. Interestingly, they were dressing her in white. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that when I was going through the wardrobe in here the other day sorting out things that I’ll be taking downstairs, I came across Roxanne’s communion dress and a bridesmaid’s dress that she wore that her mother left behind when our relationship ended. I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw them out.

There are lots of things – clothes, toys, a bike and so on of Roxanne’s that I still have that were left behind down on the farm that I came across when I scrapped the caravan in which we lived when we went down there at first on our holidays. It’s rather too late now to worry about what’s going to become of it, but whoever draws the short straw and has to sort out my effects is going to have something of a time trying to untangle everything.

Once I’d finished the dictaphone notes (which, let’s face it, didn’t take long) I sorted out the rest of the music for my biodiversity radio programme. That’s all chosen, edited, remixed and segued now, and I even began to write the notes. However, round about 07:15 I detected signs of people stirring so I went to join them.

After I’d had a good wash and scrub up we all sat around talking and drinking coffee until the nurse arrived. And he was once more taken unawares by the Hound of the Baskervilles. Consequently, he didn’t stay long and we could push on and make breakfast.

While breakfast was a-making, I set my friend a task TO PROVE THAT HE IS WORTHY. I mentioned the other day that I needed someone to place an advert on a certain Social Media Group to try to find a plumber. I was going to ask my friend Liz to do it but I can’t keep on asking her to do things for me or she’ll soon become fed up, so I set my friend onto the task.

While I was eating my breakfast, I sent off my on-line order for the oven, microwave, fridge-freezer and a few other things. They will start to arrive in midweek and carry on into the beginning of next week. So now it looks as if we are off, up and running.

To cement our progress, we sorted out some things and took them downstairs to put in the new place. That’s right! WE ARE BEGINNING TO MOVE IN! Slowly, it has to be said, but nevertheless …

Once we’d sorted out what needed to go downstairs, we decided to make the most of the beautiful weather and go out.

The first place that we visited was the radio’s studio at St Nicolas so that my friend knew where it was for the future, and then we had a nice, steady drive in the sunshine all the way down to the Pointe de Carolles where he took the Hound of the Baskervilles for a run on the beach and I went for a coffee.

That wasn’t as easy as it sounded either because it was lunchtime and the place was full. They offered me a kind-of casual table outside but the seats were no good for me. Eventually, they found a spare seat with armrests where I could sit down and, more importantly, lift myself out again.

When they had finished their walkies they came to join me and we were there for about an hour in the sun having coffee. And the cute little serving wench who waited on us can hand it to me on a platter any time she likes.

Interestingly, there were several young children wandering around, dressed in white. I asked the aforementioned serving wench about it, and she replied that the local kids had had their communion today. After that dream about the girl being laid out for her funeral, dressed in white, and Roxanne’s communion dress, that was a real coincidence.

We climbed back into the car and drove on down the coast and into Avranches to fuel up, and then carried on along the coast in the beautiful weather, admiring the view until we reached St Malo.

It’s years since I’ve been to St Malo and I can’t remember it at all compared to how it is now. But I sat on the side of the harbour watching the shipping while the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged its master off for another walk. And why I didn’t take a ‘photo of the first “Ship of the Day” since I was in MONTREAL THE 30th SEPTEMBER 2022 I really don’t know.

Back in the car, we had a nice, steady drive home, coming through the town centre to see the chaos that they are creating with these “improvements”. And all that I can say is that it’s better than Crewe Town Centre right now, that’s for sure.

Another nice surprise is that someone had replied to the advert that my friend had placed this morning. So now I have a plumber/handyman coming to see me on Friday afternoon to have a look at the job that needs doing downstairs in the bathroom. That might even be taking off at this rate.

For tea tonight I made another pizza, a large square one this time and that went down really well. There’s even some left over so my friend has bagged that for lunch tomorrow while I’m at dialysis.

So now, I’m off to bed, exhausted following a really wonderful day. I don’t have enough of those so I’ll make the most of whatever I can have.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about watching the boats in St Malo harbour … "well, one of us has" – ed … I spent a lot of time looking at this strange type of elasticated sailing boat that was there, flying the flag of one of these Middle-Eastern Emirate countries.
It was so unusual that I asked a local yokel about it.
He was a very vocal local yokel too, and told me "it’s a very famous boat, that one. Didn’t you know?"
"No, I’m afraid that I didn’t." I said
"It’s so famous" he said "that a very famous poem has been written about it"
"Which one was that?" I asked, bitterly regretting ten seconds later having done so
"It’s ‘The Rubber Yacht of Omar Khayyam’"

Wednesday 19th March 2025 – MONDAY THE FIFTH …

… of May is when I’m being summoned to Paris to hear the news about the results of the tests that I had a while back.

Obviously it can’t be all that serious if they are letting me wait six weeks to hear the news. France is not like the UK where they give you fictitious appointments two years hence and hope that you die before you have to attend and find out that the appointment didn’t really exist in the first place.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning how horrified and disappointed the professor at Leuven was when she told me at my cancer consultation nine years ago that she couldn’t find me a hospital bed for four … days.

And so May the Fourth be with STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I’ll hit the road the next day, presumably after having the dialysis in the morning instead of the afternoon.

But if they are talking about me having dialysis while I’m there, it means that I’ll be there for the Thursday at least.

One thing that will be certain, and that is that I’ll be in bed early when I’m there. I might not even leave it for the whole day. That has to be an improvement on how things are around here just now. It was another 00:30 retirement last night. I’m not sure how many of those there have been just recently but it looks as if 00:30 has become the new 23:00 these days

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly again and although I have a vague memory of something happening in the middle of the night, I didn’t move until I awoke at about 06:00.

Lying there festering for a while I thought "I may as well raise myself from the Dead rather than loiter around here" but the next thing that I knew, the alarm was ringing. I’d apparently gone back to sleep.

After I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom I went into the kitchen for the medication and found water all over the floor again. But there will be more news about this later.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I started out with Laurence and Roxanne. We’d gone to some kind of informal concert where everyone would be sitting around the entertainers rather than sitting formally in a theatre or something. We turned up and Roxanne went to sit down at the front with all the other children. I found a seat and Laurence came to sit down next to me. I put my arm around her but as soon as I did that she stood up and went to sort something out for Roxanne. She then came back and I went to put my arm around her again but then she stood up to do something else. It went on like this for half an hour until finally she came to sit down. She explained to me that she wasn’t very happy about me putting my arm around her. I couldn’t understand why because that was what I normally did but she was quite adamant that she wasn’t happy about it. I was beginning to think that for all the good that i’m doing here I may as well go outside and go for a walk on my own to settle down a little and calm down before something that went on that I might well regret in the future.

Amongst her other accomplishments, Roxanne was learning to play the harp during her Wednesday afternoon school music session. When we were out in Pionsat at the chateau once we saw an advert for a harp concert. We wandered off to find some tickets but it was completely sold out, much to Roxanne’s dismay. However, we saw a woman struggling to take a giant harp out of her car. “Clearly the harpist” I thought, and so did Roxanne. She told me how disappointed she was about not seeing her play so I told her not to tell me, but to go and tell the woman. So off she went, eight years old, and was chatting away to this woman for about ten minutes. When she came back, she was clutching three complimentary tickets in her sweaty little mitt.

Laurence used to say things like “I ought to change my name to ‘pense-à-tout‘” – ‘think of everything’ – “because no-one else ever remembers anything”. My answer to that was “and Roxanne ought to change her name to ‘reponse-à-tout‘” – “an answer for everything”.

Later on I was at a rock festival last night with Paul Rodgers of Free and some and some singer, I can’t remember. We’d formed a group for the occasion and had rehearsed fifteen songs. When it came to the night it was our turn to go on stage and make everyone listen. I had a little problem with my drum kit at the time so the guitarist simply began to play something to quieten down the audience. After I’d fetched my bass guitar and plugged it in I worked out what key we were in and played in accordance with that and It went much better. But there were only three railway stations, those on the Wirral that need to be changes in any question at all …fell asleep here …

Leaving aside the obvious point that Paul Rodgers was the singer of Free – it was David Kossof who was the guitarist – and what I would be doing with a drum kit, that’s another mystery. However that dream petered out into Heaven alone knows what before it became interesting.

Today’s issue with the nurse was that he objects to having to be here before the taxi comes at 08:30 to take me for the eye examination. I ought to book his friend for a precise time to take me in time for the appointment. But leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t me who booked this taxi but the dialysis centre, regular readers of this rubbish will recall his friend’s attitude to problems – “lie through your teeth”. That’s not the service that I want.

Breakfast was next – no book again today due to the lack of a power lead for the computer – so I was back in here quite quickly. I took advantage of the extra time by looking for a computer power transformer and cable (which I don’t have) and then beginning what is going to be a long process of tidying up the place, checking what I have, checking what I need etc for when I finally move downstairs, whenever that might be.

Today has been spent working on a radio programme. I’ve had to skip two programmes because they relate to concerts and I can fit those in whenever I have some free time … "when is that?" – ed … Consequently I’ve been working on 23rd January 2026, if that’s not too far ahead.

By the time I knocked off today I’d hunted down some tracks that I needed that I didn’t have, converted, reformatted and remixed them, paired them and segued them and written all of the text ready to dictate on Saturday night.

That was despite the disgusting drink break, the midday medication, my cleaner being here and not forgetting my wonderful shower. But how I’m looking forward to being downstairs when I can have a shower whenever I like – once the bathroom is converted.

But I mentioned the water all over the floor earlier. My cleaner noticed that the handle on my water jug is broken and there’s a crack down the back of the jug. So that’s something else to replace. I’d better spend Thursday afternoon going through Amazon seeing what I need for the new apartment and send off an order for bits and pieces like that.

Something else that happened today concerns the project in the UK about which I spoke towards the end of last year. It’s well under way and my friend who is in charge of things sent me the first photo of what has been going on and how it is going to look when it’s complete. And I’m impressed with this, that’s for sure.

If it carries on like this, I shall be well-pleased, even if it has cost me an arm and a leg to have it done.

Tea tonight was of course a left-over curry with naan and as usual, it really was delicious. The naan wasn’t as good as last eek’s though – that really was exceptional

Tomorrow I have the optician. With dialysis apparently, it’s important to have the eyes checked every six months or so with all the changes that are going on.

But while we’re on the subject of harps … "well, one of us is" – ed … Roxanne once dressed herself up for a fancy-dress party, so I asked her what her costume was supposed to be
"I’m dressing myself up to be a harp" she replied
"That can’t be a harp costume. It’s far too small" I replied.
She looked at me sternly. "Are you calling me a lyre?"

Tuesday 4th February 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

… that the notes that I edited at the Dialysis Clinic for that radio programme are going into the bin.

As I said before (but only once) I had to dictate it in two parts. However, for a reason that I have yet to understand, the parts sound so different that no amount of editing and remixing is going to make them sound similar.

All this afternoon I’ve been working on it without success and if I spend any more time on it I’ll go spare

The stage has been reached where I’ve downloaded some Artificial Intelligence to see if that comes up with any better luck than I’m having, but I doubt it very much. What I need is a copy sampler where I can analyse automatically a sample of one batch of sound and transfer the settings to the second to equalise the tracks but that’s unlikely, so I reckon it’s either the time to learn all about AI or else re-dictate the notes.

But anyway, that’s for another time. Let’s turn our attention to last night and, for a change, I wasn’t all that late going to bed.

It was 23:20 when I hit the sack but I was totally exhausted. I wasn’t sorry at all to be in bed at that time.

Once I was in bed and settled down I wasn’t long in dropping off to sleep. And there I stayed until the alarm went off, although I do have a vague recollection of being awake for a moment at 04:00.

It was a desperate stagger to beat the second alarm this morning but I did (somehow) manage it, and I had a good scrub up in the bathroom before going into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at work and for some reason I had the diary open. There was something going on on one particular date about some meeting or other. having seen whom it concerned, I wrote something rather indecent in the entry instead. Just then however the boss came along. He saw me writing and then rapidly closing it, and insisted on seeing it. I thought “this is going to be the end of the line now, isn’t it, for me in this place?”. In the end, the diary fell over haphazardly and there was a comment in there from another day that was that was fairly indecent but nothing quite as bad as that which I had written. He had a look at it, and I said “yes I know, and I’m ashamed of myself for doing it”. He wanted me to carry out a few tasks and gave me some things to do. Then I happened to mention a friend of mine who had been involved with one of our sister offices in the rural area. He had been telling me how they were all big supporters of a certain political party. The boss said “there’s no accounting for taste is there?”. I replied “no. It’s going to be pretty much of a shame if they ever find their way back into power”.

As to what this relates, I have no idea. I do know that one of my “contacts” has revealed himself to be an out-and-out Tory of the extreme type and is flooding with all kinds of extremist nonsense a page on the internet that he keeps, far worse than ever I have seen any left-winger or immigrant type

But as for writing anything abusive at work, then despite all kinds of provocation when I was at work I managed to restrain myself, and just thought abusive thoughts instead. I was going to say that “your thoughts never got you into trouble”, but while that may well have been true fifty years ago, it’s certainly not the case today, with the Thought Police out in force everywhere you go. and, believe me, you will even find yourself in trouble if they THINK that you are thinking, whether you are or not. And ask me how I know.

There was also something about Roxanne last night. I’d been away somewhere for a fair while and when I came back Roxanne threw her arms around me and hugged me.

And how nice to see Roxanne in a dream. 26 years it is since I’ve seen her in real life, so she’ll be 35 now, married I suppose, with a couple of kids. We had loads of fun together during that three years that I was her father. It made me realise what I was missing but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the big issue about this would be enticing me into the delivery room. I just couldn’t do it.

And finally I was in the USA with a friend. He had some kind of waste land, a demolition site that was a former service station. We were sitting there talking and the question of guns came up. He was talking about something about obtaining new licences for his guns. Another guy who was there said something along the lines of “your guns already have licences for Alabama and Arkansas. If you want another licence you’d have to hand some of those back”. We’d been out for a walk and came back to his property. There was a young girl sitting there. This guy totally ignored her so I did too. We began to discuss about where I certain place was in Ireland so we found an atlas and had a look down on the south-east coast but couldn’t see it. Then we went to have a look to see where this place was in the USA. We looked on the map but the map was such a short scale that it was totally useless. Then he was telling me about his life back at home and how he’d somehow managed to accumulate £10,000,000 and he was hoping to buy some property in the UK because the whole of the city centre was being demolished and he thought that it was being crazy. In the end we agreed that we would go for a walk. We set out and after a while I asked who this girl was. He replied “that’s one of Lesley’s mathematics clients. She teaches maths to her but the problem is that she has so many things going on in her mind that she can’t sit and concentrate at all”. As we carried on walking I was thinking “this demolished service station here – I need to keep in contact with the owner because if ever I have to come to the USA again I could drop a static caravan onto this place. That would act as a home for me for quite a considerable time”.

There’s a lot going on in this dream that can have some kind of connection in real life. For a start, the town centre of Crewe, having been demolished ready for an HS2-funded rebuilding and regeneration HAS BEEN SCRAPPED with the cancellation of the HS2 project, so Crewe Town Centre will be a hole in the ground after all.. And that makes a change, because up until recently it’s just been a hole.

There are several other items in there that have a meaning for two or three people who follow these notes, and they know who they are, but as for a mobile home on a demolition site in case I ever visit the USA, I’m going nowhere at all except to the Dialysis Centre and to the apartment downstairs, and that latter only if I am lucky. I have to work out how this move will take place. I have a couple of people who have kindly volunteered to help, for which I am extremely grateful, but it’s still going to be a nightmare, I reckon.

That’s not all that was in the dream, but you really don’t want to know the rest, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

The nurse was early today and once more, didn’t hang around long, which is good news. So I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

So far, it’s been two days since I began to read it and we’re still in the Introduction. It seems that our author is not in a hurry to discuss the subject but is more interested in setting the scene, down to the minutest detail. Never write one word when a hundred would do the same job … "and you don’t, I suppose?" – ed …

But I have a basic disagreement with modern research into hillforts. You look at them with their three and sometimes four concentric rings of fortification, deep ditches, scarp slopes, drystone walls, strong gates made of oak and all of that. I cannot see them as anything but defensive works, and major defensive works at that.

Neolithic and Iron-Age man didn’t have any free time. Their life was a desperate hand-to-mouth struggle. If they had to abandon food production for as long as it took and all of the effort that was required in order to construct their strongholds as they did, they must have been seriously concerned, if not frightened, for their own safety. It’s doubtful that any attacking force could have overwhelmed a determined defence in what they managed to build, until the arrival on the scene of Roman siege artillery. These forts are impressive even now, never mind what they must have been like 2500 years ago.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh lesson and then went to class. It wasn’t a rousing success today but it wasn’t a dismal failure either. It’s all a question of concentration and memory and I have neither right now. In fact, it’s been quite a while since I last did have any. We had a quiz today on identifying Welsh foods. It goes without saying that I was not at the top.

When the lesson was over I went for a break for a while and then came back to play with these sound files. There are two of them because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had to stop the dictation in midstream and rewrite part of it.

What I don’t understand though is that the tone of each part is so different, and no amount of post-production will equalise it. Consequently, after several hours of trying, I decided to abandon it while I still had some sanity left … "??" – ed …

My cleaner stuck her head in the door this afternoon. She’d brought more cheese and a few other things from the supermarket, as well as a letter from the hospital in Paris. It’s the results of the EMG test that I had, and they tell me that there’s no improvement – just a very slight deterioration. This nervous attack that has wiped out my leg muscles is completely baffling medical science.

Before I went for tea I checked a few other sites that I visit, and discovered that, after Y Drenewydd’s signing of a Philippine International the other week, Connah’s Quay Nomads have signed a Sri Lankan International. The JD Cymru League is definitely looking up these days.

But that signing is not really a surprise. The manager of the Sri Lankan national side until Christmas was Andy Morrison, former manager of the Nomads.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, just as delicious as always. And there’s plenty of stuffing remaining for a leftover curry tomorrow. So I must remember the naan bread.

It’s shower day tomorrow too, so I might even be clean by tomorrow night. That’s some hope, isn’t it?

But while we’re on the subject of the hospital and baffling medical science … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s a big stately home just outside Crewe that’s used as a medical laboratory by a well-known pharmaceutical concern
There were some headlines in the local newspaper "major medical breakthrough in Crewe".
Being bewildered, I contacted my friend in Crewe to ask him what was going on.
"You won’t believe this" he said "but they have developed something that will completely transform all medical science and procedures for the future"
"What’s that?" I asked
"One of the laboratory assistants has invented a cure for which there is no known disease"

Wednesday 2nd October 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… shower today. And you have absolutely no idea how nice it was and how much better I feel having had a really good soak under the jet of water

And I needed it too. Because I had a wretched night.

As I was finishing off the notes last night I began to feel that mysterious stabbing pain that I sometimes have in my right foot. Within half an hour I was absolutely doubled up in agony. It was the most severe attack that I have had to date and I have never hurt so much in all my life.

It was round about 01:30 when the need for sleep was such that it finally overwhelmed the pain and agony of what was going on and I could crawl into bed.

Despite the pain I did manage to fall asleep but it was a fitful, pitiful sleep that didn’t really do anyone, least of all, me, any good at all
.
When the alarm went off I crawled out of bed, still wracked by pain, and made my way into the bathroom where I had a good wash and scrub up despite everything.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone and, to my surprise, there was something recorded on there. It can’t have been such a bad night after all. I was with Roxanne and Laurence. We were wandering somewhere around Avranches and it was lunchtime. I was having health problems with this really bad attack of pain in the foot so I decided that I would have to sit down. I couldn’t walk any further. So we were sitting down on a chair alongside a wall somewhere. Suddenly I felt a splash on my shoulder. We were right underneath a bird’s nest. The two of us moved and sat at another table and had a chat for a while. Then she announced that she was going to have to go because she had to go to look for a job etc. She wasn’t sure how long it would take, whether her gran would help her but she needed to begin to move. She stood up and I pointed to a petrol station, the one that we had visited the other day, and said that I’d be waiting there if she decides to come back this way and Roxanne can meet me there if she likes. She said that she’d make a note of it and wandered off one way and I hobbled down to this garage as best as I could

What’s surprising about this is that even in a dream, I could remember an earlier dream. And it’s hardly likely that, even in a dream, I’d forget the pain that was stabbing my foot and running through my body along the central nerve

When the nurse came I mentioned to him about the pain in my foot but he didn’t seem to be interested. I think quite honestly that his heart isn’t in his work and he’s just going through the motions. It’s no surprise that his oppo is loaded up and snowed under with little tasks because I can’t be the only person who thinks like this.

After he left, I made breakfast and MY BOOK. Our author, Thomas Wright, is visiting the Medway Megaliths, a collection, of which Kit’s Coty House is one, of prominent megaliths in the Medway valley in Kent.

There’s a delightful, whimsical account of the excavation at which he assisted, of a prehistoric barrow on the chalk uplands at Holborough. They didn’t find much in the barrow but I carried out some further research, and it turned out that, unbeknown to them, while they were looking at the barrow they were standing on top of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.

This only came to light when the Portland Cement company, who had bought the land to quarry the chalk for cement, began to unearth human bones in the 1940s. They stopped work and called in the archaeologists who uncovered 37 graves from the early Saxon period.

However, Thomas Wright had every reason to fear for the future of historically important artefacts. I tracked down the report of the excavation of the graves and there, in back-and-white, in chilling detail, is written that the archaeologists had learned that in 1943 a grave was uncovered and in there, apart from the human remains, there were two iron spearhads “that were disposed of to a scrap-metal merchant”.

That’s the Portland Cement company in 1943.

But that aside, here’s another little conundrum

A couple of days ago we were visiting all of the Roman ironworks around the Weald in the South-East of England, and that made me think.

Interestingly, our hero observes that Roman ironworking stopped practically dead in the Fifth Century and there was nothing for several centuries until a very primitive Saxon forge was uncovered, using nothing like the comparatively sophisticated techniques of the Romans.

In the days of the Romans the ironfields down there were the third most important iron-producing area in the whole of the Roman Empire, and once they restarted they slowly set off and as techniques evolved, still nothing like what the Romans could manage, they kept on going with a massive output almost until the 19th Century when coke replaced charcoal as the preferred fuel and the big Black Country industrial centres took off.

The current way of “politically-correct” thinking is that the Saxons, when they arrived, didn’t massacre the native British population but everyone lived quite happily side by side and gradually assimilated into one coherent race.

But leaving aside the absolutely overwhelming preponderance of Saxon place names in most of England and parts of Eastern Wales, all writing suddenly came to a dead stop until the monks like Alcuin and Bede began to assert themselves, urban life in the Roman towns came to a dead stop and the major, important Roman ironworks suddenly came to a dead stop and never really restarted.

It seems to me that there was a massive loss of all of the proto-Roman skills, most of which never ever restarted restarted. Take concrete, for instance. The Romans made massive use of concrete but it wasn’t until John Smeaton developed a technique in the 18th Century that it became a reliable construction material again. And the rediscovery of seawater-proof concrete is comparative recent.

All of this seems to suggest to me that there was a complete ethnic cleansing of the type that Pol Pot and Hitler would have been really proud. Even they managed to keep alive enough intellectuals to run the very basic needs of the societies that they had taken over.

Of course, “absence of evidence” is a totally different thing than “evidence of absence” but had here been some evidence, I’m sure that it would have been unearthed by now. But there’s nothing.

Meanwhile back at the ran … errr … apartment I wrote off to the Centre de Re-education to say that I can’t come on 2nd December. They wrote back to tell me to communicate with them again when my programme is more clear, so I sent them another message to say that it won’t ever be any clearer than it is and presumably they are still thinking about their next move.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent finishing off the notes for the radio programme and doing some more stuff about my visit to Jersey two years ago, one of my very last adventures.

There was an interruption when my cleaner came in to do her stuff, and she helped me organise myself so that I could have a shower.

Putting the wooden box on the chair so that I could swivel myself into the bath easier was a master-stroke and worked perfectly, and much easier than last time when it was something of a battle to find my way into the tub.

Propping myself up with a crutch could soap myself down as far as I could reach, and I relied on the force of the rinsing water to clean the rest.

With the seat of the chair much higher because of the box I felt much more confident about sitting down from a standing position and it was much easier to swivel myself out of the bathtub.

So now here I am, a nice clean boy with nice clean hair and how nice it all feels. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to be downstairs, rip out the bath and have a walk-in shower installed. Then it will be a shower every day

Regrettably, for the first time for several days, I crashed out. But only for something like half an hour and after the wretched night that I’d had, it really wasn’t any surprise so I’m not disappointed.

Tea tonight was a beautiful leftover curry with rice, veg and a naan bread. That’s the last of the naan bread dough and I’ll have to make some more next week.

So now having finished my notes, I’m off to bed to catch up on my beauty sleep now that the pain has subsided somewhat. And don’t I need it?

But all of this talk about archaeology and graves reminds me of the archaeologist who had been on an excavation of a historic cemetery.
He wrote to his parents about his discoveries, saying "in one grave we found a skeleton wrapped in an ermine cloak with a big gold chain around his neck and a crown on his head. He was all dressed up like a Count."
His father turned to his mother and said "Look at this! All that money we spent on his education and he still can’t spell!"

Thursday 12th September 2024 – I CAN’T EVER FORGET …

… my friend’s daughter who, on being told that what she was going through for the first time at 11 years old was what she’ll be going through every four weeks for the next forty years, stormed upstairs in a fury and slammed her bedroom door in a fit of pre-teen angst .

And now I know exactly how she must have been feeling, after having gone through what I’ve gone through today and knowing that I’ll be doing it three times per week for the rest of my life.

They said that it would make me feel better, but I’m hardly running around like a spring chicken right now.

“It takes time” they tell me, but how much time do I have?

Not enough last night, apparently. I eschewed a trip out around Central Scotland with one of my groundhopping friends and was in bed relatively early. And asleep quite quickly too, which seems to be becoming a habit these days.

However I awoke not long after 06:00, and couldn’t go back to sleep. By 06:45 I had totally given up the idea and was so wide awake that I arose from the Dead a good 15 minutes before the alarm, not something that happens every day.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, changed my undies and washed the previous pair in the sink. I must keep on top of things otherwise it will all let go and I’ll have no idea where I am.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was an athletics meeting taking place, a World Championships of some description. I was working as a driver. At one stage I had three people in my car, a couple of girls and a guy taking them from one place to another venue. One of them was actually talking about staying illegally in the UK because he had no passport or his passport had expired. The story he was telling was how he was staying with his aunt and how she had left sounded so fishy that it was unbelievable, the type that you hear every day from thousands of people, exactly the same. He was asking about going to Canada and whether he’s receive asylum there. The Canadian girl was very suspicious and was giving very guarded answers. It was all extremely complicated. When I reached my destination I unloaded my three passengers and stayed to listen to the news. They were talking about them on the radio saying that they’d absolutely loused up the first leg of their athletics tournament and so they had been sent away somewhere off-campus to a private room out of the way of the media where they could rebuild their confidence etc ready for the second round of the event. The radio was saying how this was a good thing to do in the circumstances of these three people. But I was listening to these stories and was just extremely suspicious about them all. I was sure that there was far more to it than just a simple “take them out of the public eye for a couple of hours”. It was one of the most suspicious things that I’ve ever encountered

And believe me, in my life I have encountered a great many suspicious things. I have had something of a chequered life in a couple of previous existences and one of these days I might actually say something about it. However, I have to be mindful of the fact that the UK is one of these countries that has a very minimal Statute of Limitations.

And then we were discussing the situation at Celtic where the manager had left, a new manager had come in and there was a lot of turbulence around there with players openly talking about leaving the club. One of them was interviewed on TV and was discussing it. It turns out that another one was released over twelve months ago and has yet to find a new club. I said “surely he can find a job working on a building site or something like that and play part-time to keep fit. I could find him a job tomorrow”. I told him of a job that I knew was going. Whoever it was to whom I was talking was some elative of his and said “I want him much fitter than that. He’s 29”. The discussion continued and it was extremely interesting that I’d dreamed that Rodgers had left Celtic and they had a new foreign manager

So why would I be interested in Brendan Rodgers and Glasgow Celtic? It’s not the usual kind of topic that is forever on my mind. Not at all.

The nurse came in to see me later to apply my puttees (which fell down later). She gave me the copies of my prescriptions that she’d photocopied and also gave me some other paperwork that the clinic wants to see. She wanted to tell me what was going to happen but I didn’t want to know.

My faithful cleaner had been past too and dropped off the unused injections for me to take. Apparently they put a blood-thinning product in the mix when I’m being dialysed so they’ll start with my injections, so as to use them up

After everyone had left, I made breakfast and read my book on ROMANS IN BRITAIN.

We’re discussing Roman Roads at the moment but I’m thinking about the camps at Caersws and Caerhun that we’ve seen on those aerial maps.

When our author was writing his book, it was 1923, a long time before the advent of aerial photography and aerial mapping, something pioneered by Sidney Cotton (inventor of the “Sidcot” flying suit), whose steps we stood in IN NEWFOUNDLAND, when he came to the UK in the late 1930s.

So we can see these things quite clearly thanks to Cotton and those who followed in his footsteps … "or vapour trail" – ed …, but these people in 1923 when they were writing these books had no idea of aerial photography, so what they were able to discover and identify is really quite astonishing.

After breakfast I had to telephone the bank in Belgium. There have been payment issues with a card and I ned to check. But it wasn’t any use. According to the bank they don’t have any marker at all on the card and it should work fine.

We shall see.

What was left of the morning was spent backing up the big computer onto the memory stick on my keyring, and I ran out of time because the taxi came early for me.

There was someone else to pick up and then off we set, two passengers and the taxi driver from Hell, to Avranches. If they give me a blood pressure test as soon as we arrive they’ll have a shock.

When we arrived, there I was struggling along on my crutches so they took me to the cubicle the farthest away from the door.

They slapped a few anaesthetic patches on my arm and then we went through a pile of paperwork and forms. Then they gave me an injection and I closed my eyes as they did what they had to.

All I did was to lie there in bed. They had all the windows open and the air conditioning going full tilt and I was freezing. So much so that I couldn’t concentrate on any work at all – and that’s something that I’ll have to sort out.

Instead I read the report of Colonel Carrington about life at Fort Phil Kearny, which was permanently under siege by the native Americans and the site of which WE VISITED IN 2019. Now THAT’s what I call an interesting document.

There were also times when I drifted away with the fairies and on one of my little trips Roxanne came to see me and I remember distinctly kissing her cheek.

They eventually uncoupled me and I had to wait around for half an hour while they checked that the joint would close correctly. And FINALLY I could go to the bathroom – and not before time. And with my puttees around my ankles.

There were three taxi drivers waiting in the foyer so I asked "who’s drawn the short straw?" and one driver knew exactly what I meant.

We had another person and so the return trip home, much more sedately this time, went via the Centre Normandy to drop him off.

My cleaner was waiting but she stood and watched as I hauled myself up the stairs without help. It’s a struggle, but it works.

There’s no bread so I made another loaf. And in a wild fit of enthusiasm I made a jam roly-poly.

That was easy – make half a bread mix, after it’s risen, roll it out flat and rectangular, coat it with Jacqueline’s lovely home-made jam, sprinkle some desiccated coconut and raisins, and then roll it up, sprinkle with icing sugar and bake it in the other side of the oven while the loaf is a-doing.

While all that was going on I made tea – a burger from what’s left of the European Burger Mountain with pasta and veg done in tomato sauce

But now I’m off to bed and I’ll tell you tomorrow how the bread and roly poly have come out.

However, I started this entry today talking about repetitive tasks. And that reminds me of a Trades Union meeting that I attended years ago to discuss new work proposals
"We have agreed" said a negotiator "a 10% pay-rise, an extra week’s holiday, a Christmas bonus, and as from now on, we only have to work on Wednesdays"
"What?" howled a discontented voice. "Every bloody Wednesday?"

Wednesday 3rd April 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… “correspondence” day today. Anyone who has been expecting a reply from me over the last couple of days should either have had one (electronic) or will have one within the next few days.

If you are expecting one and don’t receive it at some point, write and let me know because it will mean that I have overlooked it in the confusion.

And as my hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche once said at the bottom of all the correspondence that he initiated, "If you do not receive this, of course it must have been miscarried; therefore I beg you to write and let me know".

That’s how I felt last night actually – like a load of miscarried correspondence. I fell asleep twice (or was it three times?) typing out the notes from yesterday and the fact that I managed to complete them, that shows determination if nothing else.

Even though there was the usual stuff to do, I was actually in bed by 23:00 and that shows what I can do when I really try. And I wasn’t sorry to hit the sack, I can tell you.

It was a really peaceful night but I did have another one of those “false awakenings” that we talked about the other day, where I’m convinced that I’m awake but I’m actually not, and it’s a really strange feeling when the alarm goes off and I’m convinced that I’m already awake.

In the past I’ve been awake when the alarm goes off but that’s a completely different sensation of course.

First thing to do was to check the blood pressure this morning, and I don’t know why because they don’t seem all that interested at hospital. It’s 14.9/92, quite a drop on last night’s 17.7/10.2. Whatever must have been winding me up completely must have disappeared

There was the medication to deal with of course, and that takes a lot longer than it ought. And then I had to arrange the room ready for the nurse.

The blood sample thing was an absolute farce again, and there are now more holes in me than in a hedgehog’s trousers. I’d printed off the form and had it ready for him, and I’d called him last night to say that it was here so that he could bring his stuff, but that didn’t mean that he could find a vein.

It’s obviously because I’m all assembled wrongly. Anyway, according to him, it’s my fault that he can’t find a vein.

Once he’d gone (and left his blood testing kit behind) I could relax and have a listen to find out where I’d been during the night. Only one sound file on the dictaphone, one that I can’t remember at all. There was something going on with regard to stolen cars in Crewe. There was a big investigation. I was out with a girlfriend of mine and we went past one of the side streets on the industrial estate at the back of where we lived as kids. A police car was pulling up behind a tatty old blue Ford Capri so we stayed to watch. 2 policemen left the car followed by a civilian. The policemen began to interrogate this civilian about this Capri and then suddenly they began to push him around. I said in a loud voice “you can’t push him around” but my partner was quite agitated, wanting me to keep quiet. They knocked him onto the floor so I said something then but they still took no notice. My girlfriend was even more agitated. Then they had a second person there and they began to give that person a rough time. I ended up thinking to myself “I wish that I had a video camera. I’d have made a fortune taping this and selling it”.

There’s more than just an element of truth in this one too. My girlfriend from school (who appears on these pages every now and again – she’s the one who still looked exactly the same 40 years later) was rather a naïve girl and had little experience of life. I soon changed all that.

We were coming back from the pub towards her home one night when we encountered a police car and two constables parked on private property. They were watching the crowds but I was much more interested in where they were parked, so I made a caustic comment.

That led to an encounter that can only be described as “confrontational” and it certainly opened up her eyes to what happens in the real World. She was never quite the same again after that.

We once had a debate or discussion about people living on the streets, something that never existed in the early 1970s in South Cheshire when we had real Socialists, and she didn’t believe that they existed at all. So I piled her into my car and we drove to London – 180 miles in the days before motorways – through the night to find some homeless people to prove their existence – and then drove back again as dawn was breaking.

What her parents had to say about the matter of their daughter being out all night is unrecorded.

It’s like the time when I was angling for that job in New York but Laurence told me that a medium had told her once that she’d never leave Europe.

Never?

So a couple of days later, having dropped Roxanne off at a colonie de vacances where she could pet horses and goats for a week, Laurence and I were at Heathrow Airport and the rest is history.

When we came back, Laurence said to Roxanne "You’ll never guess where mummy has been"
"You’ve been to America" said Roxanne, because she was in on the joke. She was always good to take part in a joke was Roxanne, the bigger the better.

So, the correspondence.

Having already printed off the prescription for the nurse, I printed off the bon de transport and wrote out my application for authorisation for a journey to Paris

And while I was at it, I sent off a huge pile of other stuff including letters to the UK, letters to Canada and all that kind of thing in an attempt to bring everything up-to-date.

Some hopes though because there is bound to be stuff that I’ve forgotten to do, or stuff that’s going to overwhelm me in due course.

The cleaner came round today so I kept out of her way for a while but had to go in there to pay her for last month and then to talk about these injections.

They wouldn’t let me have them because of the lack of blood test reports but now that they have started up, we need to organise something so that I can have them.

The nurse said that he would become involved in this and telephone the chemists, so that’s going to be guaranteed chaos for the near future until someone sensible sorts them all out.

But it’s really sad that I’ve arrived in this state.

There was time left for another batch of Welsh homework from a previous unit, interrupted by making a batch of dough for naan breads. Most of that is now freezing, except for one ball that became my naan bread for this evening along with my delicious leftover curry

And that’s the end of the notes as well. Tomorrow there are no interruptions planned and nothing outstanding to do so I might write a batch of radio notes.

But no doubt, someone or something will come along to disrupt me. It’s like “Bomber” Harris who always said, to members of the Air Ministry whom he encountered on the streets "good morning. And what are you doing to disrupt the war effort today then?".

Now HE was someone who emphasised the definition of “unpopular”, just like me in my day. I was about as unpopular as a bank manager in the middle of a recession.

The other day I mentioned that we’d all play hide-and-seek as kids – I’d hide and the other kids wouldn’t come and look for me.

In school I was in fact known as “batteries
… "why was that?" – ed …
That was because I was never included in anything.

Monday 8th January 2024 – NOW THAT I …

… have figured out how to tether my phone to my computer using “bluetooth”, I can access a phone hotspot with the computer and post the days’ entries directly.

In fact, you might have noticed that the completed entries for the last 3 days are now already on line.

Once again, I make no apology for anything that is contained therein that might distress or upset people.

Firstly, I have no control whatever over what goes on in my head during the night. And how I wish that I did! I’d have Zero, Castor and TOTGA in there all the time, with a succession of other people who have been so nice to me in the past. Even Nerina. After all, she had a lot to put up with in the old days.

Secondly, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … as this illness unfolds and heads towards its inevitable climax, the state of my mental health is just as important as the state of my physical health and needs to be controlled in a similar manner. And so any intemperate or unpleasant outburst needs to be recorded in the same way that a blood pressure recording is.

Thirdly, these are stressful times and you have no idea. Having a blood test on Wednesday, a desperate ‘phone call on Thursday and a 350-km dash in a taxi early on Friday morning is enough to tell you that something has gone horribly wrong.

And so here I am. Like the famous Maréchal MacMahon, "j’y suis, j’y reste" – “here I am and here I stay”.

So here I stayed, all through yet another miserable night of doors banging, people talking, trolleys rattling and the like. And by 06:00 I’d given up all thoughts of sleep.

Mind you, with the amount of stuff on the dictaphone, and no hallucinations either, I must have done a lot of sleeping at some point somewhere.

First port of call is the bathroom for a wash and brush up and to put on my day clothes. Then an endless stream of visitors to see me – nurses, nursing orderlies and the like, taking my temperature, taking my blood pressure, giving me my medication etc. You can imagine.

There’s been a change of crew too and it took “some negotiation” to have a second roll of bread when breakfast eventually came.

They aren’t very willing to hand out the coffee either and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that is a catastrophe of tsunami-like proportions.

Once the breakfast was out of the way I sat down to try to decipher the huge mass of notes from the night. The girl who was here a couple of nights ago was there again last night, at school. We were all at school and it was the fancy dress ball so everyone was dressed in fancy dress. I had on a pair of tights and a girl’s skirt which actually belonged to a girl with whom she was friends but I’d carefully concealed it about me somehow even though I was wearing it. She was wearing white tights and a pink top. I didn’t really notice if she was wearing anything else. We both came out of the school door together, she on one side and me on the other and headed for the lift. There was a German World War II jeep heavily camouflaged with bales of hay etc. I always had a great deal of affection for this vehicle and the people who drove it and I even happened to like one of the girls on it, whom I was hoping to bump into at some point. We were all waiting there for the lift. The lift came and the jeep drove on, then it looked as if the lift was about to leave. I said “oh no, it’s not going to leave, is it?” but it stayed so the girl and I boarded. At that point, all through this dream Alquin had been playing YOU CAN ALWAYS CHANGE. that was one of the tracks that we were going to play on stage during the concert. I had a feeling that the girl was going to talk about the track, or someone was, and I wanted to keep our selection secret but it was going on and on and on as this dream continued. When I awoke it was actually playing on the computer.

Then we were making arrangements about times to go to do the family banking for the family business that we had. I noticed that I was down to go between 14:30 and 14:45 which was going to be rather difficult because I started work after lunch at 14:00. Trying to evade myself out of the office every day for any length of time without anyone noticing is going to be extremely difficult as I’d already been back that late on a couple of occasions. In the meantime there was something going on in Brighton where there was a killer on the loose. His modus operandi was exactly the same as a series of murders several years ago so naturally the police were following up the trail of the murders committed then. One of them was by a bookcase in a side street so they arranged to set up some kind of dummy person there that this guy could shoot. But a journalist went along with the police and he decided that he’d arrive first and case the area which of course was a really bad thing to do because the guy would notice him but he turned up on his train but there were problems with his train. This meant that the journalist couldn’t get out there at the time that he had planned to be there, maybe 10 minutes before. It was cutting it extremely fine with the journalist doing his dummy run there and the correct kind of time that the murderer committed the crime on the previous occasion at the spot. There were all stories about how the journalist was going to totally wreck the police trap and spoil the show.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a dream musing on the state of the world and thinking of a particular woman who had left the oven on too low and too long and had dried out the food that she was trying to cook. There were 11 articles in there altogether to replace articles that had been cooked in the microwave and the previous table-top oven. I had a quick look and the time was only 04:00 so i was obviously a false alarm for some reason – maybe I dreamt it I dunno. Anyway I checked that I wasn’t supposed to be leaving the bed at this time and went back to sleep.

I was home from work and was with Laurence. A woman from work came round. The living room was in a really appalling state with stuff everywhere. I was quite embarrassed and apologised to the woman. I began to pick up clothes but most of them were Roxanne’s. I explained “it’s really difficult trying to live with a preteen daughter. Roxanne is 11 and is at .that age”. I walked out into the hall and threw these clothes upstairs but they missed, fell down and draped all over the stairs again. The woman said that she had a daughter who was 10 but was extremely well-behaved in that matter. I said that Roxanne was very well behaved and was a lovely girl but was in the “attitude” kind of stage. It was very difficult to try to make her see things from maybe our point of view. But it wasn’t just Roxanne’s stuff that was everywhere. It was ours as well. But as I said, it was all extremely embarrassing having people round from work with our place as untidy as it was.

Roxanne was in fact 9 years old when her mother and I separated so I’ve no idea what she was like as a preteen. But she was a normal, happy, healthy, well-adjusted kid when I knew her and there’s no reason to suppose that she was any different than any other kid of that age.

Did I tell you that she was an actress?

It all started one Sunday morning. Where we lived was right on the border between Jette and Laeken (I liked Jette very much) to the north of Brussels and on the house next door to our apartment building was a big sign dating from the 19th Century with the name of the town on it.

One Sunday morning up rolled a TV crew. They set up a sofa in the street underneath the sign and had actors and actresses sit on the sofa and shout “TV Brussel” – the name of the Flemish television company.

Of course, quite a crowd gathered and we looked down from our balcony.

One of the actors was a little girl, black as the ace of spades, and when they looked up they saw Roxanne, blonde as blonde could be with her long hair down past her waist, they called her down and they had the two kids sitting on the sofa, one in contrast to the other, shouting “TV Brussel” together, and she was shown on the cinema and television for months.

They obviously liked what they saw because they took our name and address and a short while afterwards she was asked to appear in a TV film as a schoolkid playing in a school playground. She passed the audition and the screen test and off she went.

Sometimes I wonder if she continued afterwards.

There had then been some sort of firework display in the vicinity. A friend of mine had been to see it and had come back horrified with stories of what had been going on. A little later on we’d been somewhere and come out, and bumped into a woman. She was talking about her 2 daughters who had been to the firework display. One of the daughters had come out with ” mummy why didn’t you disappear as quickly as (her sister)?”. The woman with me again told her story about what she’d seen. As we all turned to go afterwards there was a big sign pinned to the wall over an advertising hoarding “hey Eric, your websites in April had more visits than this discussion” which I thought was quite funny. A little further on we came across an internet box, one of the street internet boxes where all of the connections to the individual homes were wired. This one had been smashed open. All of the glass was smashed and it was difficult to see whether the cables were still intact. There was a policeman there examining it so we had a chat about that, the internet and things in general

Finally there was a dream where the Welsh rugby team were playing the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team. I was explaining the rules and regulations to someone but I was actually dreaming and speaking in Welsh at the time during the dream. We were interrupted by breakfast coming early but I noticed that on the tray there was no coffee. I asked the boy who was delivering them if he could go along and fetch me a very large coffee from somewhere. Of course, that part about the coffee and the breakfast coming early was certainly a dream. It never ever happened.

Last it may well be, but not “finally”. There was more stuff than this but you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

It took an age to transcribe these notes as the doctor, the one who had given me the lumbar and thoracic punctures, came to see me.

Apparently the creatine and potassium in my kidneys are preventing them from functioning correctly and what could happen risks being fatal. So they intend to give me all kinds of teratments to try to reduce the levels.

They also have to stop giving me certain medication too, and for that I have to be under constant medical supervision as most of the suppressed medication is my cardiac medication.

All of this is much more serious than it sounds, apparently. They think that I might be at Death’s Door but I mustn’t worry. They’ll do their best to pull me through.

There was the continual procession of nurses and orderlies, and I managed to blag a coffee here and there, but after they coupled me up to a perfusion – apparently I need rehydrating – I didn’t see anyone for hours and it wasn’t until 18:30 that I had a cup this afternoon, much to my dismay.

Ingrid rang me for a chat this afternoon, one of our usual multilingual chats, and I’ve also chatted to Liz, a couple of neighbours and Isabelle the infimière ambulante

Tomorrow I need to chat to the Centre de Re-education and the taxi company to cancel everything that they have arranged for this week as I won’t be here.

Rosemary sent me a brief message to say “it’s snowing here”. I replied “so what? It’s snowing here too”. And it is. Quite heavily too but it’s not sticking – yet. Not that I care because here in The Land Of Yellow And Orange I have the heater going full-tilt and for once in my life I’m warm.

But that’s not all that counts. The food here is pretty dreadful, I’ve had to have another needle in my right hand now for a perfusion as the one in the left arm had to be changed.

This perfusion will last for 24 hours, so I’m told. It’s already had me flat out on my back for several hours. But just now I’ve had to have one of these sodium sulphide drinks so I’ll be out of my head for the next few hours.

Either I’ll be dead to the world in a few minutes and we’ll have a blank page, or else you’ll be in for the most exciting dreams of your life.

Watch this space.

Thursday 23rd November 2023 – HAVING SAID …

… the other day that I was thinking about getting up before the alarm went off, I actually managed to make it out of bed this morning before the alarm went off.

A few months ago I went through a phase of early rising, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but just recently it’s been just a distant memory.

Mind you, at one point I didn’t think that I’d ever go to sleep, never mind awaken. For several hours starting shortly after going to be I was wracked by attacks of cramp, one after another after another.

But something must have awoken me this morning and I’ve no idea what it was but I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. So I spend 15 or 20 minutes doing some exercises in bed with the elastic strap with which I sleep, wrapped round my ankles, and then I raised myself from the dead.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphone. And considering that it was a short night, it was quite a lively one. There were some huge problems about confrontations between the Government, the University and the Students’ Association. The Students Union magazine that was sent round for that month had dozens and dozens of cases in it where students claimed that they had been provoked by the Government or University into a whole variety of things. As members of the Executive Committee we had to sit and examine these cases. I was on my way to a meeting, walking through a street where all these ragged children were playing around telling each other jokes etc. When they were running around they were leaving their shoes all over the place. I had a couple of particular pairs of shoes that I’d encountered and had been playing football with them up and down the street as I was walking. One of the kids noticed and began to chase after me, making a few remarks. I was distracted because there was another instance taking place right before my eyes of the goings-on between the Government, the University and one of the students. I was in a hurry to go along and actually witness it first-hand so I couldn’t stop and sort out this boy’s shoes for him.

And that brought back a few memories from the time that the Minister of Education was invited by the University to address the student body, and being forewarned by one of our “moles on various committees” we laid an ambush with STRAWBERRY MOOSE and the Minister fled. Such was Strawberry Moose’s fame in those days.

But of course, Strawberry Moose had the final say, as you might expect.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bedroom I was going off by road to the far north of Canada. We set off in a big double-decker express coach. I had my huge suitcase with STRAWBERRY MOOSE in it. I handed it to the driver, boarded and found a seat. There were a few other people sitting near me and we had a chat every now and again but I spent a lot of time dozing off. We eventually pulled into a service area with a restaurant etc where we had to alight because this was where our different buses came in to take us further on our way. I alighted from the back along with these other people whom I’d met. The driver began to take the cases out of the coach. We were checking times with each other and discussing our plans etc. One of the girls with us asked where the restaurant was. I said “it’s behind you” … "ohh no it isn’t" – ed … so she turned round. Of course by this time the bus had gone so you could actually see the service area. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have my case and the bus has gone. It’s dark and I could hardly see anything on this motorway service area. I certainly can’t remember my case being taken off the bus and now he’s disappeared.

And later I was with a girl who might have been Roxanne. She wanted to know if she could borrow my big Bosch hammer drill to drill a hole through a piece of wood. We had a look at the wood and saw how thick it was. We ended up having to tape a couple of drill bits together. I put them in the drill and was busy giving her a lesson on how to drill wood and how to drill deep lengths etc.

Nerina and I had had some friends round at one point – another couple. We were chatting away and it was becoming quite late. I said something to Nerina about going to bed. It caught her unawares and she sked me exactly what I meant. I explained that I was having to go to the bathroom so if she was planning on going to bed at some point in the near future I’d switch on her electric blanket for her so that her bed would be nice and warm. I switched it on and the evening carried on. I wandered off to do something. later on I went upstairs and she was there in bed with the bedclothes thrown back. I asked if the bed was warm enough. She replied that it was too warm. I asked why she hadn’t switched off the electric blanket but she didn’t say very much. We ended up having a lengthy discussion about Christmas and birthday presents.

Later on there were 3 of us. We were having a virtual tour on the internet of Yeovil, getting into a virtual car and on one of these map sites having a street view out of the town. We decided that it looked fairly sophisticated so we found another way back into the city. I went a strange way because I said that it’s one way of seeing what’s in people’s gardens. We came across a nouse where behind a tarpaulin were dozens and dozens of police motorbikes all with white fairings. They were a model that I hadn’t seen before so I imagined that they had been imported from somewhere obscure and were slowly being prepared for sale. This visual programme was incredible. We ended up on the very top of a hill really high up looking over this really beautiful valley with a river and viaduct in the distance etc. We climbed out of the car to look and the car just accelerated away on its own down the hill. I could feel the wind whistling through my hair as Nerina, this other guy, another couple of people and I stood there watching it. All 5 of us seemed to go at the same time. The woman of this other couple completely forgot who she was with and took my hand as we walked away which of course had everyone bursting out into laughter.

The last time that I was in Yeovil was with Sue from Swindon. I moved her from Brussels when I had my Luton Transit and we saw each other a few times after that if I happened to be in the UK. We celebrated the Solstice together at Avebury one year but like most things involving the UK it petered out.

Thinking about it, I was in the UK for half a day in 2013 to pick up a lorry-load of slates to deliver to the South of France and Rosemary and I went in Aberdeen in 2019 to pick up THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR instead of flying to Greenland to meet it there, and they are the only times that I’ve been in the UK since 2011. And, to be quite honest, I’ve no intention of ever returning.

Having finished the dictaphone notes I carried on with the radio programme and that’s now finished and up and running, ready for broadcast on … errr … 5th July next year.

In between all of that, I had my coffee and bread-and-butter pudding and phoned the garage to talk about Caliburn and his controle technique. He actually has a vacancy and he’ll send someone round “shortly” to pick him up. And Caliburn will soon be 17 too.

The lift engineer who came to chat with me was a woman – not that that’s a surprise in itself these days – but I wouldn’t go doing any lift engineering in the clothes that she was wearing. And she was wearing enough perfume to pole-axe a bactrian camel. It reminded me of the story about the guy spreading white powder outside his front gate and his neighbout asked him why.
"It’s to keep Polar Bears off my cabbages" he replied.
"But there are no Polar bears within 5,000 miles of this place"
"Powerful stuff, isn’t it?"

This afternoon I’ve been sorting out more of my Canada 2022 photos and I’m now about to board my train in Moncton ready to travel back to Montréal. And what a journey that was.

As well as that I’ve been going through one of the backup drives checking duplicates and disposing of yet more.

Tea tonight was steamed veg and veggie balls in vegan cheese sauce, delicious as usual. Tomorrow’s tea with have to be sausage and beans, not salad, as I’m not going shopping in the morning. At some point the garage might come by for Caliburn and I’ll probably be out at the shops or something so I’ll stay at home and wait, which will mean that he won’t come.

But I’ve plenty of other things that will keep me out of mischief. At some point I’m even going to soak my fruit ready for Christmas baking and that’s the kind of thing that will be exciting.

My first ever Christmas cake a couple of years ago, coached on the internet by Hannah from Batley, was a resounding success but I put that down to beginner’s luck. And in any case Hannah is no longer in our Welsh group so I’ll be on my own for this one.

But I learnt a lot last time. Here’s hoping that I can remember it.

Saturday 18th November 2023 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days where I haven’t really accomplished all that much.

Not that I can complain too much though. I accomplished everything that I intended to do, and with plenty of time to spare as well. And that’s not something that happens every day.

For once I was awake a long time before the alarm went off and had I really pushed myself I could have been up and about as well. But let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves.

After the medication and checking the mails I had a very slow start to the day and it wasn’t until I’d had my mid-morning coffee and soup that I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a wedding taking place amongst the family. We were all assembled staying somewhere in a house for the night. Tea was pretty rudimentary so we all had tea in our room, a kind-of bedroom with about 12 beds in it and rubbish and mess everywhere. It really was untidy – much more untidy than anything I could ever come up with. While I was serving out the tea a cat came in. I offered it some of the tea but it promptly threw up everywhere which put a lot of people off their meal. I cleaned it up then we sat down to eat as best as we could amongst the debris and mess. Then I collected up the dishes to take into the kitchen to wash. My brother in law was there. His part of the room was the worst of all. He was saying “just take this for me – just take that for me – go and pick this up – go and pick that up” so I exploded at him and told him “instead of standing there giving orders if he went and did the jobs himself he’d find that it would probably be done a lot quicker” and stormed out of the room into the kitchen where I bumped into my mother. She asked what was going on so I explained that I’d just upset her son in law to which she made a remark to him too. I put the dishes down on the table.

Actually, to give you some idea, that particular member of my family actually tried to provoke me into a fight with him – at a family funeral in 2000, would you believe?

50 years or so ago another member of my family was marrying. I was living in the ground floor apartment of this building at the time. I remember having to look out of the window at something that was going on outside but I really can’t remember what it was. I had things to do to prepare myself for this event. Someone whom I knew but had forgotten now made some kind of derogatory remark about my appearance. I reminded them that I could probably give them 50 years in age and the idea of what is smart is set by convention rather than by just one person’s idea

And that’s nothing new either.

Everyone in the house was asleep. I was doing the accounts for the taxis. Roxanne was awake and came to see what I was doing. We had a chat while we were doing that. When we finished I suggested that we go downstairs and so something. She ran over to her slippers but instead she took her heavy clog-type shoes that were by the door by where her parents were sleeping. I told her to put on her slippers but she said that she might be going out. I told her to pick them up and bring them with her but she said that she wasn’t allowed bare feet in the house. She began to put on her clogs but made a noise so I told her to be quiet or she’d awaken her parents. She said that I’d awaken her parents by making a noise to her and that’s what always happens. I didn’t really explain to her that what was actually awakening them was the noise of her putting on her clogs, not me telling her off about it. She put her clogs on and went dancing off down the corridor and luckily her parents didn’t actually awaken at that moment.

Yes, Roxanne was a lovely, happy child. When she was 9 years old she and I were sitting outside a café in Ixelles while Laurence had gone to the shops. Roxanne was sitting next to me drawing a picture and we were talking about what she was doing. One woman sitting at the next table said to her friend, in one of these stage whispers “you can see whose daughter she is” and I’ll never forget the big beaming smile on Roxanne’s face.

When she was 6 I taught her to ride a bike and to swim and by the time she was 9 she was riding my Honda scooter up and down the street and steering the car (sitting on my knee of course) down the country lanes around Virlet.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, while I was out walking last night something came along and hacked all my dwarf or gnome followers into bits. When I returned it was like a huge jigsaw puzzle and I had to spend hours slowly matching up the bits to remake the bodies. Eventually I began to make one or two correctly and even one or two of their house animals correctly. It was taking a very long time but I could see that I was going to be able to solve this and end up with all of my dwarves and gnomes reassembled.

My father asked me to drive over to the Shetland islands for a job that he had lined up for me. Full of mystery and suspense I set off. I eventually arrived. It turned out that one of his friends who lived on this particular island had had the opportunity to sponsor a lamp post outside his house and wanted to talk about it to someone. All this sounded extremely vague to me and the directions that my father gave me to the guy’s house weren’t of any help but he produced a couple of photos and that at least gave me some kind of idea where the house might be situated. I set off and eventually found it. It was a house in a dip with a great big street light right by it that was shining over the dip so it was really as if the house was completely floodlit. The old guy had the idea that he would sponsor it as a form of advertising. We had a lengthy discussion about the Shetland Islands, the Faroes, etc and even touched on the islands in the Arctic archipelago – strangely enough, ones of which I’d dreamt, not ones that actually exist. In the end her persuaded me to go to see his neighbour, an elderly Colonel. I went off to see him. He was completely bewildered. I explained that it’s certainly the aim of several counties in the UK to have their street furniture sponsored as a way of raising money and a way for people to advertise themselves or their possessions etc. He thought it rather strange which it probably was. he showed me around his house which was full of all kinds of different things, hardly anywhere spare of clutter on the floor or walls etc but it was all neatly arranged. After this guy left me alone for half an hour I began to sit and wonder that this was probably the strangest thing in which I’ve ever been involved. If this Colonel guy has to start moving around all his things for any particular reason we’ll be here for ever organising it. I just wondered what was going through this old man’s mind.

I went into a pub in Crewe for a drink – something that I haven’t done in years. I found to my surprise that I’d been barred. I had absolutely no idea why. It must be 40 years since I last had a beer. The next day I was at work. There was a kind-of complex confrontation going on about my timesheets. At one stage my manager took my phone and began to scroll through it. I asked him if he had a search warrant which made him immediately drop it so I immediately went onto the offensive and we had the most amazing row. I left and decided that I’d go to another pub to see if I could have a drink there. I asked for half a pint of mild but she served me half a pint of milk. We laughed about that and she gave me a drink. I began to drink it. As I was leaving I overheard a couple of conversations. One was a barman talking to one of the girls sitting at the bar. There was definitely something not correct about that conversation. He was trying to persuade her to do something and I could tell that she wasn’t all that keen at all. The other one was some people discussing councillors. A guy came in and began to talk about the building work taking place next door. Some guy had had several thousand pounds to do some digging there but as soon as he had received the money he dismissed the contractors and had the gipsies in to do it for cash. They were discussing the guy and how crooked he was. It was someone whom I actually knew so I stayed to listen to the conversation. As it happened, the guy was a Conservative Councillor so as I left I asked “what was that you were saying about councillors earlier?”. There was still a few minutes left before my bus so I thought that I’d walk through the shopping precinct off Victoria Street. I’d heard some depressing stories about it. They were right. all of the buildings were flaking, the paint was coming off, many were closed and areas of the precinct were in complete darkness as the street lights weren’t working. It looked like something from Chernobyl. I thought that I’d walk around for a while then go back to the bus station to catch my bus home.

Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration. The last time I had an alcoholic drink was in 1994. We’d been skiing up in the mountains on the border between Bulgaria and Greece and the fog came down. When we finally arrived at the gondola to take us back down to the valley it was all locked up and everyone had gone home.

We had to pick our way down the mountain on skis, completely off-piste and when we eventually reached the valley the only place open to relax was a bar and all that it had was beer.

That was the year that there was an oil embargo on Serbia and a friend (who figures occasionally in these pages although not as much as she did a good while ago and for the benefit of regular readers of this rubbish, didn’t feature in these pages anything as often as she deserved) and I were standing on a railway bridge over the main railway line from Thessaloniki watching oil train after oil train after oil train heading north.

Greece’s imports of oil tripled during that period.

Claire came on line too and we had a chat for a while. She’s been seriously ill for the last three or four weeks with something that has compounded her underlying health problems but she’s slowly feeling better and in a couple of weeks she might be up and about.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … we’re all pretty much of a similar age and we are all growing old and infirm together.

Something else that I did was to finish off all the notes for the radio programme that I’ve been preparing. I’ll dictate that tonight before I go to bed.

Much of the rest of the time has been spent trying to bring order into chaos and tidying up some of the directories. That’s an ongoing process what with having to merge 30 years-worth of hard drives together and it won’t be finished any time soon either.

There was time to have a good play on the guitars too. A couple of songs that bring back memories of those 3 missing nights in the High Arctic were of course THE FIRST SONG THAT WE SANG TOGETHER.

This was also ANOTHER ONE that we worked on together on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR

There were plenty of others too so I’m going to restart my playlist. I even managed to find time to work on the bass lines for WIND UP and, of course, not to mention the track WITH THE GREATEST OPENING 1:20 EVER

Anyway, that’s enough nostalgia for now. I can’t see me ever playing in public again if I can’t ever hold a guitar and I can’t stand up And sitting here with a guitar on my knee means that I can’t sing.

And even if I could sing sitting down with a guitar on my knee, I no longer have the breathing to do it.

What kind of state am I in?

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with salad and backed potato, delicious as usual. And now I’m going to dictate the radio notes and go to bed.

Tomorrow I have pizza dough to make and I intend to attack the bread and butter pudding to see what damage I can do to that so a good lie-in will do me good.

But we’ll have to see about that. It would be nice if some nice people came to visit me rather than the endless stream of relatives who keep turning up.

Even The Vanilla Queen coming along TO HAUNT ME IN MY DREAMS would be a great improvement. I wonder how things are these days on Baffin Island.

Tuesday 7th November 2023 – I HAD PLENTY …

… of time to recover from my exertions this afternoon at the Centre de Re-education. The vehicle that came to pick me up was 90 minutes late.

What I expect actually happened was that the vehicle that should have come for me picked up someone else because there was a driver from another ambulance company wandering around for ages trying to find her passenger.

And it’s just as well too because after the night that I’d had, I needed a good rest, although I doubted if I would be so lucky as to have one.

It was another one of these extremely mobile nights where there was a lot going on here and there. Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone as I was to discover later, and I was sure that there was much more to it than that which I recorded too.

Anyway, when the alarm went off I staggered to my feet and went off in search of my medication.

Back in here afterwards I did the very final version of this important letter that I have to write, and then I had to print off the details of my medication to take to the Centre this afternoon.

Surprisingly, there are 14 medicaments on the list, but I’m actually only taking 10. I know about 2 that I’ve stopped taking, but I’m quite curious about the others.

It’s not easy to double-check either as the prescriptions are in Flemish and the trade names of medication in Belgium are quite often different here in France. It’s pretty much some kind of inspired guesswork to fathom in out.

For example, there’s a product that I have to take that contains “Natrium”, which is unknown in France. However, the chemical formula Na refers to sodium and once you realise that, you can work it out. My ‘O’ Level Latin didn’t go to waste. But if only all of it was so easy.

After that I prepared for my Welsh lesson. I took my time at it too but regrettably I crashed out while doing so. The strain of last night was obviously far too much.

In between all of that I was having a chat on the internet with Alison and with Claire. It’s totally bizarre but everyone whom I know seems right now to be ill.

However, that’s not really all that much of a surprise. We’re all pretty much of a similar age and it’s catching up with all of us.

It reminds me of 5 years ago when I was in Liège and met a guy with whom I went to school years ago and who now lives in Munich. We were in a restaurant eating a meal, surrounded by tables with all these cute young girls sitting there eating, and we were talking about our medication.

That was when I finally decided that I was getting old. Prior to that, I always understood that someone who was old was someone 10 years older than me, no matter what age I actually was.

But kids have a habit of deflating your ego. I remember when I started to see Laurence 25 or so years ago and she brought her daughter Roxanne along with her. We were playing guessing games.
"Guess how old I am" I asked six year old Roxanne
"A hundred" she replied, without even drawing breath.

Much of the Welsh lesson passed quite well and I was quite pleased with that, but not so the rest of it.

We usually stop for 10-15 minutes for a coffee break after a couple of hours and so I went for a strip-down wash, seeing as I’m still quite wary about going into the bath for a shower.

And have you any idea how long it takes me to put on clean socks? I am really having the most extraordinary difficulty in performing even the most simple of tasks these days.

The car came for me bang on time and so I struggled down the stairs and outside, and we set off for the Centre de Re-education.

It’s a fantastic place, formerly one of the biggest and most luxurious hotels in the Baie de Granville.

It was requisitioned by the Germans in 1940 and after the Americans captured the town in 1944 it was badly damaged during the infamous German raid from the Channel Islands in the early Spring of 1945 when a detachment of German troops landed in the town and stole a freighter laden with coal from right under the noses of the Americans.

After that it was left semi-derelict until it was converted and it is probably one of the most impressive places that I’ve visited.

As it happens I actually know one of the girls who works here. She was one of the physiotherapists who worked on me in the days when I could walk and used to go twice a week to that centre by the station.

But anyway, a young girl gave my legs a workout and spent some time searching around for damaged nerve ends and the like. And I have to say that she can massage my clavicles any time she likes. There have to be some benefits of being ill.

The next session was a series of “time trials”. They have a kind-of obstacle course and the equivalent of a “measured mile” and I had to negotiate all of it against the clock.

And then I had to wait.

But I now have my programme for the next couple of weeks and it includes a chat with a social worker and also a representative of that body about which I’ve talked previously that it concerned with autonomy and keeping people in their homes as long as possible.

Strangely enough, climbing back up the stairs to here was probably the easiest that it has been for a couple of weeks. It’s probably just a coincidence or maybe even wishful thinking, or maybe it’s that the trousers into which I changed earlier today aren’t as tight as the previous ones.

On the way up I bumped into one of my neighbours, and I was glad to see him. He’s also disabled and has had his car converted to hand controls. I wanted to pick his brains about where he had it done.

After my hot chocolate and biscuits I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was being interviewed by someone who was wearing some kind of badge that wasn’t the usual badge that I would have expected someone in that position to have been wearing. Just as the interview began and before I could ask too many questions about it I had a falling sensation again in bed and awoke with a frightful start.

It was exactly the sensation that I have when my right leg gives out and I cascade to the floor, and it was really strange that I had exactly the same feeling when I was lying horizontally in bed. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there aren’t ‘arf some strange things that go on during the night that have been brought to … errr … light during this project.

And then I’d had a whole pile of homework to do – an enormous amount of it. It was all in various textbooks and on line. I needed to make a start on it but as usual there were all these different distractions etc that were preventing me until I finally managed to sit down at the computer and open one of the workbooks. There was something else happening in this dream about moving around in Shavington and something yet again about a group of us children being divided up into 2 teams by some kind of teacher for a game of rounders. Where that all fitted in I really don’t know but I do remember quite a lot about this trying to sit down and make a start on all of this homework that I had to do.

Later on I’d been out to do some shopping. I was back home in my apartment trying to sort it out and put it away. There were some things that were confusing and I didn’t know exactly where to put them. There was also some flour that i’d bought to make some kind of fruit bread so I threw the flour across to one particular pile on the table but it didn’t arrive. I thought that I must have miscalculated the weight and while it was in the air it must have fallen to the floor. I had a good look round but couldn’t see anything at all around that related to the food that I’d just bought.

Back with this dream about shopping again. I was trying to put everything on the correct shelves but there was so much that needed to be sorted out, things that I hadn’t actually bought before but there was no room for it. I had to start to shuffle everything around and squeeze things up in order to make more room to spread out and sort out my shopping that I’d just received.

And with the manoeuvres of just now, when I’d organised my things I fell over onto the ground but no-one noticed. Once I’d caught my breath I put my hands up to the table to try to raise myself up but at that moment a woman who happened to catch sight of me and hadn’t realised what was going on let out a great yell. She was really shocked. And interestingly, this was something that I dictated in French by the way.

Finally there was another one of these Government safety reports published during the night that laid bare a lot of the failings of the Government with regard to security breaches etc. Most importantly it continued on to say how the Government was trying very hard to shift the blame onto the ordinary people. Of course it wasn’t the people who were talking indiscreetly and the people don’t know any of the secrets anyway. If the people did know any secrets the fact would be that it would have been from leaks in the Government security system that those leaks had come into the public domain. A couple of journalists were tearing quite savagely into the Government last night with this report that they had published.

Later on I wrote out a few more notes for the radio programme on which I’m working, and had a chat on line with my cleaner. We need to change her hours around, what with me having to go out tomorrow afternoon.

And I’m having a visit on Friday afternoon too. I wonder what that’s all about.

Tea tonight was a taco roll made with some of the stuffing left over from Monday, with rice and veg. Tomorrow I’ll have another leftover curry and naan bread.

But let’s see how things go tomorrow down the road. The hard work is going to begin and as long as they can make some progress – or, at least, retard the deterioration – I’ll be happy. But with the Social Services and APA being involved, things are starting to happen.

And that can only be a good thing.

EPIC HALL

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