… to have yet another very late night. I’m not sure why but to cook and eat my tea and to clean up afterwards has taken me two and a half hours. I’ve no idea what I was doing for most of that time but then unkind people say that I have no idea what I’m doing at the best of times.
But if I’ve been unconsciously relaxing this evening, it’s no surprise, and I deserve it because I’ve been hard at it all day. I have accomplished a lot of work today too.
It all started last night. When I’d finished my notes and was preparing for bed, I noticed how quiet it was outside in the street. Not many caravanettes down on their parking ground down the road near the lighthouse, I reckon. So seizing the moment, I grabbed hold of the ZOOM H8 and re-dictated the notes that were all messed up on Saturday. That’s one job less to do.
Eventually I made it into bed, much later than I anticipated but never mind. Once I was in there, that was it. I was away with the fairies almost straight away and I’ve no idea if the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine was there, observing and taking notes. If so I wish that she would tell me how I did.
When the alarm went off I was dead to the World and what a struggle it was to rise up to my feet and head into the bathroom. But I had a good wash and scrub up before going into the kitchen to take my medicine for the morning.
Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out how I did during the night and to see if there had been any call for the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine to be concerned. But unfortunately not. There had been some kind of crisis and the local speedway team had been evicted from its home ground by the local council. They were wondering what to do as they had a match arranged. I was on my way to the bar where everyone met. I was walking down a road that I recognised as the main London road in Church Lawton. I walked past this semi-derelict motel. I noticed that the road that went from the office up through the cabins to the far end was actually divided off by a line. Obviously they had had two different loads of concrete. One had set before they had put the other down so they had a line that went right across the road that went between the cabins. I had a good look at that. Then I went into the bar. Everyone was there and the riders were there in their leathers, all wondering what to do about it so I told them about this concrete and the line that went across it and said quite simply “why don’t you go to race up there between the cabins? You could use the line as your starting point. You’ll all finish at the hedge but it would work. I reckon that the Council would give you back your ground in five minutes if they knew where it was that you were going to perform. Everyone left the bar and went to look at this concrete road and the line that I’d mentioned. I was sitting there thinking “I do hope that it was there and not a figment of my imagination with all of these people going to look at it”.
It was however quite impressive that I could say in a dream that the road looked like the main London Road in Church Lawton. The only problem though is that it didn’t. It resembled that run-down motel in which I stayed near Myrtle Beach in 2005 when I was awoken by the sound of a couple of South Carolina’s finest dragging someone out of a nearby cabin. And you certainly wouldn’t find a semi-derelict, run-down motel anywhere near Church Lawton. A speedway race taking place in a straight line would be interesting too. You wouldn’t make four laps out of that.
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about the speedway. Crewe had its own team for a while during the speedway boom of the late 60s and early 70s, and I used to go on Friday nights with a friend on his motor bike to Wolverhampton to see the Wolves. And of course, when I lived in that squat out in the sticks I was within walking distance of the Hatherton moto-cross field where we’d see people like Arthur Lampkin, Dave Bickers and Vic Eastwood doing their stuff through the swamp
The nurse was early again. He’s told me that this blood test that I have to have forty-eight hours before I go back to Paris, whenever that might be, I can have it done at the Dialysis Centre.
"What happens if it’s not forty-eight hours but 24, or 72 hours before I go?" I asked.
"It makes no difference" he said. "They can do it and it will be OK"
He’s absolutely flatly refusing to carry out any blood tests now. No wonder he’s so early and his oppo is so late when she comes. She’s the one who has to do all the blood tests.
So after he had finished asking me all kinds of stupid questions he left and I could go to make breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.
We have finally made it into the meat of the book and we’ve begun to discuss “promontory forts”.
These are Neolithic or Iron-Age fortresses at the end of peninsulae or promontories where there is just a fortification on one side – the other three are protected by sharp inclines that no army could reasonably climb.
He’s commented in general on forts of this era. Chalk uplands are a favourite location in which to find them and there’s plenty of evidence of primitive field-systems hard by. Today though, these areas are fairly dry and barren and so he conjectures that the climate was damper in those days and the water table was higher, leading to a better environment in which more produce would grow.
That’s as maybe, and he could well be correct, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall from 2019 when we visited all of the old US forts in “Indian Territory” in North-West USA that the soldiers would rather gather crops and wood etc closer to the fort, even if they were of lesser quality, rather than venture further from the fort and from the protection that it offered in order to gather better-quality stuff further away. The promontory forts and other forts of the same era are (in my opinion) a sign of a hostile environment, regardless of whatever modern thought may say, and maybe the same considerations applied with the Neolithic and Iron-Age inhabitant – “produce whatever we can as close to the fort as possible”.
After breakfast I edited the notes that I’d dictated last night. And then I had to prepare the programme.
It ended up being a massive 01:16 over the one-hour spot so it was necessary to engage in some ruthless editing. But now it’s all done and I have my one-hour programme for the end of October. It’s a good one too.
Having put that one to bed, I began to tackle the next. So how to reduce eighty-seven minutes of music to about 57 minutes, to allow time for some introductory speech.
Several tracks were ruthlessly axed, some applause was edited out and I even swapped some of the running order around because it sounded much better in a different order.
So now I have a fairly decent live concert that lasts for 57:59, meaning that I need just two minutes and one second of speech. My note-tab is configured to three hundred characters per line and my speech is three hundred characters per seventeen seconds, so I need just over seven lines of speech.
By the time that I’d finished, I had five and a half lines of speech. I could have finished it but there were several interruptions throughout the day.
Firstly the taxi came for me again. Trying to convince them that the Wednesday trip the other week was just a one-off is difficult. I felt sorry for the driver but I rang up the taxi office to remind them not to send anyone on a Wednesday and to remember to send someone for me on a Thursday.
Lunch was next and I was caught in flagrante delicto once more by the cleaner who came to do her stuff.
She also stood and watched as I climbed into (and out of) the bath to have my shower. It was a lovely sensation and I’m all nice and clean, but I can’t wait to be in the apartment downstairs, smash it all about and have a walk-in shower instead
With having finished the Christmas Cake yesterday it was back to the crackers and hummus. But of course, no chocolate drink. My mid-afternoon drink is now this horrible protein stuff. I suppose that I have to drink it and like it.
Tea tonight was a leftover curry with the nicest naan that I have ever made. The curry was delicious too, as was the apple cake with chocolate soya dessert. No idea what I’m going to make for tomorrow though. I shall have to have a think.
Tomorrow is another day, though. Right now I’m off to bed.
But seeing as we have been talking about the moto-cross at Hatherton, I went there once on my old Suzuki M12 with my brother on the pillion. We were late for the start and so we were travelling at a somewhat-excessive speed.
Going down the bank at Wybunbury we were stopped by a police radar trap
"Going rather fast, aren’t we?" asked the policeman. "That’s what I call a dangerous speed"
"Have no fear" I replied. "The Lord is with us."
"In that case" said the policeman "I’m going to have to book you. Three up on a motorcycle is not allowed."