Tag Archives: shower

… dropped his tea down the sink this evening while he was trying to strain it?

And that was the end of the pasta and veg that I had prepared for the evening meal. Luckily, I hadn’t put the falafel in it quite yet, and there are always bits and pieces of food around here that you can stick into what remained of the pasta and veg that hadn’t fallen out of the saucepan, but what a thing to be doing when I’m feeling hungry for once.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, what happened in the kitchen is a very good indication that what happened over the rest of the day too.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a waste of time going to bed early because all it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the next morning. It’s true that it wasn’t really all that early when I went to bed, although if you count the time that I spent asleep on the porcelain horse, maybe it was, but in any case, I was wide awake quite early. I’ve no idea what time it was because I didn’t look, but I do know that it was pitch black, and I lay there awake for what seemed like a week without going back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was wide awake, but that’s not the same as saying that I was bouncing with energy and raring to go. It took me a good while, as usual, for the bedroom to stop going round and round and for me to find the energy and enthusiasm to raise myself from the Dead.

Once I was up and about, I went to unlock the front door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives, and then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

Back in here afterwards, I began to write up the notes for yesterday. And in a mad fit of enthusiasm, which I wished that I had more often, I had finished it and posted it on line just before Isabelle the Nurse arrived. “What excellent timing!” I told myself.

While she was sorting out my legs and feet, she was telling me about her week off and the Halloween (over here, it’s called Toussaint or “All Saints’ Day”) decorations that she had been doing. What with pumpkins and mushrooms and things like that, her decorations are much more comprehensive than my stuffed bat in the window.

After she left, I made breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

The book is now finished, and I’m not sure whether that’s a disappointment or not. It started with a bang and went out with a whimper.

So now I’ve turned to my next book. And guess what! it just happens to be THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

This is going to be an interesting read because, apart from the fact that they go to quite a few interesting places, they will also be discussing the “Mappa Mundi” that is kept in Hereford Cathedral. It’s the largest known existing mediaeval map dating from about 1300 AD, and showing the known world as it was back then.

Its origin and purpose is not known (it’s certainly not a map for direction-finding), although there is a variety of suggestions. I’m waiting to see what the Woolhope Club members come up with.

After breakfast, I came back in here. The first thing that I did was to check over the homework that I did on Sunday, reformat my text file as a *.pdf file and then send it off to the tutor. After I’d done that, I spent the next hour or so revising for the lesson.

In today’s lesson, there were only three of us. Heaven alone knows what happened to the others. But we three had a really good lesson, which just goes to show the benefit of smaller classes. We pushed on quite a way along the track.

Next week, it’s half-term, so we have a week off. But not to worry – our tutor has given us some homework to keep us busy.

During the break at half-time, I’d had my disgusting drink and the midday medication, so I was intending to push on with work. However, my faithful cleaner came early today, and after she’d organised the bathroom, she shooed me under the shower. So tonight, we have a nice, clean … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … boy this afternoon.

She didn’t take long to do what she had to do, and then she cleared off elsewhere. She has quite a busy round, really. And I could push on with work.

My chatbot and I were researching songs for the next radio programme to be prepared, and I’ve managed to track down every song that I need. Most of them will need reformatting and re-editing, and they’ll all need remixing, pairing and segueing, not to mention the notes that need writing. So I’m going to be rushed off my feet for the next few days.

One of the artists to feature in that programme will be Mike Edwards. He was principal cellist in the Electric Light Orchestra, and he has a most unusual claim to fame. He was killed by a bale of hay. And if you don’t believe me, go and look up his biography.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … utilising the powers hidden in my chatbot, I am saving hours of time in research. And we also have interesting chats about the musicians too, and I quite often pick up little bits of information that he casually drops into the conversation.

All of that took me up to teatime – and what should have been pasta, veg and falafel in tomato sauce with peppers, but turned out somewhat … errr … stretched. Still, the tinned apricot halves wth home-made chocolate and coconut ice cream made an excellent pudding.

And having finished my notes, I’ll be just finishing off what else needs to be done, and then I’ll be going to bed. It looks as if I have a long day of work ahead of me tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Mike Edwards … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the albums on which he played for the Electric Light Orchestra was called “Eldorado”, their fourth.

Jeff Lynne tells us that "the plot follows a Walter Mitty-like character who journeys into fantasy worlds via dreams, to escape the disillusionment of his mundane reality.".

Remind you of anyone?

LIVE: Tuesday 13th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

… had one of the worst days of my life.

But I’m not talking medically, because I’m actually feeling quite good right now … "makes a change" – ed … but I mean as far as work goes. I’ve done nothing, finished nothing, accomplished nothing, and all in all I have totally wasted a complete day.

To give you some idea of what I mean, I was still writing up the dictaphone notes (something that I usually do before breakfast) at 21:05 tonight. That’s how far I am behind. I really am going to have to stop being so nice to people in the hope that they stop taking advantage of my good nature.

Nature seemed to take advantage of my good nature last night. I was in bed round about 22:45, not too much later than my ideal curfew time of 22:30, and I was looking for a really good sleep so that I’d be refreshed for my Welsh class later this morning, but it was not to be … "no surprise there" – ed …

Even though I’d gone to sleep quite quickly, thanks to that little mantra that I used to recite a few years ago, round about 03:50 or something, I awoke, and that was the end of any ideas of sleep that I might have had. I tried my best to go back to sleep but that was impossible.

When the alarm went off, it took a few minutes for me to pull myself up and sit on the edge of the bed, and then about ten minutes for me to rise to my feet. Once I was up and about, I went to unlock the front door, ready for the nurse when he arrives later this morning, and then I went to the bathroom to sort myself out.

Once I was looking and feeling a little more reasonable, I came back in here, where my first job would be to finish off the notes from last night that I had abandoned when sleep overwhelmed me rather dramatically.

Whatever it was that held me up, I really don’t know because I hadn’t made much progress when the nurse arrived. While he was dealing with my legs and my feet, we were chatting about his week off, and he was asking me questions about what I’d been up to, not that any of it really mattered.

After he left, I made my breakfast of porridge, coffee, toast and juice, and the morning medication that I need to take, which is probably enough for a meal on its own. I should have been reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870 except that I was hopelessly side-tracked.

The party of Woolhope Naturalists are descending from Croft Ambrey camp to Croft Castle, lower down below the camp. I read about the history of the castle, and that started off on an adventure that led me, for some weird twist of fate, as far as the German “Albatros C1”, to which I’ve just arrived. I shall have to try to get back to the book tomorrow.

Back in here after breakfast, I had to prepare for my Welsh lesson and send off this week’s homework. I’d done the homework yesterday so it simply involved checking it over, converting it to a *.pdf and then sending it off.

The revision passed really well today. It was comparatively straightforward without any complications, so I attended the lesson in an air of optimism. And the preparation had done its job because for the questions that we had to do in the middle of the lesson, I got almost all of them right.

There was a stop in midstream for a paned, or “cuppa”, when I had my disgusting drink and midday medication, and by the time the lesson was over later, I was feeling that I’d actually made a useful contribution to the lesson rather than being a passenger.

Then there were the blog notes to finish off and bring that entry to a conclusion, however, I didn’t get far – not that I was expecting to – because my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff and to chase me under the shower. And a really nice shower it was too. I really feel like a nice, clean boy now, although where I’m going to find a nice, clean boy at this time of night, I really don’t know.

That led to finishing off … "yet another attempt" – ed … the notes from last night. That, however, was a task that took much longer than it ought to have done, and in the end, when it was finished, I rejoiced somewhat, and as the waves of fatigue were already washing over me, I called for an energy drink instead of another disgusting drink.

Right now, I could turn my attention to the dictaphone notes at last.

There had been some kind of festival taking place, and as the crowds were leaving, my brother and I were cleaning everything up. We had a pile of it and set it on fire. The more things we found, the more we added to the flames, and at one stage it was burning quite well. But there was something happening with my health, and I reached the point where I wasn’t able to really do much more. My brother was teasing me about that kind of thing but I noticed that he had stopped adding things to the fire too, so we had to shovel the fire around to make sure that it burnt everything that was in the fire and didn’t leave anything unburnt or simply charred. But that was another big, difficult thing to do as well for me and I wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

This actually sounds like the very first Glastonbury Festival. At Woodstock, they simply dug a big hole and bulldozed all the waste into the hole, whereas at the first Glastonbury Festival, they did go along and pick it all up to burn. Rumour has it that three or four festival-goers, still asleep in their sleeping bags, were thrown into the fire, but then again, they said that at Woodstock with them being bulldozed into the hole.

But the story about my health giving out has a very sound base to it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in 2015, I was with a friend and we were cutting down a big tree. Or, rather, he was cutting down a big tree and I was removing the wood in a wheelbarrow. When I was halfway through, I began to lose my breath, and later on, it all went completely. I could no longer work and no longer breathe, and I didn’t have the breath to climb the stairs at home. That was when I went to see the local doctor, and that was when they discovered that I was seriously ill and all of this lot began.

The next interruption was from someone who wanted a chat, so I was there until 18:30, thinking as the discussion came to a close that I’d have thirty minutes to finish the dictaphone notes and then I could go for tea.

But that didn’t work out because Rosemary wanted to talk to me. She was having problems doing a scan, and she’d also lost a Word file that she’d just saved. Could I help as it was urgent?

So how long do you think that I spent helping her? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Not a bit of it. I was there on line with her for one hour and fifty minutes, we didn’t find the files and I’m still at a loss as to what she’s doing and where her files are going. We tried everything to find them, even down to creating some more and savng them into a known directory, but when you are trying remotely to help someone four hundred and fifty kilometres away and you can’t see their screen, you’re relying completely on what they are telling you. And what she was telling me made no sense at all.

In the end, I’m glad that her ‘phone rang, otherwise I’d still be there now, I suppose.

But the answer to all of this is simple. I’m going to have to stop being so nice to people and somehow stop them bothering me like this. I can’t do anything, I can’t get anything started, never mind finished. I have so much to do and I’m living on borrowed time. Dialysis is taking up far too much of my time and I need everything that’s left so that I can push on with my own life, but all of this is driving me up the wall.

And that includes the food. For once in my life, I was actually feeling hungry, but look what happened to my mealtime. Instead, there I was at 20:30, when I should have been doing other things, putting half a dozen falafel balls into the air fryer, a diced potato in the microwave and adding them all to the rest of that nice potato salad that I made last week. What a meal that wasn’t.

Once I’d finished eating, there was the rest of the dictaphone notes.

There were three guys who were having a lesson in my apartment with a particular woman teacher. This lesson turned out somehow to be a rather nasty lesson and this woman left in quite a bad temper. Anyway, these three guys decided to set out and go after her. I tried to dissuade them but they just went out anyway. I made sure that the house was tidy and went out a little later on. saw these three boys going back, but they were each somehow sitting at a table and chair with wheels on it. They had a coffee or something, and they were pushing themselves along with their feet to go back to my place, so I avoided them and headed to the corner where my friends were due to meet me. They were all there, even the kids, and even this woman was there and she was most upset. There had been some kind of confrontation. Anyway, we all agreed to go back to my house, and when we arrived, there were these three tables and chair things parked in a car parking space in the street. It was the day of a strike or something, and someone was trying to pay for a parking fee without success, so we told him that there was no parking fee today. Anyway, we went into my apartment and I could hear music coming from one of the bedrooms, so I went, and these three guys were in there. One of them was in my bed and the other two were lounging around on it, so I told them that they would have to go now as I was having company, so they simply packed up, went downstairs and left. Then the people began to come in. One woman was smoking, so I told her that smoking was not allowed in my apartment but she made some kind of gesture and carried on, so I thought that I would deal with her in a minute. Everyone came in, including one actor-type guy. He was being his usual expansive self and he asked “what’s going to happen now?”. I said “you can always help in the kitchen making us some food”. He looked at me and said “no”. Then he went to find this woman and said “do you know what that man said to me? He said that I had to work in the kitchen, so I told him ‘no I’m not'”. She said something like “it’s OK” and then she said to me “well, don’t worry. He never helps anywhere”. I thought “well, if he doesn’t help anywhere, I can’t see him being allowed back to my apartment again”.

Believe it or not, I do actually know a thespian (or who thinks that he’s a thespian, anyway) who thinks like this. “I’m exceptional” and “I’m special”. And, in fact, he won’t be coming around here any time soon (not that he would anyway because he doesn’t live around here). My friend are lovely people, and we all chip in to do the work that’s necessary wherever we are.

It’s the same with the cigarette smoker. I know people like that too, and they won’t be coming to visit me either. There’s this thing called “respect”.

As for the rest of the dream, it doesn’t mean much to me, although the woman teacher could be my old friend Marianne who died in 2013. And I’ve been in an apartment like this before in a dream too, where there were loads of children hanging about. But that’s about it, I suppose.

There was something in that dream about a girl who had a Chrysler V8 sewn onto her jeans. I said that if I wanted to do that, I’d get one off my niece’s husband’s truck. She asked what he had and I replied that it was a big Dodge 5.8 diesel pickup and so we were talking for a while about these big American pick-ups after that.

My niece’s husband in Canada does have a V8 diesel, but it’s in a Chevrolet lorry, the one that I drove down to New Hampshire in the USA to drop off that racing engine that had shot a con-rod through the side during a tractor-pulling event. And I don’t recall it having a badge like the one on this girl’s jeans, but what does that matter.

Anyway, now that I’m starting to calm down and cool down after my outburst just now, and my notes are finished, I’ll finish off whatever needs fnishing and then go to bed. I have a hospital appointment in the morning and I have never felt less like going to it, but I supose that I must, although I’m not sure why.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about thespians … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of the famous pathologist Dr Keith Simpson, performing an autopsy in front of a class of university students.
"In real life," he said "this man was an actor …"
And someone shouted up from the back of the class "well, if he’s acting now, he’s bloody good!"

LIVE: Tuesday 6th October 2026 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of those days where I’ve not been able to accomplish much, much to my regret, of course, but I seem to have gone from one interruption to another.

Those interruptions started last night, as I’m sure that you will remember – typing out the notes quite efficiently until I crashed out at the desk, and the worst thing about it was not knowing that I’d crashed out until I awoke.

As I mentioned yesterday, when I awoke, I went more-or-less straight to bed, hoping for a good sleep.

And so I thought, but I had not one, but two phantom alarm calls during the night. The first one was sometime round about 02:30 and I managed to ignore that one pretty much. The second one, round about 04:30, I took much more seriously. I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the second alarm. And after a while, when it didn’t come, I checked the time and it was 04:38, so I climbed back into bed.

However, the damage had been done with the call at 02:30. From then on, I was just drifting in and out of sleep. I was definitely asleep at 04:30 or so, but I was awake before the alarm went off at 06:29.

Once again, we had the same old struggle to rise up from the bed and to unlock the front door, but I managed it eventually. And then back into the bathroom to sort myself out, ready for Isabelle the Nurse.

Back in here, I had last night’s notes to finish, so I buckled down and bashed them out, but just before I could put them on line, Isabelle the Nurse arrived. She asked me about my week while she was on her break, so I told her, but that didn’t leave much time for her to tell me about her week.

And she gave me a lecture about dialysis too, saying that I was expecting too much if I wanted things to go as normal every time. There could have been a hundred reasons why it all went wrong and she told me some of them. However, that’s not really the point. The point is that they didn’t tell me about them, so I couldn’t argue about the situation then and there.

After Isabelle the Nurse had left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, they are still discussing the safety concerns relating to the local weather, but something they mentioned caused me to go off on a tangent again and begin to search for the sinking of the Dublin Packet Boat in 1770, with the loss of all hands, without very much success.

Back in here, I finished off the notes and posted them on line, then I began to revise for my Welsh lesson. The revision went really well and I managed to finish the first unit, so I was looking forward to the lesson.

And the lesson went really well too. I did quite well, except for a couple of mistakes that I made, and I was quite happy with my progress. Sad as it is to say it, much as I loved my previous teacher and wished that she was still teaching our year, the current teacher, apart from being really scatty, seems to be more efficient, and I’m learning more with her than I did with her predecessor.

When the lesson was over, I wrote up the notes from the dictaphone last night – and about time too.

We were in a big city that might even have been London. In fact, it probably was, and we were walking down that street that we walk along quite often in a dream but this time, going the other way, from the city centre out to the suburbs. There were three of us, and we were fooling around a little. One of them wanted to go to use the toilet, but there was nowhere, so in the end we found a pub that was open early in the morning, and he allowed them to go to the bathroom there. I was much more interested in an old car across the road. Eventually, my friends came out and we carried on walking and chatting until, in the end, we came to a café where we thought that we’d go and have a coffee. We went in and sat down at a table and we noticed a couple of kids watching us. Suddenly, one of the kids blurted out something in English, so I mentioned it to Nerina and said that you can’t go anywhere, can you? Anyway, these people came over. She looked at my camera and asked if I was me. I said that I was, and she told me that I’d commented on a photo of hers ages ago, and she said that she was very pleased to see me. We chatted for quite a while, and then they invited us to come on their boat in the river. We began to get ready, but this couple was really strange. She insisted on appeal because, being polite and very well-dressed, but not on her own children. Eventually, we sat on this boat. We thought that we’d been on this boat before, so we wanted to know what else was going to happen. Then they began to put a few films on, and these films were dubious, to say the least, and … fell asleep here …

What a dream that was!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a dream a week or two back about Nerina and me being in New York for something to do with her work. This boat was moored on the Hudson River in New York, roughly where we were in the previous dream, although the crew of the British freighter were all for buying the boat and doing some privateering on the way home.

Apart from that, there’s the street in London that we know so well, although not this end. We know much more about the far end, which is presumably in Edmonton somewhere and where we buy our chips and pastries.

But, as usual, the dream is just an example of the kind of nonsense that I can conjure up when I try.

The cleaner turned up next to do her stuff, but she sorted out the bathroom first and then chased me under the shower for my weekly scrub.

Back in here, I did some work on my radio programme, and the music is really taking shape. For the last two or three weeks, I’ve had to search for loads of music that I don’t have to hand, and this week is no different. But as of tomorrow, I’m going to have to crack on if I want to finish it before the weekend.

When teatime came round, I went into the kitchen and made myself some mashed potato with onion, peas and carrots and the last slice of my vegan pie. That was delicious, and I’m going to have to make another one at some point. A slice of that makes a nice, traditional meal.

It was followed by a raspberry soya dessert, and they are quite nice too. I’ll have to order some more of these when they next come round on special offer.

Back in here, Rosemary ‘phoned me. Her external hard drive had arrived, but she wasn’t sure how to use it. We ended up just having a quick chat – a mere 00:53:48 today – and helped her install the external drive and perform her first complete backup. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, she won’t lose any more files.

Once I’d finished with Rosemary, I could crack on and do the notes for the day, and now, they are finished. There are just the stats and my back-up to perform, and then I can go to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about alarms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I heard a story that one of my friends had bought a new alarm clock earlier that day.
It had come by post from the Tourettes Society, and we were having a good discussion about it.
At least, we were, until one of my friends said "well, he’s going to be in for a rude awakening tomorrow morning then"

LIVE: Tuesday 29th September 2026 – TODAY WAS A …

… much better day than yesterday – that is, up to a certain point anyway. It’s slowly starting to deteriorate now, so I’ll tell you all in due course how it ended. However, that won’t be tonight because there’s a football match on later this evening and it doesn’t finish until late, so I might end up just posting what I will have written, and you’ll get the rest tomorrow if you’re lucky.

Strangely enough, I was only thinking yesterday during the day that it’s been about a fortnight since you’ve had a “to be continued” when I’ve abandoned the notes due to tiredness and gone to bed, so things must be getting better. Only to have to post a “to be continued” the very same evening, as those of you who log in late at night or early in the morning will have seen.

It wasn’t so early when I went to bed, though. That was because I’d crashed out in the chair here while I was writing, and it wasn’t until later that I awoke. At that point, I went to bed and went straight to sleep, which is a surprise, considering the thunder and lightning that was crashing and flashing about outside.

Not that I was asleep for long. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke but it was a very long time before 06:29. I lay there tossing and turning for quite a while, and then I continued my experiment about sleeping. I made a definite effort to go to sleep lying on my side, but when I awoke each time, I was lying on my back. I’m not sure of why that is, but it’s annoying. I shall have to chain myself to the bed in memory of Kirk Anderson and Joyce McKinney, although I shan’t "ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose".

At some point, I did go back to sleep long enough to be awoken by the alarm, and then we had the usual struggle to convince myself to rise up off the edge of the bed and head to the bathroom to sort myself out. Not before having unlocked the front door, though.

Once I’d sorted myself out, I came back in here and carried on with the rest of yesterday’s notes. They are now on line, as many of you might have noticed. What I should have done next was to attack the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night, but the arrival of the nurse confounded me, and I forgot to do them afterwards. Next morning, they eventually found their way on line.

I was in St Pair last night, staying somewhere. We’d heard somewhere that a new Casino supermarket had opened on the edge of the town centre, so I went off to have a look because it wasn’t far away from where we were staying. When I came back, I told everyone that I was disappointed by it because it was only a small, local kind of superette thing rather than the big supermarket that we had been expecting, and they didn’t have very much choice in there at all. While I’d been away, there had been a hockey match played between Denmark and Wales. I heard the result, and Denmark had won 2-0. I was pleased in a sense because it showed that Wales was still being included in these international tournaments and was not being forgotten.

The first part of the dream means nothing to me really, but there was a huge Casino supermarket (now an Intermarché) on the edge of town and I didn’t much like going there because the place was dirty and it never carried much of what I needed.

As for the second part, Wales have recently (on Sunday, in fact) played football against Denmark, and Denmark beat them 2-0. And as for hockey, that’s something that is featuring quite heavily in something else that’s going on right now and I could tell you plenty of stories about it, but the World isn’t yet ready to hear them.

After his week’s rest, the nurse was quite on form, but he was in a rush with patients waiting down at his office so he couldn’t stay around long to talk. However, he was interested to know what they had pumped into me last Monday, but I told him that I didn’t know. He asked me to find out next time I was there.

His leaving was the cue for me to make my breakfast – the usual porridge, toast, coffee and fruit juice. I know that it sounds monotonous, but it’s really the only food that I enjoy eating these days.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’re now discussing the trees of the Clee and Longmynd Hills. Especially the giant elms and poplars that seem to thrive there. And although I don’t know much about trees from a biological point of view, I do know that a tree with a twenty-two-foot circumference measured five feet from the ground is an enormous tree and well worth its place on the list of giant trees.

Back in here, I had an hour and fifteen minutes of revision for my Welsh class, and now that my course book has turned up, it’s much easier to revise and prepare.

After that, I went to the lesson, all two and a half hours of it. And once more, it passed really well and I was quite pleased with it. But the acid test is yet to come – our tutor has set us some homework to be done by next Monday. Then we’ll see how much has stuck to my teflon brain.

When the lesson had finished, I went into the kitchen and began bagging up my curry from yesterday. There was enough for five portions, and that should keep me out of mischief for a while. My next effort will be an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit – it’s been ages since I’ve made one of those.

My faithful cleaner caught me in flagrante delicto packing up the stuff when she came in to do her thing. She gave me a hand to move things round in the freezer and then chased me under the shower for my weekly wash.

Back in here later, I started choosing the music for another radio programme. And I found that I was still short of some, so I had to start to search around to see what I could find.

Once I’d found everything that I needed, I had to reformat, re-edit and remix it. And then I had to pair the music off. I’ve not segued it as yet, but I’ll do that tomorrow. I ran out of time, mainly because, would you believe, I crashed out for about an hour while … errr … riding the porcelain horse. How embarrassing was that?

What with working late and there being a football match tonight, I didn’t have time for tea, so instead I had some of those small toasted squares with some of the nice spreading cheese that my cleaner found for me in Leclerc a while back. It was followed by a really nice, juicy orange for pudding.

After that, there was the football. Cardiff Metro v Hwlffordd, a match postponed from a few weeks ago when Cardiff Metro’s under-19 team was playing an European Junior Cup match on the Cyncoed pitch, and why the two teams didn’t offer to switch fixtures and play it at Hwlffordd, I really don’t know.

Anyway, the first half was absolutely dreadful. It was easily the worst forty-five minutes I have ever seen, and that’s a disappointment because both sides usually play some attractive football, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …

The first ten minutes of the second half were in the same vein, but then we had a really dramatic incident. A Hwlffordd player burst into the penalty area with the ball, but an excellent tackle by a Met defender put the ball out of play, with the Hwlffordd attacker falling over the body of the defender. In a decision that remains a mystery to everyone watching, the ref awarded a penalty.

Not surprisingly, the whole crowd and the Met players were incensed, and I don’t blame them either because I was too. After much dispute and debate, the referee went to consult the VAR cameras, and after a lengthy delay, he rightly revoked the penalty award.

What should then have happened was that he should have awarded a corner kick to Hwlffordd. However, he gave a dropped ball to the Cardiff Met keeper, who then kicked it upfield and the Met went on to score a goal from it.

After that, the game livened up somewhat as Hwlffordd tried to score a goal to equalise. However, they couldn’t make their mark on the game and it finished 1-0 to the Met.

So with that out of the way, I just have a couple more things to do and then I’m off to bed. There’s plenty of work for tomorrow, so I hope that this good-ish mood continues. I’ll have to add in last night’s dreams tomorrow too, so check back at some point.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about trees … "well, one of us has" – ed … a squirrel was sitting in a tree when it began to shake violently. He looked down and saw an elephant climbing the tree.
"Why are you climbing this tree?" asked the squirrel.
"I fancy eating some apples" replied the elephant.
"But this isn’t an apple tree" said the squirrel.
"I know" replied the elephant "but it’s OK. I brought some with me."

LIVE: Tuesday 22nd September 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why, but today, I seem to have had one of the better days that I have had for a considerable period of time. Even my cleaner noticed that I was much more bright and chirpy than my normal self.

It surely can’t be the perfusion that I had yesterday? I would imagine that that would take a few days before it started having any effect, but apart from that, nothing else seems to have changed, so I dunno.

It wasn’t the early night either because it wasn’t as early as I would have liked it to be either. It was probably about 22:45 when I finally hit the hay.

And that’s another thing too – looking back a couple of weeks or so ago, I was flat out and desperate to go to bed at some kind of ridiculously early hour, and that’s especially true of the nights when I have had dialysis in the afternoon, but just recently, there have been several nights after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out.

And last night, after dialysis, I would have normally expected to have gone to bed at about 20:30 or 21:00, but I was still going strong at, as I said just now, 22:45. So I’ve no idea what’s happening right now.

But once I’d gone to bed, I managed to go to sleep fairly quickly, but once more, it wasn’t for long. I awoke again at some early hour – I’ve no idea what time because I didn’t look – and couldn’t go back to sleep.

At some point, though, I must have managed it because I remember waking up again. This time I did look at the time and it was 05:52. I decided that I wouldn’t try to go back to bed but I’d have another early start.

By 06:15 I was in the bathroom sorting myself out and then came back in here to start work.

The first thing that I did was to transcribe the notes on the dictaphone. There was nothing on there from last night, but I dealt with Sunday’s dream and there was also something from Monday morning. Those two web pages are now on line, for the benefit of those of you who are here for the dreams and not for news of my really exciting and eventful life.

While I was at it, I checked the stats and there was yet another hit from an artificial intelligence chatbot.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to start her week and, silly me, I’d left the door locked from last night so she had to use the key that I gave her and her oppo the other week. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been locking the door to the apartment at night since I had that strange nocturnal visitor a few weeks ago.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Not very much of it because, as usual, I was side-tracked and ended up reading about the mountains on the fringe of the Mynyddoedd Duon or “Black Mountains” of Breconshire and neighbouring counties. That was much more exciting.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went to class. And surprisingly, it was one of the best lessons that I have ever had, even though it’s only the second lesson of another year. That probably contributed to my good humour, especially as after the lesson a few of us had a group chat on the internet and I managed to keep up with the conversation.

And that wasn’t the only conversation that I had had either. All in all, there was a total of four conversations with different people, and they were all welcome.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment and the first thing that she did was, as usual on a Tuesday, to chase me into the shower. While I was in there showering, she changed the bedclothes on my bed so now, you have a nice clean boy … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … and a nice clean bed.

We also had a good chat about several things, including about the retired skipper who was found dead in a burnt-out apartment the other day.

After she left, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been working on before my holidays. Now, all of the music has been located, re-edited and reformatted, paired and segued. All I need to do now is to write the notes and then that’s ready to go too. And that reminds me – I haven’t checked this week’s radio programme yet so I must do that tomorrow without fail.

On that point, I knocked off for tea. And surprisingly, I was hungry too so I made pasta and veg in tomato sauce with falafel, and it would have been delicious had I not dropped a lot of used oil onto it straight out of the air fryer. So I ate what I could and the incident reminded me to
1) Be more careful with the air fryer
2) Wash the air fryer out more regularly.

And when I did the washing up later, I did indeed wash out the air fryer and I hope that on Friday, when I have my chips, it will produce some really good ones.

But again, I had a meal tonight and half a meal last night, and I’m promising myself an evening meal on Friday. So what IS going on with me right now?

Back in the office, I typed up the notes for tonight and then checked the stats and so on. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, I might actually manage an early night tonight. So here’s hoping that this good mood continues tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the dreams from Sunday night, the first night and a friend … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of the story generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill but actually concerned Noël Coward and Randolph Churchill.
Coward – "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend—if you have one."
Churchill – "Cannot possibly attend the first night; will attend the second—if there is one"

LIVE: Tuesday 15th September 2026 – THAT WAS A …

… much better day today than yesterday was, although it does have to be said that it could hardly be any worse. For a start, I actually managed to go to sleep, which is more than I did the previous night.

Having gone to bed at about 21;00, after having been asleep on my chair for at least an hour, I was asleep quite quickly. And I didn’t need much rocking either. And there I lay, fast asleep, until something rather dramatic awoke me. It was one of these occasions where something makes me suddenly sit bolt-upright, but unlike most of the other times, it wasn’t a subconscious feeling but a real something.

After that, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. After a while I checked the time, and it was 02:48 so the noise or whatever must have been about 02:00, I reckon. But despite all that, I carried on trying to go to sleep, but it was of no use really. For all the good that it did me, I needn’t have bothered to try.

When I noticed that the time was 05:51, I decided that I may as well make an early start out of it all, so I stood up and began to dress. At east, I “tried to stand up” but for some reason my legs wouldn’t work to that much effect, and it took me about three or four goes before I was finally upright. And then, round about 06:00, I was sitting at the computer.

The first job, of course, was to deal with the notes from last night. I thought that it wouldn’t take long to finish them, but I was surprised at how much there was to write. I ended up with almost two thousand three hundred words – that’s about sixty per cent more than the average. Consequently, I was only just putting the finishing touches to them when I began to wake up and smell the coffee.

That brought the proceedings to a rapid conclusion, and I went into the kitchen to try to be sociable.

Hot, strong coffee first thing in the morning is delicious, especially the way that my friend makes it, so I quite enjoyed drinking it while we chatted.

Our leisurely morning was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse. The Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t bark at all – he just rolled onto his back ready for a tickle-tummy, and the nurse duly obliged.

He then attended to me … "the nurse, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed …, and while he was sorting out my legs and feet, we had an interesting chat. But don’t ask me what it was about because I can’t remember now. It’s one of those things that I’ll probably remember about one tenth of a second after I’ve pressed “send” later on.

After saying goodbye to the Hound of the Baskervilles, the nurse cleared off, and the aforementioned … "the Hound of the Baskervilles, not the nurse" – ed …, dragged his master outside for another round of walkies. I stayed behind, of course, and made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

At the moment, everyone is agreeing with everyone else, there’s no dissent, no disagreement, and the World in rural Herefordshire is at peace. They are all admiring the beautiful view, and I am admiring the beautiful prose, such as "the magnificent vertical wall of the celebrated Coldwell rocks, so splendidly wooded, and through which we have wended our way hither"

Back in here later, I revised for my Welsh and then went to the lesson. We have loads of new students in our class, and a new teacher too. But unfortunately she swallows her words so we can’t make out half the time what she’s saying, and she’s nothing like as well organised as our previous one. I also remain unconvinced that she actually knows her subject as well as she ought to.

We shall see.

When the lesson ended, I had a few things to do and also to sort out my clean clothes for a shower, because my cleaner comes today and she usually chases me thereunder. So when she turned up, she gave the Hound of the Baskervilles his usual big stroke, and then I decided on a change of plan.

The temperature was slowly falling, the weather was slowly deteriorating and the wind was slowly rising. So what I thought that we’d do is that the three of us (and the Hound of the Baskervilles as bodyguard) go to do a little job outside that I’ve been trying to do for an absolute age.

So they walked off and I staggered off outside to see what we could do. We attacked this job, and surprisingly, it was completely finished in about fifteen minutes. The most difficult and longest part of the job was my walking back to the apartment afterwards, because the wind was definitely rising now. And today was the first day since spring that I’d work a jacket outside.

Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph.

Back in here, the first thing that I noticed was that we could hardly move around, there was that much stuff in here. But once a couple of things had gone up into my loft space, it made it slightly … "only slightly" – ed … better.

My cleaner organised the bathroom for me, and then she chased me under the shower, so we have a nice, clean boy … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … this evening. And once I’d come out of the bathroom, my cleaner stopped playing with the Hound of the Baskervilles, sorted out the bathroom and went back upstairs to her place, leaving the rest of us alone.

Once I was organised, I came back in here to do some work. However, I didn’t get very far because Rosemary rang for a chat. Only a very short one today – one hour, nineteen minutes and fifty-two seconds.

But one of the things that we discussed was diuretics, of course, and Rosemary suggested that many fruits and vegetables have diuretic properties. That set me off on another trail, and by the end of our chat, I had a pile of recipes and daily food programmes organised by my friendly neighbourhood chatbot, and there was a cheap good-make juicing machine in my shopping basket ready for purchase tomorrow. The idea of drinking more is something that I need to do, so drinking something that actually has a positive effect on my fluid retention has to be a good way forward.

While all of this was going on, my friend was making tea, and we ended up with sausage, chips and beans. And I know that that’s what Friday’s meal usually is, but the Hound of the Baskervilles is going home on Thursday, taking my friend with him, and so he wants to try the sausages once more before he goes.

The pudding of tinned apricots and my vegan ice cream from Noz was exceptionally good. The ice cream is lovely and I wish now that I’d bought some more the other day.

Later on in here, there was yet more football – another basement clash between two newly-promoted sides, Trefelin and Cambrian United.

It was a strange game too. Plenty of skill on offer and yet plenty of midfield slogging too. But the differences between the two sides were evident. Cambian’s defence was magnificent and never looked like being beaten. They were always thinking one step ahead of the ball and not one step behind, as were their opponents, and there was a difference in physical presence. I had to laugh at one point when a Cambrian central defender and a Trefelin attacker leapt for a ball in the air. The Cambrian defender simply stuck out two hands and pushed the attacker out of the way to have a clear header.

That just about summed up Trefelin’s day, but the final scoreline of 4-0 to Cambrian was something very much of an exaggeration.

But what I’m not going to exaggerate is my need to go to bed, so I’m clearing off. Another day of rest tomorrow and then we go again. That is, if I can get some sleep with this wind that is now howling around outside like the devil.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Report of the Woolhope Naturalists Club … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone asked me whether it would be a suitable thing to read to a group of prisoners in gaol.
"Well, it would have its prose and cons, wouldn’t it?" I replied.

LIVE: Tuesday 8th September 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today! It’s been another contender for “the worst day in my life”.

Last night, as you might recall, I abandoned my blog at some strange hour and staggered off to bed. I was thoroughly exhausted after dialysis yet again.

The expectation was to have a good and refreshing sleep and a nice, comfortable wake-up so that I could carry on writing the notes with some sort of enthusiasm. Well, such was the plan. The reality was far, far different.

Firstly, I began to cough again, despite the menthol and eucalyptus sweet that I’d had on going to bed. Secondly, the Hound of the Baskervilles began to bark at about 00:50. I thought at first that he was having a nightmare, but according to his master, someone had come into the building and stood outside our door. His Nibs was simply reminding whoever it was outside that he was here and on guard.

After that, it was impossible to go back to sleep. I was coughing far too much, almost as much as when this cough was at its worst a few months ago, and I just couldn’t calm it down.

When the alarm went off, no one felt less like leaving the bed than I did, but I was soon in the chair by the computer. And the first thing that I did was to fall asleep.

About twenty minutes later, I awoke and dashed off the remainder of the notes before I crashed out again. It took me a good hour or so all the same to finish them.

Just as I was adding the finishing touches to my work, my friend came in and made a “coffee” gesture, so I quickly finished off that I had to do, posted it on line and then wandered off into the kitchen for a coffee and a chat, and also to give a stroke to the Hound of the Baskervilles.

It was quite a nice way to start the day, coffee and a chat about obsolete musical and studio equipment. It brings back many happy memories of our lives on the road.

One of our discussions was about the amps and speakers that we owned. I told him about the six-channel Marshall 200-watt PA amp and the 2 2×12 columns, the 200-watt bass amp and cabinet that I have down in the Auvergne, and the Fender bass combo and “Jaguar” bass that I have in Canada.

My friend said that they aren’t doing much good there. I replied that they wouldn’t be doing much good here either. There would be nowhere to put them. I already have my “stack” of the Genz Benz 200-watt bass combo, the 25-watt six-string combo and the 45-watt Carlsbro bass combo in the living room, along with the Gibson EB3 and the five-string fretless bass as well as the six-string electric guitar. In here, there’s the Roland cube bass amp and the little battery-operated one, and also the Ibanez six-string acoustic and the Ibanez four-string bass.

Isabelle the Nurse was late arriving today, and just as yesterday, the Hound of the Baskervilles rolled onto his back straight away for some tummy tickles. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he has far more luck with the ladies than I ever do.

Eventually, Isabelle the Nurse tore herself away from the Hound of the Baskervilles and came to deal with me. I told her about my foot, which is now hurting more than ever before, and told her to be careful.

After she left, we continued chatting for a while, and then I went to make my breakfast as the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for a walk. I didn’t envy them. There was a gale-force wind blowing outside, and it was lashing with rain.

While they were gone, I made my breakfast and sat down to read some more of my book, THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’ve had nothing controversial this morning, but I was often away from the book researching some of the places that they visited and what the opinion is today of what they saw. And there’s nothing really that has changed, although the Eurypterus Brodici,, discovered by the Reverend Brodie, seems no longer recognised as an individual species

Back in here later, I finished off all of the notes from yesterday and they are now on line, but I knew that I wasn’t. Ever since I’d awoken this morning, I’d been good for nothing, so tired was I.

And this carried on too because once the notes were online, I crashed out again on my chair. And it was for just five minutes either.

When I eventually awoke, it was disgusting drink and midday medicine time, so I went into the kitchen to sort things out. I also had my first of the disgusting cement that’s supposed to be an anti-potassium drink. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I think that before a doctor prescribes any medication, the doctor ought to take a month’s supply himself so as to see for himself what the patients might think of it.

One thing that I had forgotten was the dictaphone, so I sat down to transcribe whatever there was.

I was responsible for bringing up a young girl, and as a result, I’d been set several tasks which would account for being the new set of rules about different things and ways of expressing them in the 1980s. I’d managed to gope with them all and was quite successful, although I found it difficult to find the local names for one or two of these things. The next thing was a load of twenty of these kinds of rules suddenly appeared, and I was expected to deal with them all, not necessarily in alphabetical order. This was quite a task by the looks of things, but any of them looked fairly straightforward. I was sure that the girl involved would be able to help me with a few of the others, so it wouldn’t look all this difficult. Just as I was getting into it, the Hound of the Baskervilles had a nightmare and barked, waking both of us up in this apartment.

Earlier on, I’d mentioned the Hound of the Baskervilles awakening us, so it wasn’t just a dream. It really was the case.

But this story about the man bringing up the girl and the new set of rules would have been Ohh! So relevant in 1987. But never mind. It might yet be that Biggles Flies Again in much more modern times, although with the same characters as before. Who knows?

I started to work for London Transport last night as a conductor on the buses on my very first day. Even though I’d been to training school, I was feeling quite nervous. So I boarded this bus, which was crowded and had an old man as driver and a woman conductor who was in her forties. She wasn’t very happy to see me because she’d run these buses on her own for a long time but I was determined to help. However, I kept on making a mess of the most simple of things, and nothing seemed to be going right at all and I’m sure that she was extremely frustrated with me. Then, the driver happened to mention “have you fixed the clock?”. I replied “no”. “well we have to go to the clock on the bus to get it right”. So I had to go, and he took me up to the top deck, and there was a little doorway, so we squeezed in and went up. The clock was in a kind of tower. But when we arrived there, there was someone asleep in that little room. It turned out that he was a motor mechanic for one of the repair yards. Of course, they threw him off the bus and if he ever came here again, he’d regret it. We reset the time on the bus, and by the time that I went downstairs, there were only a dozen or so passengers. We began to collect the fares from them, but I couldn’t find my fare sheet. I’d left it somewhere while I was fixing this clock

The clock on each of these buses resembled a miniature “Big Ben” and took quite some maintenance, although people in this tower were never imagined to be sleeping in it.

And although we have the usual (or what used to be usual) panic attack, I can’t think of whatever I might be doing in a London bus.

Later on, the cleaner came round, and before she began to do her stuff, she chased me under the shower again. So there’s a nice clean boy … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … ready for tonight.

Once I’d calmed down, I began to write the notes for tonight. But as I implied just now, my head wasn’t in it. It wasn’t in fact until about 17:00 that I managed to pull myself together enough to put some coherent sentences onto paper.

There was no tea tonight – I really didn’t feel like anything – so I grabbed some toasts and cheese, a disgusting drink and an orange and came in here to watch the football.

We had Caernarfon v Y Fflint, and as I watched the match, I confirmed my assumption of what has been going wrong with Y Fflint, in second-last place in the JD Cymru League. They just aren’t having any luck.

Although Caernarfon won 3-0 as expected, Y Fflint were giving as good as they were getting. They hit the woodwork several times, they had balls kicked off the line a couple of times. Nothing is going right for them this season and it’s high time that they had a change of luck.

But right now, I’m off to bed, later than I anticipated, but it can’t be helped. We’ll see what tomorrow brings if I can survive the coughing and the pain in my foot.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Biggles … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends has told m that he was a big fan of Biggles and has all of the books – except one.
"Which one are you missing?" I asked.
"Biggles Flies Undone" he replied

LIVE: Tuesday 1st September 2026 – PHEW! WHAT A …

… day that was.

It actually started last night when I was so tired that I went to bed at about 22:00, totally exhausted. And although I wasn’t as quick going to sleep as I would have liked to have been, it was still quicker than some nights, and I hadn’t finished sucking my menthol and eucalyptus sweet.

The sleep didn’t last as long as it might have done either. I was awake at about 03:30, and, as far as that was concerned, that was the end of any reasonable hope of dozing off again. I stayed there, tossing and turning, trying to find a really good and comfortable position. And just as I was settling into a nice, comfortable position, the alarm went off.

Strangely, I was up and about rather quicker than I have been recently, and the first task that I had to do was to unlock the front door. And this time, I remembered where I put the keys when I’d finished.

Into the bathroom to sort myself out was next, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

There was something about my friend from Germany again – the one to whom I spoke on line the other day. She was planning on going somewhere in her old car, a little dark-blue 1984 Opel saloon. She had some of these stickers that you used to have in the window in the 1960s of where you’ve been. There was probably well over a hundred in her windscreen.

It’s pretty certain that most people my age and older remember those little triangular stickers that you bought in every seaside resort in the 1960s and stuck in your window to say where you’d been. We had dozens, and others had many more than that.

The nurse turned up as usual and asked how things went at dialysis. I told him of my various woes, but he didn’t react.

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

Our author is still moaning on about the end of the Gothic period of architecture. Of Renaissance architecture in Italy. He tells us that "Such a style as this cannot but be pronounced an utter barbarism ; it has no language, no meaning of its own, but owes all its splendour to the borrowed light of the very style which it is sedulously labouring to eradicate. Cinque-cento buildings exist of great magnificence, and even great beauty, but all their beauty is derived from the Gothic vestiges which linger about them, and give them at a distance the appearance of pure Gothic structures" and much more in this respect.

By now, I was back in here trying to sort out the radio to broadcast the programme that I’m hoping to make this week. The search for the music continued. However, it had an interruption, though, between 10:30 and 11:45 when I was crashed out on my chair, fast asleep.

When it awoke, I had another interruption too. I’d forgotten that I had yesterday’s notes to finish, and so I abandoned the radio for the moment and attacked the notes.

This was complicated because firstly, I was having to fight the waves of fatigue and sleep that kept on washing over me, and then there was the pause for the disgusting drink and the midday medication.

Not only that, at 14:00 my cleaner turned up, and by 14:15 she’d chased me under the shower. Once again, once she’d arranged the bathroom with everything that I needed, I went into the shower as nature intended, all by myself and without my crutches, hanging on to bits of furniture as I passed by.

The shower was delicious. As usual, I had the temperature at 40°C, and that makes the difference, as far as I’m concerned.

It was a nice, clean me … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … who emerged from the shower – on my own again and walking forwards rather than backwards as I used to. I’m getting better and far more independent than I was when I first started showering. If only I were to have these handrails installed, I could have a lot of showers, certainly more than one each week.

There was quite a bit to sort out with my cleaner today, so it wasn’t until after she left that I could restart the notes. That explains why they didn’t go on line until about 15:30 or something like that.

And once they were done and gone, I could return to the radio programme and continue to search for music. And with the help of my chatbot, I was eventually able to track down everything that I needed. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … artificial intelligence is saving me hours when you need to know “what is (some obscure musician)’s most well-known contribution to (some obscure group). You get the answer in milliseconds rather than spending hours trawling through the internet.

With all of the music downloaded, it needs reformatting and re-editing. And I was halfway through when it was time for me to knock off. However, that wasn’t the cue to put everything away

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have several other projects on the go at the moment too. For one of these, my chatbot has sent me a huge amount of text to review, amend if necessary, and post back. So, with no food again tonight – just a few crackers with the vegan spreading cheese followed by a handful of biscuits – I set to work.

And that was not interruption-free either. The new chat group for the coming year of our Welsh course was set up too, so we had the usual protocol of introducing ourselves, welcoming the newcomers and all of that jazz. And I shall have to get on and order the course book pretty soon because I don’t have long to go before I’m back in class.

After that, I continued with the artificial intelligence notes that needed reviewing and posted them back. They were so long that I had to send them back in four instalments. They wouldn’t all go back in one go.

No-one was more surprised than me to see the time when I’d finished. It was 22:10 – long past my working ultimate deadline. And I still had my notes to complete, so I began to attack them straight away. However, as time drew on, the waves of fatigue swept over me once again and this time, I was unable to resist. I posted on line what I’d written, and then I crawled off to bed. I can finish my notes tomorrow.

However, I’m as fed up with this as you are. Half the notes are better than none, but that’s still not as good as all of them. And having commitments “elsewhere” until about 21:45, there’s not much that I can do to change things. I can’t decide that “OK, I’ll change things around and start to post my notes the following morning” because with the nurse and breakfast and dialysis, there isn’t enough time to do them in the morning either. I shall have to think of a cunning plan.

And before anyone says anything, a vlog is ruled right out. Who wants to stare at my ugly mug anyway?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about having a shower … "well, one of us has" – ed … two girls from Crewe were living together in an apartment and one of them decided to take a shower.
After two hours, she was still in there, so the other one asked her "Are you ok?"
The girl in the shower replied "yes thanks."
"So what’s keeping you?"
"It’s these instructions on the shampoo. I have to follow them carefully."
"What instructions are those?"
"Where it says ‘lather, rinse, repeat’."

Tuesday 25th August 2026 – THERE’S A NICE …

… clean me … "well, clean anyway" – ed … tonight, going to sleep in a nice clean bed tonight. It’s Tuesday, so that’s shower day, and while I was hosing myself down, my faithful cleaner gave my bed a good going over and changed the bedding.

Actually, it’s quite nice to be in that position, because these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, showering is something that I find extremely difficult these days. And so I’m only allowed to have a shower when she’s here to watch over me. I’m not allowed to have one when I’m on my own in case I fall.

But anyway, be that as it may, last night, having abandoned my notes halfway through, it was still after 22:30 when I went to bed. I awoke twice during the night, but I have no idea what time it was – I couldn’t be bothered to look. And in any case, I was back asleep quickly enough.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was definitely asleep. And I was certainly in no mood to leave the bed. It was quite a struggle to coax myself out of bed and sit on the edge, never mind stand up and go to the bathroom.

Eventually, though, I made it into the bathroom and managed to organise myself into something like, ready to face the day, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

I had a huge, blazing row with one of my friends last night. We’d all been away and were due to come home. I’d spent all afternoon and evening servicing the van, and all through the night we’d been packing everything away. Early in the morning, we set off for home again. We arrived back home in the early evening, and I reckoned that I’d been working for about thirty hours without a break, so whilst everyone was gathered in the living room, I excused myself and said that I was going straight to bed. I went into my bedroom, and it was untidy with all kinds of stuff everywhere, but then I thought “it’s my room, so what does it matter?”. I made a little space, but before I could go to bed, three or four people came up to chat. That was really the last thing that I wanted. They wouldn’t go, and they were there for most of the evening, so it was now almost forty hours without any sleep. Eventually, they left and I was just now going to bed when my friend turned up. He asked me “have you seen such-and-such”? Well, of course I hadn’t – I’ve been ill in bed, so I went to bed. And after wrestling with a pile of frozen food that needed to be put away, he just lay on the bed next to me, talking. I told him to go about three or four times, but he wouldn’t. In the end, I picked up a couple of jars that he was carrying and threw them at the door, and in the end, he got the message, and I tried to go to sleep. However, my friend went to the police and explained that I’d attacked him. This led to all kinds of complications, and he came back. I asked him to go, but he said no, the police said that he could stay if he liked. Just then, the woman who was in charge of the whole outfit turned up, so I asked her if she could make him leave. However, she wanted to know note-by-note exactly what had happened.

This dream does have some kind of basis in fact – not about the van and not about wanting to go to bed, but about a former friend and a friendship that came to a shuddering halt. Although, as usual, it’s one of those stories that the World is not yet ready to hear.

But being out and about with no sleep is not unusual. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall Back about fifteen years ago, I was in Cambridge. I had to drive to Gloucestershire to pick up a trailer, then to North Lancashire to pick up a mini digger, and then all the way down to central France – a working “day” of thirty-five hours with the only sleep being the couple of hours on the cross-Channel ferry. I couldn’t do it now.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. While he was working, he was chatting about Welsh football, which I thought was rather strange.

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

Actually, I didn’t read that much of it today. He started to talk about the Batalha Monastery in Portugal, and that was something of which I knew nothing at all. Consequently, I set off to find out about it. Apparently its construction was ordered by King John I of Portugal as fulfilment of a vow that he had made before a battle in which his small army decisively defeated a very much larger Castilian and French army and assured Portugal’s independence.

Back in here, I began the knotty problem of this soundtrack, where I had to dispose of about one and a half minutes of something, but I know not what, in order to make enough room for a decent introduction.

By the time that I’d finished, I’d actually disposed of two and a half minutes, which makes it even better. But it didn’t ‘arf take some time to do. I managed to save some time by trimming out some of the applause. That involved trying to mate the “before the trim” endings with the “after the trim” starting points, and that took a great deal of time and effort, and yet it still didn’t take out enough.

The next step, therefore, was to listen to the long and pointless guitar and bass at the start of one of the tracks. With a constant beat running through it, I could take out a lot of that and simply mate up the beats. But when you have a choice of ten beats, it’s not that easy. And, after about an hour and a half and once you do find the correct beat, that’s when you find that the drummer’s timing at the “after the trim” point isn’t the same as at the “before the trim” point, so they don’t overlap. And that’s when it really does become difficult because the two parts don’t overlay.

Eventually, though, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to solve the problem to some kind of suitable degree, using an awful lot of “Silence” mode. And when I played it back just now, you couldn’t hear the join.

By now, my cleaner was here doing her stuff. She organised the bathroom for me and I went for my shower. While I was in there, she was tidying up my bedroom and changing the bedding.

Once more, I was able to go into the shower, shower and come out without help again. That’s definite progress, right enough.

After my cleaner left, I began to think about what I needed to write for the introduction for the programme, and by the time that I was ready to knock off, all of the notes had been written – all three minutes and four seconds worth of them. There will still be some editing to do, I reckon.

Tea tonight was non-existent. I wasn’t in the mood, so I simply had a handful of biscuits, and now I’m thinking of going to bed, ready to begin the next radio programme tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about silence … "well, one of us has" – ed … a woman in church whispered to her husband "I’ve just broken wind silently. It’s one of those “silent but deadly” ones. What do you think I should do?"

"If I were you" said her husband, "the first thing that I would do would be to switch your hearing aid back on."

Tuesday 18th August 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day this has been. If I were to think about it, I would say that this has been one of the worst days so far.

It started off badly yesterday evening when I fell asleep while trying to write up my notes and had to haul myself physically into bed. And during the night it didn’t get any better.

As usual, I was asleep fairly quickly too, but also, as usual, not for long. I was soon awake again thanks to yet another enormous coughing fit and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I kept on seeing a vision of a phantom hand creeping around the open door of the bedroom heading for my throat, and then realising that it was mine!

At some point, I must have gone off to sleep because I awoke with Seren’s alarm going off, and then all three of us had to stay marooned until we were rescued (this is what I mean about hallucinations and everything like that creeping into my dreams).

I was with another group of people, and it was near Christmas, so we had come away to a city for a city break for a few days. We’d had a good walk around and seen everything, but all down the side of one street, under a scaffolding, was a huge, long row of people, probably two thousand people, all queuing there for something. The queue began in the square at the bottom of the hill but went all the way back up. Some guy from Brittany Ferries had rung me, but I wasn’t there to answer it, so he left a message for me to call him again, which I forgot. He rang me eventually, and he wanted to know what we were going to do about this five-thousand-pound bill. I asked, “what five-thousand-pound bill?” It turned out that someone, whose name he gave me, had bought a ticket to go to the Isles of Scilly for five thousand pounds, and that just didn’t sound right at all. I thought that the Scilly Isles weren’t that far away – it’s not going to cost anything like that, so what’s the going on? The guy who came to see me, a nice young lad whose birthday was roughly the same as mine, told me that they don’t know but they want to deal with this matter urgently. So standing in the street leaning against the wall of a shop, we talked about it, and in the end, we all went down the hill to the centre and back up … fell asleep here … so we all went down into town but couldn’t find a Royal Bank of Scotland, so we came back up again and it was there on the left, so we went into it. A woman came to see the three of us, but just then, the alarm went off.

The alarm going off just there wiped our dream completely, and I was really disappointed in that.

There were a few other bits and pieces that I subsequently remembered, such as my chat with that guy taking place over the ‘phone at my place, but the volume on the turntable was such that no one could hear a word, so we met in town, and all those people were queuing, but there was absolutely no indication of what they were queuing for, not like in Poland when I was there with my coach in the days of the Communists and the long queues of people outside the shops.

After sorting myself out in the bathroom, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if there was anything else on it but there wasn’t. That one dream was it today.

While I was waiting for the nurse, I was sorting out a free kick in my mind, but further play was impossible once the Nurse turned up. He sorted out my legs and feet, and, at the same time, we discussed my spell at dialysis yesterday. He didn’t offer any useful suggestion about how to improve them, which is unfortunate, seeing as before being an itinerant nurse, he was a nurse in the dialysis centre of St Malo.

After he’d left, I turned to making my breakfast of porridge, toast and coffee. Well, it should have been toast, but I’d forgotten to take the bread out of the freezer so I have to toast some rye bread instead.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

We should have been reading more of the book, but I was side-tracked once more by some interesting information that came out in one of his paragraphs, and I was off doing some research into the matter, that is, when I wasn’t falling asleep.

Back in here, there were the usual things to do and then I attacked the rest of the notes from yesterday. Being so tired didn’t help, as I was constantly falling asleep – at one point slamming my face really hard into the desk. A job of maybe forty-five minutes turned into one of well over two hours, and not even the midday disgusting drink and medication could improve matters.

My cleaner came round as usual to do her stuff and she chased me under the shower again. I managed to climb into the shower and climb out unaided too. At least I’m getting better in that respect.

After the shower, we concentrated on the medication, ready to make a new order. Last month’s supply is running out and I’ll be stuck if we don’t order any sometime soon.

When the cleaner left, I started on the next radio programme. This isn’t going to be a complicated one, but I made it so because of all of this tiredness where I was dropping off to sleep all the time. At some point, my wanderings took me to Sandbach and Middlewich before I could shake myself awake again.

Anyway, I’ve done as much as I want to today, even though it’s early. I’m not making myself any food tonight, just going to bed and hoping that I can sleep all of this off by tomorrow, although that’s going to be unlikely.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about sleeping … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember talking to an old colleague of mine once.

"You know" he said. "There’s nothing nicer than falling asleep after a hard day’s work, and then waking up and kissing the lips of the gorgeous person next to you"
"And what happens when you do?" I enquired
"Well, I’m having to find a different way home now. They aren’t going to let me back on my bus again"

Tuesday 11th August 2026 – FOR A LITTLE …

… while, things seemed to be going better today than they had been yesterday, not that that was ever likely to be difficult.

So having abandoned my notes last night, I was in bed by 22:00 or thereabouts, but it took an absolute age to go off to sleep, despite how tired I was feeling. And once I was finally asleep, it wasn’t for long. I’ve no idea what time I awoke, but the car park light was still on, so it was before 02:30.

Once awake, I lay there in a daze, drifting in and out of sleep from time to time and not being absolutely sure of which was which.

When the alarm went off, I was on my way to pick up an old American schoolbus so that I could start doing my round of delivering alcohol now that Prohibition has ended. But I didn’t get very far into that before the alarm awoke me.

A friend of mine, Rhys, who is a regular reader of this rubbish, actually owns an old school bus that he is slowly converting into a mobile home. And appropriately, his “day job” is driving a school bus for his local education authority in South Carolina, not that Prohibition figures all that much in whatever he does.

At that moment, I was feeling rather wretched, and as usual, it took me a while to summon up the energy to leave the bed and head into the bathroom. And having spent a lot of time sorting myself out in the bathroom, I came back in here to see what else might be on the dictaphone.

Some friends from school and I had decided that we’d go out for a Christmas meal, so someone had booked eight or nine places at this kind-of restaurant place. I remember going there last year for a Christmas meal, and it wasn’t very satisfactory, mainly because the menu wasn’t properly prepared and there were bits here, bits there and bits somewhere else, so I thought that this evening, I’d go to have a look at the menu. One of my friends came in with me, and there was another one waiting by the door for someone else. So we went to look at this menu, and sure enough, the twenty-second of the month, the menu still hadn’t been properly prepared. I was having to try to argue with the staff about whether “this” would be available on Christmas Day or whether “that” would be available and what other options they would have for someone whose diet is pretty restricting. But this restaurant was one of these ones that was always in the dark and gloomy, and it’s very upmarket with a pub bar right in the centre of the room. They are trying their best to run it as a pub and restaurant, but it’s going to be difficult to try to combine the two.

Where this restaurant is situated, I have no idea. It doesn’t ring any kind of bell with me. However, I have been to plenty of pubs and restaurants where hasty recruiting, crammed venues and an excess of clients, followed by a “certain group” of kids from our school who were determined to spike the enjoyment of as many people as possible, led to unsatisfactory Christmas meals.

Isabelle the Nurse zoomed in, and I told her about the confusion yesterday at the dialysis centre. She was frankly appalled by the laxity over the question of my weight. But then again, she’s a former accident and emergency nurse, so the rules about recording medication, etc., are obviously much more strict there.

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

Well, once more, I actually didn’t. I was again caught short and ended up reading page after page of research. Not that it brought me much nearer what I was hoping to find, but I hoped that I’d be making progress somehow, somewhere.

Back in here, there were the usual things that needed doing, and they took some time today. And then, when they were out of the way, I could start to make my plans for this radio programme.

One thing that I needed was some music, so I had to search in all the likely and then the unlikely places on the internet until I found it. And that took hours. Not in the least because between about 11:50 and 13:00, I crashed out completely and definitively.

Even worse, ten minutes later, I crashed out again, and my face slammed right into the keyboard and my desk. And how that hurt! But at least the flow of adrenaline that resulted from the crash seemed to awaken me, and I carried on from there.

One thing that I learned was that either yesterday or the day before, not once but twice, my web pages have been used as a reference to answer a question in ChatGPT. I forget now how many times that has happened, but it seems that my tactic of introducing well-known but long-forgotten facts from old books into the internet seems to be paying off.

At 14:00 I had a visitor. Madame la Présidente of the Residents’ Committee came to see me. Apparently she’s put her apartment up for sale and is moving to St Nazaire to be near her family. That’s a shame because she’s actually quite nice and I can’t ever thank her enough for tipping me the wink about this apartment coming up for sale. I was really grateful for her help.

She brought me some pineapple, which was nice of her, and she stayed for about an hour or so while we chatted about her move, life in this building, the new occupiers we’ve had these last few months, etc.

After she left, my faithful cleaner came down to do her stuff. First thing that she did, though, was to chase me into the shower. Showering these days is much easier than it used to be. Once she’s organised the fittings, etc., I can go in and come out of the shower on my own. I’ve managed that now for the last three or four showers.

Interestingly, the other times that I’ve come out of the shower, I’ve had to come out backwards. Today, though, without even thinking about it, I came out forwards and even dried myself standing up, without having to sit on a chair.

After my cleaner left, I went into the kitchen to make two bread rolls and then came back in here to carry on.

At teatime today, I had the other half of my broccoli stalk soup from last week, with those tiny pasta elbows and my two piping hot fresh bread rolls. And as usual, it was absolutely delicious. I really shall have to make some more at some point, although I need to start eating the florets. I seem to have gathered quite a mountain of those over a period of time.

Having been given some pineapple earlier, for pudding I had pineapple with homemade ice cream. And that was what I call ‘really delicious’ too. I’m hoping that it will be just as nice tomorrow evening when I can have a second helping.

After tea, I washed up and then came back in here to do some more work, and then I began to write my notes. I’d done about half an hour, I suppose, and then the next thing that I remember was that it was 22:15. I’d crashed out in my chair yet again.

When I looked at what I had written, it seemed to degenerate towards the end, and I was typing all kinds of nonsense that bore no resemblance to what had gone on. It was full of spelling mistakes and typing errors too. That was when I decided to delete whatever didn’t look right, post the rest online and then clear off to bed.

Falling asleep on the porcelain horse didn’t help much either, so it was quite late when I finally crawled into bed – much later than I’d been hoping. I’ll never catch up on my beauty sleep like this.

One interesting thing, though, was that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few days ago that I wrote about menthol and eucalyptus. While I was rummaging around in the drawers in the kitchen earlier today, I came across a couple of packets of menthol and eucalyptus sweets that I bought years ago from LIDL.

When I went to bed tonight, I opened a packet and took a couple with me to bed. Once I was in bed, I put one of the sweets in my mouth and sucked it for what seemed like ages. And to my surprise, my coughing immediately subsided. This is something worth knowing and remembering.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and ChatGPT … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ve been confusing my own chatbot again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … these chatbots have absolutely no sense of humour.
Last night, I asked my chatbot "what’s the difference between Nigel Garbage and Count Binface?"
My chatbot then set out to give me a huge list of differences, supported by evidence and links.
"No" I replied. "one is a comedy figure, a parody of a politician who has turned politics into a comedy show, who isn’t to be taken seriously and shouldn’t be allowed to stand for Parliament."
"And the other?" asked my chatbot.
"Oh, he’s a man disguised as a dustbin."

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."

Tuesday 28th July 2026 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine, I’ll tell you that.

Leclerc’s drive-in didn’t have in stock the vegan cream cheese that I love when I made my order last Friday, and so I asked her if, when she goes to the Leclerc supermarket the next time, she can look out for a couple of packs.

While I was looking for an old, empty pack for her to photograph, I came across a really ancient empty pack of vegan Boursin spreading cheese that I had bought one Christmas a long time ago and thought was wonderful, so, even though it was years ago that I’d bought it and hadn’t seen it in the supermarket since, I asked her to keep an eye out for that too, just in case.

And so, just after 14:00, she came into the apartment to do her stuff, not only carrying two packs of vegan cream cheese, not only carrying two packs of vegan Boursin but also a pack of another type of vegan spreading cheese made by the same company that made the vegan Boursin.

For the next few weeks, on Friday nights as I’m watching the football and eating my savoury biscuits, I shall be regaling myself with the toppings that I’ll be spreading on them.

It’s a pity that I couldn’t regale myself with anything during the night, because it was a long, hard slog. Totally exhausted and falling asleep before I’d even hit the pillow, it was 21:45 when I finally crawled into bed. And how much was I needing that?

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning. Like 01:23, for example.

That really put the tin hat on just about everything. Having this awful cough come back is one thing – disturbing me and waking me up is another.

So I lay there, coughing my insides out, slowly looking at the day beginning to dawn, and then I must have gone off to sleep because the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

There have been days when I simply haven’t felt like getting up at all, and this wasn’t far short of one of those. And although I felt dreadful, little by little I began to feel a bit more human. It took me a very long time, though, to make it into the bathroom.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

We were at the beginning of World War II, and the Germans were invading Belgium. In the absence of any news, they asked me if I would take a patrol of people under cover and survey the battlefield and where all the German troops are. It sounded like a complicated, difficult and almost impossible task. There was a German prisoner at Headquarters so I asked for him to come along too, for no other reason than if there was going to be a disaster, there wouldn’t have been anyone better-suited to share it with us. We had to dress in uniform and then with overalls on top, like we were from a tank or something. Then we were studying maps of what we knew so far. I was in charge of the fire-watching in the cathedral. For me, it was in the crypt underneath, so I wanted to spray the materials and everything like that with water so it wouldn’t catch alight. But one of the things was that they had a rare set of encyclopaedias going back to the end of the eighteenth century and I didn’t want that to become wet or to catch fire, so people were laughing and joking with me about the possible consequences thereof. In the end, we set out on this mission and we arrived eventually at a café that was still in Belgian hands, and everyone there was having a drink or a moan or a chat. I happened to mention to the landlady that we were looking to connect up to the German forces, and we noticed a couple of ears pricking up at one of the tables and the two men sitting there left rather hurriedly

Just recently, I’ve spent a lot of time in various crypts, reading the current breakfast-time book. But I can’t recall fire ever having been an issue with any of them.

The ending of this dream, however, reminds me of the Hobbits in the bar at Bree and the stranger there, as recorded in LORD OF THE RINGS

Apart from that, nothing else seems to ring a bell, although it would be the kind of thing that would make an interesting book.

There had been another one of these parties at someone’s house miles away, and as I was on my travels, I decided that I’d pass by there. However, I was on my old red 50cc moped so it took me quite a while to get there. The people there weren’t really having too much of a good time – it was a very relaxed kind of social gathering – and I didn’t know anyone there. There was just me in my car? Then the hostess came along to collect details of when people were leaving. Most people were leaving on Friday but others would be leaving on the Sunday, so I told her that I’d be leaving on the Sunday evening and she made a note of that. The reason was that the car in which I was, the Land Rover, had been left at Berchtesgarten by someone else who wasn’t there. Anyway, I set off and … fell asleep here …

There have been a few of these “party” dreams just recently. However, unsociable creature that I am, I wouldn’t be going to all that many in real life.

“Then the hostess came along to collect details of when people were leaving” – just as a nurse does at dialysis so that she can ring up the taxi companies. It’s an everyday routine there.

As for Berchtesgarten and the Land Rover, I have no idea how they came to figure in this at all. It’s a shame that I fell asleep just as it was becoming interesting.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual to soothe my fevered brow and to sort out my legs and feet. We chatted about the fire yesterday, La Havaudière and other fires, and then she pushed off.

Once she’d gone, I could read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

We’ve now moved on from the Arabic (with the usual derogatory comments) to discussing his evidently favourite period – the Gothic period. And we’re not even a dozen lines in when we have "the forms that had their root in an age of persecution joyfully surrender their supremacy to those which breathed the spirit of a Church triumphant alike over heathendom without, and secular oppression within. We shall see how they built who bore alike the spear and the crozier in her holy cause ; when ” the praises of GOD were in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hands."

Bearing a spear and a “two-edged sword in their hands” is hardly a Christian attitude, what with “thou shalt not kill” and all of that. But when we have ministers of the church married two or three or even more times after various divorces, you have to understand that the Christian religion has very little whatever to do with the words of Jesus.

Back in here, I had a few more things to do, and then I wrote out my notes from yesterday. And that took longer than it ought to have done too, due to me drifting in and out of sleep for most of the morning.

After I had finished and everything was on-line, I relaxed in my chair for a while, and the next thing that I remembered was that it was now 13:05. I must have been asleep for an age.

Once I’d recovered my enthusiasm and energy, I went to sort out the bathroom. And when my cleaner arrived, bearing gifts as I mentioned earlier, she chased me under the shower. And actually, now that I can go in and come out of the shower all on my own, today I had my first-ever shower in the altogether. And that was nice too.

After she left, I had a second disgusting drink and then started to track down the music that I need for this next radio programme. And this will be difficult as the search motor that I use is currently offline.

Rosemary rang me for a chat in the middle of it all. Just a mere fifty-five minutes today – we’re obviously losing our touch.

For tea tonight, I lengthened the leftovers from the taco roll stuffing from last week and made another taco roll with rice and veg. And that was really nice too. I seem to be eating much better these days. Mind you, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t eating anything at all.

So right now I’m off to bed, hoping for a better sleep than yesterday.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the lack of Christianity in the church these days … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old man walked into a church wearing tatty, threadbare clothes. The preacher was outraged and told the man "before you come into this church again, have a good talk with God and ask him what attire you should be wearing to come into this church!"
Next week, the old man was back, still in the same threadbare clothes.
"I thought I told you to have a good talk with God about your attire before you came back!"
"I did," he replied "but God said that he didn’t have a clue. He’s never been in this place before."

EPIC HALL

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