Tag Archives: sid james

Monday 9th June 2025 – THEY HAVE CHANGED …

… my hours at the dialysis centre, so it seems.

However, it wasn’t they who told me, it was the taxi company, when I rang them to find out why the taxi hadn’t come for me

It’s not been changed to the morning either, which was what I was hoping, but instead it’s being put back from 13:30 to 14:00. That is what they would in Mexico call a peon in the hacienda.

What was annoying was that I was good and ready for the taxi at 12:30, after having what for me is a good night’s sleep. It was after midnight when I stopped letting it all hang out and crawled off to bed. It took a while to go off to sleep but once I’d gone, I’d really gone.

And there I stayed until all of … errr … 05:50. I didn’t recall anything whatsoever going on during the night.

Being awake is 05:50 is not the same as being out of bed. That’s for sure. Mind you, when I heard the electric water heater switch off at 06:20 I was already sitting at my desk. I had decided to make the most of the opportunity and I was dictating the notes for the additional track to complete the radio programme that I almost finished yesterday.

After a wash, a clothes-washing session and the morning’s supply of medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night. I wasn’t going to work any more. I’d been ill so I’d finished work and was at home. I’d been experimenting with a few things. At the end of the week, on a Friday, Nerina came home with a loaf of bread, some cakes and a few types of speciality loaves. She was showing them to me. “I don’t want to steal your thunder” I said, but reaching under the worktop, I pulled out a loaf that I had made during the day. She replied that her loaf was much nicer than mine, which they probably were. I noticed that my loaf of bread had been cut in half. It was in two halves under the counter and one half had not been put into the freezer to freeze. She’d also brought some cakes with her. She told me that a couple were for me. I wondered how I was going to eat them because it was going to be difficult. She made no explanation so I thought that I’d eat one today and maybe one tomorrow, something like that. I thought that this would give me a great opportunity to actually do some baking myself. I didn’t want to be put off by this idea of Nerina buying stuff and bringing it home when I’d like to have a go at making it

Nothing in the above would surprise me. Nerina never had great faith in my cooking, which was hardly surprising bearing in mind my mother’s cooking. What started off my culinary apprenticeship, such as it was, was with Nerina who, having an Italian mother, could rustle up a tasty meal out of the most basic ingredients. The rest was picked up here and there, especially from my friend Liz (“that” Liz, not “this” Liz) and by trial and error – usually much more of the latter.

There was a battle to be fought. It was to take place in the early months of the Spring. It was again something to do with the Wars of the Roses. The armies had to negotiate themselves into a good position so that they could defend it and attack the opponents. One of them had to inform its superiors in whichever army by 12th June – can you imagine that? Preparing for a war and having to organise something for several months like this?

We had a “Wars of the Roses” moment the other day too. This book about medieval castles is really getting to me right now. But the prelude to the battle bears a strong resemblance to the prelude for the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513

Later on, it was something to do with mobile ‘phones. Some young boy had had a mobile ‘phone at first and was totally confused by all of the offers on the market. His father sat down and went through them all with him. They worked out which one was the best so they arranged coverage with that one. In the meantime, the father decided that he’d buy the main shop in the town where this best company was installed and slowly set out the premises, then he could take over the installation of these sites and how tall they were. That way, he’d have a monopoly on the amount of work that was being done in the town on mobile ‘phones.

There was nothing in that dream that seemed to be of any significance or ring any bells with me.

Finally, I’d had a girlfriend. She was a few years younger than me but I liked her anyway and she liked me, which was the important thing. We hung around for a while, nothing particularly seriously, One day she’d been round to my house but my mother said that she’d have to go. I saw her to the door but told her to come back in half an hour. Half an hour later she was there on the doorstep and I smuggled her into the house. I had to leave her for a minute while I went to the bathroom, and she decided that she needed to go too. She went into the bathroom and I closed the door and waited outside. My mother had heard the toilet flush from the previous time so she came upstairs to use the bathroom, walked in and found this girl in there. Naturally, she was quite upset and it led to something of an argument but by the time that the three of us were walking downstairs again my mother had calmed down a little. I think that she’d started to accept by this time that this girl was going to be somewhere around in the future. I remember saying to this girl as we were walking down the stairs “you can’t say that life going out with me isn’t exciting, can you?”.

This house – it was the one in Shavington that we left when I was 16. I can see it quite clearly. I can still see the girl too. She was short, small-framed and with dark curly hair down just past her shoulders. I was convinced that I knew who she was too, but now that I’m awake … "really?" – ed … I can’t recognise her at all.

But finally “getting the girl” and overwhelming my mother? Things are surely beginning to look up. I just wish that I knew who the girl was.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and didn’t hang about. It’s her last day so I imagine that she has plenty of blood samples and injections to perform, seeing as her oppo starts his round tomorrow.

After she left I made breakfast and then sat down to eat it, with a good book on the laptop.

At long last, we’ve finished Geo T Clark’s MEDIEVAL MILITARY ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND and I can’t say that I was disappointed. It ended up going out like a damp squib which is not surprising.

And having yesterday mocked somewhat the author of a book dated 1840, the next reading matter to come round on the book list was printed in 1604.

It’s called THE SURVEY OF LONDON and it’s a guide book discussing the different localities of London as they were at the end of the Fifteenth Century, with a few anecdotal notes about things that our author, John Stowe, picked up while he was researching.

It’s a book that’s been on my reading list for ages. Liz (“this” Liz, not “that” Liz) and I spent days wandering around London in between University meetings twenty years ago, visiting all kinds of hidden corners.

London has changed considerably since the slum clearances that began at the end of the Nineteenth Century and the Luftwaffe bombing, so I’m hoping to find a collection of books that describe how it used to be. I’ve found a few from the early Twentieth Century but they are in the period where the modernisation of the City was in full swing, and a lot had gone already by them.

What I’m hoping is that this book will fill the gap.

After breakfast I came back in here to start work. And today’s task was the Welsh homework, which is now finished, although God knows what it will be like. I’m really struggling to concentrate these days.

My cleaner turned up bang on time to fit my patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait. And wait.

When I rang up to enquire after it, I was told that the dialysis centre had changed my hours. That was the first that I had heard of it.

The taxi already had a passenger aboard when it arrived, and once I was in, we set off.

At the dialysis centre I was seen quite quickly. They confirmed that my hours had changed but they didn’t believe me when I told them that I knew nothing about it. That rather annoyed me.

No-one bothered me all afternoon, which was a good thing. However, I didn’t do very much. I wasn’t in the mood.

The same passenger was with me on the return journey so the driver dropped him off first. It took about fifteen minutes to take him to his room at the Re-education Centre so it was about 19:15 when I made it back home. And I’ve no idea why, but I found myself in a foul mood.

Back in my lair, I crashed into a chair and vegetated for an hour. I was exhausted. Tea was a simple pasta and burger and now I’m off to bed, totally wasted.

But seeing as we have been talking about historical novels … "well, one of us has" – ed … a book written in 1604 will be full of obsolete phrase and spelling.
That’s no surprise though, because the English language was in a state of confusion, consolidation and correction round about that time.
As Kenneth Williams once famously said "but English is a very peculiar language"
And as Sid James famously replied "you interrupt me once more and you’ll hear some VERY peculiar language"

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Tuesday 25th February 2025 – NOW THAT’S WHAT I …

… call a wasted day today. I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done exactly three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … nothing.

Some of it has been my own fault, as you might indeed expect, but some of it hasn’t. I really need to motivate myself better if I am ever going to accomplish anything.

The most obvious excuse to use is that I was thoroughly, completely and utterly exhausted. The other day, returning from dialysis, I was in bed at 21:30 and last night it was 22:20. and I was lucky that I made it that far because I really wasn’t in the mood.

Once in bed though, going to sleep was another matter. “At least, being in a horizontal position is resting and relaxing” I kidded myself.

Eventually though I dozed off into oblivion and had yet another turbulent night. For a change though, following a dialysis session, I was actually asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00

At that moment I was with a friend of mine and we were trying to go into her office. There was a security reception desk and the girl on there was known to be rather strict so it was necessary to fill in an application form, and when you went for an eye test, the optical test, it would come up with several people similar and you had to guess which one you were. The aim was that I would find someone similar to me and say that I’d lost my card. She would give me a new card and I would go in. This however wasn’t working and there was nothing very similar to me at all so my friend had to think of another excuse. The girl at the reception desk took an absolute age to deal with all of this before she finally handed me a duplicate card. My friend said “this is just typical of this girl. She knows that this is a fraudulent application because we have thousands, and she’s just taking her time about it as she always does”. We went in a walked down a corridor, then we had to climb down into a courtyard and up the other side. Climbing down was fine but climbing up was almost impossible for me so I had to think of another way of doing it. At that moment a man came down and sat in the corner to begin to smoke a cigarette. I thought that the easiest way was to strike up a conversation. This place looked rather Asian so I talked about having a Japanese garden in here. My friend came back to look for me. He asked her “how long have you worked here?”. She replied “oh, years. I came here in August” and said which year it was. He asked “how do you find it?”. She replied “I made a mistake because I came here in a jumper and I regretted it”. She wandered off and he said to me “she’s a tough girl, isn’t she?”. I said “someone who had had the problems that she had had and survived, anyone would be tough”. He was looking at me and could see that I was disabled and said “oh please sit down”. I replied “I can’t because if I sit down I can’t stand up”. Then he began to panic saying “oh please sit down, sit down, sit down”. I wondered what was going on. This place where we were was like a volcanic crater although it was a garden with pavilion-type Japanese buildings in it, all ringed by a really jagged range of mountains in a huge circular form that looked just as if it was inside a volcano but with a garden inside instead of a crater.

That’s an interesting idea for Security, isn’t it? Being able to choose who you were. After all, NAMES ARE FOR TOMBSTONES, BABY. And I had a friend for a while in Brussels who had been a diplomat in Japan, but it wasn’t she. But if I’m going to be disabled and handicapped in my dream, then it rather defeats the point of them, doesn’t it? Not much point in escapism if you can’t escape.

Into the bathroom for a good wash and then into the kitchen for medication; Finally back in here to listen to the dictaphone because there was much more than just the above. I’d been working on a radio programme and I couldn’t ever make it right. It never seemed to go anywhere as how it was supposed to do. It was continually failing the quality control check. After several weeks of editing I finally had it something like and was ready to send it off. The recording engineer and some of the producers were however rather fed up of having this come up on their desks every week so they were determined to stop it but I sent it off anyway but they still came back and refused it. What should have been a deadline for the 28th of April was now running into May. They basically said that they wouldn’t edit it again and it was finished. I replied “well for failing it this last two or three times on tiny issues, it shows a serious lack of goodwill particularly when I have worked as hard as I have done over the past day or two to put the issue right. If there was nothing substantially wrong with the last one you should have accepted it” but they were still very unwilling to move on this particular issue and I could see this programme running on and on and on.

There have been radio programmes that have taken an age to do because the editing has been so complicated. There was the one a few weeks ago that took several weeks, and the worst part of it was that it overran so I had to edit it, and one of the bits that went was the bit where I’d had all of the difficulty

There was a girl from school directing a film last night. She was running through the scenes. I had a look at the scenes and towards the end of the film there were thousands of scenes every second, so many scenes to go through and they lasted a blinking of an eye. I was appearing as an extra in it and so was a friend of mine. We’d been to makeup and we’d been dressed up and put our costumes on. As the film was being filmed it was passed through some kind of computer animation so people became like cartoon characters as they were going through the motions for real. When I looked at my image and the vision of the girl who was with me, the images were horrible, the faces were all distorted and nothing seemed to be correct at all. We were standing on the set waiting to be directed. The girl from school came along, took one look at us, took one look at the screen effects and told us to leave the stage. We thought “that was a waste of an entire day. What a shame. Our chance for fame and fortune”.

This is another girl about whom I haven’t spent a day thinking since I left school. So why she would put in an appearance right now I really don’t know.

Later on I was with another girl. We’d stopped somewhere to look at something that we’d seen earlier. All of a sudden I had a horrible realisation that I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t have a clue as to how I’d arrived at this place, or the name of the place or what I was doing here anyway. I left the girl with the car and walked a little way up the road to see if I could see anything. On the left-hand side of the road was a funeral director’s place with gravestones in it but it was all closed, dusty, and hadn’t been open for years by the looks of it. I decided to turn round and walk back to the car and drive until we find a village and see the name. What I could also do later was to look through the dashcam videos and see if I could identify the route. As I was walking back a lorry that was coming up behind me stopped at the side of the road behind me. The driver alighted and stood by the side of his cab. A lorry that was coming towards me, he stopped too and he alighted from his cab. He was carrying a small puppy and he stood by the cab. I was effectively blocked in between these two lorries, and my car and my friend were beyond them. As these two guys stood there I had this horrible menacing feeling that something pretty awful was about to happen.

So who are all these girls who keep on appearing? I wish I knew. Some nice, charming, pleasant company would be just what the doctor ordered and to actually have them present and allow them to slip away so easily like this is something of a shame. And I know that regular readers of this rubbish will recall saying on many occasions that I never “know where I was” but in this dream it was for real. As for those two guys in the lorries, I know THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THEM .

isabelle the nurse breezed in this morning, late as usual due to having to do all of the blood tests that her oppo doesn’t want to do. She had a few cheery words of greeting and then rushed back out. She’s been working on her float for Carnaval and making the costumes and she’s promised me plenty of photos after the parades this forthcoming weekend.

Then it was breakfast time and MY BOOK time.

Today we are discussing miscellaneous earthworks again and despite his dismissal of much that has been assumed or inferred on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, he seems to conclude that everything uncertain is “probably” something astronomical or astrological, or both. However, he is yet to post one single piece of evidence to suggest what it is that is supposed to be indicated or observed, and the position of the stars and planets in the sky hasn’t changed that much in the last 5,000 years. The earth rotates through something like 1° every 7000 years.

His “pottery works” on the shores of the Thames estuary in Essex was excavated in the 1930s and identified as an Iron Age or Roman salt evaporation site, and not only did I manage to find the report of the excavation, I found a treatise on the operation thereof and now I would be quite confident in running my own sea salt production facility if the need ever arises. It would have been the kind of thing that, had I found it 20 years ago, I would have gone to try it to see if it would work.

Back in here I had all of the replies to deal with, and you’ve no idea just how many there were. Do I owe you all money or something? Once again, a great big thank-you for your continued support.

No Welsh today, so I decided to deal with the “Taste of Woodstock” radio programme. First task is to see what “songs played at Woodstock” I have in my live music collection As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can’t use material actually performed at Woodstock unfortunately.

The answer to that is “not as much as I need” so I edited what I had and then set out to hunt down more music but I was waylaid. One of my neighbours, the President of the Residents’ Committee, wanted to come to pay me a visit. She’d left me a birthday present yesterday, which was nice of her.

She came along and we had a very nice chat for a while and discussed several issues, one of which was, surprisingly, one of the topics that I’d discussed with Rosemary the other day. It seems to be something that’s on the minds of a lot of people right now.

Next was my little great niece (or is she my great little niece) who arrived back home in Canada last night from Ecuador. She showed me all of her photos and videos of her trip and I told her how impressed I was with her. And I am too. These opportunities for travel only come along once in a lifetime and you should seize the moment. Sitting there with her feet straddling the equator beats the one that I took of Alison straddling the driehoek – the three-cornered border between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and also beats the one of Rosemary, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and me straddling the Arctic Circle.

Had His Nibs and I been able to reach the North Pole in 2018 I might have trumped it but, regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we stopped 700 miles short. My niece has 50 years ahead of her to do that, and good luck to her.

And while we’re on the subject of Rosemary … "well, one of us is" – ed … she rang me again today for a short chat. And it was short too – only fifty-three minutes. She needs the birth certificates of her parents and didn’t know how to go about finding them. Consequently I had a very happy time delving deep into the bowels of the Public Records Office in Kew and to my delight, I came up trumps too. When I was in Wandsworth working in that Italian restaurant I spent a lot of time in the PRO

The radio programme for this coming weekend needed chaeking too. That’s now done and sent off, but there was no time left to carry on with any more work. I was late as it was. But making a taco roll with rice and veg followed by date bread and soya dessert doesn’t take long.

So now I’m off to bed ready for shower day tomorrow. And I hope that I have a more productive day than today was. I can do without too many days like that. However, I’ll never turn down an opportunity to talk to a friend when the opportunity arises. There are more things in life than working.

But while we’re on the subject of working … "well, one of us is" – ed … One of my friends had sent me a message for my birthday, saying "I hope you managed to lay your hands on something tasty for your birthday"
And so I replied saying "unfortunately not. The nurses at dialysis kept well out of my reach."

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Tuesday 27th August 2024 – I HAVE MADE …

… myself a ginger cake this afternoon.

As yet, I haven’t sampled it, but I’m quite looking forward to doing that tomorrow. I’ve no idea what it’ll turn out like because it’s a recipe that I’ve pretty much invented, so we shall see what we shall see. It promises to be interesting, to say the least.

Like last night, which was also quite interesting, not the least because the nurse had fastened my puttees quite tightly, and as my foot expanded it felt as if the little toe on my left foot was being amputated with no anaesthetic. It’s a long time since I’ve felt pain like that

And so I had to undo my puttees quite a while before going to bed, which is not what I want to do as all of the water in my body will them settle down into my legs and feet and make them swell even more. Ahh well …

Going to bed was interesting last night because I can’t remember anything at all about it. I must have been asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. And there I stayed until the alarm went off. I had awoken a couple of times but I can’t remember when and why.

When the alarm went off I switched it off and headed to the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing a radio programme on mutations last night, why they exist and what’s their meaning, which words mutate and why. We were broadcasting it over a period of several days on several different platforms. There were several people who didn’t really receive the message at all, that Welsh is a completely different language from most that they’ve already encountered before. The German language mutates a little and there are a few mutations in the English language but the Welsh language is full of them and has specific rules. These need to be understood by the speakers whether you are native or a graduate Welsh speaker so this was the point of telling them about our discussion. But I’d noticed that these lamp posts have to be secreted well below the road surface but the two that they were about to install at this road junction didn’t look anything at all heavy enough to me … fell asleep here …

This was interesting. German, and to a lesser extent English, employ mutations quite a lot but it’s mainly the vowel that mutates – gIve = gAve, hOld = hEld etc and it’s a very rare consonant that mutates – leaF = leaVes etc. But in Welsh it’s the consonant that mutates most commonly, and when I say “common” I mean “common”. I’m at the stage now though where I can’t remember the rules of mutation and am just learning phrases parrot-fashion as a small child would. As for where the second part of this dream came from I really have no idea. Perhaps it’s just as well that I fell asleep in mid-dictate.

Back in the 1930s was one of these sweat-shop offices in New York where you had to walk around about 50 flights of stairs down 10 basements to find where people were working in all kinds of overcrowded and unhealthy conditions. Someone finally went down there – he was moving to Chicago and wanted to take members of staff from New York with him. He identified people on the basis of “you, you and you” – that’s how he recruited his “willing” volunteers, by pointing to them and ordering them to accompany him. One or two of them were upset but there was no other alternative. While the rest of his staff were discussing this, a news report came in that the Police had stopped someone riding a motor bike in their area of the city. They had found out that this person was unlicensed so they told him that his bike would be confiscated. As the police officer was pushing it into someone’s driveway to await collection a shot rang out and she fell dead. There was a huge enquiry launched, which upset just about everyone and the local papers crusaded on behalf of the residents who, they said, had lost many of their civil rights as a result of the police coming into the Borough in numbers to try to track down the murderer and the tactics that they used to deprive them of their civil rights too.

That was how things were run in American offices back in the 1930s and while evolution in the UK office culture, thanks to the Trades Unions, has made the office a much more friendly place to work, that’s not the case in the USA. Not by any means. I worked for an American company for a while, in their Brussels office. There was a knotty problem that needed fixing and I was on the ‘phone to New York one Friday afternoon trying to sort it out. At 18:00 our time (12:00 their time) I said that I was going home and we’d catch up to finish it off on the Monday. Monday at 15:00 (09:00 in New York) I waited for his ‘phone call, which never came. Just before going home I rang up the New York office to speak to him. "Ohh – Mr (so-and-so)?" came a voice. "I’m afraid that his position was made redundant on Friday." So he was finished there with (less than) six hours notice. Not exactly shot on his doorstep but not far off.

The nurse was late this morning and that had me running around rather late today. But she and I had a row. She was on the point of refusing to put a plaster on my operation but I stood my ground and insisted.

She thinks that I’m being a big baby over this and she’s probably right too, but I can do without a panic attack right now. There will be time enough for that in a few weeks time. But thanks to my faithful cleaner I have brand-new puttees on today and the previous lot are soaking in a bowl.

After she left I had breakfast, nice and at my leisure reading my book on the Icknield Way. And then I had plenty of things to do.

Firstly, to find the batteries that I took out of the dictaphone one night a few days ago and which fell on the floor and were lost to view. They’ve been tracked down and are now charging up.

Second thing is to have a much closer look at the Genz Benz combo amp. My initial inspection is regrettably correct – the two-way voltage switch is missing and the data plate shows that the “115 Volt 60 Herz” option is the only one selected.

That means that I need a transformer to run it from a 230 Volt 50 Herz” European electricity circuit, which wa what I suspected in the first place. But there are transformers readily available

Another thing is to make a slow start on the outstanding correspondence, of which there’s more than enough over the past few weeks. I owe several people a response and I haven’t forgotten you

After lunch I did some work on the radio and finished off the first of my special projects. You may be wondering why someone born in 1892 deserves a special rock music programme dedicated to him and him alone but if there is ever one man who has contributed more to rock music than any other one person I’d like to meet him

“Finished” I say, but I’ll be reading it through a few times before I dictate it. It’ll doubtless have a few amendments before it’s ready, but in a few months time I shall be inviting my merry little band of listeners to come for a walk with me in a most surprising place.

After the mid-afternoon hot chocolate there was baking to do. Firstly, a loaf of bread as I have now run out yet again, and secondly, while the dough was busy rising, I made my cake.

The chocolate powder was omitted this time of course, and its volume was replaced by extra flour, and then melted a tablespoon of coconut oil, which replaced an equivalent amount of oil. Then some ground ginger, ground mixed spice, and thanks to my loyal cleaner, some fresh ginger, finely diced

It probably will be the most ridiculous cake ever but at least it looks as if it might be a cake – of sorts. It actually rose in the oven too so that’s definitely progress of a sort

Tea was taco roll with rice and veg and for the benefit of those readers who say that I need stuffing, there was plenty to hand. So much so that it will be a good leftover curry tomorrow night, especially if I remember to make some naan bread.

But tomorrow I’m off to the hospital at Avranches – an 08:15 pick-up. I’m not sure that I’m looking forward to that but I shall do my best.

But while we’re on the subject of baking … "well, one of us is" – ed … the fact that I’m willing to have a go at baking is keeping me away from these agencies like the one that Sid James and Hattie Jacques were running in CARRY ON LOVING

Terry Scott who had “good cook” among his requirements went storming back to the office after a meeting set up by Sid James
"I don’t know why you’re upset" said Sid James. "I told you that she was a good cook"
"Yes, and she had something in the oven" said Terry Scott. "For nine months on Gas Mark Eight"

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Saturday 10th August 2024 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… all that much better today than it was yesterday. There has been a slight improvement to be sure but almost anything would be an improvement over what surely must have been one of the worst days of my life.

It was another late night last night. and I’m not talking about midnight or anything respectably late but I’m talking about times like 02:00, that sort of thing.

Something awoke me at 05:45 and I’ve no idea what it was. At te time I was in the middle of some kind of panic attack thing about how I must catch a bus to somewhere, a long-distance coach. I have to be somewhere else by 08:00 to board this bus and I’ve no idea what time it is and when the alarm goes off will I have time to go – another one of these panic attacks. But whatever awoke me sounded so real that I actually left the bed to answer my phone, which hadn’t rung or even received a message, so I’ve absolutely no idea why I would have done that.

Having made sure that there was nothing going on that might have been of an importance I went back to bed.

These days I’ve had a few of these panic attacks while I’m asleep.. I wonder if some part of my body is telling me something and that I need to take heed. But I really can’t think where I have to be that involves any kind of travel that I would undertake in a long-distance bus. The only place where I would ever be likely to want to take one would be between Montréal and Florenceville in New Brunswick, but not even that bus runs any more.

Once I was back in bed there I stayed until the alarm went off.

When Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE I staggered off into the bathroom to have a good scrub, wash my night-time shorts and change my clothes. I have to look my best for Isabelle’s last day before she goes off on a well-deserved break.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in a scrapyard somewhere and we had an old Class 20 or similar shunter. For some reason we had to go to a quarry. At the quarry was another one of the same type of machine. There was some issue involving the driver of that particular machine so as we were there one of our people drove it. There was a huge argument and he ended up escaping in this machine, not before he’s destroyed half of their infrastructure, driven over the top of a crane cutting the bodywork etc. The bailiffs or someone turned up at our place and wanted to take away our machine thinking that it was theirs but when they compared the registration numbers of our train with the registration numbers of the locomotive from the quarry they found out that it wasn’t the same so they couldn’t take it, so they left Then the guy turned up with this machine from a quarry so we ended up with two identical machines due to people losing their temper

Actually, I know someone who has a Class 20 diesel locomotive. He might even have more. He’s the neighbour of a former friend of mine and runs a company in Staffordshire hiring out locomotives to various railway companies and has a useful side-line ingoing round various locomotive breakers yards rescuing the more valuable spare parts. He started off with just one locomotive that he had bought to preserve but made a fortune hiring it out to the builders of the Channel Tunnel and, like Topsy, his business “just growed”.

Isabelle was in “chat” mode again today and she spent some time here. Having covered for her boss’s absence on holiday she’s now going off for ten days. He starts back tomorrow and their cycle of “one week on, one week off” begins again.

While I was having breakfast I was reading about the Maginnis Gulch Stampede, or Montana’s Phantom Gold Rush, an incident that was played to perfection in CARRY ON COWBOY

But for those of you who have expressed an interest, the book is called FOLLOWING OLD TRAILS, written by a newspaperman called Arthur L Stone.

Later on in the morning there were the highlights of last night’s game between Queen’s Park and Livingston, and then I joined that guy I mentioned the other day, Blair McNally, for a trip to the East end of Glasgow for Vale of Clyde v Port Glasgow Athletic, a proper amateur football match in about the eighth level of the Scottish Pyramid.

This afternoon I’ve been tracking down concert dates. And much to my surprise, because of all the ones that I’ve done this is the first, I came across one that took place on a date on which I will have a radio broadcast within the current cycle of programmes that I’m preparing.

So on 21st March next year we’ll be having a live concert from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in 1974. This afternoon I’ve mixed the music for the concert and I’ve written half of the notes. I could have written more but unfortunately I was away with the fairies for a while at some point.

While I was at it, I came across a few other interesting bits and pieces, and finally turned my hand to downloading a concert that had been sent to me by one of the musicians who took part, featuring the almost-last concert on which my hero Deke Leonard played.

It’s a real pity though because of how the dates fall, this one won’t be broadcast for several years yet.

Tea tonight was one of my favourite quorn steaks in breadcrumbs, with baked potato and vegan salad. And it was delicious as always. Something that I eat every week but why not if I enjoy it.

So now I’m going to dictate the next batch of radio notes and then I’m going to try to go to bed at something like a reasonable time.

But talking of “Carry On Cowboy” reminds me of the two bandits (one of whom was Sid James) talking to the Indian chief Big Heap (Charles Hawtrey)

Big Heap – "And this is my son, Little Heap"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "How"
Big Heap – "And this is my squaw. I bought her for two buffalo skins"
One Bandit – "How"
Other bandit (Sid James) – "Never mind how. Where?"

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Friday 29th December 2023 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what has happened but I awoke this morning in a more positive state of mind than the one in which I’ve been for the last few weeks.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I write down things like this because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … controlling my mental health as this illness unfolds is just as important as controlling my physical health

Many people, health professionals and the like, think that I ought to have counselling to prepare me for my fate, but I’ve declined. I don’t want to be pumped full of pills and quizzed about my childhood and all of that. My childhood was ghastly and that’s all that need be said about it. All the details are, like Kate Bush, HIDING IN A ROOM IN MY MIND and there they can stay.

And apart from that, what about the poor person who draws the short straw and has to probe the depths of my subconscious? There are places in there where I daren’t even go.

But anyway, I digress. I took my blood pressure before going to bed and then slept the Sleep of the Dead until the alarm went off at 07:00

First thing that I did was to take my blood pressure and, as is normal, it’s higher than what they want to see. But it’s always been high so there’s no difference there. Nevertheless not as high as when SID JAMES MEETS NURSE BARBARA WINDSOR.

After the medication, all 15 tablets of it and which takes much longer than it ought, I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been and, more importantly these days, who came with me. I was back in that bus garage from the other night. A company called Ferodo that worked nearby needed some kind of 12-seater minibus to run people around their factory premises. The local newspaper approached whoever was in charge to find out how it possibly could be done bearing in mind the fact that the firm was stretched to capacity already and they were having to hire in coaches and drivers from other companies in order to complete the services that they had.

And then I was in Nantwich at the gym. A battle broke out and bombs began to fall. The first thing that I thought of was my patient so I ran to the hospital and began to move them to a safe place but the receptionists caught hold of me and told me that there were people much worse than him who needed help so I spent that night under bombardment ferrying injured persons around the hospital. In the morning the crowd quietened down and we were able to slip out for things. I spoke about this medical examination that I’d had to have for my patient. They agreed that it was essential and sent me on my way through these crowds of people to a place that was quiet where I could have the ECG test.

Later on I stepped back into that dream. I’d finally had the agreement to take these patients away from the wards and the next building later on and the Social Services would pay me 2 chestnuts or I’d pay the Social Security 2 chestnuts for every patient whom I moved to safety. So I picked up my equipment and set out for the Centre ready to begin the evacuation

Yes, I can step back into dreams like that at a later date, so why can’t I do it when Castor, Zero or TOTGA feature in them. Last night, there wasn’t a single person whom I recognised (or would have liked to recognise).

After a good wash and scrub up I went outside for the bus. And I do seem to be moving a little easier. It’s not my imagination.

The bus threw me out at St Nicolas and I went off to do my shopping. However I bumped into the guy with whom I’d had a long chat a few weeks ago and we had another discussion. People out here are starting to recognise me.

At the Post Office I posted off a letter to pay a bill and bought a pack of pre-stamped envelopes. They are handy because if there’s anything urgent I can write the letter, put it in one of those and give it to my cleaner to post without any money changing hand.

When the Christmas cake is finished it looks as if we’ll be having bread-and-butter pudding again for breakfast. There was a loaf of bread in the Carrefour reduced to half-price so I added that into my usual shopping list of mushrooms, lettuce and potatoes.

This time though I’ll make two smaller ones and freeze half of it so that it doesn’t go off like it did last time. And I’ll bake it for longer than I did too and see if that improves it any.

There’s a long wait for the bus back home but there’s coffee available in the Carrefour so I had a cup while I waited. And when I saw it go past in the opposite direction towards the terminus at this end of town I went out to wait for it to come back.

Back here, after an easier climb up the stairs than a few weeks ago, I made my coffee and cheese on toast and came back in here where I regrettably crashed out.

The telephone roused me from my slumber. It was the hospital. Apparently they check up on all of the serious cases once per week to see how they are developing, and now I’m on the list for that. I reassured them that, to date at least, everything was as it should be.

The firemen awoke me later too, asking for access to the building. Over here, it’s the firemen who handle the emergency ambulances so I was naturally interested in why they should be here.

My cleaner made her enquiries of “the usual suspects” and all of us were OK apparently so it’s a mystery

This afternoon, when I’ve not been away with the fairies, I finished off writing the notes for the next radio programme, which I’ll dictate on Saturday night.

That is, if I’m awake. The morale might be better right now but physically I’m exhausted and can’t keep my eyes open. Another early night is called for and I hope that this time one of my favourite young ladies comes to join me on a nocturnal ramble.

It doesn’t really matter which one it is. And in fact it could be a few others who have figured in my peripatetic adventures and who have come out of it in a favourable light. I know that it’s not many but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not the quantity that counts but the quality.
"Set sail before the sun
Feel the warmth that’s just begun
Share each and every dream
They belong to everyone"
OH I’D GIVE MY LIFE SO LIGHTLY …

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