Tag Archives: stuffed peppers

Monday 20th October 2025 – I HAVE LEFT …

… on the dinner plate about half my tea tonight. I just couldn’t physically eat it.

The way things are right now, I seem to be in quite a bad way, what with one thing and another, and unless I can find some way to pull myself out of it, I worry about what will happen.

It all had the air of being really good today too. Once more, I was in bed prior to 23:00 – well before, in fact, and I fell asleep quite rapidly.

Although I awoke at about 03:00 or so, it was only for a fleeting minute and then I went back to sleep again. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29

There was the usual procedure – into the bathroom for a wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, there was the dictaphone. The war was about to hit France in its full fury. I’d been leading one of the French armies. We’d ended up on the Normandy coast not too far from here when the information came through that the Germans were massing ready for a final sweep into Brittany. There was no time to spare so I ordered my army to stand to, and I went back to the base headquarters from where my army was administered. Everyone was waiting there for me, waiting for instructions, but I needed to look at reports and plans, and details from the sentinels as to what the German army was doing before I disposed my troops. But people were in such a rush. They asked if they should be ordered to arms, so I replied “yes”. “So what about being sent to the transport?”. I replied “there’s no harm in them being sent to the transports either”. I asked about Division 1816 which was the one that I wanted to be in the thickest of the fight. That was not actually present at Headquarters at the moment. Eventually, I obtained enough information to go to join my particular division which was at St Pair here and ready for an attack on the German Army.

This is, I believe, only the second time that I’ve dreamed about this area. But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there would be no chance whatever of me joining the Army, even in wartime. If I had to choose, I would be in the Merchant Navy.

There were three of us, two guys and me. We had to walk somewhere, which was going to take us about eight hours. We set out and began to walk, but at one point we were in a field where there was a big depression. To go round this depression, it meant climbing up some kind of bank, crossing over higher and going out through a hedge. The first person who went, she was actually a girl. She complained that I was too close behind her for her to manoeuvre at the top, saying something like “the purpose of being perpendicular is so that you can turn easily”, in other words, implying that I had to take a couple of steps back to give her room. At the top, there was a barbed wire fence to slide under. This turned to be more complicated than it might be, and I began to think that it would have been far easier just to jump the depression, and far quicker too. At the top, we had to slide under this barbed wire fence, then another barbed wire fence and into the roadway, but there was a cowpat in the way that didn’t look very comforting. Just then a car pulled up and a little woman was sitting in the car reading something that was on the seat beside her. We thought that if she stays here for long, we’re going to be very late. We have to push on regardless. Later on, there was this announcement that the British Government had discovered traces of three snakes. They described the three snakes, and I wondered if they meant that they had found our tracks on that embankment place where we had had to slide on out stomachs underneath that barbed wire.

It’s amazing how my fellow travellers change sex in the middle of a dream, isn’t it? As for the rest of the dream, including the cowpat, it’s quite meaningless. What would the snakes be doing in all of this?

There was also something about being in a house at the side of a road with a slight incline downhill. I had to come out of there in my van, towing a caravan, go down about 200 yards and turn left. I’d checked the road and it was clear, so I set out. But the van was really struggling to find any acceleration and a car caught up with me, which I thought that I’d have plenty of time to avoid. He cut in front of me at the traffic lights where this left turn was, and turned left, regardless of the light being on red, but just as I approached it, it turned green so I could carry on.

Where the house comes from, I have no idea. But the road junction, minus the traffic lights, is where you turn off the Upper Labrador road near Goose Bay to travel over the Mealy Mountains to the Labrador coast, SCENE OF OUR TRIUMPHS IN 2010. The van not working as it should, especially when towing a caravan, is something that doesn’t fit anywhere.

After that, I turned up in Wrexham after that. There were these people trying to register for something – there was a huge crowd. One girl was saying to her friends “come back here! Look at this!” and took them back to the reception window. As I walked past, I saw one of the guys whom I knew from the previous times that I’d been to hospital. He said “hello” so I said “hello”. I asked him if the way to the hospital that I wanted, which was a different one, was down at the bottom of this particular lane. He said that it was, so I set off. It was through a posh area with these Victorian buildings that looked like a school or a hospital or something. Then out in the countryside, I came across a ruined viaduct, so I had to walk down the valley to find another bridge to cross over, and then climb back up the other side.

This dream doesn’t fit anywhere either. I could easily see it as being the first part of the first dream, except that it’s out of order. But then, the purpose of this project at the beginning was to tie together some of these isolated dreams into some kind of continuous soap opera.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in on the gale (we’re having another storm). She told me that she doesn’t think that her oppo will be here in time tomorrow before I go. She’ll ring me if there’s a change in this decision (but as yet, not at all).

After she left, I made breakfast and then came in here.

There were several important things to do this morning, such as pay a few bills and write a letter or two.

To fill in the rest of the time, I prepared for the Welsh class tomorrow. I know that I won’t be there, but I need at least to have an idea of what’s going on so that I don’t fall behind. I’ve been doing too much of that in the past.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic. She brought with her a pile of medication too, as I’m running low on that as well. And that reminds me – the prescription is expiring so I need a new one.

Once she had left, I waited for the taxi. And waited, and waited. It turned up eventually at 13:30 or shortly thereafter with another two passengers. The driver was a very young, chatty girl who has taken me once, months ago. She was somewhat insistent on the bell, so I apologised, saying "I’m not able to run".

There was heavy traffic on the road but she put her foot down when she could, and I wasn’t all that late arriving. And although I was last to be coupled up, I didn’t have to wait too long.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me to talk about my infection. She thinks that I’m fit enough to go to chemotherapy tomorrow. I told her about all of my medical appointments this week and asked her if she couldn’t find one for Sunday, so that I would have a full week.

While I was at it, I told her that I was going to sell my apartment and live in one of the taxi company’s ambulances. That would save everyone a pile of trouble.

They have also re-organised my dialysis sessions for when my niece and her daughter arrive so that I can spend all the time with them.

One of my favourite taxi drivers was waiting for me, and we had a nice chat on the way home, but I was battered by the storms once I left the car, trying to return to the apartment.

After my faithful cleaner left, I made a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg but as I said, half of it went into the bin. I’m throwing away tons of stuff just now and it’s not at all good.

So tomorrow, I shall be up at 06:00 ready (I don’t think) for chemotherapy. I’m not looking forward to it at all but I suppose that I have to go through with it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about snakes … "well, one of us has" – ed … one day, mummy snake saw baby snake crying.
"What’s the matter, dear?" she asked
"It’s the snakes next door" sobbed baby snake. "They won’t let me hiss in their pit."
"Don’t you worry about them" replied mummy. "I can remember them when they were so poor that they didn’t have a pit to hiss in."

Tuesday 7th October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s totally pointless breaking my neck in order to go to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

So there I was, rushing to finish everything as early as possible, given how ill I was feeling last night, and eventually managing to be in bed before 22:30 for once, and there I was, wide awake at 03:30.

What finished it off was that I’d fallen asleep quite quickly too, so I could reasonably have expected to have had a really good sleep. That would have been really nice for once to have managed to have still been asleep at 06:29 when the alarm should be going off.

Having said that, however, I did in the end manage to go back to sleep, although it took a good ninety minutes of tossing and turning. And even then, I was once more awake at 06:10, feeling even more tired than I had been at 03:30.

It took a good few minutes to summon up the courage to leave the bed and head off into the bathroom for a good wash. And then it was into the kitchen as usual for the medication.

Back in here, there were tons of stuff on the dictaphone so I must have had a decent sleep at some point. There was some kind of camp set up – a campsite for nomadic people. I was one who turned up there with my caravan. I settled down for something like a temporary home for a while. But I’d built some kind of weird contraption something like one of these switchbacks on a fairground – I’d built it out of planks of wood. The aim was for kids to climb up into it and roll or otherwise descend down to the bottom. It looked really good but it was really rickety and the first wind would blow it down but the kids were going to enjoy themselves and make good use of it.

These days, with half of the roads out of town closed for repair, we’ve been going past the camp site for the nomads so I’ve seen quite a lot of it. Although the nomadic life appeals to me (or, at lest, it did until I was taken ill), the idea of having a camp defeats the whole purpose of it.

The “weird contraption” however reminds me of the industrial log-chutes that we have encountered on our travels in the past, at PLACES SUCH AS FORESTVILLE

And later, during one period of hostilities in the USA they caught a girl who was a bunny girl. Although she was dressed in civilian clothes, she had her uniform with her so the authorities obliged her by using force to march through the city in her bunny girl outfit. This is against the rules of War of course, but she was obliged to march like this through the city.

This is another one of those really strange, meaningless dreams that I have every now and again. And as far as I can tell, it has no relevance to anything.

Some time later, I had Percy Penguin in the car. I’d picked her up in Shavington and there was someone else with us too, a youngish guy. We’d been loading up some furniture to take and we’d put it in my car and set off. We drove through into Belgium and then we reached the coast. We had a lovely drive out on the coast road and then over a kind of ramp and onto an island. We drove all the way to the far end of this island where there was a huge bridge. We drove over this huge bridge and ended up on a smaller island with a canal, and all around this island were cruise ships etc. Then, we ended up having to go over a third bridge, and on the island at the end of the third bridge were all these skyscrapers. It looked so impressive. That was the head office of the European Union. We pulled up outside and we had to unload all of these pieces of furniture. I asked Percy Penguin what she thought, and she thought that it was really nice. Then she decided that she would like us to go for a walk in the park. I said we could but we couldn’t stay long because they know what time I’d delivered this furniture and I’d be expected to be at my desk a few minutes later than this. So if she wanted to go for a walk, it would have to be quick.

The islands, the ships, the bridges and the buildings in this dream, I can still see them now and they were all really quite impressive. It was like something from a science fiction film. But how nice it was to see Percy Penguin again. I haven’t seen her for years and I do sometimes wonder how she is doing these days. I’m not even sure if she’s still alive after Covid, what with working in a high-risk environment.

But there was something somewhere in the middle of all of this about me going for breakfast. However, I’d turned up really late after a series of meetings and there was very little breakfast left. I had to scratch around for some cornflakes and some muesli, and it looked like a mess. Someone actually asked me what it was. And then trying to find the soya milk, and with the water, I almost ended up tipping it out of someone’s glass because it was all that I could find. Generally speaking, this breakfast was turning into a total disaster, seeing as it was so late being taken.

The breakfast is something that I can still see too. And it looks disgusting, I do have to say. It must have been even more frightening in the dream. But at one point, I did use to have muesli for breakfast – I made it myself by mixing all of the ingredients. However, one winter I went onto porridge and there I seem to have stayed.

The nurse was early today, and he’s still the cheerful, happy person that he became after he returned from his holiday. We had a nice chat about musical instruments and then he cleared off on the rest of his rounds.

Once he’d gone, I made breakfast and, instead of my book, I read some articles about German commerce raiders in the two World Wars. These were fast freighters that could, with plenty of canvas and wood, easily be disguised as many other different types of freighter, usually of neutral countries.

They had several heavy guns, well-hidden and disguised. Their rôle was to sidle up to innocent freighters belonging to the allied countries, lull them into a false sense of security, and then capture them, remove their freight and their fuel, and then either sink them or send them with a skeleton crew back to Germany.

It was all quite a lucrative operation for a while but the counter-measures adopted by the Royal Navy put an end to it.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. It was another one that passed quite well, and although I wasn’t quite as confident as I had been last week, I was still very satisfied. It makes a great deal of difference being thoroughly prepared, but it would be even better if I could remember it all later once the lesson has ended.

This afternoon, I began to dictate the notes for the radio programme on which I’ve been working for the past few weeks. They are all done and I’m about half-way through editing them. It should be finished tomorrow and then I can push on.

It should have been finished today but, apart from a little wobble at some point, I was interrupted by the letting agent for my previous apartment. They came to inspect it to make sure that it’s in good order so that they can refund my deposit.

Thanks to my faithful cleaner, the agent was completely satisfied. Once they’ve worked out all of the accounts, they will send me the money, which will be quite nice. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it because I can’t think of anything that I actually need right now or am likely to need in the future.

For some reason, tea seemed to take hours to make. It was a stuffed pepper with pasta tonight, tasty as usual, but now I’m running horribly late – again! So I’m not going to hang around. I’m going to clear off and go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about the nomadic life … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a couple of lines in David Bowie’s THE LAUGHING GNOME
"Haven’t you got a gnome to go to?"
"No, we are gnome-ads"
Presumably, David Bowie came across them in Gnome-man’s land.

Monday 29th September 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something today that is so rare and so unusual that it is worthy of some note.

And that is that I have left food on my plate tonight.

Usually, I’m really good at estimating how much food I want to eat at a meal, but tonight, even with my much reduced appetite, I still didn’t manage to finish the small (for me, anyway) portion of food that I served myself.

It’s down, I reckon, to a combination of a lack of appetite, a horrible salty taste of just about everything (since chemotherapy began) and a feeling that things are fermenting in my stomach, and I’m not sure which is the principal, or worst of those three situations.

That’s rather a shame because it was looking as if it might have been a good day today. Although it was later than I would like when I went to bed, I slept right through until the alarm went off at 06:29, and judging by how I was lying in bed, I hadn’t moved a muscle all night.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash, scrub up and also a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. While I was there, I washed my undies and had a change of clothes too, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d started a new job in a solicitor’s office and was being shown around the building. I was looking at all of the files and all of the documents, and thought that all of the things in there that they had collected over time were magnificent. Then I was taken to a table where there were two girls sitting, and was introduced to them. I was told that this was going to be my little case group. The first thing that I wanted to do was to find out what their attitudes were towards different things, motorists and so on, so that we could have some kind of uniform approach. However, they didn’t seem to be all that interested in that kind of thing so I had the impression that there wasn’t really any kind of uniformity there. Everyone dealt with the legal cases as they saw fit. Later on, we were filing away some papers, and I was fascinated by some of the things that I saw in there, on the files and on the evidence etc. It was the little comments that made my morning when I was looking at these – all kinds of remarks scribbled on them by other solicitors. They were sometimes hilarious, sometimes very cutting remarks. There were old papers there that you could see written on them details of the cases and similar things. There were files there relating to old vehicles that went back years. I remember saying to one of the girls that I could have an immense amount of fun just sitting here and reading these old papers. Then we began to file away some books. This girl had a book where the name of it began with an ‘A’ so she was trying to put it at the very beginning of the run. However, I had noticed that at the beginning of the run they had things that were grouped and the alphabetical names only began about halfway down this run. She was up on the top trying to put away this book. I explained to her, but she dropped the book. A whole pile of other books fell off and I caught them, but it was a real struggle to pass them back up to her so that she could put them back on the shelves.

Now, that would be a job that would be right up my alley – poring over ancient papers and files, noting all of the interesting information that they contained. When I worked for that Insurance Company in Chester between 1972 and 1974, several of the files held old deeds of trust and deeds of assignment dating back to the Seventeenth Century after the Restoration. I could (and did) sit and read them for hours, even though I worked in the section that dealt with the insurance of commercial garages.

The nurse was early today, but that was because his client from down the road was still in hospital. Not doing so well, apparently. He … "the nurse, not the client" – ed … didn’t stay long and was soon out of the way so that I could make breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The subject today had been the woeful lack of urgency, and the delay by General Howe in following up his victory at New York, allowing the colonists to slip away in good order. And then the embarrassment that the British must have felt when, having occupied Trenton, they forgot to fortify it or even mount a proper guard, so that they were overwhelmed and pushed back with the loss of most of their supplies and weapons.

That really is the eternal story of the American War of Independence – the British refusing to press home their advantage with enough speed or determination to launch a killer blow.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I spent the rest of the morning working on my Welsh. I’ve finished reviewing and preparing the chapter, and I’ve also made a start on the homework. I’m trying my best to keep up to date with that at least because I can’t afford to fall any further behind than I already am.

My faithful cleaner came along as usual to apply my anaesthetic cream, and the taxi came early for me too. Not that it did much good because, even though I arrived at 13:30, I wasn’t plugged in until 14:20.

While I was waiting, though, I had a ‘phone call from the Centre de Re-education. My fourteen-week course there starts on … errr … Wednesday at 11:30.

Believe it or not, Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me today. She told me that they have thought of a way to repair my implant, but they are not convinced that it will improve the situation any. What did I think?

"What do I know?" I replied. "I’m quite happy to leave it in the hands of the medical staff and follow their advice."

We discussed my recent blood test, and then she asked if there was anything else that I needed.

"A pretty nurse to sit at the foot of my bed throwing grapes into my mouth, and a couple of dancing girls on that table over there" I replied. She laughed at that, but I wouldn’t like to type out what she was thinking or my site would be taken down.

The rest of the session was spent preparing my LeClerc order ready to send off tomorrow. It’s going to be a large one too because it’s been a good three weeks since my last delivery.

When the alarm sounded to signal that I had finished, I had to wait a good 20 minutes for them to attend to me, with the result that, once more, I’m hours late returning home and it’s dismaying me.

After gathering my wits (which takes longer than it ought, seeing how few I have these days) I made tea – a stuffed pepper. There is plenty of stuffing left for the next few days too.

But as for leaving food on my plate, that’s worrying. It’s not like me at all and it’s a sure sign that I’m not at all well. Perhaps a good sleep might make me feel better, but that’s a comment made more in hope than expectation.

But seeing as we have been talking about being off our food … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the cannibal chief of a village where the chief cook put a captured blonde woman in the stew pot.
After thirty seconds or so of contemplation, the chief went over to the fire and put it out.
"What’s the matter, chief?" asked the chef. "aren’t you hungry?"
"Not really" replied the cannibal chief. "I don’t think that I could eat anything right now. I’ll probably just play with my food for a while and see how I feel later."

Tuesday 9th September 2025 – I AM IN …

… Isabelle the Nurse’s bad books at the moment. Apparently, I said something at the dialysis centre yesterday that I shouldn’t have said, and she went through the roof.

It’s a shame really. She’s usually a very nice, chatty, friendly person, but I have noticed on more than one occasion that if you push the wrong button, she goes up like a four-bob rocket. I think that in future, I shall have to refrain from saying anything to anyone.

Last night, I didn’t have much to say for myself … "a mere 1600 words, that’s all" – ed … because it was another night where I was totally and utterly flaked out after dialysis and the effort of coming home. I was in a rush to finish my notes and crawl into bed.

Not that it actually worked out like that though because for some reason, I just can’t seem to press on. From what should have been an early finish, posting my notes online at 22:16 precisely, it was yet again after 23:00 when I finally made it into bed.

Once in bed, I slept right through until all of 03:40 when I had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have.

The first thing that I noticed was the absolute silence in the apartment. There was none of that steady, deep humming from the fuse box just outside the door to tell me that the water heater was drawing current. In the end, I left the bed to look and sure enough, it hadn’t switched on yet again.

For a change, I managed to switch it on manually so there was some heat going in there. And I went back to bed.

With an interruption like that, I didn’t think that I’d go back to sleep but when the alarm went off at 06:29 I was well-and-truly away with the fairies (although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine).

As usual, it took a good while for me to summon up the motivation and energy to leave the bed but eventually I staggered off into the bathroom, having a quick glance at the fuse box, noticing that the water heater had at least switched itself off at some point.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was travelling through Austria and ended up on the border with Liechtenstein. The moment that I drove into Liechtenstein I was stuck behind a traffic queue with a huge articulated lorry with three huge tractors on the trailer, with a load of other vehicles in front. Gradually, we inched our way through the country until we came to the Swiss border. A Swiss border patrol man walked out in front of the van, and I wasn’t sure whether to swerve around him or stop, so I tried a bit of both. In the end, he came over to me so I told him that I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. He asked me to lift up the bonnet of the van, so I did, and to my amazement it was covered in silt as if it had been swamped in a river or something. He poked and prodded around inside, and in the end, slammed down the bonnet. He came over to me and asked for my passport, so I showed him my identity card from France. He had something of a moan about that. In the meantime, someone else came over to talk to me, someone else in the queue, and asked what the engines in these vans are like. I said that they were great. The one in my van had done a quarter of a million kilometres and it’s still working fine. In the end, the Swiss border patrol guy waved me on, so I drove off.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have DRIVEN THROUGH LIECHTENSTEIN IN THE PAST and I also drove through here with Nerina when we were on our way to see her family in Italy during our honeymoon.

The incident at the Swiss border though is very much like the incident that I had CROSSING THE BORDER BETWEEN HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA in 2020.

The silt under the bonnet is something that defeats me though. Unless it’s a reference to that Rolls-Royce that I found in a scrapyard in Stoke-upon-Trent that had about a foot of silt inside, looking as if it had been caught in a flood somewhere.

As I mentioned earlier, Isabelle the Nurse blew in to deal with my legs, and blew out again in something of a storm. One very unhappy bunny here this morning. However, she’s gone off for a week’s rest and she’ll probably feel better when she comes back.

Then I could push on and make breakfast, and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

The other day, I mentioned that our author seemed to be very good at fortune-telling and predicting the future. Well, he’s at it again today. He’s discussing the spread of American settlers across the Native American lands of the West and concludes "Their anti-republican love of aggrandisement, by the continual extension of their territorial possessions, must sooner or later destroy the unity of their confederation"

His book, written in 1831, was 30 years ahead of its time.

Something else that he mentions that seems to have been missed by many historians is the question of tinned food. It’s generally assumed that the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the High Arctic, 129 men of which there were no survivors, in 1845 was the first major use of tinned food, produced by Steven Goldner in London.

However, our author notes that in 1814, a supply ship brought a "quantity of prime English beef, which they had dressed and preserved in a peculiar manner in tin cases impervious to air ; so that we could say we ate fresh beef which had been killed and dressed in England thirteen months before"

That’s the earliest ever mention that I have seen of tinned food.

He also makes mention of a primitive Native American Sauna and an ice-plunge, both used by the natives as an excellent cure for rheumatism. I shall have to try that, to see if it works.

The tinned food is preserved by sealing it in a vacuum. That’s done by rapidly heating the liquid in which it’s stored. Hot liquid is much less dense than cold liquid so when it’s hot, you quickly ram down a lid onto it and seal it (or solder it with lead solder as Goldner did to the tinned food that he sent to Franklin’s men, thus killing them all by lead poisoning), when the liquid cools down, it shrinks in volume and the resultant empty space becomes a vacuum.

Back in here, I went through my LeClerc order and sent it off, asking for delivery between 15:00 and 17:00. And then I had things to do.

Now that I’m fully down here and the cleaning of the apartment is more-or-less finished, we no longer need the electricity up there. Consequently, I telephoned the electricity company to talk about them cutting the power to it and finalising my bill. The new tenant, whoever that might be, can arrange for the power supply.

And seeing as we have been talking about the new tenant … "well, one of us has" – ed … the letting agent rang me to ask if someone could come along and view the apartment tomorrow at 16:00. That’s not a problem.

After a disgusting drink break, I had another ‘phone call to make – this time to Canada. It seems that there’s an issue with my Canadian bank account, something to do with a change of account number that I need to note.

Having ordered my shopping for between 15:00 and 17:00, it turned up at 14:55 when I wasn’t ready for it. It was a large order too, seeing that I’d been letting supplies run down for a while, and contained lots of new stuff now that I have a place to store it.

There were also 2 kilos of carrots that needed cleaning, dicing and blanching, so that was this afternoon’s work sorted out for me

With what little time that was left, I had a listen to the radio programme that needs sending off for broadcast this weekend, only to find a glaring fault right in the middle. Consequently, I had to rewrite, re-dictate, edit and re-assemble the programme. I really need to take more care when I am doing these programmes.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and now I’m off to bed, ready for a good sleep … "I don’t think" – ed … I’m having far too many wake-up calls awakening me these days – a sharp contrast to how things were a few months ago when I’d be up and about after a mere three or four hours’ sleep. What’s happening to change all of that?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about vacuums … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe was on one of these quiz shows on TV, and the presenter asked her "if you were in a vacuum and someone shouted, would you hear it?"
She thought for a while, and then asked "would the vacuum be switched on?"

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

… back at my desk well over an hour later than I ought to be, but I simply couldn’t get going this afternoon and evening.

I’ve had one of those days when I have done a lot of work but accomplished nothing at all and such enthusiasm that I still possess these days drained away as I watched it.

Having read again my rather intemperate and incendiary notes from last night, and read a few more of recent times, I can see that I’ve been sliding deep into the black pit again, and I’m not the only one to have noticed, as you’ll find out as you read on.

Not that it’s any surprise, of course. This time seven years ago, we were wandering aimlessly around the High Arctic of Canada looking for our ship that was icebound somewhere trying to work its way through the North West Passage.

And six years ago today, I was on the point of stepping ashore at the end of our famous traverse of the North-West Passage, having just spent three lovely evenings and nights in the company of a certain young lady who at one time figured frequently during my nocturnal rambles but has been conspicuous by her absence for much longer than I like.

All of this is enough to try the patience of a saint, and believe me, I’m no saint at all and never will be.

Last night was also a late night, although not as late as this one will be. After having finished my incoherent rant and been through the usual end-of-day routine, I went to bed, still seething with anger.

It was a very long night last night and it felt as if I hadn’t been to sleep at all, so wound up was I. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed, having given up any thought of sleep a long time before.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t wind myself up to go and it took an age before I ended up in the bathroom. In the kitchen, I’d run out of more medication so I had to wander off in search of the aforementioned in my faithful cleaner’s lovely little box.

It wasn’t true that I’d had a night without sleep, because I found some notes on the dictaphone and I really can’t remember dictating them. A group of us was off to Germany, three or four of us. We ended up meeting a friend who lived on an island in the mouth of the river at Bremen. After we’d settled ourselves down, we thought that we’d go for a trip to Bremen so we dashed out of the house, climbed aboard the little train that was there but found that the train was going the wrong way. It reached the far side of the island and we could see part of the city way across the estuary there but that wasn’t where we wanted to be so we had to stay on this little train and go back across the island to the far side. However, the river was so wide that the ferry crossing was about two hours and it was already about 21:00 so we decided that perhaps we would save that for the morning so we all went off to find something to eat locally. Our friend who lived on there was packing her son off on a school trip and had lots of his things that she’d cleared out that she was going to sell. What she had planned to do was to give them to the school so the school could sell them on as a way of raising funds. She asked me if I wanted to go to have a look but I couldn’t think of a good reason to do that at the moment. Then we began to start making plans. There was a huge boxing match taking place down in southern Germany in a town not too far from the Czech border and we were all planning to go. I thought that I may as well go too, but why don’t we find a hotel in the Czech Republic so that we can say that we have done something different while we were there. We were busily sorting that out when suddenly one of my friends arrived. I’d told him ages ago about buying a motorbike, and he had turned up on a big 500cc motorbike and said “I have your motorbike outside”. I thought that this is going to become really complicated because I’ve come here in the van. How do I take this motorcycle home? This is the wrong time because we are all setting off in a minute for this boxing match. I could see that the friends with whom I had come to this island weren’t at all keen on this guy being here. I thought that this is going to create some kind of wrong atmosphere and I don’t want this to happen but I couldn’t think of how to avoid it.

Leaving aside the fact that Bremen isn’t situated at the mouth of a river, and even so, there’s no island in any mouth of any river in Germany that corresponds to this description, it was quite a dramatic dream. It’s been an age since I’VE BEEN TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC and it’s easy to understand why I’m feeling depressed when I keep on encountering things that I used to do with pleasure but am no longer able to do.

And that includes riding a motorcycle. My last motorcycle was a CZ175 but I had loads of fun on my old CX500 when I moved to Brussels. I really was at one point quite recently thinking about having another one but I was overtaken by events.

The nurse caught me in mid-transcription and sorted out my feet. He thinks that there are no oedemas in my legs, so maybe the situation at dialysis isn’t as desperate as I was thinking. I still think that I’ll be there for four hours though, which will fill me full of dismay.

As he left, I thanked him and wished him a good rest for his week off. It was nice to see him in such a better humour since his holiday.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

We’re now well into our discussion of Roman land division and the settlement of the individual parcels of land, and how the system of the occupation of the land that the Romans installed lasted until the Enclosure Acts of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, and how the actual physical division of the land under Roman law lasted until the passing of the Local Government Act 1888.

However, our author implies that travelling the main roads must have been a bagful of fun back in Roman times. He quotes the author JWE Conybeare who tells us that "Intercourse was easy between the various districts, for along every great road a series of posting stations, each with its stud of relays, was available for the service of travellers.”". I’m not sure exactly what service the travellers would have obtained from the stud of relays, but I’m sure that the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine could tell us.

Back in here, I made a determined attempt to finish the installation of the office and although it took me all the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon, it’s now all up and running. I have all of the back-up drives and the array working … "hip hip array" – ed … and we have music again too, which is good news. I can’t stand the quiet – it drives me mad.

My faithful cleaner came down later with another pile of vegan cheese and also a pile of the yeast that I like and which has been out of s for a while. She was followed by one of the nurses from dialysis who inspected my apartment to make sure that I was living in sanitary conditions and who then proceeded to talk to me about dialysis at home.

That would be good if it worked, but merely talking about the procedure made my stomach churn and my muscles tense up. However, I did take advantage of her by making her give my faithful cleaner a thorough course in dialysis implants and how and where to apply the anaesthetic cream. That was worth its weight in gold, that course of instruction.

However, she did say something that surprised me. She asked me if I’d considered seeing the service’s psychologist. I haven’t, but I can’t see what good a psychologist would do. I’m dying, I know that, and I’m resigned to it. It’s difficult sometimes to come to terms with it but I can’t see how a psychologist would help me in that respect. And in any case, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’d hate to be the person who would draw the short straw and have to probe the depths of my subconscious mind.

After everyone left, I came back here where I regrettably crashed out for an hour. That’s disappointing, but with the wretched night that I had had last night, it’s not surprising.

For one reason or another, I was really late going for tea, stuffed peppers etc, so consequently I’m late going to bed. I can’t wait to be under the covers though because, once more, I’m exhausted. A good night’s sleep will do me good.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the lack of motivation … "well, one of us has" – ed … the nurse from dialysis asked me "what happened to your famous ‘get up and go’ then?"
"By the looks of things, it’s got up and gone a long time ago." I replied.

Monday 11th August 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at this point I usually wail about the lack of excitement and interest etc, but as I have said it before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you are probably as fed up with it as I am, so I shall desist.

Mind you, it’s not really all that much of a surprise because I was still letting it all hang out after midnight last night. For one reason or another, despite my best attempts to be early, it was nothing like. I really don’t know where the time goes these days.

And so in bed after midnight, I was asleep quite quickly, but not for long. At 04:10 I was wide awake again, which was probably why there was nothing on the dictaphone. You can’t go far in four hours.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. By about 05:15 I gave up the struggle and arose from the Dead.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went into the kitchen for the medication. Back in here, I discovered that there was nothing on the dictaphone, but not to worry because I have plenty to do.

In the living room, I filled all of the boxes that we had emptied on Wednesday so they are now all ready to be taken down and emptied. I also emptied one of the CD racks so that one is now ready to be moved.

Isabelle the Nurse inspected my catheter port and changed the dressing, and then dealt with my legs. She didn’t hang around for long, and I could make breakfast and read some more of THE OLD ROAD.

Our author is at it again with his flowery prose. He wants to talk about the Dissolution of Monasteries. I’m not going to reproduce what he has to say but if you were to look at page 199 you’ll see that he takes well over a page of his book to say "the monasteries were taken into possession of the Crown."

There’s another one of his … errr … rather inexact paragraphs. Talking about the Enclosure Act 1773 and its effect on the road, he says "it has been caught by the enclosures of the great landlords in four places alone : Albury, Denbies, Gatton, and Titsey. It passes, indeed, through the gardens of Merstham House,".

So is it “four places alone”, or is it actually five? Rhetorical hyperbole is one thing, but that which he is writing is something else.

The plumber finally turned up this morning, and we had a lengthy discussion about how I want the job to be done. Today, I found him much more amenable to my ideas than he was the last time that he was here, which is good news. He had also appeared with a trailer and he intended to move the bath, sink and mirror which I had been trying to give away but no-one wanted.

After he went downstairs, I had a few other things to do until my cleaner arrived. We fitted my anaesthetic patches and then took everything downstairs, where we found the plumber busily smashing old tiles off the wall.

We had a chat, and he showed me a few more defects that the builders who had converted this building into apartments in 1998 had done. The standard of workmanship in this place is appalling.

While I was waiting for the taxi, I began to unpack the boxes. But when she arrived, I was whisked down to Avranches at a rapid rate of knots by an impatient and probably very busy driver.

For a change, they had found a comfortable bed for me and I made the most of it because I crashed out completely for an hour or so.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me but didn’t have much to say. She asked me if there was anything that I needed, but I told her that whatever I needed wouldn’t be supplied by the dialysis clinic. One disappointment was that she hadn’t had an opportunity to speak to Paris about transferring my chemotherapy to Rennes.

If I were honest, I have to say that there wasn’t much work done this afternoon. I was far too tired to concentrate.

When the session was over, I had to wait around to be disconnected, so consequently I was no earlier coming home.

Back here, we inspected the work that the plumber had done. It’s quite impressive, it has to be said, but not so the work that we saw underneath that the builders had done in 1998. It really is disgraceful and one of these days, I’ll post a few photos of their efforts.

The climb back up the stairs was awful again, and so my cleaner and I have made a decision. While I am at dialysis on Monday next week, she’ll round up some willing volunteers and move my bed downstairs so that I don’t have to worry about coming back up here when I return.

If she is able to do that, it means just two more climbs up the stairs and my nightmare will be over. Mind you, that’s still two climbs too many. I really wanted to stay down there today – really.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, but I really wasn’t all that hungry. I just wanted to go to bed, and I’m on my way there now.

But seeing as we have been talking about the awful standard of renovations in this building … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a builder’s van that I saw once in Birmingham.
Written on the side was "Gurdeep Singh, builder. You’ve had the cowboys, now here come the Indians."

Monday 4th August 2025 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes again:

Sitting here all morning fuming because the plumber hadn’t shown up, I eventually decided to re-read the message that he had sent me at the beginning of last week.

And sure enough, there in black and white, is written “a week on Monday” – i.e. the 11th August.

Here I am, having been fretting all day for nothing at all.

Even worse, in the mad rush to order what I needed and ended up with what I could buy at short notice rather than what I would like, it turns out that I had plenty of time to shop around and make an online order. Still, it’s too late to fret about it now.

And seeing as we have been talking about it being too late … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was too late last night when I finally went to bed last night. After my marathon lie-in on Sunday, I wasn’t all that tired, which is no surprise

Mind you, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed, flat out, until all of … errr … 04:10.

At that point I could easily have left the bed but I decided once more to loiter around for a while. The next thing that I knew, it was 05:45 and so at that point I decided to leave the bed. Not that I managed it straight away – it took me a good few minutes to summon up the courage to leave the bed.

The first thing that I did was to go back to yesterday’s entry and add in the dictaphone notes that I had forgotten to include last night.

After a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went to sort out the medication and then I came back in here to find out what was on the dictaphone from the night. I was in an apartment in the rue de Villedieu. Looking out of the window I could see someone going past with a pile of books and records so I wondered what was happening. As I opened the door, a paper that had been on my desk blew out and I had to run after it but the faster I ran, the faster it blew in front of me. It took me quite a while, up to the hospital roundabout in fact, before I was able to catch it and stamp on it. By this time, the people with all these books and records had disappeared. I was chatting to a friend about this and we had no idea of what was going on. A few days later, I was walking down by the old cemetery and in the corner at the bottom where all of the records of the cemetery and the burials of the town had been kept, it was now an office for an auto-electrical company. I was wandering around a little more and came across a guy who used to supply sand into the cemetery. I asked him if he knew what was happening. He replied that the books and records department had been closed in May. I thought that this was the reason why the books and records had been moved, but to where have they gone? No-one at all seemed to know. They had disappeared off the face of the earth. I thought that if the company had closed down, that might be the reason why there was no football on Sunday morning, maybe because the commentators who accessed all of the records for their broadcasts, they had decided to move on too although it would be extremely unlikely.

This reminds me of an incident in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1992 where the disposal of a pile of records led to an extremely unfortunate crisis that had still not resolved itself when I left for the European mainland. It was one of those events that would have the most enormous repercussions but we’ll leave it at that, for fear of incriminating certain people.

Later on, I stepped back into that dream. We were talking about the ancient martial art of Terzhik which involved a way of entering through the window of some kind of sacred or special place. This is what had started off on this series of dreams by thinking that I had seen someone coming through the window into the records office. However, I didn’t spend long dreaming of this because I awoke with a start again halfway through.

As for any martial art called Terzhik, I doubt very much that there is such a thing. But people coming in through the window is a concern that I need to address when I’m on the ground floor, knowing how suddenly and how profoundly I can crash out.

While we were tidying up, my cleaner came across a video that I hadn’t seen. It talked about the Welsh migrations during the Industrial Revolution when hundreds of thousands of people left their homes on the farms and in the mountains to go to work in the coal mines and in the big cities. I hadn’t seen this before so I sat down to watch it. It was extremely interesting, talking about the lines of emigration up the Conwy valley and places like that. It went on to talk about the migrations from the South to the North in 1913 when the Wrexham coal mines open – that would seem to be when my grandmother moved from Penrhiwceiber in South Wales up to Wrexham. It showed all kinds of interesting things like the contemporary carriages and the rock-strew routes that they used to take, how their carriages were broken down along the way and had to be repaired so a whole new breed of carriage repairers had to be set up in mid-Wales. It talked about the cemeteries being vacated, bodies being removed and being found just about everywhere because there was no possible way to bury them anywhere else. It was just reaching the interesting part when I awoke.

Rural depopulation is something that has been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution but in Wales, with the dramatic rise of heavy industry, the process was much more intense and many villages lost a huge amount of their population. In 1871, Penrhiwceiber wasn’t even listed in the census, yet in 1909 there were over 4,000 people working in the coal mines there As for the roads in mid-Wales, they are not much better than those that I saw in my dream. The problem in a lack of investment – neither the Welsh Assembly nor Central Government believes that there’s anything north of the “Heads of the Valleys” except sheep and druids.

There was another part of a dream somewhere but I can’t remember where it fitted in, but I’d gone for a walk and had gone almost as far as Nantwich before I realised that I had set out without my crutches. I wondered how that was possible and, more importantly, once I realised, how was I going to return home?

Wherever this fits in, I have no idea. But it’s not the first time that I’ve dreamed that I’ve been walking without my crutches. But I’d love to know how I returned home once I’d realised.

Isabelle was late this morning and she didn’t stay long, just enough time to sort out my legs and then she was away. I could then make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author has pressed on today and is now discussing the chronology of the Bishops of London.

He has quite a few comments to make about some of the Bishops, but he reserves his most incendiary vitriol for Eustachius de Fauconbridge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer who was made bishop in 1221. He says that while Fauconbridge "was giving Holy orders, a great tempest of wind and rain annoyed so many who came thither whereof it was gathered how highly God was displeased with such as came to receive orders, to the end that they might live a more easy life of the stipend appointed to the churchmen, giving themselves to banqueting, and so with unclean and filthy bodies (but more unclean souls) presume to minister unto God, the author of purity and cleanness."

Back in here, still fuming over the non-arrival of the plumber (I hadn’t re-read the message at this point) I drafted an advert onto one of these Chamber of Commerce sites to see if I couldn’t find another one.

While I was at it, I put some more things online for sale and, in the case of the old bathroom fittings, to give away. There is still plenty more to be sold.

When my cleaner had finished applying my anaesthetic patches, we collected some more things together, photographed another piece of furniture, and then took downstairs the things that we had assembled.

Once I was down there, I put things away, mainly in the new bathroom unit, and then began to rearrange and reorder the food in the kitchen cabinets. There’s now much more space in there, which is good.

When it was 13:00 we went outside in the sun to await the taxi, but it was half an hour late. Not that I was complaining, because it was a gorgeous afternoon and I was enjoying the fresh air.

There was another passenger in the car and the driver spent all of the time talking to her. No-one said a word to me. I settled down in the back of the car and had a nice rest.

At dialysis I was put in a small room with three other people. It was a nice, comfortable bed with nice surroundings so I didn’t do much this afternoon. I simply relaxed and enjoyed the nice view.

And who should come to chat to me but Emilie the Cute Consultant. We discussed the issues about chemotherapy, and an in-depth discussion it was too. In the end she promised to ring Paris to explain in greater detail the issues that I’m having, and suggest that I go to Rennes for any subsequent treatment. It would be lovely if she could persuade them

With being late arriving, I was late leaving but we made good time on the way home. Back here, we measured the windows in the apartment downstairs so that I could order some curtains, and my faithful cleaner has struck lucky. Some of the shelves in the fridge here are broken and I would have to order some new ones as replacements before I go, but someone has dumped over in the rubbish bay a fridge the same size as mine and she was able to rescue a couple of shelves, which is wonderful.

It was another long, weary climb up here and I had to sit down for twenty minutes to recover before I could make tea.

We’re back in our usual routine as of today, with stuffed pepper, and enough stuffing left over for a couple of days. It’s only a small mix of stuffing too, but I’m really not in all that much of a mood to eat a great deal right now.

So tomorrow, there is plenty to do so I’m going to go to bed, late as it is. And here’s hoping for a good sleep because despite the events of Sunday morning, I really need it.

But seeing as we have been talking about the cemetery here in Granville … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone from Crewe came here years ago and was astonished by the number of graves in it for such a small town.
"Do people die here often then?" he asked the gravedigger.
"Ohh no!" replied the gravedigger. "Only the once."

Monday 7th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

… that I am yet again, I was once more asleep when the alarm went off this morning. How many times is this now?

It’s not as if I had a late night either. It wasn’t 23:00, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t as late as 23:30 either. That means that for once, during the night, I had seven hours of uninterrupted sleep, and it’s been a long time since that has happened.

And “uninterrupted” it certainly was. I remember nothing whatsoever about anything at all during the night.

When the alarm went off, I struggled to sit on the edge of the bed, and that’s where I stayed for a good few minutes while I waited for the bedroom to stop spinning around.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then went off in search of my medication for the morning.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at the local technical college last night and there had been some kind of meeting in the great hall. Everyone had waded through there to fetch their meal, this meeting had taken place and slowly, everyone had left. We were some of the last to go. We were having a look around the place, looking to see where would be the best place to put some kind of permanent stage for holding meetings, but we noticed on the wall some small button-like things and realised that these were micro-camera lenses. The wall had been covered in micro-cameras to film what had happened at this meeting. As we walked out of the hall we walked down the front of some kind of supermarket where there were some military people investigating things with machines. We wondered whether they were using these unidirectional receiver things to pick up what people were saying on their mobile ‘phones from a distance. As we walked out, there was a commotion at one of the cash desks. It seemed that some soldier and some civilian were having an argument, the soldier had pulled his gun but the civilian was not backing down and was haranguing this soldier. Quite a crowd had gathered around to watch.

With no recollection whatever of this dream, I have no idea about what must have been going on in my mind … "neither have we" – ed … during the night and it certainly doesn’t seem to relate to anything that is currently or has recently been ongoing.

My only forays into the Technical College at Crewe were at nights where I learned paint spraying and welding, and where I did my first computer courses back in 1974 and 1975.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and returned my “War and Peace”, making a few comments as she did so. After she fixed my legs she disappeared off into the sunset for her week’s rest, but not before we’d talked about Alvin Tofler and SOME OF HIS MOST ASTONISHINGLY ACCURATE PREDICTIONS.

Once she’d left I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we covered an extraordinary amount of ground, discussing many different subjects such as medieval games, including primitive ice-skating where "some tie bones to their feet and under their heels". I could write pages and pages about the sports that he mentioned and their descriptions, and so could he, apparently, for he mentions how the maidens would "dance for garlands hung athwart the streets, which open pastimes in my youth being suppressed, worse practices within doors are to be feared."

He talks about alms for the poor and gives several examples, including "Ethelwald, Bishop of Winchester, … about the Year of Christ 963, he in great famine sold away all the sacred vessels of his Church for to relieve the almost-starved people, saying that there was no reason that the senseless temples of God should abound in riches.". Contrast that with the Church today with their works of art, silver candlesticks and the like.

Another thing that he mentions is the rise in traffic in London at the end of the Sixteenth Century, commenting that "the World runs on wheels with many whose parents were glad to go on foot.", a quote that I have added to my little library because I have rarely heard a truer word spoken.

We’ve also had the accounts of several large households, sums that would be extravagant even by today’s standards.

In fact, I can say without fear of contradiction that this has been the most interesting day’s reading that I have had for quite some considerable time.

After breakfast, I began the arduous task of sorting out the kitchen. I’ve gone through the boxes with the plastic containers in and binned about 90% of the contents. Well, not actually “binned”, but earmarked for disposal. My faithful cleaner can then distribute them amongst the needy. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m doing my best to go over to glass and have amassed quite a collection of the big olive jars which I am now pressing into service.

Back in here, I made a start on editing the radio notes and by the time my faithful cleaner arrived, I’d edited about a quarter of them. This is going to be a very long job, I reckon.

After she had fitted my anaesthetic patches, we went through the medication and anything that is not actually in use went into an old box ready to go downstairs. We need to crack on with this emptying and tidying up ready for the estate agents to photograph the place on Friday ready for re-letting

The taxi was late arriving, we had to go to pick up another passenger (making three as there was already a passenger in there when it arrived) and what with one thing and another … "and until you’ve started, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … we were really late arriving.

There were also three ambulances there in front of us, one of which was a new patient. And they all were destined for my ward. Consequently it was 14:40 when I was finally connected.

Once I was finally off and running, I dozed off, to find myself being shaken awake by a panic-stricken doctor. Not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant. Anyway, we had a good chat about chemotherapy and Paris. His idea as to why they are starting to give me the medication that my body rejected in 2016 is that they have now run out of other solutions. That makes for some grim reading.

He agrees though, and so does everyone else, that I ought to persuade them to send me to Rennes, closer to home and more relaxed

When I was finished, the taxi home was already waiting, but it was still 19:30 when I returned. And I wasn’t sure if I’d come to the correct apartment. My faithful cleaner had shifted a couple more loads downstairs.

It took me a while to recover and then I made a stuffed pepper, even though I didn’t feel like it. I have to eat.

So now, much later that I would have liked, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll crack on with the radio notes and see if I can’t complete the first run of the programme, to give me an idea of what I’ll need to edit to cut it all down to an hour.

But seeing as we have been talking about medieval games … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the most popular medieval games was “hide and seek”.
John Stow asked me if we played “hide and seek” in modern times, so I assured him that we did.
"Is it still an enjoyable game?" he asked.
"Maybe so" I replied "but I never really enjoyed it."
"Why was that?" he asked.
"Because I would always be the one who would have to hide" I replied "but no-one ever bothered to come to look for me!"

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something that I have only done once previously over this last few weeks, and that is that I was still asleep this morning at 06:30 when the alarm went off.

Well, actually, I wasn’t. I was awake – but only just, and I was thinking about looking at the ‘phone to see what time it was when the alarm beat me to it.

It might be a disappointment, but it’s not so much of a surprise, especially as I didn’t go to bed until later than I would have liked.

Not that I slept for long, though. At 02:20 I was wide awake and after half an hour of trying to go back to sleep, I was seriously thinking about leaving the bed and doing some work. However, at some point I must have gone back to sleep because when the alarm went off, there I was.

Trying to return to my usual habits after the bouleversements of the last few weeks, first thing that I did was to go to the bathroom for a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here afterwards, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was staying in a hotel or somewhere like that, right by the beach. I had to go for a walk every day. This walk was very realistic, walking around the edge of the sands and edge of the dunes etc, having to deal with seagulls, take my injections correctly at the correct time. It’s all very much like the way that things would be now if I were actually at a hotel staying somewhere.

Here we go again. Another hotel. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … with almost all of my dreams, I am asleep when I dictate them but when I’m transcribing them, I have some kind of vague memory or recollection. This dream is, however, one of those rare ones where I have no recollection of anything whatsoever.

And then I awoke at about 02:20. I’d been walking up and down the beach with a friend, a beach that had a very broad similarity with the beach at Donville les Bains. While he’d gone off to do something, I’d set out to walk along the coastline following the railway, the electric overhead railway that was there. I didn’t meet him until his car turned up quite a while later. I seemed to have walked for miles. According to the map, I had. When I awoke, I was carrying on this conversation with my friend for quite some time before I went to check the time and found that it was now 02:40.

Leaving aside the fact that there’s no railway line, overhead electric or not, at or near the beach at Donville-les-Bains, nor has there ever been, it’s an interesting phenomenon for me to awaken in the middle of the dream and to carry on dreaming. I know that there are some people who can climb up into the dozens of layers of dreams, but I can only rarely make it as high as two layers. I wish that I could do it more often, especially when Zero comes to see me during the night.

This walk continued and we ended up at a really nice stone house, a typical “Midi” low-pitched roof. We ended up talking to the owners. One of them was British but the other one, we weren’t quite sure. They were talking to us about all of the work that they had done. What I had noticed was a car tyre on a wheel awaiting being prepared for the dustman to take it away. It was a cheap copy-tyre and had been worn down way below the tread limit. That made me wonder whether these people had any money, seeing a car tyre in that condition. Anyway after we had had a chat for quite some time, we were invited to take a walk around the garden. One of the women said to me “it’s OK. Someone has sent for a wheelchair for you”. I replied “no thanks. I’m intending to walk”, and walk I did, although I took my time … fell asleep here … all over the new stones etc. We went to sit in the shade in what must have been a chapel building. Slowly, everyone moved away but my two friends and I stayed there talking. Later on, I heard one of them on the ‘phone giving directions to where we are. When I asked what was happening, he said that we can’t go back via the railway line because they’d had a huge delivery of something or other and they were working there, so we had to find an alternative way and someone else was coming to pick us up.

Stepping back into a dream later is something that I would also like to do more often, especially when Zero etc. etc. And the number of times that I’ve been offered a wheelchair. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when you are really ill, you have to keep on fighting, because that is what keeps you going. I’ve seen far too many people give up the struggle and a few months later, they have gone the Way of the West.

Isabelle the Nurse came around to give me my second injection and to deal with my legs. She tells me that the oedemas are almost gone, which is good news, and I hope that she is right about that. I need to find a way to bring down the creatinine in the bloodstream so that I can do something about this dialysis which is the bane of my life right now.

She told her family about the mouse in my hospital room and they were outraged. Just to underline the point, I showed her the photo that I had taken. But now that the dust has settled and I’m not quite so angry, I’m going to go on the offensive … "”offensive” is the correct word where you are involved" – ed … and write a scathing letter to the hospital administration. I’m not sure how they will respond, but if I mention that I’ll be writing to the Press and the Sécurité Sociale. In the words of Hugh Latimer, as he was being burned to death, I "shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, as I trust shall never be put out".

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re undergoing a tour of all of the gates through the wall into the City of London, including the water gates. And I do like the cynicism of the author, which makes quite a change from the gullibility and naïveté of most medieval authors. He tells us, for example, that "in the west is the next gate … called Ludgate, as first built (saith Geoffrey of Monmouth) by King Lud … in the Year before Christ’s nativity … wherefore I pass over it … referring the reader to that I have before written out of Caesar’s Commentaries."

When he’s writing about Billingsgate, he tells us "Geoffrey of Monmouth writeth that Belin, a King of the Britons, about four hundred years before Christ’s nativity built this gate, but is seemeth to me not to be so ancient but to have taken that name of some later owner of the place. "

Back in here, there was football to watch – a friendly between Hurlford and Stranraer last night. Despite the gulf in league positions, Stranraer made really heavy weather of a 1-0 victory. They never really looked in much danger but their attack just wasn’t at the races and the Hurlford keeper didn’t have much to do.

Unless Stranraer find a striker from somewhere, they are going to struggle this coming season.

Following the football, I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme but I didn’t go far because I hadn’t realised how late it was. My faithful cleaner burst in onto the scene while I was having a disgusting drink break.

She spent most of her time tidying up the living room and vacuuming up dog hairs, in between finding time to shoo me into the shower for a good scrub up, and I have never felt less like doing anything, never mind a shower.

But a nice clean me came out and I came back in here to carry on working.

However, something else that I haven’t done for ages until this afternoon, miserable failure that I am, was to crash out in my chair. And it was another one of those crash-outs that I didn’t realise that I’d crashed out until I awoke, all of an hour later. So don’t tell me that we are starting these all over again after all of this.

But what this tells me is that they aren’t extracting enough fluid and impurities from me – in other words, this lack of eating is working better than I anticipated and my “dry weight” has fallen dramatically. They are still extracting fluid based on my previous “dry weight” which means that they aren’t taking out enough. It’ll be interesting to see what the blood test reading tomorrow will show.

There was time to finish choosing the music and to begin to pair it off before I went to make tea – a small stuffed pepper with a handful of pasta and veg and I didn’t feel much like eating that either.

So tomorrow, the plumber comes. I hope that it’s good news when he rips out the bathroom. But we’ll know that tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about London’s City Walls … "well, one of us has" – ed … John Stow tells us that he found that someone had knocked a hole through the wall into the changing rooms of St Botolph’s nunnery.
He told me that he had reported the incident to the Mayor and the Constable of the Watch
"So what happened?" I asked him
"Nothing as yet" he replied. "They are still looking into it."

Tuesday 10th June 2025 – IT SEEMS THAT …

… our Welsh course has come to an end for this year. Our tutor sent us the details of the homework for the unit that we have just finished, but there was no link for the next lesson.

A short while later, there was another mail with a link, but for a chat reunion at the end of July. So that seems to be that until September.

It isn’t really, though, because I have a couple of summer courses coming up and then I stumbled across a whole list of short courses for special interest groups, such as football supporters, transport workers, all different kinds of things. And I’m also going to look out for a few more virtual classroom courses.

Having some kind of face-to-face structured course is important for me because I’m not able to discipline myself sufficiently, and what with austerity and all of that, I can’t afford those ladies in Soho any more so self-discipline is important.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I failed once again to go to bed at any kind of realistic time, despite not having all that much to do. In the end it was nearer midnight than 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed.

Once under the quilt, I remember nothing whatsoever. I must have fallen asleep immediately and there I lay, totally painlessly, until 06:15. And that, I reckon, is the longest continual sleep that I’ve had for quite some considerable time.

It was also the deepest because, as I noticed with dismay, once again there was nothing on the dictaphone.

However, I have made an executive decision – and for the benefit of new readers … "of whom there are more than just a few these days" – ed … an executive decision is one when, if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed.

What I’ve decided is that I’m going to advance the alarm to 06:29 in the morning. In the good old days I used to have the alarm set at 06:00, then as my condition developed it went to 07:30, and as I adapted to things, it came backwards to 07:00. What I’ll do for now is to see how 6:30 works.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and then went to sort out the medication for the morning.

Back in here I reviewed my Welsh homework and sent it off for marking. That didn’t take too long, and it was just as well because the nurse, with no blood samples to take or injections to do, was early.

He didn’t hang about long, so I could make my breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

Despite it being over 400 years since it was written, and thus containing a great many myths that subsequent investigations have disproved, it promises to be quite interesting. It mentions several little-known facts that have subsequently been proven to be true but are not in the generally-attributed wider knowledge.

For example, after the defeat of Allectus and his army in 296 AD, some of his Frankish mercenary troops fled north where a wandering bunch of Roman soldiers, cut off by the fog from the main battle, trapped them in the streets of London and massacred them.

It promises to be interesting for other reasons too. Our author, John Stow, says of London that "Tacitus, who first of all authors named it Londinium, saith, that, in the 62nd year after Christ, it was, albeit, no colony of the Romans, yet most famous for the great multitude of merchants, provision, and intercourse "

Maybe that was why the Editor of Aunt Judy’s magazine had her offices there.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went for my lesson. Once more, the extra preparation paid dividends and I made a lot of progress. I’m disappointed though that the lessons are coming to an end for the Summer. Just as I was starting to make progress too, after all of the barren times this last couple of years. I really need to find a way to push on.

After lunch, Ingrid ‘phoned me and we had a very long chat. She has a lot of problems right now that are distracting her from whatever it is that she’s supposed to be doing. I hope that things go well for her soon.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door too. With the news that the company that makes my vegan cheese is going out of business, when she was at LeClerc this morning she cleaned out their stock of grated cheese and it’s all in her fridge upstairs, even as we speak.

The rest of the day has been spent drafting the lengthy reply to the kitchen fitter, with a whole list of answers to the questions that he’s asking. At least, however, he’s asking intelligent and thoughtful questions, and we’ll probably find that most of the work will be done on the desk and the computer, which will save a lot of time in the long run.

Tea tonight was the stuffed pepper that I should have had yesterday, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert.

So right now I’m off to bed ready for a day radioing tomorrow. It’s shower day too so I’ll be having a good clean, which is nice.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about school and lessons … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of the story of the little boy who went to school for his very first day.
When he returned home, his mother asked him how he did. He replied "not very well, apparently"
"Why was that?" asked his mother
"I can’t have done enough work" he replied. "They want me to go back tomorrow".

Monday 26th May 2025 – YET MORE CHAOS …

… at the dialysis centre today.

Well, not exactly. Whatever they did there seemed to be okay, but it was almost everything else that was associated with it that all seemed to go pear-shaped. The fates really do seem to be conspiring against me right now.

And not only that, but the stabbing pain in my foot that died down earlier this morning is now back, and with a vengeance too and it’s really stressing me out that I can’t seem this time to shake it off.

It seemed to begin to quieten down late last night which was just as well because I managed to find my way into bed at something like a reasonable time. Not before 23:00, it has to be said, but not all that far off. I was asleep quite quickly too and I remember nothing at all about the night until all of … errr … 05:40.

Even worse, I couldn’t go back to sleep at all and when the electric water heater switched off I was already in the bathroom having a wash, a shave and a wash of the undies.

After the medication I came back in here for a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was down in the town during the night, having a wander around in the evening. It was a cool, dry night and there was a guy down there busking, playing the guitar and he had a friend with him. The guitarist was quite simple but quite good. I had the idea that maybe why didn’t I bring my guitar and I could do one morning on one street corner and another morning on another street corner and move around as much as I possibly could to play at different places. I walked down past where the new War Memorial is and came eventually to a restaurant. This was a well-known restaurant for being very close to its hours and not serving very close to closing time. I looked in and it wasn’t as crowded as it might have been so I walked through and walked out of the back door onto the car park. But the back door didn’t lead onto the car park. It led into another type of café that was facing the sea. It was pitch-black in there but there were still people. I heard the voice of the woman who owned it asking “did someone call me?”. Another voice from the far corner replied “yes, we were trying to order a pizza”. The woman answered “yes, but give me five minutes and I’ll organise it for you”. I thought that that was quite strange because normally, if you went in there shortly before closing time, they would refuse to serve you. In any case, I didn’t recall this room at the rear at all. I used to walk through there and out of the door at the back and find myself on the car park.

Believe it or not, I know where this restaurant is but I just can’t place it. And the back door does lead out into a little square or car park where there’s a quayside across the way. But there’s a story about a restaurant where Nerina and I went once (only once) where they refused to serve even though we were there ten minutes before “last meals”. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had similar problems once IN NORTH CAROLINA.

Another thing that I did was to fill in the forms from that electrician and pack it in an envelope with a cheque on part-account for my cleaner to post. I may as well sign him up and set him to work so that at least something will be done fairly soon.

Isabelle the Nurse was in chat mode today but she didn’t stay long all the same. And I still didn’t manage to see her photos of Copenhagen.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We didn’t stay long at Richard’s Castle and we’ve now moved on to Rochester. There would usually be a lot to say about Rochester Castle, but it remains to be seen if our author is going to say very much about it.

So far, he’s admiring the civilian architecture of the place, having noted that "the architrave has a bold chevron moulding." and that "the north loop, which opened into the bridge-pit of the main entrance, has been converted into a rude doorway,". How I would have loved to have seen that and to find out what it was doing.

Back in here I made a start on my Welsh homework and by the time that my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches I’d done about two-thirds of it. It’s not due for another couple of weeks but I want to push on ahead if I can.

After my cleaner left, I cut up my ginger cake and put it away. And if the crumbs taste anything like as good as the cake does, it will be wonderful.

However, even though I had the cake as low down in the oven as I possibly could, I ended up with a hard crust on the top and the base is slightly undercooked. I can’t wait to have a decent oven and try some proper baking with proper facilities instead of trying to make do with a very unsatisfactory tabletop oven.

The taxi was late again – except that it wasn’t. It should have been here at 12:30 but it turned up at 13:05 with another passenger, well within the 45-minute Social Security guideline for combining passengers.

It was my favourite driver too and so we arrived at 13:28 which is some good going. I didn’t have to wait long to be connected up either.

No-one bothered me this afternoon but with the pan returning to my foot I didn’t feel like working too much. It’s difficult to concentrate at these moments.

After I was unplugged and weighed I found my taxi already waiting, with another passenger on board. He wasn’t going far and when we arrived at his residence, one of the assistants asked "where’s his wheelchair?"

How could it be possible for someone to forget his wheelchair? It beats me, especially as we had to go all the way back for it and drop it off on our way past again. Therefore it was once more late when I returned home, in agony with my foot and totally exhausted.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with the last of the chocolate cake, so ginger cake tomorrow for tea if I feel like it which, right now is debatable. I’m going to try to go to bed but this pain in my foot is driving me berserk.

And seeing as we are talking about pains driving us berserk … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that famous incident when Brian Close, fielding in close to the wicket was hit by a vicious drive from an Australian batsman
The other players dashed around him. "Does it hurt, Brian?" asked one of them
"Of course it hurts" he replied. "It always hurts when you tell a bowler to ‘pitch it up’ and he totally ignores you."

Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

… that I have a sense of humour meltdown, but today has been one of those days, right enough. Nothing that I have done seems to have gone as it should.

Last night’s activities set the scene somewhat for today’s disasters. What with the football and everything, I ended up being really late going to bed when I could really have done with going to bed early.

Once in bed though, I can’t remember all that much. I have the vaguest memory of waking up, noticing that it was still dark and so going beck to sleep pretty much straight away.

Be that as it may, I awoke at 06:40, 20 minutes before the alarm and when the alarm finally did ring, I was already in the bathroom having a good wash. Not as early as some, but an early start all the same.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was in a public ward in a hospital after an operation on my leg. I found it really difficult if not impossible to walk around at the moment but being in this ward with all these other people made me realise just how healthy I was. It was probably the best reason that I could think of for actually leaving the bed but it was so painful trying to move. There were examples being shown on the television of other people who had had this kind of operation to their leg, mostly foreigners, people from abroad. It was interesting to spot their places where they were actually going to fit into this hospital regime as far as needing help and lack of autonomy went. They would be cruising so many hours of their own private life for so many hours per day on dialysis and was it worth it?

If you want to know my opinion about this, read on. But once more, I was dismayed that I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about medical issues.

Later on, my brother was talking to a girl from his class whom I recognised and to whom I used to chat occasionally. When they finished I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was at Manchester University. I took hold of her and pulled her so that she sat down on the edge of my bed and asked her what she was studying. She said, with a strange look on her face, “geography”. I asked how she meant. She replied “different parts of Europe and Dalmatia – I moved my bath the other day and there they were, all of them on the floor. I was horrified”. I said “had I known, I would have let you come and share my bed”. We had something of a laugh, a joke and a flirt around. I thought to myself “this is yet another good chance of actually trying to build on something, some kind of relationship for the immediate future”.

Even now, I can still see this girl. I’ve no idea who she is but in the dream I knew that I knew her. She was wearing a red and white gingham school dress too, so what she was doing at University I really don’t know. However, there is some kind of undercurrent to this story but the World isn’t ready to hear it. And what a shame that the dream finished when it did.

There was something going on with a Native American tribe in North America of which I was a member. I was there, I suppose, because I respected the people, liked them, liked their culture. A group of Native Americans from outside my group were not content with everything and were trying to incite my group of Native Americans into rising up and rebelling whereas our opinion was that rising up and rebelling is OK in books and folk songs but it’s much more complicated than that. In the end the situation became so severe that those from outside our group were expelled from the tribe. There was talk that I would be expelled too because my position was seen as being something of an anomaly and I was being seen as a position of suspicion by some people from within the group.

What immediately came into my mind when I was typing out these notes was my visit in 2019 to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the site where the US Army massacred what was left of the Lakota Sioux people, where I went for a walk around the site of the slaughter and visited the mass grave of the victims.

This is what the author of “The Wizard of Oz” had to say at the time about Wounded Knee "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth".

Nothing has changed in the USA.

The nurse had very little to say for himself, which suited me fine. He was soon in and gone and I could carry on with making breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’re pushing on with our visits, dashing from one site to another in some kind of indecent haste. We’ve been to the castle at Oswestry, such as it is, and then back across the dyke into Wales for a couple more places. We’re pushing on at quite a rate and there can’t be all that many places left to visit.

Back in here, I reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and then I had an electrician to see.

Not that I know an awful lot about electricity – I do it all by trial and error – but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a disgraceful estimate. To supply and fit a new power board (that isn’t necessary) that costs €199:00 at Brico Depot, he’s quoted €2,000. For changing eight double sockets for multiples and wiring up the oven, microwave and hob, he wants another €2,000.

What beat me though was that he had the quote back here in less than the time that it would have taken to go back home to type it, and he rang me up thirty seconds after the quote arrived, to tell me to sign it and return it quickly. I’m not sure from which tree he thinks that I fell, but I feel really sorry for any elderly person who comes across him.

Next task was to finish my Welsh homework, which is now ready for a final check tomorrow morning before I send it off for marking.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait, and wait, and wait. Round about 13:00 I ‘phoned them up to enquire and was told that "he’s running a little late."

These new Sécurité Social regulations allow a 45-minute window in order for the vehicles to carry multiple passengers, and when my vehicle did turn up, 44 minutes late, it already had one passenger in it.

The driver and the other passenger chatted like long-lost buddies so I relaxed and enjoyed the view, knowing full well that by the time I arrive, my anaesthetic will have worn off.

As I was leaving the car, my telephone fell out into the footwell, as I found out later when the driver brought it back. And an envelope in my pocket with a prescription for a blood test became dislodged and I won’t tell you where it fell, because you are probably eating your tea right now.

There was a new patient today and all of the nurses were congregating around him, sorting him out. It was 14:20, 50 minutes late, when I was finally plugged in. painful yet again

There were plenty of things for me to do, right up to the moment when the needle ceased to work and my arm began to swell up. By that time though, the new patient was having a crisis and the entire medical staff, doctors and nurses, were congregating around him so I had to wait.

When the crisis began, my nurse was standing by me bed, dealing with an infusion. When the alarm sounded, she dropped the infusion pouch – right onto my leg where the wound is.

Later on, moving the table with my computer, she banged the wound yet again.

Everyone finished at the same time today but while most of the staff were dealing with this emergency, there was just one nurse unplugging everyone. So guess who was last?

By the time that I made it back home it was 19:20 and I was thoroughly fed up with everything. So in answer to the question that was asked during one of my dreams, it’s certainly not worth it

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly fed up with today. Gotthold Lessing once famously said "Better counsel comes overnight " and that is for what I am hoping.

But seeing as we have been talking about transport issues … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not by any means the first that I have had.
Several years ago I was waiting for a train in Canada – the 11:55 from Calgary to Regina – when at 11:42 exactly it pulled into the station.
It’s never happened like that before so I went to express my admiration to the driver.
"It’s not like that at all" he replied
"Why not?" I asked
"Because, if the truth be known, this is the 11:55 train from a week last Tuesday"

Monday 12th May 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

… one of those days that has been a disaster from start to finish, a day when nothing has gone right at all.

At least, that’s how it seems The truth is that most of the disasters relate to this afternoon and concern the dialysis centre. The rest, well, ça va as they say around here.

The morning actually started quite brightly, but before we arrive at that point, let’s just mention last night, which was another late-night calamity when I couldn’t summon up the energy to go to bed early.

Not that it would have been early either. It would have been about 23:30 by the time that I finished my notes and that’s not early by any means. And even then, it took me over half an hour to stagger off into the bathroom and then into bed.

Nevertheless, I was asleep quite quickly though, but not for long. And I tossed and turned throughout the night until round about 06:30 when I finally gave up trying to go back to sleep and headed off back into the bathroom.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. We had some silver pie base container things. For some reason we were going to have our evening meal in them. The girl who was nominated to do it had first of all to fetch our knitting files from Sam Apple Pie or wherever into the mix and merged properly. That took her a while. The supper came and it was leek soup … fell asleep here … I’m sure that one of the players playing alongside me was Adam Davies but anyway, going back to the story, these pie cases were flattened by some kind of road roller and we had to have them so that the sides came up again. We were managing a block of three hundred houses and apartments so imagine the cheer when one of them was rectified. Then it would go dark again and it, it would join one of the others that had yet been seen with floodlights and this carried on all the time. It was very, very rare that the product … fell asleep here … but we had these silver dishes and looking for one that we’d thrown out and trying to find one that was this Adam Davies, trying to make the sides stand up for some usage.

Adam Davies is of course centre-forward for Caernarfon, whom we watched yesterday, and “Sam Apple Pie” is the group in which my friend Dave Charles, the recording engineer for Rockfield Studios, played before joining “Help Yourself”. As for the rest of the dream, I’ll let you lot work it out and if you come up with an answer, don’t forget to let me know, because I don’t have a clue … "nothing new there" – ed ….

By the way, seeing as we are talking about Caernarfon … "well, one of us is" – ed … HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF YESTERDAY’S GAME

And next, we were offered a pile of dressed stone for two shillings apiece so we arranged for them to have these stones delivered to the Haurace (?). They brought it in through the ice and deposited it just by his front door so he couldn’t move it and couldn’t open his door. He had to start to put it away quickly and do it well so that we could press on but that wasn’t his speedy work at all, wasn’t his thing. He’d seen the things that take the ghost when he played with the cards from Metz and he wanted to go to … fell asleep here … and we were peddling works after six series of taking it, I suppose you’d call it, where each club has been on it for over a month. It doesn’t work beforehand like that.

It seems that I have ashlar … "and rubble" – ed … on the brain right now with all of this medieval architecture that I am reading. As for the rest of it, this is something else that seemed to degenerate into the usual load of … errr … nonsense.

Finally, I went for a walk with a couple of friends of mine. One of them might have been Cécile. We’d been strolling over this agricultural area where she said that she had bought some land. The further we walked, the closer we came to something that looked like an old mill with a big, tall chimney. It was an abandoned place in this field. I went to look at it, but as I did, my attention was distracted by something in a quarry that was covered in rocks. I climbed up this ladder into this quarry. There were these two boys playing at the foot of the ladder. In the quarry it turned out to be an old American 6×4 lorry, camouflaged by being covered over in rocks. I took a couple of photos of it and had a good look around it, then climbed back down. I nearly put my foot on the hand of one of these boys. I told him that it was dangerous, playing around like that. I walked off to rejoin my friends. They had come to some kind of ruined house of the kind that you find in North America. Cécile, if it was Cécile, was extremely depressed because she’d bought it thinking that it was a place to live but it was in fact a ruin. We had a really good look around inside it. There was abandoned furniture and everything and the floors were unsafe. It was in a terrible condition. The two girls decided that they would go upstairs so I said that I’d stay down here to take some photos because there was a really good view of the mill from up here on the top of this hill where we were at this house. I walked out onto the verandah ready to take some more photos of the mill while they were upstairs looking around.

Cécile of course, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, featured in my life quite significantly for a six-month period. And the American army lorry presumably relates to the one in the Grès de Lapeize … "we’re talking “ashlar” again" – ed … quarry at … errr … Lapeize where Clotilde lives, the quarry that we visited BACK IN 2010 and found the lorry. However, climbing up on a ladder to the quarry is a new departure.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up early. "I can’t stop long" she said. "There are plenty of blood tests to carry out back at the office". Of course, it’s her final day today before her week off, and her colleague’s “reluctance” in this respect is well-known.

After she left I made breakfast and then read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve had the guided tour of Ludlow Castle and we’re now having the potted history of the place. What this has to do with the “Medieval Military Architecture” I really have no idea.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and I actually managed to complete three-quarters of it. It was quite difficult too, especially seeing as I had missed the one-and-a-half lessons that covered this section.

When my faithful cleaner turned up, I was still bashing away at it, so I gave up and went to have my patches fitted.

And just as well that I did, because the taxi came early – 12:20. And it was my favourite driver too. After she installed me, she told me "we have to go to the Centre Normandy to pick up another passenger". So much for my hopes of an early arrival.

Even less chance too. The other passenger was in a wheelchair and he took some rounding up. It was 12:45 when we drove away from the “Normandy”.

And when we arrived, they weren’t ready for us. They had been explaining to a new stagière how to clean and then calibrate the machines.

There were some additional tests to perform on me too today, which meant that I wasn’t finally coupled up until 14:15, fifteen minutes after the effectiveness of the anaesthetic patches has worn off, so you can imagine how the coupling up went.

At least they left me alone pretty much once the machine began to work, although there were still some tests to carry out. But everyone finished at roughly the same time, so guess who was left until last.

Once I was finally sorted out, I went outside to find that the vehicle sent for me was the minibus. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have an extraordinary amount of difficulty climbing into it. In the centre, I’d banged my wounded leg putting on my shoes, and now I banged it again trying to enter the vehicle. And it was so complicated and difficult to climb in.

The torrential rainstorm didn’t help. I was soaked to the skin trying to climb in.

To cap it all, the guy in the wheelchair from the “Normandy” was in there already, and the driver wanted to drop him off first. Not much that I can do about it.

It was 19:30 when I arrived home, soaked, uncomfortable, in pain and completely fed up.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left for the rest of the week, followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

So now, thoroughly fed up and thoroughly exhausted, I’m off to bed where I shall sleep for a hundred years.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about “Sam Apple Pie” and “Help Yourself” … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of when I was arranging my CDs on shelves down on the farm.
Half-way through the exercise I burst out laughing.
"What’s so funny?" asked Cécile
"Have a look!" I replied.
I’d been labelling the shelves with the musician at the start and the musician at the end, and one of my shelves was labelled "Help Yourself to Kate Bush."

Monday 28th April 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting at my desk in my office.

And there’s a huge red mark on my file “Leaving the Hospital Against Medical Advice”.

What has happened is that they want me to stay for another scan on my stomach. So I telephoned the hospital myself and spoke to the scanner and asked him "when could I have an appointment for a scan? I have a prescription from Doctor …" (luckily it wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant who saw me)
He paused for a minute and said "The next appointment is 1st of June".
My response was "Doctor … says that it’s urgent".
"It doesn’t matter" he said "We can’t do it any earlier".

So if anyone thinks that I’m going to sit around for five weeks kicking my heels in a hospital when I have so much to do, they are out of their tiny minds.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the medical staff and I have different aims. Their aim is to keep me alive as long as possible, clinging on by the end of my fingertips while they pump me full of morphine to deaden the pain. For my part, I wouldn’t care if I were to die tomorrow if I had had a full and active life up to that point.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the hysteria that took place at Leuven in 2019 when I told them that I was abandoning my treatment for three months while I went on an expedition to the High Arctic.

Anyway, that’s another story completely. Last night I had a much better night and after I finished my notes etc I went almost straight to sleep and there I stayed until all of 06:00 when they awoke me for a blood test.

After that I actually went back to sleep and stayed there until about 07:55.

When I awoke was in my Ford Transit. I’d been talking to my youngest sister. She wandered ff saying that she’ll be back in a minute. Ten minutes later she still hadn’t returned so I drove round to the club on Nantwich Road where she had gone. After another ten minutes she still didn’t come so I buttonholed one of her mother’s friends who was standing by the door. He told me that she was busy and wouldn’t be finished for a while. I was extremely angry and told the guy to tell her that she would have to stay there because I had things to do, and drove off down one of the side streets on the south side of Nantwich Road.

That sounds just like my family, but again, that’s all water that floated under the bridge a very long time ago. But I’ve still no idea why I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about Crewe. In total, I only lived there for about 12 years of my life.

After I’d washed and shaved (and went in search of my gant de toilette that the cleaner had taken by mistake) they served me breakfast. And once again, it was starvation rations and there was nothing that I could do about it. Apparently, the staff had been warned.

Next were the dictaphone notes. And there were piles of those last night. I was doing something with … I can’t remember what now but it was involving my brother and his wife and it was something to do with being disabled and someone at the centre turned up. In the end no matter what we were doing a friend of mine, a young girl who had a car, she said that she would take us all home. I was sitting in the back with someone and the girl was sitting in the front and there was a seat next to her. The disabled woman came out. She said that she could travel with us so she put her walkframe in the back of the boot so she told her that she could sit in the front so she ran round to the front so what she was doing with a walkframe ….. She had a big stool with her but found that it wouldn’t fit in so we said “why don’t you give it to us and we’ll hold it?”. So she climbed in and the girl drove and dropped off the two of us who were sitting in the back and went on to take Mrs Whateverhername is back to her bungalow. And the thing about this is that I was telling my brother about the dream and he was in it, telling exactly this dream to him

My family again, God bless them. And one of the women now from dialysis. This story is going out of hand, there’s no doubt about that. The interesting part though is that I was dreaming within a dream. That’s not something that happens very often with me. However, it does show that my nocturnal rhythms are settling down after a major period of disturbance.

There has been a lot of further contact between people in many of these dreams and that dream just now involved a girl who could play the violin. I didn’t particularly like her all that much but we needed a flute player as well and this girl could do them both so we had to be nice to her. That meant that she’d even come to see me in the hospital and when she went back to the hospital administration offices at the other side of the road from here there was no way of going home so we offered to drive her if she was feeling willing

There’s an interesting story about the girl with the violin but the World is not ready to hear it. However, her second instrument was the piano and maybe some power chords on a Fender Telecaster. I can say though that if in the dream I said that I didn’t like her, that is being somewhat “economical with the truth”.

And later on I’d gone to volunteer for certain hospital tests and they were busy taking some pulse from me. I was told that it would be a morning session and an afternoon session so I’d gone in the afternoon and time was really dragging on, like it was 18:00, 19:00, 20:00. I mentioned this to the doctor who was taking some samples from me. He eventually went to the ‘phone, by which time it was about midnight and telephoned someone. He told them the situation and I heard the reply, which was “these people come as volunteers and volunteer for certain tasks and so they have to stay until they are done. If he doesn’t like it he can clear off and never come back again, particularly after all of the trouble that we had last time with him”. I tried to think of the last time that I was here and what trouble I had caused, but I couldn’t think of any. Then I was put into a car, the car that does the hospital transfers. We drove into the town centre. There was a taxi parked at the side of the road. I wondered if the taxi had been ordered for me to take me home and they would drop me off here or whether I was expected to stay in the one that I was with and carry on. However the traffic lights were red and we had to stop and wait until they turned green before we could move on

It beats me, the significance of this dream. I’ve offered my services as a guinea pig to a couple of hospitals where I’ve been staying, but when it presents to you the possibility of having several handfuls of student nurses crawling all over you, who wouldn’t?

Later on I was in Chester. I was talking to some guys about music. We were working out some songs with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. We decided that the big solo that he would play would make a great track on its own so we were busy thinking of ways to expand the first track. I walked down by the river and walked to the car park and there was my car there, the old Mercedes that I had once. Parked next to it was a sleek black limousine with a chauffeur by it. I looked at the driver and I knew him from when I was chauffeuring. He looked at me and said “chauffeuring again?. I said “yes”, yes because I was driving for. So I told him that there was a British trade delegation. He looked at the car, this old Merc, and I said “yes, because they don’t have very much money because they didn’t do very much. I opened the door and there was a couple of people inside – the boss and one of the girls. I asked them if they were ready to go. They replied “no” – they were waiting for a third person. Meantime, the little girl who was in there, she opened her rucksack and pulled out a computer. “It’s not mine” she said. “It’s one of the training ones. I said “you’ll have to take it home and look after it tonight and take it back in the morning”. She was annoyed by that because she had all her contacts on it for chatting etc. I replied “it can’t be helped. You should really check your things if you put them away in the bag.

There is also a story about walking down by the river but the World is not ready to hear that one either. As far as Ian Anderson goes, the Ian Anderson may well be another Ian Anderson, a folk singer with whom I have had some correspondence at one time. He has an interesting claim to fame which listeners of my radio shows at the end of August may well discover. The story about the chauffeuring and the computer is bizarre and I don’t know to what that relates, except that I still have my old Mercedes, festering down the field on the farm next to a Ford Cortina and a Ford Transit ditto.

Meantime, the doctor came to see me. I told her that I wanted to leave after dialysis this afternoon
"You can’t" she replied
"Can’t I?" I said. "You just watch"

And then the argument began.

She gave me a very long speech about everything, the highlight of which was "this is not a prison, but …". When she finished, I replied "I’ve listened carefully to you and I’ve understood everything that you have said. But nevertheless I am still leaving."

The truth of the matter is that I have had news that my locataire loaded up a van with half of her possessions early this morning. She might even (although it’s doubtful) finish tomorrow and leave the apartment. Secondly, I have a visitor coming from this evening for a few days. Thirdly, I have a builder coming round on Wednesday morning. Fourthly, I’m going to Paris for a week at the other hospital on Monday.

And so the argument raged on and on until in the end she left. She came back with a sheaf of my discharge papers with the prominent red stamp upon it.

It was an ambulance with a stretcher that took me over the road to the dialysis centre where, apparently, amongst the nurses my rebellion is headline news. Julie the Cook, my allocated nurse, came for a chat to “make further enquiries”.

But proof that the hospital regime has done me some good is that there was only 1.4 kilos of water to remove from me so it was a three-and-a-half hour session. And afterwards, I had never felt so well for quite some considerable time.

While I was there I was in an exchange of messages with a friend of mine. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have an ongoing major project in the UK and a friend of mine from my Manchester days is handling it. He has a few days spare so he wanted to come over to see me.

He turned up at the dialysis centre just as I was being thrown out and he brought me home. We came the pretty way by the coast because it’s been a while since I’ve passed that way.

My faithful cleaner helped me up the stairs and after I left, I made stuffed peppers for two followed by chocolate cake and chocolate soya dessert, all of which went down a treat.

Right now though, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about walkframes … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a friend of mine telling me "Sony has brought out a new product for our generation"
"Ohh yes?" I replied, bitterly regretting it thirty seconds later
"It’s called ‘The Sony Walkframe’"

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 04:15 you don’t have all that much time to go a-wandering by the time that the alarm goes off.

What is surprising is that despite the short amount of sleep, I’ve not been at all tired today, not even for one single minute. It must therefore be the dialysis and not the overall state of my health that’s causing these little “moments”. And as it happened almost every day before dialysis, we can narrow it down to something to do with my kidneys.

So last night, or, rather, this morning, after I’d finished my notes I wasn’t all that tired and found a few things to do but eventually I thought that if I don’t go to bed now, I never will and that’s no good at all.

It took an age to go off to sleep but once I did, I remember nothing further until the alarm went off. And then didn’t I have a struggle to leave the bed? Not that that was surprising because the stabbing pain in my foot had started up again.

For once in my life I couldn’t face the bathroom so I thought “tough” and went into the kitchen for my medication.

Back in here, I found nothing on the dictaphone so I spent some time making notes about the next radio programme or two to keep me occupied.

Isabelle breezed in, in something of a rush as usual on her first day back. She mentioned that she was off to visit the town of Avallon in Burgundy. Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous incarnation will recall that we visited it years ago as part of our quest for the legends of the Knights Templar

After she left, I made breakfast and then read more of MY BOOK. I was correct about not spending long at Kilpeck. This morning we arrived in Knaresborough.

As usual though, I was distracted. I spent more time reading about the conflicts between the Kings, usurpers and Barons in Yorkshire in Medieval times than I did about the castle. And then following up a clue, I managed to track down a copy of John Leland’s “Itinerary”.

Leland was one of the first travel writers and his book was written towards the middle of the Sixteenth Century, in which he described his ramblings around England and Wales. Its interest as far as I am concerned is that he was a big fan of castles too and described them in great detail. Our author Geo T Clark makes several comparisons between what Leland saw and what he saw 300-odd years later, indicating how much of the superstructure had disappeared in the interval.

After breakfast I began to make the series of ‘phone calls that I talked about the other day.

By the time that I’d finished, I had my summons for the hospital in Paris (and that was a job in itself). I’m expected to arrive there Monday 5th May between 14:00 and 17:00 and I’ll be there for a week. My dialysis is arranged here in Avranches for the Monday morning and I’ll be having it in Paris on the 8th. I’ll be back on Friday evening.

The taxi is booked too. Early morning on Monday from here to Avranches and then after dialysis, straight to Paris. They’ll wait to hear from the hospital for the return.

There’s someone coming to see me on Wednesday about my renovations downstairs. I had a lovely mail this morning from the letting agent "on further consideration, your tenant has decided that she will rent a storage box as of the 3rd June, put her affairs in store and move in with relatives."

She’s obviously received my letter of the other day and it has had the desired response. Consequently I’ve been advertising the work on some of these “artisan” sites run by the various professional bodies, designed so that their members can look at them and see what work is available. I’ve already had one response.

With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, this removal planned tentatively for the last week in August might even take place. Several friends have offered to come to visit and help out, and there’s always room for anyone else to lend a hand.

What I shall be doing is talking to a few workmen, having some kind of starting and finishing date, and then handing in my three-months notice to the letting agent. I don’t mind a couple of months’ overlap of accommodation. It’s far better than finding myself out in the street.

The rest of the day has been spent radioing. 260306 is a concert, as I mentioned a few days ago, 260313 is nothing special and 260327 is another concert, one that I caught in, of all places, Montréal where my cousin’s son-in-law was sound engineer.

260320 is going to be interesting though. 20th March is “International Francophone Day”. Leaving aside French rock bands like Magma and Gong, have you any idea how many rock songs by British and American groups there are that contain lyrics either wholly or partly in French?. I’m up to thirty-four and I’m still counting.

Remember the other day when we were talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us was" – ed …? I’m disappointed in my AI search engine, that only came up with three that would fit in my programme. I had plenty of ideas myself of course … "and about the music too" – ed … and a brainstorming session in an Internet forum came up with the rest.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Tea tonight was the stuffed pepper that I should have had yesterday, with plenty of stuffing left over for my taco roll and leftover curry, which shall be on Thursday this week.

And now, hardly tired even after the turmoil of last night, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I have my faithful cleaner coming to sort me out and apparently she’s bringing an assistant, so I’ve been told. I shall need to be on my best behaviour.

But seeing as we have been talking about house renovations … "well, one of us has" – ed … I hope that they turn out to be better than the last lot that I had.
When I moved back to Crewe from Winsford in 1981 I had some local builders in. One of them was pulling nails out of his bag to knock into the wall, but he was throwing half of them away.
"Why are you doing that?" asked his mate.
"They are defective" he replied. "Made backwards. When I pull them out, the heads are the wrong way round."
"You fool!" roared his mate. "They aren’t defective at all. They are to be used in the wall behind you!"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: stuffed peppers

Monday 20th October 2025 – I HAVE LEFT …

Tuesday 7th October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Monday 29th September 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

Tuesday 9th September 2025 – I AM IN …

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

Monday 11th August 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Monday 4th August 2025 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

Monday 7th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

Tuesday 10th June 2025 – IT SEEMS THAT …

Monday 26th May 2025 – YET MORE CHAOS …

Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

Monday 12th May 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

Monday 28th April 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring