… is back on the menu … "PERSONSu" – ed … for Sunday lunch.
LeClerc has made a delivery this afternoon, and one of the options on special offer was a head of broccoli at €0:99. Consequently the head has been divided into its individual florets, blanched and is now in the freezer freezing. The stalk is being kept out of harm’s way in the fridge, along with about half a litre of water in which the broccoli was blanched. That will come in handy for making the soup.
While I was at the Dialysis Centre yesterday I reviewed my LeClerc shopping list, added a few things, subtracted a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.
After I’d finished my notes last night and backed up everything (now that I’m having to take two back-ups) I reviewed my shopping list once again to make sure that I had everything that I needed, adding a few things and subtracting a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.
Consequently it was another late night last night. But not because I was going over my shopping list. In fact I probably would have found something else to do instead to waste the time.
Once I’d finished everything I didn’t loiter about though, and was in bed quite smartly. If only I could show this kind of motivation when it matters
Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep but once I was gone, I was gone. I seem to be having a few deep sleeps these days. I wonder if one of the medicine that I’m taking in the evening has this deep-sleep effect. I’ll have t look at the side-effects and if so, I’ll have to go back to taking it in the morning, whichever it is..
When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the morning’s medication. This is really getting on my nerves right now but there’s not too much that I can do about it.
Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. No sign of Moonchild, or any of the other Fearsome Foursome for that matter, which is a shame, of course. But anyway I’d been in hospital. I was in a ward. I was lying there. Something that I’d been doing had been giving me some kind of exercise so I was quite tired at one point. A doctor came in to examine me and asked me to sit up. Sitting up was at first extremely difficult. In the end I managed to sit up and he could examine me. But this brought back some memories of a few other people who had been in my ward a little earlier but I can’t remember very much as to who they are and why they came.
Never mind not remembering who came in beforehand, I can’t even remember this dream – not at all. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m usually in a deep sleep when I’m dictating, but even so, when I’m transcribing, something awakens in the back of my mind about what had gone on. But not in this case. Hospital dreams though are two-a-penny. It is after all where I spend most of my life.
Later on I went back to sleep at some point … "you didn’t even know that you’d been awake" – ed … and there was a story about a nine-year old girl who had been found dead in a hospital in a bath in her own particular ward. They were wondering why this had happened but that was all that I remember of this.
Like I said, hospital dreams are two-a-penny
There was also something about being at a concert somewhere where a friend of mine was playing drums. He had a black pearl basic drum kit with faces of native Americans painted on the skins. The drums were far too loud and were drowning out everything else on stage, but I wondered later whether that might have been due to the position of the monitor mikes that were picking up more of his sound to relay to us in the wings.
That’s not all either, but you wouldn’t thank me for telling you the rest, especially if you are eating your meal right now.
There was a friend of mine who had a drum kit like that, and it is he who figured in this dream. But he wasn’t known for his loudness when he played so I can’t think why he would be drowning everyone else out. As for sitting in the wings, for several years I did help a guy who was a sound engineer at concerts. He had all of his equipment but couldn’t drive, and I had the traditional Ford Transit and could help lift the gear. And, of course, slip a discreet C90 into the tape head on the mixer desk.
And that reminds me – on the music site from where I obtain most of my equipment, they had a lovely budget-priced table-top mixer with USB and Micro SD capability. Get thee behind me, Satan!
It’s Isabelle the Nurse’s last day today for a while. She’s off to the ski slopes tomorrow morning, lucky person. And there’s no room in her suitcase for me. Ahhh well!
After she left, I made breakfast and read my book. The three guys who investigated the Eddisbury Hillfort are now comparing it with a few others, notably Hembury and Cadbury.
Because of similarities in the construction and reconstruction of the three hillforts they are able to give some kind of date for the commencement of the major fortifications. They put it at something round about 400BC, which corresponds with the arrival of the Celtic people. Presumably the forts are built by the Belgae to defend themselves from the Celts, or by the Celts to defend themselves from counter-attack
There are subsequent stages of abandonment, with reoccupation and repair, indicating that there were a few really turbulent moments in the next few centuries. Unfortunately, the absence of any written record makes it difficult to date anything or to give some kind of coherent history.
But there is one interesting fact that comes out of all of this. There are, generally speaking, several types of hillfort. Despite being in a zone where the “Northwestern” design is most common, Eddisbury bears a much more startling resemblance to the hillforts of Southwest England. So what was happening here?
The person who excavated Cadbury in the 1970s was called Leslie Alcock and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in an earlier version of this rubbish we talked about Leslie Alcock’s book while I was reading it. His work has subsequently been amended by later research and I managed to track down a copy.
At least, I tracked it down to where it was stored. And you’ve guessed it – at Cambridge University Library and they want me to pay £19:00 to read it. I shan’t go into a rant this time though. I shall just sit and seethe quietly. If I had a spieen I would vent it.
Back in here I had a ‘phone call from Paris asking how I was. I told them that they ought to be telling me how I am, seeing as they have the results and I don’t. But the specialist is away on holiday this week so the results might be a few days.
They also told me that I will have an appointment soon.
"Days? Weeks? Months?" I asked
"Certainly not months" I was told. So expect an appointment in July some time.
Today I’ve been editing a rock concert. There’s a reasonably famous concert that was recorded live for an LP back in 1982 but it’s a little-known fact that the group did a dummy-run of the concert a week or so earlier.
What’s even less-well-known than that is that the concert was recorded, which is significant for the fact that one of the tracks that they played lasted almost 50 minutes in the first concert, and cut down dramatically in the second that was recorded onto the LP.
The reason why was that some of the changes within the track were so difficult that they kept on fluffing them at the practice conference, so they decided to leave them out. Unfortunately, this tape that I have has passed through a couple of hands before it came my way and a few people have had a play at editing it to leave out the fluffed parts and make a seamless concert, but they haven’t done it so well and each subsequent editing has made it worse. The bits that were cut out have been lost a long time ago, so I’ve been trying to create a seamless concert with what I have.
It wasn’t easy but I’ve managed it and it doesn’t sound too bad at all compared to how it was when I received it. In fact it sounds quite good and I’m reasonably pleased with it. And if anyone wants the 24 seconds in total that I cut out, I still have them.
Having done that, I began to write the notes. And for a concert that runs for 58:27, I don’t need much in the way of notes. Just 1:33 which at 17 seconds per line, works out at five and a half. Well, it did when I went to school. Heaven alone knows what it is now.
There were the usual interruptions. There was lunch of course, when I realised that I hadn’t sent off my LeClerc order, and then my cleaner who interrupted my lunch. So once the dust had settled I had to attack the LeClerc stuff. I have to eat. So I added a few things, subtracted a few things and off it blasted
There was Christmas Cake break, and there is some Christmas cake being left until Sunday, which is quite handy, I suppose because I can plan something else to make then if necessary. If not, it’s back to the crackers and hummus
But before the Christmas cake there was LeClerc. “After 17:00” was my delivery slot so he turned up at 16:10. "In a rush to get off for the weekend, are we?"
All of that had to be put away and the broccoli blanched. And now, after several weeks of calm, the freezer is full again. Full to the brim.
There’s not much left now to do for the notes of the concert, so I’ll finish that off tomorrow morning ready to dictate tomorrow night. I went for tea instead.
Tonight’s tea was chips and vegan salad with the other half of that strange vegan thing from a couple of weeks ago, followed by apple cake and caramel soya dessert. That should keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.
Yes, with all of this stuff I’ve been reading about Julius Caesar and T Rice Holmes’s showing-off, it’s rekindled the Latin that I haven’t learned or used since school. Whatever next? Puer amat mensam I suppose.
But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Satan … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to someone who asked me if I knew about the dyslexic devil-worshipper
"Was he the one who didn’t believe that there was a Dog?" I asked, smart @rse that I am
"That’s right. Him" said my friend. "He ended up selling his soul to Santa"
, "Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror"
