Tag Archives: the diaries of sir daniel gooch

Friday 15th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I stood up and left a table with food on my plate?

Usually, I’m pretty good at working out how much I feel like eating but that certainly wasn’t the case tonight. Even when I tried to force myself to eat, it didn’t seem to make any difference, and I ended up wasting quite a pile of food.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that if I’m off my food, or don’t feel like eating, it means that I’m on the verge of having another illness. So what’s going to happen next? And more importantly, when?

For all I know, it might have happened last night, I suppose. Once more, I’ve no idea why but it seemed to take an eternity to finish off everything that I have to do before I go to bed. And while it wasn’t midnight when I finally crawled under the covers, it wasn’t very far off.

Once in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly and remember nothing at all until about 05:40 when I awoke. No danger of sleeping in until the alarm this morning.

It took a good few minutes to summon up the energy and the courage to leave the bed, and then I went for a good wash and the morning medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night. I was doing something at dialysis last night. This time, it was under the supervision of some builder and interior designer who had us all wearing some kind of uniform that was managed by the park service. The park service came along and dressed us once each day etc so it was some kind of average prices, dandelion somebody and someone else, and we all had to look our best and behave our best because of the status of the society tailed off into a mass of incoherent mumbling.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that even though I’m asleep when I dictate my notes, there’s usually always some kind of vague recollection of the events when I’m transcribing them. Occasionally though, there is absolutely no recollection whatsoever, and this is one of the latter. I really don’t know what this is all about.

Later on, a whole group of us had gone to Chester on some kind of office trip. We’d arranged to meet everyone outside Buyrite. The coach stopped and dropped us off on the way in to Chester. I knew where Buyrite was, and we’d been dropped off at the wrong roundabout so we had to walk down to where the correct roundabout was. We went down through into the pedestrian maze under the roundabout and came out on the top. This was where there was a Saturday market with all kinds of handbags and everything like that. One of my friends there bought himself a new briefcase because his old one had split and the one that he’d used to replace it wasn’t big enough. We saw a strange thing happening. That was a woman driving a car with a small girl of about seven or eight running after it, crying and screaming, shouting “Daddy”. We were looking at this and wondering what on earth was happening, whether the woman had decided to abandon her child or something like that, we really didn’t know.

After I ran away from home, I spent two very happy years living in Chester. I hated my job and was glad to leave, but I loved the city and the people and wish that there had been a way by which I could have stayed. But the part of that dream about the child – that’s the thing that would prey on my mind. I hate to see children treated badly. It seems to me that children often have a very raw deal at the hands of adults.

There had been a couple of parcel deliveries just recently, mainly of stuff for downstairs, but there were a few things that belong up here so I had some fun unpacking them and playing with my new toys. I ought to treat myself more often.

Isabelle the Nurse bounced in as usual, all bright and cheerful which is no surprise, seeing as it’s her last day for a fortnight. Tomorrow, she’s off to the Alps. But today she dealt with my legs, wished everyone a pleasant fortnight, wish my furniture removal team good luck, and then bounced out.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

And by the time that I’d finished, there was no more to read. It didn’t take long to demolish that book.

On 10th July 1869 "We saw a very curious effect of mirage this morning. A large ship on the horizon was upside down, sailing on her mast-head, and her hull up in the clouds ;"

That’s an effect called a fata morgana – caused by the differences in air density as you look across, say, a large body of water. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have witnessed a few of them ourselves, such as here ON THE ST LAWRENCE RIVER in 2012.

Later on in the book, he’s having a moan about the workmen, who are "earning so much in wages that they will only work three or four days a week, and then only do part work.", wishing "may God avert so sad an evil to this country,". Meanwhile, in other news, he mentions a page or two earlier that "the half-yearly meeting of the Great Western was held on the 2Qth February, and we were able to pay a good dividend of 5 per cent. ." and that "the shareholders passed a resolution, giving me 5000 guineas, in very complimentary terms"

“Sauce for the goose” is a phrase that went through my mind at that moment.

There’s quite a profound comment that he makes a while later when he retires from his seat as an MP in the House of Commons. "I have taken no part in any of the debates, and have been a silent member. It would be a great advantage to business if there were a greater number who followed my example.", sentiments with which I concur wholeheartedly.

For several years, he was a director of the company that laid several telegraph cables across the Atlantic, and actually sailed on three of the trips. The experience on board these sailings led to him changing his opinion about several important matters. On the first expedition, in 1865, he notes that "as the insulation of this cable has gradually improved as it was put into deep water, until it is now twelve times better than the contract standard, a cheaper material might be used in the outer coatings of the core, and the whole cable be laid at a much less cost."

However, having lost several cables to the depths over the next four years, he tells us in 1869 that "there is much discussion just now as to laying light, and therefore cheap, cables. I do not think they could be laid across the Atlantic. You need a cable of considerable strength, as difficulties are sure to occur. A light cable would be, in my opinion, sure to break; and I doubt whether in great depths it could be picked up, as it would be impossible to tell when the grapnel had hold of it. If the experiment is tried, I will certainly take no share in the work."

Once I was back in here, I began to work seriously on this soundtrack for the next radio programme. I was beginning to wonder how I was going to be able to produce it, as it seemed to have far too many bits and pieces missing, with big holes everywhere.

However, by the time that I knocked off for tea, I’d managed to produce 58 or so minutes of fairly seamless soundtrack music. It wasn’t easy, not by any means, and there were times when I was tearing out my hair. But now it merely needs a couple of tiny tweaks and then I can write the notes.

My cleaner turned up to do her stuff, and we spent a happy hour beginning to pack away my office ready for moving. We really only scratched the surface of it today but at least it’s a start. If I pack a few boxes every day, it will soon be done, I hope.

Tea tonight was breaded nuggets and chips with salad but as I said earlier, I wasn’t hungry and left a pile of food on my plate. And with chemotherapy looming on Tuesday and Wednesday, this is telling me all kinds of bad omens … "oPERSONS" – ed …

Anyway, now I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. But before I go, another player from the JD Cymru League has been called up for international duty by his country. Abdul Sharif of Connah’s Quay Nomads will be flying out to Somalia to participate in their World Cup qualifying matches in early September. That’s not a surprise following his impressive performance the other day against Colwyn Bay.

But seeing as we have been talking about the early days of telegraphy … "well, one of us has" – ed … a team was engaged to erect telegraph poles from London to Lizard Point to connect up with the cable coming from Valentia in Ireland.
At the end of the first day, the foreman calls over the erector from Crewe and asks him "how many telegraph poles did you erect today?"
"Two" replied the erector from Crewe.
"That’s no good" said the foreman. "Most of the other guys can erect ten or twelve."
"That’s as maybe" said the erector from Crewe "but look how far out of the ground they leave them!"

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Thursday 14th August 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day at dialysis that was! Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and it wasn’t until 19:45 that I finally made it back here.

It had all gone wrong a long time before that, though. Once more, another night where I failed miserably to beat my curfew time of 23:00, mainly due to prevarication and lack of motivation, and I really need to do something about that. Over the last eighteen months or so I seem to have lost the will and there’s nothing that I can do that seems to recapture it.

At least, once I go to bed, I don’t stay awake for long. I’m away quite quickly, which is at least an improvement on how things used to be. But in some kind of weird compensation, I seem to awaken quite early and quite easily.

It was 02:45 when I awoke for the first time, and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep at first. I reckoned at one stage that I may as well leave the bed and do something constructive, but as I was trying to summon up the energy, I must have gone back to sleep.

And then a strange thing happened. For the first time since I don’t know when, I was still asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29. I must have been really tired last night, because I was completely out of it all at that moment.

It took a good few minutes for me to gather up my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, but I still managed to beat the second alarm – but only just.

After a good scrub up and the morning medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d gone to Paris for the weekend. On the Sunday morning I awoke and went down to the metro station to buy a metro pass. I then set out for a little walk. I walked down alongside the River Seine for a while and then decided to catch the metro. I climbed onto the metro and headed south along the river. I suddenly then had a horrible sensation that I’d left my keys in the metro station when I bought my ticket. So what was I going to do? I had to leave the metro and then run all the way back, all the way down the banks of the Seine, all the way to the metro station where I had been. I remember thinking that I don’t have my crutches here. How am I doing this? When I reached the metro station, I had to climb into my car and drive out into the suburbs or something. I drove out, and it was quite a fast drive with people not really obeying the speed limit at all. When I reached where I was supposed to be, I found that everyone from work had assembled there. One of the people gave me my suit that was in one of these plastic suit cover things on a hanger. I mentioned to him about my keys so he opened the plastic suit container thing and pulled out my keys. Of course I was extremely relieved about this and I thanked him, but then everyone began to take the mickey out of me. Although I knew that it was done in good nature, I wasn’t really in the kind of mood to be teased at that moment again. It was more a great big sigh of relief.

These days I seem to spend a lot of time wandering around without my crutches. If only it were true! But why would I be walking around Paris? That’s something that I certainly can’t do these days, not that I would want to, because Paris isn’t my favourite European city. The last time that I had a good walk around Paris was about three years ago with a certain young lady who figures every now and again in these pages. I don’t know why my colleagues from work would be there either, but that’s another story.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual, and as well as dealing with my legs, she removed the plaster from my catheter, without giving me an opportunity to express my opinion on the matter. She’s probably right to do so, but it’s still going to be uncomfortable for me if I see it.

Once she’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

Today, we’ve been treated to a very lengthy and involved discussion about fishing in 2400 fathoms (14400 feet) of sea with a couple of grappling hooks for the broken end of a transatlantic telegraph cable so that they could haul it up, splice a new length in it and lay it as a second cable from Valencia to Heart’s Content.

He also spends some time talking about the shipping that went past them as they fished for the cable. And in those days, there was so much marine traffic and so many different companies sailing the Atlantic. When we sailed the Atlantic in 2019, we met just one ship after leaving the Orkney Islands behind us until we were in the Davis Strait off the west coast of Greenland.

After breakfast, I did some more packing for a while and then came back in here to begin work on the next radio programme. And just five minutes convinced me that this is going to be a real mess. I’ll be lucky to salvage anything at all out of it.

And seeing as we have been talking about the radio, don’t forget that this weekend features my series of Woodstock programmes. I hope that you’ll all listen to it, even if you can’t understand French. After all, it took ages to prepare and involved an enormous amount of research. I was really happy about how it all turned out.

You can hear the broadcasts HERE at 21:00 Central European Time, 20:00 UK Time and 15:00 Toronto Time on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and even download them for later perusal.

My cleaner turned up a little later than usual to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then we went downstairs where I had a good chat with the plumber. Judging by what remains to be done, it looks as if he might be finished by Monday night if he works tomorrow, which is a Bank Holiday around here.

The taxi was late arriving but the driver put her foot down and we weren’t too late arriving in Avranches. But the doctor wanted to inspect the fitting in my arm, and then the nurse found that one of the patches had missed the fitting so it hurt like Hades, and the needle that goes in there missed the fitting too, so they were talking about doing it again. But wiser counsel prevailed and they fitted a “Y” branch on the one that was working.

They also found that I’d gained quite a lot of weight this last couple of days and so I had to stay for four hours. And to add insult to injury, they put me in the bed that is the most uncomfortable.

Having arrived at 13:45, it was 14:45 when the treatment actually began. And as I said earlier, s late as 19:45 when I returned home.

We had a quick look in to see where the plumber had reached this afternoon. He had made good progress while I was at dialysis. The plasterboard walling is all done and he’s applied the first layer of jointing compound. He has everything that he needs to repair the floor and to tile everywhere. It’s looking really impressive and will look even better when it’s finished

Coming back upstairs was a nightmare, and shan’t I be glad to no longer have to do it? I was exhausted and it took me a good half hour to recover enough breath to make a quick tea. Nothing exotic at all – I wasn’t in the mood.

So I’m off to bed now, wondering if I’ll have another sleep like last night or whether I’ll be back to the “four hours per night” lark.

But seeing as we have been talking about shipping … "well, one of us has" – ed … Nerina and I met a couple of people on a ferry once and had a really interesting chat with them.
"My husband is a sea-captain" said the woman. "He works for Cunard."
"My husband runs a taxi business" replied Nerina. "He puts a great deal of effort and energy into his work too."

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Wednesday 13th August 2025 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… will see me installed downstairs, if all goes according to plan. It won’t be everything down there of course – just the essentials like the bed, the office and the kitchen. That’s the important part of everything. The rest will arrive when it arrives.

But it won’t be without its vicissitudes though. I’ve had the “summons” to attend hospital on Tuesday next week for chemotherapy, staying over until Wednesday afternoon. And it’s to Paris again. It seems that my plea to be treated at Rennes has fallen on deaf ears.

Something else that has fallen on deaf ears – my own this time – is my plea to be in bed by 23:00. Once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out

For no good reason, except that yesterday I appear to have written WAR AND PEACE instead of the usual notes, and that must have taken an age. And by the time that It’d taken the stats and backed up the computers, it was probably closer to 00:30 than anything else.

That’s not the worst of it. I was wide-awake at 01:50. So wide-awake that I was giving serious consideration to leaving the bed. However, second thoughts prevailed and I curled up under the covers again, where eventually I managed to go back to sleep.

Not for long though, because I had one of these dramatic awakenings at – would you believe – 04:10.

This time I couldn’t go back to sleep and so round about 05:00 I called it a night and raised myself from the Dead. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in the bathroom having a good wash, having already dictated the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And not dictated them once, but twice. I made something of a pig’s ear of the first attempts and it was easier to start again.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in dialysis, but we were allowed to be up and about while we were being pumped around. There was one guy there who had a tablecloth over the top of his table and it looked as if he was baking. He was weighing out certain quantities of this and certain quantities of that. The guy who was in charge of supervising the dialysis section told him basically to stop doing that and to concentrate on being dialysed. However, the guy didn’t listen and carried on so the guy in charge began to make a few sarcastic remarks, such as “it looks as if you are making the tea for your mother” etc. In the end, the guy said that he was passing the time making this whatever it was and he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever he likes during the period of dialysis provided that he doesn’t upset or disturb the other people. It looked as if the guy in charge was going to have some kind of argument, but the first guy said “if you had been here a couple of hours earlier, you would have seen three women here from the other group making folders for different purposes. At that point, I stuck my hand up and said that if everyone were allowed to do all kinds of different things and people could do all kinds of different things during dialysis, I think that the period of dialysis would pass so much quicker than it seems to do at the moment”. The guy in charge wasn’t very impressed. He just put his head down and just totally ignored everything after that

Dialysis is quite literally the bane of my life. It really is three and a half hours wasted each time because there is nothing that one can do. We lie in bed, not allowed to move in case we disturb something, and no exercise of any value, nor any entertainment other than a TV is provided.

One thing about which I have been badgering them is to provide things like pedicures, bed-yoga sessions so that we could profit from the time that we are there, but that seems to have fallen on stony ground too.

Isabelle the Nurse was in a good mood this morning. Only three more days and then she’s off on holiday for a fortnight. That’s good news for her, but not so good for those of us remaining behind because we have her oppo for two weeks.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

Today, we’ve had our first meeting with Dr Dionysus Lardner. He was the Magnus Pyke of his day, one of the very first people to take science out of the laboratories and put it on the breakfast table in the ordinary home.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t always accurate in the events that he predicted. He told a tribunal hearing once that if the brakes failed on a heavily laden train going down a slope, it could reach speeds of 120 mph. Gooch and his boss, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had to remind him that there are such things as friction and wind resistance, and these would slow the train down considerably.

He also predicted that the larger the steamship, the more fuel it would need, and there wouldn’t be the space on board for all the coal, failing to understand that if you double the breadth and width of something, you increase the volume fourfold.

Try it yourself – for example, if you have two metres width and two metres length, at one metre high, you have four cubic metres of space. But if you double the length and width, i.e. four metres width and four metres length, at one metre high you have a volume of sixteen cubic metres.

And so there’s plenty of room for extra coal.

Further along in the book, I stumbled upon one of my favourite quotes. Gooch talks about the early days of railway operation, saying "When I look back upon that time, it is a marvel to me that we escaped serious accidents. It was no uncommon thing to take an engine out on the line to look for a late train that was expected, and many times have I seen the train coming and reversed the engine, and ran back out of its way as quickly as I could. What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now ?"

Yes, "What would be said of such a mode of proceeding now?" How many times have I said that when reminiscing about my adolescence and young adulthood?

We have however reached the interesting part of the book. He’s off on the Great Eastern laying the telegraph cables along the sea bed from Valencia in Ireland to Heart’s Content on the island of Newfoundland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we VISITED HEART’S CONTENT ON OUR MEGA-VOYAGE AROUND NORTH AMERICA IN 2017 when I went to say goodbye to all of my friends in Canada and the USA. Who would have thought that I’d still be here eight years later, defying all the odds

Back in here I attacked the radio notes that I’d dictated and despite several interruptions, they are all now finished and the radio programmes assembled. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the next one.

Seeing as we have been talking about interruptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the first one was the man who came to repair the electric door opening device. In a fit of pique and bad temper, I sent a somewhat … errr … intemperate mail to the building’s management team and, to my surprise, they reacted.

My cleaner turned up to do her stuff too, and that included putting me in the shower. Do you realise? That was the last time that I’ll have to clamber into the bath to have a shower. Te next shower that I have will be in my shower downstairs.

That is, if the plumber extricates his digit. He’s not the fastest of workers and he’s not going to have this finished by the time I come home from Paris. Mind you, he seems to be making a very thorough and solid job of everything.

Sadly, I also crashed out today, which is no surprise seeing how little sleep I’ve been having just recently. It was the hospital that awoke me, telling me the news about chemotherapy. And it was tough trying to follow the conversation, seeing that I was still somewhere up in the clouds.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry. One of the best that I have ever made, I reckon. And now I’m off to bed for a really good sleep ready for a good afternoon at dialysis. There’s nothing like optimism, is there?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my pleas falling on deaf ears … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the situation to my niece in Canada, with whom I have been talking today.
"That’s no surprise" She said. "The rest of the family thinks that you are a miserable pleader – or something like that, anyway."

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Tuesday 12th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… some visitors around here this morning, which is always very nice.

However, can you imagine how embarrassing it is when you make coffee for three and suddenly realise that, due to the slow moving-house process that has already seen a pile of stuff move downstairs over the last ten days or so, you only have two coffee mugs up here?

Yes, Bane of Britain strikes again, doesn’t he?

It was something of a “Bane of Britain” night last night too. I’ve no idea what exactly happened but I was still eating my evening meal at about 21:45, and there is no particular reason for it being so late.

Consequently, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out yet again, with a good few minutes before I actually crawled into bed.

Not that I stayed there too long either. At 02:10 exactly I awoke with a streaming head-cold of most embarrassing proportions and I had to leave the bed to find a roll of kitchen paper. Ordinary paper tissues did not suffice.

Nothing seemed to calm it down either. In the end, I smothered my chest and the lower part of my face with some eucalyptus vapour rub, wishing that I had some Olbas Oil handy.

Eventually, I managed to go back to sleep, where I remained until … errr … 05:20. And this time, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep. After about half an hour of trying, I gave it up as a bad job and, clutching my roll of kitchen paper tightly to my chest … "this is becoming ridiculous" – ed … I staggered off into the bathroom.

The medication was next, and then I staggered back into here to listen to the dictaphone, thinking to my self that I’d be lucky if there was anything on it after such a short night.

However, you never know your luck. Not that it was an awful lot but there was something last night about being in bed and looking at one of the walls in my hospital ward. It was tiled, with tiles that were 30cms by 60cms laid horizontally. They were laid one directly above the other directly above the other rather than staggered with half a tile over the top of one and half a tile over the top of that. You can hardly see the join above the tiles but you could see where the door into the room was – that was right on the edge of some of the tiles.

No prizes for guessing to which subjects of recent discussion this relates. And the tiles are indeed 30cms by 60cms. Whether they will be laid horizontally or vertically, or in straight vertical lines or as overlapping tiles depends very much on the plumber. I have given no instructions. Incidentally, where the builders of 1998 have built, the joints are an absolutely disgraceful mess but when we found some of the original wall, all 1,200mm thick of solid Grès de Chausey granite, you could indeed barely see the very neat and precise joints made by the builders of 1668.

Having done that, I started to think about the radio programmes that I want to finish today. There’s one where I need to rewrite the notes because the ones that I wrote and dictated at the end of last week aren’t long enough, and then there are the notes to finish for the one that comes afterwards.

However, Isabelle the Nurse arrived just in time to interrupt the proceedings. We had a little chat while she sorted out my legs, and then she cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast.

This morning, I finished THE OLD ROAD. Belloc has now arrived at Canterbury and was in the cathedral in time to celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Thomas A Beckett.

The book was extremely interesting, that’s for sure, but Belloc didn’t really go into his subject very deeply. He barely scratched the surface of many of the places of interest that he passed along the way, and his description of the route itself was somewhat brief. I would have liked to have seen much more, but then again, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I am famous for never writing just one word when a hundred would do the job just as well … "quite!" – ed …

The value of the book lay in its anecdotes, just as did John Stow’s, but I’m sure that Belloc had many more up his sleeve that he could have imparted to us.

Before he finished though, there were a couple more points of interest that caught my eye.

He wrote "I came to wish that all history should be based upon legend. For the history of learned men is like a number of separate points set down very rare upon a great empty space, but the historic memories of the people are like a picture. They are one body whose distortion one can correct, but the mass of which is usually sound in stuff, and always in spirit."

This is, of course, the theory of Laurence Gomme whose book FOLKLORE AS A HISTORICAL SCIENCE we read back in March. It’s also something that, while I don’t necessarily agree completely with Belloc and Gomme, I would consider to be an excellent starting point, and would use scientific means of unravelling history as a tool to investigate the folk theories, rather than as a means unto themselves.

The second point is his remark that "I thought I should be like the men who lifted the last veil in the ritual of the hidden goddess, and having lifted it found there was nothing beyond, and that all the scheme was a cheat ; or like what those must feel at the approach of death who say there is nothing in death but an end and no transition."

We all know that feeling of extreme disappointment when we end up after many years of toil with exactly what we wanted, only to find out that it wasn’t what we needed, or that it didn’t live up to expectations, and we wonder why we went to all that trouble.

The next book on the list is THE DIARIES OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH.

He was the Chairman for many years of the Great Western Railway during their period of immense prosperity, and I’ve been looking forward to this book for quite a while.

But here we go again. Gooch talks about the loyalty that one should have towards one’s employer, that "you can be relied upon steadily to persevere in the pursuit of their interest, and so identify yourself with them that they can rest assured you are not ever seeking for a change, because you thus might earn a few pounds a year extra.", and "It ought to be every man’s greatest happiness and pride to say, ‘I have been associated with the same men through life.’ And to my mind, nothing speaks stronger against a man than for him, in describing his past life, to go through a long list of changes in his business associations,"

He then proceeds, several pages further on, to recount the enormous list of employers and employments that he had had during his adolescence.

The editor of his diaries tells us that during the “battle of the gauges”, with “God’s Wonderful Railway” trying unsuccessfully to persuade the other companies to adopt their Broad Gauge, Gooch "alludes with justice to the gain which the country reaped from this conflict of the gauges, putting on their mettle, as it did, the engineering giants by whom the conflict was carried on, and leading through their rivalry to improvements in speed, economy, and comfort which might otherwise have been long postponed."

It’s a well-known saying that “necessity is the mother of invention” … "not Frank Zappa" – ed … Technology and science make massive strides during wartime, for example, when the pressure is on everyone to push farther and farther ahead of the enemy as quickly as possible, and when we were discussing the dominance of TNS in Welsh domestic football the other day, I mentioned the dramatic improvement in standards in the JD Cymru League as clubs struggle to catch up.

After breakfast, I sat down at the desk to do some radio stuff but my visitors turned up. The lady who does the curtains brought her husband round. He’s a musician and wanted to see my guitars. As expected, he drooled over my Gibson EB3, which most people do. I sold my soul to buy it back in 1975 and I won’t ever part with it, even though I have been told on more than one occasion to name my own price. I hope that whoever inherits it after me will look after it carefully.

It was interesting to welcome my guests though. The electric door opener doesn’t work – YET AGAIN – so I had to go down the stairs on my own to open the front door, and then somehow work my way back up here without assistance. I could well do without this. I’m trying to cut down the number of times that I go downstairs and back up again.

There was a huge parcel delivery too, but I had warned the plumber and he had managed to intercept it at the door.

Once everyone had gone, I could press on with the radio programmes. The notes are now finished and ready for dictation, which I shall do the next time I have to leave the bed at 02:10.

However, listening to one of the soundtracks, I’ve noticed several imperfections. It looks as if someone has had a go at editing it before it came into my hands. At the end of every track, in the middle of the applause, there are small blank moments of a couple of hundredths of a second and the volume of the succeeding piece of applause is slightly different from the preceding one.

It seems that someone has done a “cut and paste” job on this, even though the running order matches the official set list, and the applause sounds similar and consistent so it’s not several concerts merged together to make up one complete one.

Anyway, I was there for quite some time cutting out the blanks and playing with the volume adjusters to make everything match.

There were several interruptions too. My friend from the UK who is managing my project over there wanted a good chat, and then my cleaner came in unexpectedly.

While she was going through my cupboards the other day sorting out some things to take downstairs, she came across some things of Roxanne’s that were left behind when she and her mother moved away and I can’t bring myself to throw away. After all, she was the only daughter that I ever had, even though it was for only three years.

Time, the damp of the farm and so on have not been kind to them so my cleaner had taken them away so that she could work her magic. She brought them down this evening and she had made a magnificent job of them. I really must take steps from now on to keep them in a better condition than I have been doing.

Thinking about Roxanne later, as I sometimes do, I began to think that I should have had another daughter. I would have been a wonderful father and she would have been spoiled rotten.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg and home-made garlic mayonnaise. And now, later than usual … "again" – ed … I’m off to bed, hoping for a better night than last night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the end of the journey not being what we would want it to be … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the story about the team that was sent in search of the very last Giant Prawn of the Galápagos, teetering on the edge of extinction.
When the team returned to the Natural History Club in London, the members crowded round and asked the leader "how did you find it?"
"Mmmmm. Delicious" he replied.

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