Tag Archives: tidying up

Saturday 12th April 2025 – WE ARE BACK …

… amongst the painful dialysis connections. After a few sessions of comparatively painless connections since Emilie the Cute Consultant did her stuff, they have been gradually worsening and today we were back in the agony stakes. So I’ve no idea what’s going to happen now.

Another thing about which I have no idea now is this story about early nights. I cracked on rapidly to finish everything last night and managed somehow to finish relatively early. However I was as usual side-tracked by a couple of really good concerts on the playlist and it ended up being long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change it was a comparatively decent night. I slept right though until the alarm sounded with only the vaguest memory of awakening in mid-sleep.

It was a struggle to rise to my feet when the alarm went off but I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After the wash I set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. For once, I managed to fit everything into it but it probably wasn’t a good idea because it struggled with the weight. I need to wash my clothes more frequently – or wash fewer clothes more often.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I should have been going into work with Nerina. We were on our way to catch our bus at the top of Mill Street. I was walking on my crutches and Nerina was with me. Nerina suddenly remembered that she had a prescription to pick up at the chemist’s across the road. She said that she would go and pick it up. I told her to be quick so she dashed off while I continued as quickly as I possibly could, which wasn’t very quick at all. I saw the bus come up Mill Street to the traffic lights and turn right. I knew that I wasn’t going to catch it. I saw Nerina come out of the chemist’s and run across the road. I thought “at least she’s caught the bus”. When I reached the bus stop she was standing there. She was saying that she had seen that I wasn’t there and so had waited for me. I told her that that was a silly thing to do. She should have caught the bus and gone on into work anyway on time. I would follow as best as I could. She would have been on time but now we are both going to be late and there isn’t another bus for hours so we are probably going to end up missing half a day. That was a strange decision.

Why I should be going to work on the K43 to Nantwich (that was the bus route where I was) is a total mystery, as is why I would be coming from the general direction of the railway station. And I wouldn’t be on crutches in Crewe either. Furthermore, I reckon that Nerina would have had far more sense than to have missed the bus in order to wait for me if I were going to miss it.

There was also something about being on board a yacht. There was some boy there who seemed to be very well-educated from a good family but that was far from the case. He was very insistent on his rights etc. He was going on wanting this, wanting that and everyone was annoyed with him in the end. They decided that they would teach him a lesson. When he made some more demands, someone reminded him that he was hoping that we’d move back into more traditional ways that were all good and proper a hundred years ago. They put him on a bed face down, removed his trousers and spanked him with a slipper. Every time he protested, they reminded him that he was hoping for a return to the Good Old Days and isn’t this just the kind of thing that he would have wanted? When his parents came back they were outraged by what they saw but everyone on board said “well, he was asking for this – it was literally what he wanted, a return to the Good Old Days of a hundred years ago and he’s receiving exactly what he wanted. None of us can see what the problem is”.

There have been some very, very strange dreams in the past but I don’t think that there has ever been one quite as strange as this. It quite possibly relates to an argument that broke out on the Internet a while back when someone posted "the problem with today’s children is that they don’t seem to have the sense of fear that the sound of a leather belt being withdrawn quickly so a series of belt hoops on a pair of jeans would instil into them.".

Isabelle was in quite a chatty mood today and talked incessantly about nothing whatever as she organised my legs.

Breakfast was next, with more of MY BOOK. We have left Harlech and are now at Hastings Castle, discussing the finer points of corbels and arches, with the odd flying buttress thrown in for good measures. A flying buttress is the equivalent of half an arch, leaning against the outside of a heavy stone wall to stop the wall falling outward. But does our author tell us that? Of course he doesn’t. He describes the buttress’s more elegant points from an artistic point of view and that’s about it.

Back in here I spent a couple of hours drafting a complicated letter to my tenant downstairs, but after having had a couple of chats with a couple of people and having had second thoughts, it’s all becoming far too complicated for words and so I’ve decided that she will leave at the end of the current lease. I’m too old, too tired and fed up to start to negotiate complicated deals and arrangements.

My cleaner turned up on time and fitted my anaesthetic patches and then I tidied up the kitchen while I waited for the taxi. I didn’t have long to wait either. And I was the only passenger in the car so we arrived at the dialysis centre quite early.

For a change I was second in and second to be coupled up. Despite the patches and despite the new procedure and despite the ice pack, it still hurt, and it was hurting throughout the session.

The good news is that if they had the machine on max and ran it for three and a half hours, it would leave 200 grams behind. After a discussion with the doctor today, I decided that it would make more sense to go with three and a half hours, and have a look at how things are on Monday. Four hours would probably be better then, and bring me down to an ideal weight ready for my three-day break.

There was football on the internet as I mentioned earlier – Y Drenewydd v Aberystwyth. And for once in my life in the Welsh Premier League, I saw a team play the way that I would play my team against any team that has a rather pedestrian central defence.

Y Drenewydd were desperate to win to keep alive any possible hope of avoiding the drop, so they went on an all-out attack, However Aberystwyth, who have clearly been reading my training manual, played with the rapid winger Niall Flint at centre-forward. Every time Aberystwyth won the ball in defence they kicked it upfield over the head of the central defenders and Niall Flint ran after it.

He was causing panic in their defence all through the game. And while Y Drenewydd scored two goals, Niall Flint scored two of his own for Aberystwyth, he hit the post twice and only some desperate defending kept him out on another couple of occasions. And when Aberystwyth scored a third as the game drew to a close, that, I’m afraid, was that for Y Drenewydd.

During pre-season I’d seen Y Drenewydd play against Hednesford Town, and what I saw prompted me to enter into correspondence with the Drenewydd club secretary. On the 5th of August I finished my correspondence with "I can see it being a long, cold season ahead"

At least the Chairman of Y Drenewydd was quite frank after the game. "We lost some very good players in close season but didn’t replace like with like". That is no surprise at all. What is a surprise is that he didn’t do anything to redress the balance.

The boss was waiting for me when the dialysis was over and he brought me home through the immense traffic queue as the Parisians desert their city for the Easter break. Despite dropping off another passenger, I was at home for 18:15 and I wish that I could do that every time.

My cleaner watched as I climbed my weary way upstairs where I relaxed for an hour or so.

Tea was as usual baked potato, vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet, followed by cake and soya dessert. Now I’m having a little break before dictating my radio notes and going to bed. A lie-in until 08:00 in the morning and then I have baking to do. Bread, more bread and a chocolate cake. Let’s see how the new water measurer copes

But seeing as we have been talking about football … "well, one of us has" – ed … tomorrow there’s a live football match in the Women’s League Cup – Caerdydd V Llansawel.
In the previous round Llansawel beat a team representing the Walt Disney Fan club. It was quite an easy match for Llansawel so I asked them why
"It was as if that Disney team only played with ten players" explained the Llansawel manager. "They had a player on the pitch called ‘Cinderella’ but she spent the whole ninety minutes running away from the ball"

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Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But then that’s hardly a surprise when you don’t go to bed until 02:20 and you are up and about by 05:35. And that’s something of a tragedy because if I’m going to have a bad night’s sleep at least I want to be going out and about enjoying it, even if it is only a notional travel.

As you might expect I was hunting down files and data last night and then ended up being carried away by something or other, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are. It was still a very weary me who crawled into bed at about 02:20.

Not that it did me all that much good because although I did go to sleep at one point it wasn’t for very long and in the end I became fed up of doing nothing whatever and arose from the Dead.

In the bathroom I scrubbed up and washed my clothes, and then went into the kitchen to take my medication. Next task was to finish off the unpacking of the food from yesterday and organise the collection of glass jars so that there was room to add some more

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m trying to do away with plastic in here. Over the last few months I’ve been buying my olives in these big glass jars and I now have quite a collection. My range of glass-bottled loose product is expanding quite rapidly because of the extra stuff that I have bought over the last few months as my recipe ideas have expanded and as I try to move everything out of plastic and paper bags into glass jars.

Before I came back in here I tidied away all of the shopping bags so that they weren’t all over the floor. But in any case it doesn’t work. My place is now just as untidy as it was yesterday before my cleaner came.

Once back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe I made a start on unzipping data but was halted in my tracks by the nurse who came to sort me out. He asked me the same questions as usual and so he had the same responses as usual, not that I’m too bothered.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We reached page 123 today and that marks the end of the introductory preamble as he sets the scene for what is to come.

He’s convinced that these strange stories that Julius Caesar reported about the British people being cannibals, holding wives in common and other "odious practices" as he puts it were not actually the practices of the Celts who Caesar met but those of the people who were here and were displaced by the Celts when they arrived.

Furthermore he thinks that he can prove it too and I shall be interested to see how he manages to do it, bearing in mind that if there are no written records of the Celts there are likely to be even less for the people who were here before.

In here I carried on with the extraction of files until my cleaner arrived to fit my anaesthetic patches. She had only just finished too when the taxi arrived. 12:15, 15 minutes early. Not that i’m bothered though because the sooner we start the sooner we finish (in principle).

It was the young chatty driver who came for me today but he didn’t have much to say for himself which is a shame because the time passes more quickly when you are having an interesting discussion.

First in at the dialysis centre I was, and first to be coupled up. Julie the Cook had left a message for her colleagues and they applied the ice pack too before they plugged me in and although it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as much as it has done in the past.

There was football this afternoon, TNS v Hwlffordd. Hwlffordd are pushing Penybont for second place following Penybont’s dramatic collapse of form but TNS demolished them with some ease and the 5-1 scoreline was not flattering TNS at all.

Hwlffordd played some pretty football at times but it was all to no real purpose and they didn’t look threatening at all. For all the distance between Aberystwyth and Hwlffordd in the table and in the style of play, Aberystwyth’s showed much more dogged resistance last week that Hwlffordd did today.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and she said “hello” to me, but that was about the extent of her interaction today. No-one else spoke to me until it was time to be unplugged.

The driver who brought me home was the young girl who brought me home several weeks ago. We were talking about food and I found, to my surprise and to hers too, that we are both vegan. She immediately asked if she could come round for a meal and who am I to refuse such a request?

Mind you, I’ll believe it when I actually see it.

My cleaner watched as I ascended the stairs and once I’d sat down and recovered my strength I had my disgusting protein drink.

Tea tonight was one of those weird chili burgers on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. It was the first time for a fortnight that I’ve actually felt like eating a proper meal.

So there’s some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. I have a busy day of baking and there’s some fruit that needs transforming into juice and purée.

But while we’re on the subject of glass bottles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I used to collect them if they were any good and reuse them for other things. One day I found a really nice one.
It was rather dirty so I went to rub it clean and suddenly a genie appeared out of the neck.
"You have released me from the bottle and now I am yours to command" he said. "Give me 100 gold pieces and I will answer any two questions"
"Blimey!" I said. "That’s a lot of money for two questions, don’t you think?"
"Yes" replied the genie. "Now what’s your second question?"

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Friday 14th February 2025 – HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY …

… to everyone who didn’t have anyone to send a Valentine’s Card to them.

Not that I am in that bracket, of course, … "he said, smirking" – ed … because at 00:01 precisely on Valentine’s Day morning a Valentine’s Card fell into my electronic inbox. You know who you are of course, and so do I, and a big thank-you to you because it cheered me up immensely. I imagine though that with all of your connections, you weren’t short of too many

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s not true in my case because all the night did was to harden my resolve.

And my resolve is just about the only thing that will harden overnight, Valentine’s Cards notwithstanding, these days. Times are definitely sad.

But what I have decided is that I am not going for a fourth session of dialysis. I have to draw the line somewhere otherwise I’ll be living there permanently. Not only that, my cleaner has her own life and a business to run. She can’t plan all of her affairs around the caprices of the dialysis centre.

Consequently, I foresee a major argument breaking out on Monday afternoon. We shall see.

Anyway, I had plenty of time to brood on my situation last night because this was yet another night where I had almost nothing in the way of sleep. Tossing and turning and perspiring all the way through the night with just the occasional flash of sleep, an odd five minutes here and there. How many nights is this now?

When the alarm went off I was however asleep, and once more it was a desperate struggle to fight my way out of bed before the second alarm. And having said the other day that I had never felt less like doing it, I now wish to withdraw that remark.

After a good wash I went into the kitchen to take my medication and then came back in here to find that the computer wouldn’t fire up. Well, it would fire up, but it wouldn’t launch the software operating system.

That’s twice now that it’s done that after a major update, and the last thing that I felt like this morning was to be playing about in the BIOS

When Isabelle the Nurse came round I told her of my woes. Her response was "but you have to" However, when I asked her to give me one good reason why, she was stuck for an answer. Instead, she was out of the apartment like a ferret up a trouser leg.

My appetite is still diminished but I made breakfast anyway and then went to read MY NEW BOOK

We’re discussing water supply at some of these camps that have no obvious source, and he is relying heavily on the presence of dew ponds, which is a somewhat precarious way to go about things.

He also mentions that "It is surprising how little drink is really needed even by modern man when he has perforce to stint himself; probably his Neolithic predecessor required still less, not merely for climatic reasons, but also by habit.^" Whether that’s the case or not, I’m intrigued to know what he thinks are the reasons why Neolithic Man had so many pot-boilers, clearly showing signs of heavy use, lying around if he didn’t have much water in which to drop them.

Back in here, once I’d finished playing with the computer and persuaded it to fire up, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. To my surprise there were actually some to transcribe.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were going though some kind of crisis similar to this one a few months ago, Castor appeared in the night and stood silently at the foot of my bed as if watching over me to keep me safe from harm. Last night, not only was Zero’s father there again, so this time was Zero. I’d been doing something with someone but I can’t remember who. It was quite late in the evening so we walked round to their house for some kind of reason. Zero was there with her parents. We talked, or, rather, I didn’t. The guy with me talked to Zero’s father but I was doing my very best not to fall asleep because I was so absolutely tired. As the evening drew on I felt even more and more tired. During this whole dream I just didn’t even say a word to anyone. I just listened to the conversation that was taking place. At the end of it we both set out to go back to from where we had come.

It was really strange that neither I nor Zero said a word during all of this. We just sat there looking at each other throughout the whole affair. If it’s this kind of thing that can summon up Castor and Zero, maybe I ought to throw teddy out of the pram more often.

A little later I heard someone read out the football results. There were just a few and one of the last ones that I heard was “Crystal Palace 1, Notts County 5” and then I awoke. I’ve no idea what would have inspired this.

There was also the Welsh rock band “Man” being included, trying to sneak along under cover and under disguise as the name of another group at one point during the night. Bizarrely, just as I am typing this, round on the playlist come George Jones (Mickey’s son)’s group “Son Of Man” with guest star Deke Leonard. So no early night for me while this plays out.

So there we are anyway. Zero came back to see me last night, and how nice it was to see her too.

Next task was to check over my shopping list and send it off, especially as my faithful cleaner sent me a message to remind me

Having done that, I sat down to think about preparing another radio programme. And by the time that I knocked off today, I had chosen the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it and written the notes for it too. So that’s two ready to dictate tomorrow night if I’m up to it.

There was even an hour or so afterwards to chill out.

That radio programme wasn’t all that I did either. About an hour later the delivery driver ‘phoned me. "I know that you said ‘after 17:00’ on your form but is it any problem if I were to come round in half an hour?"

Clearly someone wants to be away early today. I’m not going anywhere so it’s no problem to me. But I had to rush to put it all away before my cleaner came around to do her stuff. She doesn’t want to be tripping over it, which is why I don’t usually want it delivered until after she has gone.

Lunch was next, but only a short lunch as I wasn’t hungry. And while there was no mid-afternoon snack, there was still the disgusting drink break

So all-in-all I’ve been a very busy boy today. I ought to have a few more of these crises.

Just another small tea tonight – a handful of chips, a couple of vegan nuggets and a small salad followed by apple cake and lemon soya dessert.

So when Son of Man finish, I’m off to bed for what I hope will be a good sleep. I can’t believe that I’ve had so little sleep just recently but I’m still going on. Tomorrow I have to fight the good fight at the dialysis centre and then on Sunday there’s a Welsh Cup foot-fest as well as Stranraer hoping to stop the rot.

Four days at the dialysis centre? They must be joking.

But while we are talking of Zero appearing … "well, one of us is" – ed … a bunch of us, Zero included, went once for a day out years ago and I ended up buying lunch for her.
And quite frankly, I was amazed at what she was preparing to put away.
"Does your mum make you meals like this at home?" I asked
"Ohh no" she replied. "She doesn’t want to sleep with me."

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Thursday 13th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anyone else around here, but I reckon that I’ve had enough now and I wish that I would be somewhere else right now. Even shovelling coal into the fires down below can’t be any worse than this.

A few days ago I mentioned that I can’t do with too many more days like the one that I had then, but today I reckon that we’ve reached the stage where there’s no longer any pleasure left in anything any more. As I said right back at the start of all this ten years ago, I’ll keep on going as long as there is something left to enjoy.

It might have been something to celebrate, I suppose, that I had a night last night where I was in bed at something like a realistic time. Not 23:00 of course, because those days are long-gone, but something not too far unadjacent to that.

Once I was in my bed it didn’t take too long to go off to sleep and if only Id have stayed asleep it wouldn’t have been so bad, I suppose, but another mobile, perspiring night. Although I might have slept longer than the ninety minutes of the previous one, it didn’t seem much like it.

When the alarm went off this morning I was just as wasted as yesterday morning and it was yet another undignified stagger into the bathroom. A wash and a shave later, I was in the kitchen taking all of my medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night too.

And so it happened, I had. But these continual bouts of awakening had interrupted any sequence of anything important. There was something about Prehistoric man and about being in bed in comparatively modern times but as soon as I awoke, whatever it was that was going on at that particular moment just evaporated and I lost all of it. But I was certainly in bed and it was certainly something of particular interest.

No prizes for guessing where this idea about Prehistoric man comes from. I’ll really have to stop reading these books on ancient architecture. But I wish that I knew where this dream was going.

There was also a woman with whom I used to work once making an appearance last night. She was visiting this prisoner-of-war site at the west end of Crewe where people were incarcerated after the fighting had passed by. She’d gone there to check on their needs etc but the Belgian Government wanted an assurance from the British Government that any changes would not be applicable and were to be backdated but the British Government would not agree to do this so the prisoners were held and she was to check on them but there was much more to it than this and I can’t remember a thing now.

Why this woman should be there I really don’t know because I can’t have thought about her even once since I moved on to pastures new all those years ago. But I’ve no idea where the prisoners of war fitted in. However in the South Cheshire area there were two prisoner-of-war camps, which later became Displaced Persons camps

There was also a group of us in work having a good time passing the time working, chatting to each other. The question of what we were going to do that evening came up because it was a Friday. I said that if I could find someone to go dancing with me I’d be off to the nightclub. “How are you fixed?” She said one or two words and then said “yes, why not?”. So we left the office and walked hand-in-hand down the street, skipping and laughing, down to the nightclub. But there was never anything serious about it. She spent most of the time telling me about her boyfriend and how ever since they had met they had only spent three days away from each other so I knew that this was just the whim of a moment and that it would be all over in a couple of hours by the time the nightclub closed but it was one of those things that you have to seize the moment as it goes by.

This was my Irish friend again, the one who had far more sense than to hitch her cart onto my star, and who can blame her? But almost Getting The Girl is a darn sight better than what usually happens in my dreams. But even in a dream, I realised that it was just something ephemeral, and that’s interesting

Isabelle the Nurse turned up late and in a whirlwind of a rush. Apparently everyone is making their requests for blood tests before her oppo comes back at the weekend and I can’t say that I blame them. I will almost inevitably do the same.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK. We’ve finished hillforts and now discussing dwelling houses. But he can’t leave off hillforts for long and we’ve had a delightful ramble through Caer Seion near Conwy

This is a fascinating place because it consists of two forts, one inside the other, but there is no internal communication between the two parts. You have to go back outside the one and come back into the other.

Digging around on the internet, I found an archaeologist’s report from the 1950s. His conclusion went something along the lines that "all dates are inconclusive and capable of several interpretations".

Back in here afterwards I had tidying up to do and I didn’t accomplish anything like what I wanted to do because a text message told me that the taxi was coming early.

Once I was in it, we drove all around the town, to areas that I didn’t know existed and then the four of us, driver and three passengers, set off for Avranches.

They weren’t ready for my at the dialysis centre so I had to wait, but once I was seen it was another painful session where I was in agony.

It wasn’t just four hours either. A nurse came along and said "we’ve seen your weight graph, and the doctor says that you have to stay for an extra half-hour". And by this time the stabbing pain in the sole of my foot had started up..

A doctor appeared shortly afterwards so I complained. "Are you going to make me sit here for four and a half hours in this agony and do nothing about all of the tests that I’ve had on this arm that show an anomaly?"
"I’ll prescribe an anaesthetic spray" she said
"An anaesthetic spray isn’t going to do me much good" I said. "I’m not going through all of this every time I come here for the rest of my life. It needs to be dealt with"
"I’ll have a look in your file" she said, beating a hasty retreat.

When they came to unplug me, they brought me more bad news. The weight graph shows no signs of stabilisation so as of next week I may well have to come in four days per week.

Having arrived early, I was hoping to be home early but with the extra half-hour and the delay at the start it was even later than usual by the time that I returned, totally and utterly exhausted, and completely fed up.

There was no energy left in the tank to make tea. A baked potato and some salad was the best that I could do, and now I’m off to bed. And if I don’t awaken in the morning I couldn’t care less. “Tomorrow is another day” they say, but it will be just like this one.

All of this reminds me of the story of the man who goes to see the doctor about his (the man’s, not the doctor’s) chronic alcohol problem
"If you keep on drinking like this" said the doctor "you are going to die"
The man turned to the doctor with a smile on his face and said "when?"

It’s better, I suppose, than the doctor who announced to his patient "I can’t find what seems to be the matter with you. It must be due to drink"
"That’s no problem" said the patient. "I’ll come back when you are sober".

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Saturday 1st February 2025 – I REALLY MUST SHUT …

… up and stop moaning about this dialysis. If I were to tell you that we had another four painful hours of life coupled up to the machine you would very soon become as fed up as I am about the whole affair. I really can’t believe that everyone else suffers as much as I do about all of this.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

After I’d finished my notes last night I had a few things to do and once more it was quite late by the time that I finally went off to bed. Not that I’m bothered too much. Times have changed these last few months.

Once in bed thought, it was totally painless. I didn’t feel a thing for the whole six hours or so until the alarm went off the following morning.

And that was an effort to leave the bed before the second alarm. I’m having to push myself along as best as I can at the moment and hope that I can keep on going. It’s now my shoulders and my back that are giving me major problems

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, with a shave and plenty of deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant. And then I attacked the washing.

“Attacked” is the correct word too. There were piles of it. So much so that even with the washing machine loaded to the brim, there was still plenty that wouldn’t fit in which will have to wait for another time. This is becoming ridiculous.

In the kitchen I had all of my medication, not forgetting the Vitamin D supplement, and then I had to tidy up the empty shopping bags that were lying around all over the place.

It’s not been a very happy morning so far, has it?

If the nurse had turned up two minutes earlier he would have caught me in flagrante delicto. I’d just finished tidying up when he came. Of course he had to do his “cocorico” after Friday’s rugby, but that doesn’t bother me. I have no interest whatever in the game, except to say that it’s a sport played by men with odd-shaped balls.

He was in and out in a few seconds today. he didn’t stay around at all. That suits me fine and I could make breakfast and read my book.

We’re reaching the conclusion and it is as I suspected – a great deal of construction done quite rapidly around 400-380BC, periods of calm, increase in wealth and a relax in tension, followed by spells of more rapid overhauling of the forts until, in the words of the writers, "this is now an architecture of intimidation …. alongside a ‘deliberate closing down’ of the wider agricultural landscape, including animal slaughter"

Not just animal slaughter either. There’s evidence of warfare, such as heaps of slingshot pellets in readiness by the gates, and also, regrettably, piles of skeletons of men, women and children, clearly victims of a battle, cast into a pit.

This all started with some iron relics that were found in a caravan. And they have now identified them as a convex bowl on a spike that would be thrust into a tree-trunk to act as the pivot for a gate, sitting in a corresponding concave bowl set in a sill-beam in the floor.

That’s not all either. to stop the tree-trunk from splitting, a couple of iron bands were heated and strapped around the end of the tree-trunk. They would shrink and contract the wood, and the spike would be rammed home, with the bands preventing the wood from splitting

And if that’s not clever for Iron-Age engineering 2500 years ago, I don’t know what is.

Controversy has at last reared its ugly head. But it’s expressed in a much more scholarly way than T Rice Holmes ever did. The authors tell us "It seems worth stating here that there are so many problems with Avery’s (1993, App. A, 146 ff.) understanding of Varley’s work that it is in some ways safer simply not to consult Avery "

Back in here, first task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with Steve Knightley at a concert. He was organising one of these entertainments. It was a shame because there was only about a dozen people attending them. I’d been on the stage during one of his songs to do something so during a pause he was doing an entertainment having half a dozen people up on the stage for something like a quiz. He looked at me and said “you’ve just been up, haven’t you?”. He couldn’t find enough people to make up the team that he wanted on the stage. They were about to ask him the prize to start to answer the questions. Someone asked him “what are the prizes?”. He ummed and ahhed and didn’t say anything. Then he took all the people off the stage before the quiz had started and then led them out into the car park. We walked through the car park. Someone worked out that “ohh the first prize is marriage” to which one of the women said ” it can’t be that. I’m already married”. And then she looked at Steve Knightley and said “unless there’s a nice, gallant man who is going to arrange it for me”. We walked down to the far side of the car park and there were four or five cars parked down there. I recognised mine, and there was a Black Tulip BMC 1100-type of car. His was an Austin A40, a dirty green metallic and the whole of the bottom was rusting away. The wheels were rusting. He told me that he was a concrete examiner during the day. I thought that he’d been driving the car through the concrete. He said “yes, it needs something doing to the paintwork to stop it rusting further” he said. Why do’t you come down on Friday and do it for me?”. I thought “he lives the other side of Bristol”. He said “oh by the way my wife likes to have her one flat tyre each week so she’s probably have that while you’re down there”. I thought “well, I don’t suppose that I’m doing anything on Friday but even so ..”

Even though I remember nothing whatsoever of this dream, I can see the car park and see my car. It was a black Ford Consul MkI, a car that I have never owned, but would have given my right arm to have had at the time. Steve Knightley is much more well-known for being one third of the group “A Show Of Hands” whom I have never seen live but I have several of their concerts sent to me by a friend who works at a folk festival. He would really be quite good as a game show host I reckon. Judging by the cars though, this was set in the early 1970s when life was so much different. I’m not saying “better” because TB, rickets and waking up to ice on the bedroom window in the morning wasn’t good at any moment in history.

Next stop was to finish off the radio notes from yesterday. They are all done and dusted now ready to be dictated. It didn’t take me too long. But there are quite a few that need dictating tonight so I have better hurry up and finish my notes.

When the cleaner poked her head into the apartment I was backing up the computer, so once more that fell by the wayside. I’ll do this full back-up onto the travelling laptop yet.

She put the patches on my arm and then I had to wait for my driver so I tidied up in the kitchen.

It was my favourite driver today, so we had the whole running commentary, complete with gesticulations, all the way down to Avranches. And at Avranches we had the usual painful procedure that’s enough to drive me wild.

Once installed though, I could settle down to watch the football. Penybont v Hwlfforth is a match of second v third, with both teams keen for points – Penybont to stay clutching on to the coat-tails of TNS and for Hwlfforth to fight off Caernarfon for the coveted third place.

But I’m not sure what game I was watching because, apart from the fact that its quality can best be described as “agricultural”, I don’t think that either goalkeeper had any serious work to do. The match finished 0-0, with both sides lucky to get nil and if they are still playing now I reckon the score would still be 0-0.

The rest of the time at the hospital I spent backing up the computer, with still a long way to go. But when the buzzer goes off and the girls come to disconnect me, I just want to go home.

They guy who brought me back was the one who, I reckon, has some part in running the affair. We had a little chat on the way home and he dropped me off in the capable hands of my cleaner.

Now that the stair handrails have been fixed I strode personfully up all twenty-five steps to my door, and then collapsed inside.

Tea was a burger on a bap with vegan salad and baked potato, followed by apple cake and caramel soya dessert. Life doesn’t get much better than that And now that I’ve written my notes I’ll dictate the notes for the radio programmes and then go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about Steve Knightly and his small crowd … "well, one of us has" – ed … it made me smile. I once told someone that I played in several one-man shows
"I thought that there were three people in your two most famous groups" she replied
"Indeed there were" I replied. "but when I talk about a “one man show” I’m usually referring to the size of the audience"

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Monday 27th January 2025 – I’VE BEEN DOING …

… my impression of Mr Carmichael today and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN tonight. I have had a fraught, exhausting day and I’m too tired to move. And seeing that that’s my normal state of affairs these days when there isn’t any nonsense, this one is going to be good.

Last night was another typical night in this new order of things where I was in no rush to go to bed. The days when I used to be so stressed out about meeting a deadline are over and I’m now much more relaxed about it.

And so I loitered around doing not very much of anything for a while before I finally lost whatever enthusiasm I might have had, and crawled off into bed.

And there I lay, fast asleep until the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 when definitely the worse for wear, I crawled out into the light.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and shave, and even applied the deodorant in case Emilie the Cute Consultant were to come to see me, and then did some hand-washing of clothes again. Not that they needed it, I suppose, but I have to keep on pushing forward.

Into the kitchen for the medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was away somewhere on some kind of trip from work on a business training course. When I arrived at the hotel and put my things in my room I went for a walk around. In the basement there was a shop and they had about twenty racks with LPs on, “Best of…. and B-sides”, the title of the whole range of albums that were on sale. They were on sale at¨£2:49 each. I began to have a rummage through and found an album that had the cover of IN SEARCH OF SPACE by Hawkwind, but when I looked at it, it was an album by Country Joe McDonald and the Fish. Then I found an album by one of these new wave bands like “Frankie Goes To Hollywood” or something. The further I dug, I found a couple of albums by Curved Air. I thought to myself that I’m going to be in Paradise here. I’m going to spend my night now searching through all these shelves and I bet that I can go away with a couple of hundred Pounds-worth of LPs to take with me on the way home. Then I began to think about CDs. I don’t use albums any more, I have CDs and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my album collection was digitalised several years ago. So yet again, I was caught in this huge mesh of indecision.

How many times have we been here? If it’s not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory or the family putting le baton dans la roue or a collection of Cortinas without MoTs scattered around the town it’s the indecision that is a thread that’s running through my dreams. And I was so intrigued by this idea of the cover of “In Search Of Space” that I actually checked. I can still see the album cover that was in my dreams and sure enough, it IS the cover of “In Search Of Space” and if that’s not an impressive thing to happen in a dream, I don’t know what is.

The nurse turned up and we had yet another animated discussion. He hadn’t told me yesterday that it’s his last day for this month today, so today he needs my health card for the details. I don’t have it at the moment because my faithful cleaner has it for when she goes to the chemist’s later. "No problem" he said. "I’ll go and knock on her door. In which apartment does she live?"

Ohh no you won’t, my friend. Not at 08:30 in the morning and not when it’s nothing to do with you. If you had told me that you needed it today it would have been here. You’ll have to make some other arrangement. My cleaner is entitled to her comfort and privacy.

So after he left, I made breakfast and read MY BOOK

And here we go again. On page 681 where there is a dispute between the narrative of Caesar and that of Seneca and someone prefers the latter, which disagrees with his own point of view, he asks is if we really "are to prefer the authority of Seneca to that of the general who fought the battle"

On page 648 however, when he notes another disagreement between two narratives and he prefers the one that contradicts Caesar, he asks if one of his colleagues had "forgotten the discrepant statements that were made by officers who had watches in their pockets as to the hour at which this or that episode occurred in the campaign of Waterloo?". Caesar’s "estimate may have been right : but also it may have been wrong ; and anyhow it is folly to stake the whole argument upon its accuracy."

Despite his criticism of his colleagues, he’s also doing his fair share of cherry-picking of facts and ideas, but I bet that his colleagues and contemporaries were much nicer about it that he was.

After breakfast I came in here to do the second part of my Welsh homework. We had to write n essay about one of our relatives who fought in a war.

So do I write about my cousin who was in the Army in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s or my mother who was in the Royal Air Force in World War II who told us when we were small that she flew Spitfires but I bet that she peeled the spuds in the cookhouse, or my Great-Grandfather who having retired once from the army at 45, dyed his white hair black, lied about his age (and not just by a couple of years either) and went to France with the Canadian Army?

Instead, I decided to do something rather different and talk about a cousin of my maternal Grandmother who was sentenced to be SHOT AT DAWN for refusing to pick up a rifle.

Yes, we have ’em all in our family.

When I’d finished my magnum opus I began the mega-backup of my travelling laptop but as usual, I ran out of time. My cleaner came along to interrupt me and to fit my patches. And she had brought with her the first big load of medication.

After she’d performed her task and left, I began another project of mine which involved trying to bring some order into chaos in the kitchen. Of course, Nietzsche is quite famous for saying that "out of chaos comes order" but he had never ever been to visit anywhere where I was living.

Not that I actually made it very far with my plans because the taxi arrived. And this time I checked to see if there was anyone on the back seat of the car before I committed another indiscretion. And lucky that I looked too.

Still we had an interesting chat all the way down to Avranches.

Today is the first day of my four-hour sessions. They wanted to remove 4.2 kilos of water from my body, and that’s a far cry from the 2.7 that they wanted to remove on the first day. I’m definitely not doing so well.

And when it’s painful for three and a half hours, can you imagine how painful it is for four hours?

There was a visitor too today. Someone from the Re-education Department who wanted to see how much I knew, and talked to me as if I was two years old or some doddery, senile old fart (and you can shut up too!)

So with the pain in my arm, seething from this blasted visit, totally fed up, having been ignored by the duty doctor who passed my bed three times without even glancing in my direction, and with no coffee anywhere in sight, it was rather unfortunate that just at that moment a nurse brought round a “customer satisfaction” survey form to fill in.

Four hours under the dialysis is long enough. It’s exhausting, tiring, painful and shattering. But it’s not all over yet. After having waited ten minutes for the taxi, we then had to go right across Avranches to the Clinic to pick up someone else, to come back right past where we started and then head out to Granville.

It was 19:30 when I returned here, totally exhausted and fed up, but I made it up the stairs and then up to here. There was bread to make next, so you’ll understand why I gave it all up and made supper out of a tin, just like Mr Carmichael had to.

Right now though, I’ve had enough. I really have. The events of today have dragged me back down into the pit from which I had just climbed out. I said to my cleaner that in all honesty, I can’t take too many of these four-hour sessions. I’m wiped out after the first one. What am I going to be like in a couple of weeks? There’s no end to it either.

But these patronising, condescending people really get on my wick. It reminds me of the time (well, one of the times actually, but that’s another story) when I saw the trick cyclist.
She showed me a photo of a splodge with green edges. "What’s this?" she asked.
"It’s image number six of the Rorschach Test" I replied
"And this?"
"Image number two of the Rorschach Test"
"And this?"
"Ohhhh" I replied. That’s a horrible, evil mass of flesh that sucks the blood out of every living soul and brings gloom and despondency in its wake."
"The picture is over here" he said. "You’re looking at a photo of my wife there"
"Was I correct?"
"Pretty much".

There’s a RORSCHACH TEST on line that you can have fun with it. I answered it seriously and carefully, and the result is that I’m "SOUND AND WELL-BALANCED", which just goes to prove, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that these trick cyclists don’t have a clue what they are talking about.

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Saturday 11th January 2025 – WHAT A CALAMITY …

… this whole day has been. Everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong today, but these days it’s becoming par for the course. I’m beginning to think that I must have kicked a black cat or walked under a ladder somewhere on my travels, and it all seems to be coming home to roost.

Even going to bed last night. It was well after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out before I staggered off into my stinking pit. But at least I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed, snug as a bug in a rug, until 07:00.

When the alarm went off, it took me quite a good few minutes to gather my wits which is a surprise seeing how few I actually have left these days, but even so I managed to beat the second alarm to my feet and headed off to the bathroom

Clothes-washing this morning. My night attire and undies went into the sink after I’d finished washing myself, and the clothes had a good wash through. And there they went, onto the octopus that hangs from the shower rail.

In the kitchen I had my medication, remembering not to take the anti-potassium stuff, and then I tidied up all of the shopping bags that were lying around all over the place. The place has to look tidy at least occasionally, even if I can’t manage that all the time.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Once more back on Middle Earth with a bunch of men and women and in this theme I dreamed that women were people and apologists being shown around. One question that came up was about some visitor to here from a while ago who was sitting on top of a plank that was on top of a paint tin that was stuck on the top of some kind of column. He was doing this in the 13th Century. They were pointing out to him that he had people listening on the news and watching on the television watching what he was doing and he had to hold his foot in his mouth in a certain position when the cameras were filming him so that it would provide an illusion with the camera. They asked him why he was there and whether he followed TNS. He replied “no, it was the other European teams that interested him like Y Fflint and Connah’s Quay” where he could follow them and experience the real atmosphere. But even in the other clubs the opportunity to speak Welsh was presented to him by having to carry out the PA reports in Welsh. The aim of this plank on this pot of paint was so that he could balance it in the one direction so that it wouldn’t actually fall off the plank. He could sit there and watch it or rugby if he so desired, sitting on his plank and have been sat there, really … indecipherable … that was a free seat or something. He was sitting on a big expensive paid type of free seat that didn’t give the right results.

Whatever that was all about, I really have no idea. None of it makes sense, especially the bit about Y Fflint qualifying for Europe. But quite honestly, this was one of the strangest dreams that I have ever had, and I’ve had a few of those.

The nurse was early today and he had a few things to say for himself. But he didn’t stay long and I could press on and make my breakfast

Armed with my porridge, toast, purée and coffee, I had another read of MY BOOK. Our hero is certainly letting his polemic run away with him now and is making no effort whatever to hide his contempt of his contemporaries.

He’s also tying himself up in knots with the different strands of the Celtic language.

There are two principal strands, the “P” strand which is Welsh, Cornish, Breton and maybe Galician; and the “Q” strand, which is the Irish, the Manx and the Gael. There are certainly similarities between the two, for example, there are surnames. In Wales, “son of” is “Mab” (mutated to “Map”) and in Scotland it’s Maq (modernised into “Mac”) which is why in Wales a surname might be “Map Hywell” which over time has become “Powell”, or “Map Reece” – now “Preece” whereas in Scotland it’s “MacAdam” or “MacArthur”.

The Welsh name for the British Isles is “Prydain” (from where “Britain” comes) and our hero is trying to tie the name in with the name “Pict” for the Pictish inhabitants of Northern Scotland, with the argument that they were “Q Strand Celts’ who were formerly the settlers of the whole island before the “P Strand Celts” arrived. But what I don’t understand is that if they were the “Q strand Celts”, why do they have a name that begins with a P?

It’s perfectly true that some of the very early Mediterraneans like Pytheas reported their name, but surely he would have found it out by speaking to them and asking them, especially if the name of the islands had been taken from their tribal or generic name and later mutated into Britannia.

Sometimes I find it very difficult and confusing to follow our author’s arguments.

Back in here I carried on with my radio programme editing and by the time that I’d finished I had something that might actually pass muster. And if it works, it really will be impressive.

It wasn’t that I actually finished but that my cleaner came along and surprised me again. She soon had my patches on me and after a little chat she left me to await the taxi.

And wait. And wait.

Eventually there was a ‘phone call. It was my driver. "I’m sorry I’m late, Mr Hall. I’m in Avranches. I’ll be another half-hour".

So where does that leave me with my anaesthetic?

After about 25 minutes another driver turned up. He’d come from St Hilaire du Harcoet to drop someone off at St Pair so they sent him here to pick me up on his return journey. At least that’s the one big advantage of being a client of one of Normandy’s biggest taxi companies. They have drivers everywhere.

We had to pick up our other passenger too, and then we had a really rapid drive down to Avranches.

Horribly late at Avranches, everyone else was already plugged in so I was seen straight away. The first pin went in totally and absolutely painlessly. I didn’t feel a thing. As for the second, that really hurt. However, it wasn’t working so they had to take it out and insert it again.

And if, dear reader, you ever want to know what pain is all about, I recommend that you go to your local Dialysis Clinic and ask them to try that out on you.

So swathed in ice to deaden the arm and the pain, I could relax.

There was football on the internet and with the lightning-fast connection there, I could watch the game in comfort. Y Bala v Caernarfon, with the winner taking a gigantic leap towards the European Qualification playoffs.

This was actually one of the best games that I have ever seen. Y Bala were the much more technical team but the Cofis are one of the fastest teams in Europe and while their style is more “agricultural” they can tear a more static team to shreds.

And this was precisely how the game went. It was one of non-stop action and excitement and the Cofis caught out Y Bala several tims with their lightning pace. And they made two of those attacks count. You can see the highlights of the game HERE

So now, Y Bala must win their final match this half season against Connah’s Quay (which the Quay must do too) on Tuesday night, and hope that Caernarfon lose at home to Y Fflint.

Eventually I was unplugged and, hours later than usual, the taxi was already waiting for me. It was one of my favourite drivers too and we almost always (except last weekend) have a good chat.

We were halfway home, on the by-pass around Sartilly, when her data head pinged. “Pick up Mr … for Granville”.

That’s the guy who is dialysed with me and he must be ready. This is going to be a very long night for the driver so "it’s OK. Let’s do a U-turn at the next roundabout" I suggested. No sense leaving him waiting and making the driver’s day any longer than it has to be.

As a result, it was after my usual tea-time when I arrived back. And as a result, everything is running really late, yet again.

There’s stuff to dictate of course, and then I’ll go to bed. But I’m never going to have this early night that I need so badly.

But this thing about asking other people to tell you what is someone’s name can lead to all kinds of confusion.
Once upon a time I had to write down a woman’s particulars.
When I finished she asked me "do you want my husband’s name too?"
"That’s right" I replied. "I need to have his name. What’s he called?"
"Well" she replied "There are a lot of names that I call him. But if I told you what they were, I bet that you wouldn’t write them down on your form."

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Thursday 2nd January 2025 – I HAVE GONE …

… from one extreme to the other with the story of this blasted alarm.

Having forgotten to switch it off on New Year’s morning and having to do so in a panic, guess who forgot to switch it back on last night … "this morning" – ed … before going to bed?

It was “this morning” too – a good few minutes after midnight when I stopped messing around and went to bed. I’d found plenty to do, as usual, after I’d finished my notes so I loitered around for a while until I was ready to go to bed.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until about 05:20 when I awoke in a panic thinking about the alarm – I’m not sure why. However I realised quite quickly that I hadn’t set the alarm to ring and soon put that right.

It’s interesting though that my subconscious state should awaken me like that. It makes me wonder what else my subconscious is trying to tell me when I have had these other dramatic awakenings. There have been a few of those just recently.

Back in bed, I slept until the alarm went off and then hauled myself off into the bathroom for a god wash, scrub up and shave, although I think that I have had any chance of impressing Emily the Cute Consultant with my charm, intelligence, wit, beauty and, most of all, my modesty.

On the way out of the bathroom I was caught in flagrante delicto by Isabelle the Nurse who had arrived early this morning. We had something of a chat while she sorted out my legs and repaired the damage to them by their not being treated yesterday.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY BOOK

We’re discussing Caesar’s first invasion of Britain in 55BC and the author favours a starting-point of modern-day Boulogne. However, modern research renders this unlikely.

Although he recognises that the coastline on both sides of the Channel has changed dramatically in the last 2,000 years, modern research shows that it has changed even more dramatically than even he imagined. Back in those days there was an inviting inlet that led up to the gates of St Omer which, after having studied the effect of tides and wind, an expert considers that this inlet would have been perfect for an invasion fleet to set sail.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night, such as they were. At some point during the night there was something going on about an ancient warrior but I’ve no idea what it is because the moment that I reached for the dictaphone everything completely evaporated. I lost sight of everything which is a shame

And it is too. It’s something that seems to be happening more and more.

Then I was back at school again. All that I was doing was just walking around the playground. Occasionally someone would come up and chat to me but for the most part I was just walking around. There was nothing to mention or to notice about any of this

It goes without saying that I remember nothing whatever about this. Wandering around the school playground admiring some of the nice girls (and there were some nice girls in our school) must surely have been something well-worth remembering.

When the alarm went off I was busy designing medieval houses, not that they were houses as we would know them but more like huts made out of wattle and daub in which the people lived. Some of them were quite small and very poor but others were quite large and luxurious. I suppose that it all depended upon the success of the person concerned and his agricultural activities at that particular time as to how his house was built. They were certainly not complicated or substantial as we would want to have them today.

At one time a couple of years ago we were having quite a talk on medieval housing. I’d been to the SITE OF AN ABANDONED VILLAGE IN THE PYRENEES where contemporary notes written by a Papal Legate state something along the lines of how a person had lifted up the roof of a house to have a listen to the conversation inside.

This led us to the conclusion that the houses back in those days can’t have been all that substantial – and an animated discussion ensued. But why that should rear its ugly head during the night is another one of these mysteries that seem to surround my dreams

Another mystery that surrounds me, only in real life, is “to where does everything disappear in this blasted apartment?”

There were bills that had to be paid quite quickly and one of them, the most important of all, I’d put in a safe place so that I could lay my hands on it quite easily.

So where is this “safe place”? I’ve looked everywhere that I could think and there is no trace of it at all. The rest of the stuff I could find and that’s all paid, but I’ve no idea where this important one is. Not at all.

In the middle of turning my room upside down and tearing out my hair, my faithful cleaner appeared to apply my anaesthetic patches. It’s that time already. She sorted me out and helped me prepare for my taxi, and then I waited.

The drive down to Avranches was done in total silence. I tried once or twice to engage the driver in conversation but to no avail so I left him to his thoughts, and me to mine.

At the Dialysis Clinic it was another painful three and a half hours. The first pin went in painlessly but the second one made up for that.

But they have given me an appointment for another echograph, presumably of what they have fitted into my arm to find out why it’s so painful. That’s on Monday morning at 11:15 so I need to find out what’s happening about this anaesthetic because if my cleaner does it at 10:30 before the taxi comes, the effects will have worn off a long time before my 13:30 Dialysis session

As well as revising my Welsh, I was reading some notes that I’d downloaded years ago about “Outardes One” – one of the very first hydro-electric power stations harnessing the water that cascades down the Canadian Shield into the St Lawrence down the “forgotten coast” of Québec.

It’s long-since been abandoned but I’d VISITED THE SITE in 2015, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and taken a few photos and written a few notes. It’s my intention to update everything, when and if I can, at some stage in the proceedings so it’s no harm to start right now

Once they had unplugged me I staggered out to the taxi to bring me home, which was already waiting. The driver, one of the usually chatty ones, was also silent today for no particular reason that I could see. Maybe I ought to change my deodorant and underwear more often, I dunno.

But my faithful cleaner was at her post waiting for me when I returned and watched once more as I climbed up the stairs unaided. Only halfway though – they still haven’t fixed these handrails.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry and naan bread followed by the last of the ginger cake. But at least there’s now room in the fridge for the chocolate cake which I’ll start tomorrow.

But not tonight, Josephine. I’m off to bed for a good sleep, I hope. I really need it too. And then tomorrow I can devote more time and effort to finding this missing piece of paper

However, there’s a little story doing the rounds from 2,000 years ago when Caesar walked into a bar in Portus Iltius before setting sail for Britannia, and asked the bartender for "Martinus, please"
"Don’t you mean ‘Martini’?" asked the bartender
Caesar leans over the bar and grabs him by the lapels "If I had wanted more than one, I would have said so!"

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Tuesday 31st December 2024 – BY THE TIME …

… that you lot read this, the old year will have gone out and it’ll be a new year. For many people it will be a new beginning too, but for many others it will be more of the same old routine.

25 years ago today we were eagerly awaiting the Millennium. I’d given an interview on Belgian TV (in Flemish, of course) a few days earlier and on New Year’s Eve I was sitting in a bar in a motel in a small town on an island off the coast of New Jersey.

We were partying, of course. I was wearing a hat to which I had tied a helium balloon. I’d tied the hat to me all the same with just enough string so that the hat, by virtue of the balloon, was floating an inch or so above my head and it looked really cool.

The Continental USA has five time zones and so we celebrated New Year for New York, then for Chicago, then for Denver, then for San Francisco, and finally for Anchorage.

Once we had celebrated New Year in Anchorage, we all trundled off to the all-night petrol station and convenience store down the road where we bought a big tub of ice cream and with a spoon each, we tucked in. Then a couple of us walked down to the beach and waited for the dawn to break and for all of the hope that we wanted it to bring.

But look at me now, 25 years later. Never mind crossing the Atlantic, I’m struggling to cross my bedroom and my best hope for the New Year is that they can somehow resolve the issue of this painful dialysis.

How the Mighty have fallen.

So if I have any advice for anyone in this coming year it is "if you feel like doing something, do it now, right now, before it’s too late. Because you become much more ill and infirm much quicker than you think."

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I stayed up last night, loitering around for my own pleasure reading a few web pages about this and that, although not about “the other” of course. That boat sailed a long time ago.

It was 01:00 when I finally crawled into bed and then I slept the Sleep of the Dead until the alarm awoke me. I hadn’t moved at all during the night.

When I awoke though I was in the middle of an exciting dream but the moment I went to reach for the dictaphone it all evaporated, every last drop of thought and that is really a tragedy. I only hope that it didn’t involve Castor, TOTGA or Zero.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and sorted myself out, and then came back in here to wait for Isabelle the Nurse.

While I was waiting, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it from the night. I was in work again. It was one of the very last days of work before Christmas so we weren’t doing very much. We were sitting around, talking and playing some kind of game that went on round and round the building. after lunch, I was late back. There were already six or seven people in this group. Our boss was there, the big boss of the building. He told us that we may as well continue this game and he’d actually like to play it with us too, so he joined in. Just then, his ‘phone rang so he answered it. It was a woman, asking for permission to be in late tomorrow because her husband worked at Knorr and they were doing something at 09:00. He replied that that wasn’t a problem. Then what he said was that he had a whole host of adverts that he’d cut out of the papers and he was going to ring round and speak to everyone to find out who they were, what they were doing and whether we knew all about them. I had something of a thought myself because my ‘phone number was also in that lot. He made a start and I could see that he was coming closer to my number in this pile. I’d worked out what I was going to say, and that was that this was just simply a way that I could use as an aide-memoire to make sure that I’d filled in all my forms on time and sent them in, and that would be really all.

Whatever was going on in that dream, I can’t think of how it relates to anything that I might know, especially why Knorr should feature in it so prominently. But then nothing in my dreams ever makes sense – just like in real life, I suppose.

Later on, we’d been playing football in a 5-a side football tournament. We were waiting for our final matches to start. My brother told me that his match was in a couple of minutes. I said something like “so is my final match”. We went to our various respective areas of this field. I played my game and when I came back I couldn’t find my brother. I searched and searched but with no luck so in the end I went home. Being back home, first of all I was shouted at for being late and then shouted at for losing my brother but I told the story of the final games and I still don’t think that they believed me but they were becoming completely agitated. Just then we heard the front door downstairs open. We thought “is this him?” I looked out of the door and down the stairs. It was my old black cat. She sat at the bottom of the stairs miaowing for a couple of minutes. I kept on talking to her. In the end she ran up the wall and across into our room. I picked her up, stroked her and took her back into the room where my parents were. They seemed more relieved to see the cat than any news about my brother

This is what I call “unlikely”. There would be no chance whatever of my brother ever playing football. And being shouted at was nothing compared to what would have happened had I lost my brother somewhere.

It was interesting watching my old black cat climb up the wall but she is the only member of my family whom I would be pleased to see. Why the others keep on appearing so often is something that completely defeats me and I wish that they’d move out of my head and make room for some others to appear.

Isabelle was late today. First day back so I imagine that she had all of the blood tests and injections to do. But she was her usual chatty self and she complimented me on being the only person up here to have some kind of Christmas decoration visible to the public.

After she left I made breakfast, and that was when I discovered that I’d run out of bread and had forgotten to make any more yesterday evening. And so I had to have a quick breadmaking session first.

While I was waiting for the dough to rise I had breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are discussing housing, coinage and religion but it is the “religion” bit that is the most interesting, and not for the more obvious reasons either.

It’s long-been a mystery to me why so many Welsh words seem to come from the Latin, even though the words describe some vital item that surely must have existed and had a name prior to the coming of the Romans. Anyway our author tells us, in an aside, that "Celtic religion, in so far as it was descended from the religion of the undivided Aryan stock, was fundamentally one with the religions of Italy and Greece ; and we might expect that it would resemble most closely the religion of the Italians, to whose tongue Celtic was most nearly akin."

There is a variety of early Italian languages, like Etruscan and Umbrian to name but two, that preceded the Latin language. And if the root of these words in common usage was derived from words in one of these early Italian languages that later influenced the Latin language, that would explain everything.

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. The word for a snake in Welsh is neidr which sounds uncannily like “adder” and a river in Welsh is afon, pronounced “Avon”, so you can see that Modern English has been influenced by words from an ancient Celtic language. Why wouldn’t this work with any other languages?

After breakfast I carried on making the bread and by the time that I finished, I had the best loaf that I have ever made and I was really impressed with that. While it was baking I tidied up around the kitchen and regrettably, dropped and broke one of my best glass storage jars

Then I had to check the radio programme that I’ll be sending off later. And this is that mega-complicated one that took me weeks of thought and work to make. But listening to it, it really does work and there’s a pile of good stuff in it.

It features someone who was born in 1892 and probably never ever met a rock musician in his life but he’s an important personage in the story of rock music, and it’s well-worth a listen. So tune in to LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS on Friday or Saturday at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK time, 15:00 Toronto time.

There was an unexpected visit today. The woman who is President of the Residents’ Committee and who helped me so much with the purchase of the apartment downstairs came to see how I was. She stayed for an hour or so too chatting away. And she was another one who admired my Christmas lights, so I had a moan to her about the lack of festive spirit shown by everyone else.

For lunch I tried one of my new flapjack slices and this batch is the best that I have ever made too. Pushing the mixture down tightly into the baking tray with a potato masher is definitely the way to go here.

My cleaner turned up today instead of tomorrow and helped me into the shower. And once more, it really was lovely. Only five months to go until I can move downstairs and have a real shower.

While I was showering she was cleaning so there’s a nice clean apartment and a nice clean me in nice clean clothes. How long all of that will last, I really don’t know.

Football was on next – Penybont v Cardiff Metropolitan, and once again at the vital moment Penybont threw away a two-goal lead. They went from 2-0 to 2-3 against TNS a few weeks ago and tonight, they went from 2-0 to 2-2. They have now been knocked off the top of the table.

A match played in a howling gale was always going to be a lottery but the Met, playing with the wind and a 6’4″ centre-forward in the second half managed the conditions much better and had Penybont under the cosh for most of the last 45 minutes.

If Penybont have any aspirations in challenging TNS at the top, they are going to have to look at the question of concentration much more closely. They can’t let matches slip out of their grasp like this.

Tea tonight was the last of the frozen wellingtons with a big pile of veg and gravy, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. But as for the veg, the roast potatoes and roast Butternut squash went down really well.

There are some leeks left so at the weekend, it may well be leek soup for lunch. There’s some butternut squash soup in the fridge for tomorrow.

So now I’m going to loiter around for a while before going to bed. Isabelle isn’t coming so I can lie in.
"I’ll give you a ring to see how you are tomorrow morning" she said instead
"No you won’t" I replied. "I’ll be in bed"
"I’ll leave it late then" she said. "About 11:30"
"No you won’t. I’ll still be in bed then!"

Anyway, just before I go, latest news from Bridgend in that Penybont FC’s dog walking service has collapsed.
"Why is that?" I asked my informant
"They have lost all of their contracts"
"What happened?"
"Apparently no-one is letting them take their dogs for a walk, seeing as how they are totally incapable of hanging on to a lead."

0

Monday 30th December 2024 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that HIS NIBS and I have been to the town of Lech in the Austria Tyrol ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

It’s a town that has some kind of significance for me. When Nerina and I were on our way to Italy on our honeymoon to see her family, we passed through Lech. We thought that the place looked lovely but being pushed for time – the story of our lives – we didn’t stop. However we vowed one day to return.

Of course, the lack of time and other factors intervened and then circumstances changed. However, I kept my vow and have been back a few times. I often wonder if she ever went back.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to go back today though. Apparently someone took nine hours just recently to dig his car out of the overnight snow that had fallen. All of that snow would have been great if I had been already there and wasn’t planning on going anywhere. It would have been like that time that I was SNOWED IN IN ANDORRA

However, I’m right here at the moment having a good think about what went on today.

Last night was quite easy. After I’d finished my notes and backed up the computer I loitered around for (quite) a while, and it was about 01:00 when I finally crawled off into my stinking pit.

Once I was in there, that was that. I remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off at 08:00 (I’m still in “holiday” mode here). It was quite painless. No-one was more surprised than me that I’d slept like that.

When the alarm went off though, I was in the middle of a dream about elephants dancing in a circus and someone beating a kind of drum with a hand. Someone had offered to teach me how to dance in time to the music too but unfortunately we never came round to that because the alarm went off and that was that.

It’s just as well too. Seeing me dancing would not be a very pleasant sight and I’m glad that we were spared that.

In the bathroom I’d only just begun to wash myself when the nurse put in his appearance. Nothing else for it – he had to wait for me to finish what I was doing and so, like the White Rabbit, he would lose the time he’d saved.

We had the usual banal questions that so irritate me and then he cleared off. It’s his oppo now for the next seven days so things might be looking up.

Breakfast was next, and I read MY BOOK.

A couple of days ago, I talked about the location of specific Neolithic (or otherwise) stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … in Britain and how it looks to me as if succeeding waves of invaders have pushed the previous wave further into the less favourable areas of the British Isles and so on in further waves.

This morning he was discussing these waves of invaders (without mentioning the stone circles etc) and saying "It would be surprising if these conjectures did not attain some measure of truth ; but those who will not accept guesses even from the highest authority without testing them will perceive that they bristle with difficulties"

He seems to think though that new waves of invaders pushed their way through the existing settlers and headed freely and willingly to the less-favourable areas, something that, knowing human nature, I consider most unlikely, and he pours heaps of scorn on a writer who tell us that the latest invaders "were last in the held, were not forced to seek distant abodes, but conquered the best parts of the country which were nearest to the Continent.", a scenario that I consider to be much more likely.

Not two paragraphs further down, he speaks of the Belgae – the final wave that arrived in Britain – and says "The Belgic conquest, which brought Britain into closer connexion with the Continent, gave a powerful impetus to the spread of Late Celtic art.". Now how could they do that if they had pushed through all the others and gone to the more remote parts of the island?

After breakfast, I tidied up. I cut up the cake and the flapjack into individual helpings and put them all in tins and boxes. But I really need to make toom in the fridge. having resolved all of the difficulties about the freezer, it’s the fridge about which I’m worrying these days, wishing that I could make more room in it.

While I was at it, I started to put away the washing up from yesterday, but I need much more time than I had available to do that this morning.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s a good job that she was prompt because my 12:30 taxi turned up this morning at 12:18. There were two passengers already in it – from the Centre de Re-education on their way home to the back of beyond near Rennes, and I was being picked up and dropped off en route

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … whilst I’m not complaining about these new Social Security regulations, I’d love to know what will happen if an infectious disease springs up amongst the clients of a taxi service because of all of this.

Being early to be picked up, I was early to be dropped off too and was actually second to be plugged in, which made a change.

And while I was undergoing treatment I was reading up on the various periods of the Stone Age (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and the change in existence from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural community. As I said yesterday, the site at Hallstatt begins right at the very, very end of the Neolithic period and takes us through the Copper Age, the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age.

What had piqued my interest was the existence of Hearne’s Copper Indians – still living clearly in the Copper Age from a tools point of view but a Palaeolithic Age from the point of view of hunter-gathering.

But this takes us back to another point I raised from a couple of days ago about the survival of Palaeolithic Communities in isolated upland areas of Britain well into Neolithic times. They did it for the same reason that the Copper Indians had one foot in either of their camps – because that represents the best use of the resources that are readily and locally available.

The doctor, the uncommunicative one, came to see me too. He asked me a few more questions about my foot and later on, handed me a big envelope full of papers to hand in at Paris. Maybe he’s asking them to follow up this issue. I’ll have to have a sneaky look.

Almost-first in means almost-first out so once Alexi had unplugged me, I was out of there like a ferret up a trouser leg and a rather uncommunicative driver brought me home.

My cleaner was astonished to see me home so early, just as I was astonished to be here so early, and having climbed up the steps and used the lift, I was back in the warmth of my apartment. It was freezing outside.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta in tomato sauce followed by ginger cake and soya mince. Tomorrow, I’m having my New Year’s Eve dinner so I shall have to work up an appetite.

But before I do, my dream today made me begin to think of the time at school we were discussing the sexual reproduction of worms.
We were looking at works through a microscope, examining their reproductive organs, and it struck us that something was missing
"There is no testicular substance there" we exclaimed
"Worms are devoid of testicular matter" explained the teacher
"What does that mean?" asked little Johnny at the back of class.
"It means" I shouted "that worms don’t have any balls!"
"Please Sir" asked little Johnny "why don’t worms have balls?"
And the teacher sighed. "Because they can’t dance, you fool!"

0

Monday 23rd December 2024 – I HAVE DROPPED …

… my veggies all over the floor in the bathroom (where the freezer is) this evening.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another, isn’t it? I can’t ever seem to have a good day when something unexpected comes along to sink me without trace. I know that you lot think that it’s my own fault and I ought to be more careful, but you try carrying a saucepan of veggies when you have a crutch in each hand staggering along as best you can, with this stabbing pain going off in your heel every couple of minutes.

It’s not been one of my better days today unfortunately.

Yesterday ended rather better though. What with everything that I needed to do, as well as having a little relax after my hard day, I was quite late (after midnight, letting it all hang out in fact) going to bed. But once in bed, I went straight to sleep and didn’t move a muscle until the alarm went off at 07:00.

At that point, there was a group of us, my father and there were many of his children. We were in the living room in Davenport Avenue, admiring his new sofa. It turned out that it wasn’t new at all but he’d actually painted it. He said that the reason why he’d painted it white was because that was the only colour that he had at the time. There was a problem with the record player. He had put on a CD and somehow it wasn’t playing correctly. I went to have a look at it and the metadata was all wrong for this Marillion track. I edited the metadata and the track began to play. I hadn’t really taken any notice of the fact that there was more music being played at the time. He wondered what on earth I’d done to try to start a second track off. I explained that I’d just edited the metadata and it played itself. There was plenty of room in the living room, which there wasn’t when we were kids. He asked me about a book. Someone had given me a book which was interesting or important and he asked me if I’d read it yet. I said “no, but that was the next book on the list for me to read”.

Now that’s what I call a nightmare if ever I were to have one. Me back in the family pile surrounded by various members thereof. And the chances of my father ever listening to or choosing to play a Marillion record would be considerably less than zero. As for the books though, the pile is growing daily and I think that even if I were to live to be 100, I still won’t have read them all. I’ve heard about people haunting a certain place and talking about their “old haunts” but I shall definitely be haunting somewhere where there are loads of books.

So I struggled rather unwillingly to my feet and crawled off into the bathroom to have a good wash ready for the Dialysis Clinic this afternoon, washing my undies for good measure, and also my trousers. I think that yesterday I ended up with more sugar on me than I did on my Christmas Cake.

In the kitchen I took my medicine and then put away all of my cooking from yesterday so that it’s out of reach from groping fingers. The other nurse starts his round tomorrow and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, he’s notorious for grabbing hold of my cooking.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. I was writing an essay on a certain painter for my school homework. The painter was mostly famous for having painted a certain group of religious people so I’d been tracking down these people, extracting little bits of their biography and checking to see whether the painter had included those particular scenes in his works. There were one or two that were represented so I went to write down something about one of the people and one of the works that had been done, but I couldn’t think of how to paraphrase a sentence. I was stuck in this paraphrase thing and it was very important for me to do it so as to avoid plagiarising the works of whoever it was who had written the original book. But it was terrible to be stuck like this and not be able to move forward in expressing myself.

That’s one of my recurring nightmares. With this new plagiarism software that Universities have, accusations of plagiarism are flying around like no tomorrow where people use phrases that just by the merest chance happen to be in some obscure book that no-one has read for 100 years. We had loads of arguments about this, especially when they tried to accuse a student of plagiarism by repeating a paragraph that had been used in another written document – which in fact he had written. There is no time limit on research, and facts unearthed in a previous project are just as valuable for repetition in subsequent research if they are still relevant.

But checking a biography is something that we learned at University. Whenever you are given a document, reading it is only the third thing that you do. Firstly, you check the author’s biography to find out on which side of the fence he is sitting, and then, more importantly, you find out who funded his research. Armed with those details, that’s when you read the document. The days when students would stay on at University as researchers doing a PhD or Masters are pretty much dead. Have you seen how much it costs to be a student doing research for 30 years? Nowadays, most research isn’t done in University labs but in labs owned by commercial interests who have their own business affairs at heart. The Government hasn’t realised that the imposition of University fees has killed off much of the country’s research.

So abandoning yet another good rant for the moment, Isabelle the Nurse put in her appearance and sorted me out. We had quite a chat yet again because she wasn’t in such a rush this morning.

After she left, I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve moved on now to be discussing the end of the Palaeolithic era and the arrival of the Neolithic era.

For someone so opinionated, he’s now stuck by the fact that he can’t work out if the British Isles were separated from the Continent by then or whether they were still connected. He’s identified that some species existing in the British Isles are extinct in the World, others have moved South, but many still remain. If some left, why did others remain while yet more species were being killed off? Why is there a distinct layer of earth between Palaeolithic remains and Neolithic remains? If it was a silt deposit from a great flood, why and how did it kill off some of those species, and how come the others survived?

It looks to me as if he’ll be completely tied up in knots before we go much farther.

The question though of why Palaeolithic tools and ways of life clung on longer in Britain than elsewhere may not necessarily be due to the separation of the British Isles from the Continent and the difficulty of Neolithic Man from arriving. It may well be that, quite simply, if a technology of whatever level is sufficient to provide for the needs of the people, why change? I’m still writing websites in HTML 5.0 and they work well enough. It’s only when something like a greater pressure from an increasing population comes along that new technology is considered.

Back in here I had things to do and once more, my cleaner took me by surprise when she turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches. And once she left I waited for my taxi.

We were three passengers in the car today – one going into Avranches centre and the third going out to somewhere in the back of beyond out towards Rennes. The new Social Security regulations are really biting, and I’m waiting for the first vulnerable person (like me, with no system of immunity) to catch some infectious disease.

Once again, I was last to be connected up and while the first pin that went in was totally, absolutely painless, the second one more than made up for it. But today’s nurse was Océane, and believe it or not, she held my hand while she was doing it. I’m not sure what she’s after, but I don’t have it any more, that’s for sure. Not that I’m complaining. Holding my hand is the best offer that I have had for quite some considerable time.

Obviously though, that stirred some jealousy somewhere because I ended up having a really long chat with – yes, you’ve guessed it – Emilie the Cute Consultant. And while she didn’t sit on the edge of my bed or discuss matters totally unrelated to my health, she exhibited a few of those timid, girlish mannerisms that we used to see when young girls were chatting to us back in the olden days.

She thinks that the trips to Paris are going to finish me off and I ought to think about trying to be transferred to Caen or Rennes. I felt like asking her at which one she works in her spare time, but I thought that that was pushing the boat out just a little too far at the moment.

But if I’m not careful, I’ll have Emilie the Cute Consultant and Océane scratching out each other’s eyes. And Alexia too – she came to look at the photos that I took of the polar bears that we encountered when I was out in the High Arctic.

We had a very long wait tonight for the taxi to bring us back. It was on its way back light from Rennes and the Social Security wanted it to pick us up as it went past. There’s an “acceptable” limit of 45 minutes delay under these new procedures and I wouldn’t like to say close to that it was, or on which side.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she watched as I struggled upstairs. I wasn’t on form tonight but even so, I managed the first flight and made it to the lift. I wish that they’d fix this stair rail so I can climb all the way up to my door.

With no bread, I made some dough and then cooked tea. A stuffed pepper again, and yet more veg rescued from the freezer to replace that lot that ended up in the bin, and followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. I’m not starting on the Christmas food until Christmas Day.

So tomorrow my cleaner is coming, so it will be shower day. I’ll be nice and clean ready for Christmas Day, although I don’t exactly know why.

But before I go to bed, something that I wrote just now reminds me of my friend Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz”), who unfortunately left us all in 2009. We both sat on the same University committees and so we were regularly in each other’s company on our travels around the UK from Newcastle upon Tyne to Edinburgh, Bristol and London, Milton Keynes and places in between.
She had to go in for a serious operation once, and her daughter Kathryn saw her writing out a list of names.
"Are these the people whom you want us to contact, mum" asked Kit "if anything happens?"
"Ohhh good Lord no!" retorted Liz. "If anything happens, this is a list of all the people whom I’m going to come back and haunt!"

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Saturday 21st December 2024 – JUST FOR A …

… change, the two pins that go into my forearm at the Dialysis Centre went in totally painlessly today, and it’s been a long time since that that has happened. I was so relieved when they went in without making me scream “blue murder”.

All we needed now was a dialysis machine that works, but you’re greedy if you have everything, aren’t you? I felt really sorry for Alexia and Naomi who had to keep on running to my machine every five minutes to give it a kick to shut it up. The poor girls must have been exhausted.

One thing that I know however was that I wasn’t quite so exhausted this morning. I was up (but not necessarily about) this morning before the alarm went off yet again

It wasn’t as if I’d gone to bed early either. It was another late-ish night where it took an age for me to find the motivation to haul myself off out of my chair and into my bed just one step away. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.

Once in bed though I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed without moving until I awoke quite suddenly and dramatically. I had a look at the time and it was 06:54. I’ll be moving myself out of bed in six minutes so I may as well rise up now and start the day as I intend to go on.

When the alarm went off I was sitting on the edge of the bed and it was quite an effort to go farther than that this morning but eventually I managed to haul myself into the bathroom.

After a good wash and shave I filled the washing machine with stuff and set it off on its travels. That’s all of the washing done now – until the next time, at least. I don’t know where all these dirty clothes come from

In the kitchen the task for today was to put away all of the paper bags in which LeClerc’s order arrived, put the carrots into the freezer now that they have finished draining, and then put away all of the washing-up that I did yesterday. Once I’d done that I could then take my medicine.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on last night while I was asleep. There was some kind of stately home that had fallen on hard times due to the effects of Inheritance Tax etc. They were all talking on the local market about how very soon it would be the first home in the UK to admit paying visitors in order to recoup some money. They interviewed the former head gardener who was now leasing the vegetable garden there. He was saying that he was in the process of growing 2cwt of lettuce for sending to Manchester and talking about how much of a shame it was about this stately home.

That’s weird, isn’t it? I can’t think of anything that has happened recently that has any connection with any of this at all.

Isabelle the Nurse came around, late again. We had a good chat about Christmas decorations and the like in town. She things that those of us up here in the haute ville ought to make more of an effort to decorate the place. Apart from the lights in the Place Cambernon I’m the only person here with anything like any festive decorations.

My opinion is that in the little square we ought to have a Christmas market with little cabins selling craft articles and there should be a hot wine stall too. Isabelle thinks that I should run for mayor, but I don’t even have the right to vote, never mind stand for election.

After she left I made breakfast and began to read my book. This one is about Britain in the period immediately prior to the Roman invasion. At least, it’s supposed to be but we’re now at page 18, still in the preamble and the author is still taking a light-hearted sideswipe at several authors and archaeologists who preceded him.

That kind of thing is not the stuff of which serious books are made. It’s all very well writing in the vernacular for people who aren’t experts in their field, but at least you should do it with dignity (said he, having just written “that kind of thing is not the stuff of which serious books are made”)

After breakfast I hung out the washing. And there were tons of it too. I’m really working my little washing machine quite hard these days. It could do with a rest, just like me, I suppose.

And then I had things to do, and once more I was caught unawares by my faithful cleaner who came to fit my patches.

We had a laugh and a joke for a few minutes and then she cleared off leaving me to wait for the taxi to come for me.

It was the guy who seems to have an “in” on the administration of the company who came for me today. We went to pick up the other guy who comes with us and we had a chatty drive down to the Dialysis Centre.

Plugging me in was painless but once more it caused me to crash out once the machine began to pump. And then the machine misfired, whined, I awoke, a nurse came running and that’s how it went on

But on the VIRTUAL LIBRARY that I use, I struck gold. Not only have I found all seven volumes of the legendary “War In The Air” – the official account of all air operations concerning the UK in World War I – whether committed or on the receiving end – but I’ve also found the official Military History volumes, and there are dozens of those.

So while I was there I made a start on the downloading, and I’m going to be there for ever downloading them, never mind reading them.

These are the books that have been used as sources for so many other books by other authors when their memories, or the memories of the respondents have failed them. I’ve always said that being on the internet is like living in the biggest library in the World.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and even though she walked several times past my bed, she studiously ignored me. Ahh well! You can’t win a coconut every time … "are you allowed to say that these days?" – ed …

My favourite taxi driver brought me home this evening, and so we had a running commentary all the way back. She’s a real chip off the old block, just like a real taxi driver

My faithful cleaner was at her post, waiting for me, but I was busy looking at my Christmas lights. They do look pretty from down here and I wish that other people would make an effort. I’m not even festive but I still have my lights and my artificial Christmas tree.

Tea tonight was baked potato with one of those breaded quorn fillets and a vegan salad, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert.

So I’ll dictate the radio notes for this programme that I wrote during the week and then go to bed. There’s a lie-in until 08:00 which is just as well because I have a lot to do. And thanks, Rosemary, for the recipe for icing.

But there’s more building work going on at the hospital. I asked one of the nurses what the new building that they were erecting was going to be for.
"It’s the Memory Unit" she said. "It’ll be where people who are suffering from loss of memory will go"
"That’s a waste of money, isn’t it?" I asked.
"Why’s that?" she asked
"You don’t need a building for them" I replied. "Just give them a random appointment and they’ll forget to turn up"

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29th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy this afternoon, and you’ve no idea how.

There has been a delivery from LeClerc and so I’ve been hard at work being quite domestic.

There was a good preparation for it too, because I was actually in bed before 23:00 last night. Not by much, I have to admit, but even a minute is worth noting as it so rarely happens these days.

Once more, once I had fallen asleep I had the Sleep of the Dead and didn’t stir until 07:00.

When the alarm went off it took me a few minutes to gather my senses, which is a big surprise seeing how few there seem to be these days. But once the World had stopped spinning and I’d alighted, I staggered off into the bathroom.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night; if anywhere, because I didn’t remember a thing. However There was a story at some point during the night that a farmer’s daughter – not The Farmer’s Daughter whom we all know and love – had an encounter with a group of extra-terrestrial beings, an unpleasant encounter at that.

Later on there was a story about some man in Crewe who had to go to school as quite a schoolgirl. He had to enquire of his family where the school was. It turned out that it was right down at the far end of Earle Street. he spent a lot of time making himself ready but when it was time to go he looked nothing like a schoolgirl at all. He was like a man. He could see immediately that this was not going to work and so wondered how he could leave off going. He checked with the woman who was going to be his mother in this thing. She replied that she would continue to be here until 12:00 before going to work, so he couldn’t actually extricate himself from it in the morning. In the end he set off with his sister for the purposes of this story but he was really I suppose the daughter of the people with whom he was staying. As they set off they saw one or two other men with beards dressed in school uniform. The girl made some kind of comment that the guy couldn’t appreciate anything of this because he was realising more and more that this wasn’t going to work and how he wished that he could abandon it. Later on there was something about several men having their beards shaved off for reasons that I can’t remember because that part of the dream has unfortunately evaporated but there are definitely men in this who were having their beards shaved off.

It’s a shame that that dream evaporated because it would have been interesting to see where it would have led. It did actually have a connection in real life, if it could be called that, with a group of people who go around dressed up as all kinds of things, furry animals, cartoon characters and the like and go swarming at a certain place at a certain time. Hannah and I ran into them once in Brussels early one morning while they were off to swarm somewhere round by the Heysel Stadium.

The nurse came early today which was nice. He didn’t stay long either which was even nicer. Neither did he have much to say, although he encouraged me to continue with dialysis at any price.

Once he’d left I made breakfast and then carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s still going on … "and on, and on etc." – ed … about taverns, not just about the accommodation but now he’s added the quality of food available (or not, as the case may be) to his list of complaints. "Salted pork, boiled with turnip tops by way of greens, or fried bacon, or fried falted fifh, with warm fallad, drefTed with vinegar and the melted fat which remains in the fryingpan after dreffing the bacon, is the only food to be got at moft of the taverns in this country"

However, as he’s now on his way to Canada, and having encountered all of the difficulties, both natural and man-made, that it would be possible to encounter, he’s fetched up in Albany, the State capital of New York State, where he’s trying to hire a carriage. However, the two carriage hire companies are in collusion and holding him to ransom.

But it’s Independence Day in the USA and while this day "would, it might be expected have called forth more brilliant and more general rejoicings; but the downright phlegmatic people in this neighbourhood, intent upon making money, and enjoying the folid advantages of the revolution, are but little difpofed to wafte their time in what they confider idle demonftrations of joy"

However he saves his most poisonous vitriol for when he’s “entertained” by a prosperous farmer in the Lake Champlain valley and is shown around what he took to be a lush local farmhouse.

How he was disappointed by what he saw. Disappointed and more besides. "That people can live in fuch a manner, who have the necefTaries and conveniencies cf life within their reach, as much as any others in the world, is really moft aftonifhing ! It is, however, to be accounted for, by that defire of making money, which is the predominant feature in the character of the Americans in general, and leads the petty farmer in particular to fuiTer numberlefs inconveniencies, when he can gain by fo doing ……. Money is his idol, and to procure it he gladly foregoes every felf-gratification."

He’s now only a couple of days away from the border with Québec and I’ll be interested to see what comparison he makes between the USA and Québec. I’ve driven around here a few times and the border seemed to be fairly seamless to me.

Back in here I had my order for LeClerc to finish off and set in motion to be delivered this afternoon, and then there was paperwork to tidy up and bills to pay. But at least I could pay them via the internet so I suppose it isn’t as difficult as it otherwise might be.

While I was at it, I tried to contact the hospital in Paris but each time that I tried, I had the answerphone in response and in the end I forgot to carry on.

There was however an incoming ‘phone call. It was the chiropodist. He’s had an unexpected vacancy this afternoon so could he come by here? Well, the sooner it’s done, the sooner it’s over, isn’t it?.

After (a late) lunch I tidied up the kitchen, which was just as well because the LeClerc delivery came early. So now I have tons of food, including a butternut squash that will make a nice change roasted and mashed as a vegetable with some potatoes.

There were carrots of course, but also broccoli and a cauliflower so there was quite a load of washing, dicing, blanching and freezing. It’s a good job that I’ve made plenty of space in my freezer with this defrosting exercise

In fact, there was quite a lot of stuff, either frozen or to be frozen, on my list that needed putting in the freezer so that kept me busy too.

The chiropodist came round and saw to my feet. He thinks that my feet need much more attention than they have had in the past, which was no attention at all. He’ll be back again in a few months time to check on them.

There was bread to make too, seeing as I’ve now run out. I managed to do all of that in between everything else that I had to do.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with some of those vegan nuggets and air-fried chips, followed by chocolate cake and lemon soya dessert. I’m running low on chocolate cake so on Sunday I’ll make a ginger cake now that I have some fresh ginger. Now that I also have plenty of coconut oil, it should be exciting if I use some of that too.

Isaac Weld, our author, passed through New York on his way north up the Hudson Valley, and looking at some of the buildings, it reminded him of a conversation that he’d had in Dublin with an American who had come “home” for a visit.
Weld was showing him around the city and he pointed out on particular building as being the pride of the city because of its architecture.
"But it’s so tiny!" exclaimed the American. "Back home every city has many buildings ten times bigger than that§"
"I’m not surprised" said Weld. "After all, it is the lunatic asylum."

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Monday 25th November 2024 – I AM STILL IN …

… agony after the session at the Dialysis Clinic this afternoon.

Once more, they could only fit one pin into the tube in my arm, once more it hurt like absolute Hades, and once more they had to come running to the machine every five minutes when it let out its little plaintive wail.

So what am I going to do? I don’t know. I have no idea what the alternatives are. The visiting nurse who is on duty as of tomorrow formerly worked in a Dialysis Clinic, but I suspect that I’ll be wasting my time asking him. Every time I ask him a question, he replies with a completely different answer.

But the agony is now going beyond a joke. It can’t really, surely, be as painful as this? No-one else seems to have the slightest problem

By the looks of things, everything seems to be a problem these days. Like going to bed, for example. Last night I couldn’t even be in bed for midnight, there was that much going on that needed doing and finishing.

So when I finally crawled into bed I didn’t have much time to sleep but, believe me, I was out like a light once I was in bed, and there I stayed until the alarm went off.

When I awoke, it was with a mighty crash – one of THOSE awakenings where the whole World seems to stop. Except of course that it was still spinning round and I had to wait, poised, on the side of my bed until it stopped spinning and I could stand up.

In the bathroom I had a wash, a shave and washed my undies. I need to do what I can to keep clean as much as I possibly can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a quiet, shy girl who worked in an office somewhere. She used our vehicles every now and again for hospital runs. Sometimes I’d take her, and I’d quite enjoyed taking her too. I came to quite like her. I was hoping that she might quite like me as well but nothing ever came of it for a while which was quite sad. One day I had to take her to the hospital but for some reason we decided to walk there. She came out of her office, and she told me about some of the things that she’d been doing over the last couple of weeks as we set off. I knew the short-cut through the hills so we walked through the hills. She began to tell me a few more interesting things. We climbed over this steep bit of hill. There were two types like this that we climbed over. We found ourselves in a little valley. As we walked along this small valley we saw a sign that said “exhibition of the factory that made Churchill’s beds. I made some kind of witty remark about that and carried on walking. I put my hand down and found her hand, and began to hold it. She didn’t take her hand away, just left it there for me to hold and we walked off hand-in-hand like that

So i Got The Girl last night, and no-one from my family came along to spike my guns or put le baton dans le roue as they say around here. That’s not something that happens every day, is it? And a guided tour of the factory that made Churchill’s beds? That sounds exciting and is obviously a trip not to be missed. But that range of hills – it’s the one that we’ve walked – and skied – over on many occasions in the past and keeps on reoccurring. I’ve no idea where it is, although you would think that I would know by now.

There was also something else, that I haven’t dictated but that I have a very strong memory of it happening during the night, of going into a newspaper office and placing an advert to sell the van. I can even remember describing it in great detail. I’ve no idea though why there’s nothing like this on the dictaphone. It makes me wonder what else I’ve missed in the past. Nothing involving Castor, TOTGA or Zero, I hope.

The nurse came and told me some more about the demolition of the War Memorial. It seems that following a poll where the town was something like 90% against the mayor’s plan to remove it, the mayor is going to move it anyway. My nurse expressed herself in such extremely unparliamentary language that had someone from the General Medical Council heard her, she would have been struck off.

After she left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK

Our author, Isaac Weld, is remarkably prescient. You have to remember that he is writing in the 1790s, and makes some predictions that are astonishingly accurate.

"at a future day, if the affairs of the United States go on as profperouHy as they have done, it will become the grand emporium of the weft, and rival in magnitude and fplendor the cities of the old world."

And talking of the removal of Congress from Philadelphia to Washington he predicts "a large majority, however, of the people in the United States is defirous that the removal of the feat of government mould take place and there is little doubt but it will take place at the appointed time. The difcontents indeed, which an oppolite meafure would give rife to in the fouth could not but be alarming and if they did not occafion a total feparation of the fouthern from the northern ftates, yet they would certainly materially deftroy that harmony which has hitherto exifted between them."

He also talks about "the prefident’s houfe, which is nearly completed on the outride, is two ftories high, and built of free ftone. The principal room in it is of an oval form", something that will ring a bell with many people today.

He saves most of his vitriol for Washington himself when he visits Washington’s house and the first things that he sees are the "SLAVE" (his capitals, not mine) cabins.

He says, on the subject of Washington’s slaves, "Happy would it have been, if the man who flood forth the champion of a nation contending for its freedom, and whofe declaration to the whole world was, ” That all men were created equal, and that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, amongft the firft of which were life, liberty, and the purfuit of happinefs;” happy would it have been, if this man could have been the firft to wave all interelted views, to liberate his own flaves, and thus convince the people he had fought for, that it was their duty, when they had eftablifhed their own independence, to give freedom to thofe whom they had themfelves held in bondage !"

No more needs to be said.

Back in here I had things to do, such as my Welsh homework, and then I carried on with editing the radio programme notes. However the Welsh homework had taken me much longer than it ought to have done so there wasn’t much time for the radio

My cleaner turned up bang on time and fitted my anaesthetic patches and then helped me tidy up the mess from yesterday. We kept all of the packaging because it will all come in useful in the future

The taxi was early because we had to go to pick up someone else – this sharing of taxis now is proving to be inconvenient but who am I to complain?

And then we had the pantomime of fitting the plug in my arm. And how painful was that? Nothing that they tried to do seemed to make any difference until after about an hour, they finally found a position in which the machine was comfortable. Then they taped the plug and pipes to my arm with so much tape that it was ridiculous

Even before I’d arrived, I’d made up my mind to speak to the doctor about the situation.

There’s a team of four doctors whom I’ve identified so far and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s one of them who gives the impression that he really doesn’t want to be there. So guess who was on duty today.

He is really disinterested in his job and has no interpersonal skills at all. So I told him about the situation and his immediate response was to tell the nurse to bring me a Doliprane – a notion that I immediately shot down.

No, a painkiller is no good for me. I want the situation resolved. In the end he agreed to arrange a scan of my implant to see what the problem might be. “But it won’t be today”.

While we’re on the subject of scans … "well, one of us is" – ed … I asked him what was the plan about the scan that I’d had the other day.

“Nothing” was the answer. “We’ll see how it goes because things like this usually disappear after a couple of weeks or months”.

“Seeing as I’ve been suffering like this for over a year” I said, “I promise you it won’t go away ‘in a couple of weeks’ ”

That rather deflated his ego and he beat a hasty retreat.

They eventually unplugged me, hours later than it ought to have been and the poor taxi driver had to wait quite a while.

Luckily it was one of the friendly ones and we had a good chat all the way back to Granville.

My cleaner was waiting and watched as I climbed all the stairs on my own up to my room

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left over for a curry on Wednesday. Tomorrow I’ll use the last of the refried beans.

But wasn’t it a lovely change to go to the freezer and open the drawers without a fight? I hope that the drawers last without breaking again until I can move downstairs and have a decent fridge-freezer.

But right now I’m off to bed, not before time too. It’s my Welsh class tomorrow and I want to be on top form.

But one of the nurses told me about a footballer who was admitted to the emergency department on Saturday with a dislocated knee.
He screamed “Blue Murder” when the physiotherapist went to put it back in place.
“"Don’t be a baby" urged the nurse. "There’s a woman in Maternity who has just given birth to triplets and she’s made far less noise than that"
"You go and try to put them back in" said the footballer "and see what noise she makes then!"

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Sunday 24th November 2024 – RIGHT NOW I’M IN …

… absolute agony yet again, having been standing on my feet for several hours.

It’s the lack of muscles in my knees that is causing the pain. If I want to stand up without my crutches, such as if I want to use my hands, I have to wedge my legs so that the knee-bones lock in a certain way and after a while it hurts like hell

Still the most important job of the week is done, even if several less-important ones have not so been.

Take the radio notes for example. Last night after I finished writing my notes I had the dictating of the radio notes to do – two lots of them. I was also having a chat on-line with my niece from Canada.

Her middle daughter, my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) was married a year ago and now lives in Michigan in the USA and her youngest daughter, another my great little niece (or is it “little great niece”?) is at “St. F-X” – St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the best University in Canada.

We’re planning a group meeting soon, a video chat on one of the on-line platforms seeing as we haven’t all seen each other for an age.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was invited to the wedding in Michigan last November so I tried a “dummy run” to Belgium last September to see how I would cope with the journey on my crutches with just a backpack, but failed miserably so I didn’t manage to go to the USA.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I finished off the dictation, finished off the chat and crawled into bed much later than I would have liked.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off for a quick wash and brush up. It’s Sunday, I’ve had an hour’s lie in and the nurse will be here soon so I need to hurry.

But back in the bedroom I have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. The wind awoke me at 03:00 (not that I knew anything about it) but at that point I’d been off on an expedition with the native Americans. We’d paddled down the coast as far as we could to Florida and then walked back, describing a few of the tribes that we’d met and a few of their characteristics. Several of them were noted as lazy and several others had different epithets. In the end we said that it’s a far better representation of ourselves amongst the native Americans, we want to build a stronger fort to protect our settlement. He goes on to say that although there’s not a lot of land in each settlement they’ve crammed in many men, sometimes more men than the land is worth and they really need more soldiers going to serve as colonists so that they can have some kind of native element to protect the settlements against the French or the French can protect their own settlements against anyone, even the British who were currently their allies at the moment.

This reminds me of the book that I’m reading right now. Our author travels by water all the way down the St Lawrence River and then comes back on land.

But the conflict between the English and the French, with various native American tribes on different sides (or not as the case may be) went on all along the Hudson River valley and out into Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee for the best part of a hundred years, on and off. It was a fierce, vicious war at times and was well-documented in stories such as Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED MANY OF THE BATTLEFIELD SITES in the Hudson valley in 2013 when we had that slow drive back to Montreal that took several weeks

We made it to Ticonderoga, Fort William Henry and all of the other places that Fenimore Cooper made famous in his “Leatherstocking Tales” of the Seven Years War in North America.

I’m not sure where I was but there was a choice of two cars. We had to choose one of three cars, An Austin Maxi, an Austin Princess HL and a Marina. I remember thinking that that’s the whole total of the British car output of the United Kingdom represented in that lot. We had a really good look round at them but couldn’t see anything or any reason to break any kind of monopoly position with Ford because there were quite a few issues with the British cars, even coming just straight off the production line and we couldn’t really at the time negotiating and repairing all of the bits that they needed to give us a car that we wanted

In the past I’ve had various cars and vans and I have to say that I’ve always returned to having Fords. I’m not sure what I’ll be having next. It’ll have to be whatever is available at the moment that has hand controls fitted.

The nurse turned up and was in chat mode today. She asked for my Carte Vitale – my health card – because she’ll be off on Tuesday and won’t be back until after the start of the next month so she has to make up her accounts.

After she left, I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. And I learned something new today.

Over the years, I have always wondered why the “District of Columbia” where the city of “Washington DC” is situated, is not included in the territory of any of the States. And thanks to Isaac Weld who was there at the time of its creation, now I know.

Congress used to meet in Philadelphia but at the end of the Revolutionary War it was besieged by discontented soldiers whose pay was in arrears. And the Pennsylvania State Government, in sympathy with the soldiers, refused to summon up the State’s forces of law and order quell the riot.

Consequently it was decided that there should be a territory created to house the Congress, where Congress itself could act as the local Government, issue by-laws, control the law enforcement officers and so on, and not be dependent upon any State authority.

In HIS BOOK he talks at great length about why that particular site was chosen. He is certainly very informative, if not garrulous.

Back in here, much later than usual thanks to the late arrival of the nurse, I had football to watch.

For some reason I couldn’t find a video of Stranraer’s game against Spartans. I later found out that the match had been postponed.

As for te Welsh football, there was one game missing – Hwlffordd v Y Bala, and it took an age to find that one.

The radio notes that I’d dictated were quite complicated. So far, I’ve only managed to finish editing one and I’m halfway through the other. I’m a long way from being where I wanted to be, with two radio programmes fully completed.

That’s because after the hot chocolate I set about dealing with the freezer.

It took much longer than you might imagine to unpack the two new drawers. Whoever packed them certainly deserves a medal because they would never be likely to break in that box, with all the padding that was around them.

Then I had to switch off the freezer, unplug it and take out all the drawers. Luckily, I’d put ice packs in there and they, being frozen solid, would help keep the contents cold.

Then I could attack the freezer with the hair dryer that I’d liberated the other week.

That took much longer too. I was surprised at just how much ice there was in there. And what didn’t help was that having put a towel at the front to catch the water that melts, the water actually drains out of the back.

For the time that it took, I was on my feet for several hours and hence the issue with my knees. But it was worth it because the freezer is now totally defrosted, the new drawers are in and filled, and you’d be surprised at how much room there is in there now.

At lunchtime I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and that had been defrosting. When I finished with the freezer I rolled out the dough and later, assembled the pizza.

With no small tomatoes I had to use large ones sliced thinly. Nevertheless it took much longer to bake. However it was delicious all the same. Now I’m going to have a quick tidy-up of the packaging and then go to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow.

But talking about the Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of Hawkeye and Chingachgook on their way to Fort Ticonderoga
After separating for a few days Hawkeye comes across Chingackgook with his ear to the ground.
"What is it, Chingachgook?" asks Hawkeye
"Stagecoach. French stagecoach" says Chingachgook. "Eight horses, two drivers, twelve passengers, five women, seven men. One driver, he have wart on side of face. Other driver, he have patch over left eye. "
"That’s astonishing" said Hawkeye. "You can tell all that by just lying there with your ear to the ground?"
"Oh no" replied Chingachgook. "Me standing here having little pause, and damn stagecoach ran me down"

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