… day I’ve had today. It’s another one of those days that would qualify for “the worst day ever” and I shudder to think of how I would have been had Emilie the Cute Consultant not insisted that I cancel the chemotherapy for today.

It seems very much as if I have returned to the bad old days of 2016 in my little room in Leuven.

Things were not looking very good last night. Despite having spent much of yesterday afternoon asleep at dialysis, I fell asleep again while riding the porcelain horse and that was embarrassing. I had a very quick trip into the bathroom afterwards and was really relieved when I was finally able to crawl under the covers into my nice, comfortable bed.

And there I lay until all of about 04:00 – after about four and a half hours’ sleep. Not that I was wide awake, though. There was no question of me leaving the bed at that time. At some point, I went back to sleep again but awoke at 06:20, nine minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

That was the key to forcing myself out of bed, even though I had never felt less like it than I did this morning

As might be expected, it was a very slow start to the day. Isabelle the Nurse, spurred on by the suggestion that I would be going for chemotherapy this morning, exerted herself to arrive really early and caught me in mid-transcription of my dictaphone notes.

Naturally, I apologised for making her rush but she didn’t seem to be too worried. She didn’t stay long and I could push on and make breakfast. Not that I felt much like eating anything, but you have to go through the motions. I was in no mood to read my book either.

While I was at breakfast, my faithful cleaner stuck her head in at the door to check that I was still alive. That was nice of her. I’m not so sure that she was reassured, though.

Back in here, I carried on with the dictaphone notes. We’d been giving a discussion about the ten most deadly massacres by the Japanese of Allied prisoners of war. This involved one particular incident where, with a ship, the prisoners were rounded up and marched into the interior in different groups, but one group was stopped on the way and the Japanese injected everyone with what was supposed to be some kind of antibiotic or something, but in fact was a poison and all of the ones of this particular group were killed.

Something that I have been reading recently has bee the story of the Japanese “hell ships” – cargo ships crammed full of prisoners of war in the most unhealthy and disgusting conditions – which they sailed out of war zones towards the mainland. Refusing to notify them to the Red Cross so that immunity to attack could be granted, they were torpedoed by the dozen by American submarines who treated them as ordinary merchantmen.

There was a big group of us hanging around together, and my Afro-Caribbean friend was in there. I’d heard that these people were talking about going swimming, so I went to have a chat with her to find out where, and it turned out that they were going that afternoon, which was a shame because I wouldn’t be able to make it. So we had a chat and she said something like “you know, why don’t you come another time with us?”. I said “why don’t you come with me for a week in California and we’ll go swimming in the Pacific Ocean?”. Her eyes lit up, and so did her mother’s. I wondered if this was something that might actually really happen. Anyway, we all went later on to a rock concert with Mark Knopfler. We were in the wings on stage, watching it. He walked on stage and began to sing but his voice gave out so he had to stop, collect himself, clear his throat and begin again. He was halfway through the first number when one of the radios of one of the security men bled into the PA and said “is he still going on?”. Mark Knopfler obviously stopped dead and really didn’t know how to proceed after that. He thought for a minute and then said to the audience “you may as well go outside and bring in the adverts for this concert. There’s no point in them being outside now while the rain is pouring down” and he just turned round and walked off the stage. When we were assembling after the concert, we looked around and there were one or two people missing. We wondered where they had gone. We decided that we’d go to look in the nearest bars and pubs, and we’d all meet up back here in ten minutes to see if we’d been able to find them. I was in one when someone came in carrying a railwayman’s signal light. I overheard them talking, saying “I got it from the car park at the back of the station. The guy wasn’t very happy and he actually had a gun, but I managed to take the light from him”.

Whoever my “Afro-Caribbean friend” might have been, I’ve really no idea. During my University studies I met Annette from Barbados and Tracy from Nigeria and spent some time with both of them but I’ve not thought too much about either of them for years. That is a shame because I happened to like them both. And in any case, they were both sensible enough to keep me well at arm’s-length.

Strangely enough, I have never seen Mark Knopfler live, although the scenario in this theatre would not have been an unusual one. The rest of the dream means nothing at all to me.

Back with these Japanese prisoners of war again. A Japanese aeroplane flew in with several deceased and dying prisoners on board. I asked a couple of minutes later if the ‘plane was unloaded and was told “no” – they can’t find something that they need. I told them to go on and make a start without it. They came back a few minutes later to say that they still couldn’t find something else now. I told them to drop the passengers out through the bomb bay, and if they can’t find the button to press for the bomb bay, to use the manual winding handles to open up the bomb bay.

Wherever this fits in, I really have no idea either.

Once I’d sorted out all of that, I revised my Welsh again and then went for the lesson.

It was another one that, from an educational point of view, went quite well and I was very pleased, but from every other point of view, it was a shambles. I almost fell asleep three times during the lesson and had to fight to stay awake.

What surprised me though was that one of my classmates has noticed that I have been losing weight. I hadn’t realised that it was so obvious.

In the middle of the lesson, the hospital at Rennes ‘phoned me. Apparently Emilie the Cute Consultant had been unable to contact them so they were wondering where I was. I explained the situation to them and they gave me another date – Tuesday next week, to be at Rennes for … gulp … 08:30 – which means leaving here at something like 06:45. I shall be looking forward to that, I don’t think.

While I was at it, I gave Emilie the Cute Consultant a quick ring to check that I would be OK for that date. She seemed to think so. She also seemed to think that I would be recovered by then.

After the lesson finished, I was no longer able to concentrate. I struggled to accomplish something – anything – without any success at all and by 16:00 I was on the bed, under the covers, fast asleep. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … sleep is my cure for all evils.

When I awoke, I found that not only was I still wearing my jacket, but my slippers too. What kind of state am I in just now?

Tea was the other half of the pizza that I had not eaten on Sunday. It didn’t take long, and so now, I’m going back to bed. Tomorrow is an unexpected day with nothing at all planned, so I really need to find some enthusiasm from somewhere to complete some of these outstanding tasks. I can’t go on like this, otherwise I’m just going to drift away.

But seeing as we have been talking about Isabelle the Nurse … "well, one of us has" – ed … when she came this morning, she told me that I was indeed looking extremely.
"That kind of comment is unacceptable" I replied. "I’m going to want a second opinion"
"OK" she replied. "My second opinion is that you are ugly too."