… a somewhat better night than a few of the previous ones.
It was probably helped by the fact that I was in bed by 22:45, which is one of the earliest times (leaving aside the times when I’ve crashed out) that I’ve been in bed for a while. Not that it did me much good, though, because at 01:20, I was wide-awake again.
This time, however, I managed to go back to sleep and apart from the odd bit of tossing and turning, there I stayed, flat out, until the alarm rang at 06:29. At that point, I was enjoying myself in a really nice dream but the sound of the alarm caused the whole lot to evaporate before I could record any of it, which was a shame.
As usual, it took a while for me to raise myself from the Dead, and when I finally found the energy and the motivation, I headed off into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day. I also had to fill the soap dispenser in the shower because I’d run out of soap when I was showering yesterday.
Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and I was surprised at how far I had travelled.
Cooking is something that’s quite high on my agenda, and so is the Neolithic period, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And I’ve also appeared on TV a few times in the past.
Tuppence is my old black cat and she is currently appearing as a star in another project that is taking place elsewhere. This kind of behaviour – sitting on the important papers, sitting on me in the middle of the night – was actually part of her character and I lost count of how many times she did it back in those days.
The second pub reminded me very much of the “Ermine” in Hoole, Chester, but the first pub was definitely not the old Beehive on the other side of the road. They were pubs that I knew well when I lived in Newton Lane and Lightfoot Street in Chester and hung out with a couple of guys from that area.
The first pub, I can’t recognise at all, though. I only saw the interior of it last night and it didn’t resemble any pub that I knew. And believe me – I knew many pubs all over the UK back in those days. The girls in the dream are something else that I can’t recognise. They aren’t the “usual suspects”, yet they must be people whom I know quite well.
There were two families called “Cope” who lived in Vine Tree Avenue. This one is the one lower down the street opposite Edwards Avenue. Although they had a son my age with whom I played occasionally when I was a child, I didn’t really like them all that much, so I can’t think why I’d be taking a tent groundsheet to their house.
The two guys following me are interesting too. I can’t think what they might have been after, but one thing is certain and that is that I didn’t have it. Back in those days, we were constantly broke. The police engaging with them is interesting too. That kind of thing wouldn’t happen today – they would just drive past.
Isabelle the Nurse was late today, and I’ve no idea why. We had a little chat as usual as she sorted me out, and then she carried on to the rest of her round. Mind you, I did hear a story later about how she’d had a blazing row with one of her clients further on along her round. How true it is, I don’t know, but I know that she has a “character” at times. I’ve mentioned it before, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.
He’s still moaning about the Egyptian and Persian architecture and loudly praising the Greeks, and now it’s the turn of the Romans to come under fire. He says that some early Greek buildings "demonstrate, even more clearly than larger structures, the complete freedom of Grecian genius from the degrading fetters with which Italian pedantry would fain enslave it. They are pretty, but odd"
He goes on to say that "simplicity is the grand characteristic of Grecian architecture, and seems peculiar to it. Even in Egypt and India, where everything had stiffened in the mould of caste, we find greater variety than on the free soil of Greece ; the forms are more diversified, and the designs more complicated."
And that’s from someone who has been criticising Persian and Egyptian architecture as being no work of art.
After breakfast, there were things to do back in here, and then there was the radio programme. I finished re-editing, reformatting, pairing and segueing the rest of the music and then I started to write the notes. However, I was interrupted by my faithful cleaner, who caught me in flagrante delicto riding the porcelain horse.
She came by to see if I was ready and had everything that I wanted. I told her that I’d completed all of the forms this morning and that everything was ready.
After she left, I had to wait for the taxi. And once more, I dozed off and was in the middle of a lovely dream when the doorbell rang. At that moment, everything evaporated and I couldn’t remember a thing.
For a taxi that was booked at 13:00 to be present at the scanner in the hospital at 13:20 for the scan at 13:30, it actually turned up at 13:34, meaning that I was thirty minutes late arriving for my scan. That’s not really a surprise because there’s an ambulance strike on today, and many vehicles are off in a protest convoy up the A84, so I suppose that they are short-staffed.
As I was entering the building, I bumped into one of the doctors from dialysis who was just leaving. Unfortunately, it was not Emilie the Cute Consultant, but I suppose that you can’t win a coconut every time.
As I was late, they had passed a few people in front of me, which is normal, so I had to wait around for a while. Eventually, they let me into the scanning room, where I noted that it was one of these big time-tunnel portal-type of machines made by General Electric, for whom, as regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall, I worked for six months in 2005 to cover someone’s maternity leave.
They had to give me a perfusion, and it took the nurses three attempts to find a vein correctly. Then, I passed through the machine a few times. After that, someone said “we’re starting the perfusion”. Almost immediately, I went red-hot from head to toe, and then they passed me through the machine a couple more times. “Breath in, fill your lungs and hold it” – “now breathe normally” etc.
The driver was waiting to bring me back, so I was home in no time, where my cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment. And it’s a good job that she was there because this driver didn’t even help me out of the car. And he almost drove off with my crutches still in the boot.
Once I’d recovered, I came back in here and thrashed my way through the rest of the notes for the radio programme, and they are all now complete and ready for dictating.
For tea, I grabbed some crackers, the cream cheese, the spice cake and a disgusting drink, put it on my trolley and pushed it in here, because there was football on the internet – Connah’s Quay Nomads v FC Ballkani of Kosovo in the European Conference.
Ballkani, the seeded side who have played in the group stages before, played the prettier football, without any doubt, but the Nomads absorbed the pressure and hit the Kosovans on the break on several occasions, causing panic in the defence. However, neither side could break through and the match ended 0-0, which is really a moral victory for the Nomads.
Now that the game is over and I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about sitting with our backs to the wall … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of someone whom I met many, many years ago who had been fighting in the Civil War in Spain.
He told me that he always sat with his back to the wall "because I was assaulted in the rear by a Spanish Falangist in a brothel during the Civil War"
After he left, one of his friends said to me "doesn’t he talk a load of rubbish? He sits with his back to the wall so that he can keep an eye on the door. That way, he can spot his creditors before they spot him!"
