Tag Archives: vegan curry

Thursday 16th April 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

…. since I had a really decent sleep? Just for once, after all this time, I finally managed to have a really profound sleep and it did me the World of good.

Not that it was early, though. Making tea took much longer than I imagined, and even though I enjoyed it, I had other things to do, for which I could make better use of my time.

By the time that I’d finished writing my notes, taking the stats, backing up the computer and all of that, it was just after 22:00 when I climbed into bed. As seems to be the case these days, it took a while to go off to sleep, but once I was gone, boy, was I gone?

There was one moment when I awoke, for what seems to be the obvious reason at the moment, but I was soon back in bed and asleep almost immediately. I’ve no idea what time it was, but the electric water heater was buzzing so it was certainly after midnight when I let it all hang out.

There was another awakening later, for the same reason, and I was debating whether or not to check the time to see if it was worth getting up permanently, but I was barely back in bed, tucked up under the covers, when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE made up my mind for me.

Considering that I’d only just gone back to bed, it took an age for me to leave it again, but after I’d finally managed to sort myself out in the bathroom, including a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went for my medication. In the interests of my weight, I eschewed the usual 200 ml of hot drink and just washed everything down with a small mouthful of orange juice.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, but to my dismay, I had nothing on. It must have been a really deep sleep, I reckon. So instead, I found a few other things to do.

Isabelle the Nurse came in as usual to sort me out. She was chatting away about not very much at all, and after she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’re in the countryside discussing Roman villas, and apart from a few more “Richard of Cirencester” moments, he’s managed to steer pretty well clear of controversy. But while he was being led up the garden path by the aforementioned, we were being led through the sewers of Lincoln by the archaeologist Charles Roach Smith, who had apparently crawled through them in the past and whose notes were being quoted by our author.

Back in here, I had a few more things to do and then in a mad fit of enthusiasm, which came from I know not where, I attacked the radio programme that I’d started at the end of yesterday. And now, all of the music is reformatted, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’ve even written a few notes. I can finish the rest tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner was late today so she didn’t have much time to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was quite early today and caught me in flagrante delicto with a frozen curry that I’d just taken out of the freezer in the bathroom. I just had to dump it on the worktop, hoping that it would melt quietly, rather than find a bowl for it.

The driver had never been here before, so she was parked across in the car park. Eventually she brought the car round to the entry and we could set off. We had another passenger to pick up at the Centre de Reeducation, but rather than a return to Avranches, from where he had come this morning, it was a return home, so we ended up driving around the obscure corners of Granville.

Nevertheless, at dialysis, I was somewhat early but I was still the last to arrive, so I was last to be connected, as usual.

And there were all kinds of problems there today. As far as I was concerned, they couldn’t make one of the auxillary machines work. Consequently, for about an hour and a half, I was surrounded by people trying to fix it, and I couldn’t do any work at all while they were there. And once again, I spilled some coffee onto the laptop. This time though, I was much quicker wiping it off.

Being the last to be connected, and with all of the other problems, I was last, as usual, to be unplugged. The taxi driver had been waiting a good fifteen minutes for me, so at least our departure was rapid enough, but I was still late home.

My cleaner helped me inside, and after she left, I made some rice and heated the curry that had been quietly melting on the worktop all afternoon, without leaking from its plastic bag, I’m pleased to say. It was delicious, as usual, and filling, so I once more eschewed my chocolate cake and home-made ice cream.

By now, though, it was late and I was totally whacked. I could hardly keep my eyes open. And so I just posted another terse note on my blog and went to bed. And that was that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about problems with machines … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of one of the old Andy Capp stories from the 1960s.
They were trying to bring into a building an IBM mainframe computer but it wouldn’t fit through the door. They had a pile of people around it making suggestions, and trying their best to help, but to no avail.
Eventually, Andy Capp shouted across to them "why not plug it in and let it work it out for itself?"

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Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

… last night’s theatrics, I managed to survive into today.

Not without problems, though. I am still having these severe coughing fits, my nose is running and I’m freezing, freezing cold. In fact, although for the past few days I’ve just been running the heating at night, it went back on on Thursday for twenty-four hours per day. And yet I’m still perishing.

So after I’d finished the notes for yesterday, I managed to find the time to dictate a few radio notes, making a horrible mess of them, and I reckoned that that was nature’s way of telling me to go to bed.

But not before I’d switched off the alarms and set one for 07:30. A lie-in will do me a little good, I hope.

However, there was just one problem. The alarm that I’d set didn’t have a sound. Consequently, it was the vibration and the buzzing that awoke me, rather later than it might have been. I was dead to the World at that moment.

As usual, it took a while to haul myself out of bed, and as I was already dressed (yes, I’d gone to bed again fully dressed) I sat at the desk and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And again, it was somewhat disappointing.

I was in dialysis last night. There was some discussion amongst the staff about cases of food poisoning going around. I listened quite carefully because when someone began to mention a couple of the symptoms, I realised that that was actually how I was feeling and how I was suffering. However, the only thing that I have to eat or drink there is the orange juice and coffee so I don’t know where this thing about food poisoning might have come from at dialysis.

That was rather prescient, I suppose, because the idea of food poisoning had gone through my mind at some point during the afternoon on Thursday.

When the alarm went off, there was something going on about weddings. We’d been planning some kind of wedding for something or other and a couple of people had said that this is going to be the kind of wedding that we’ll never forget. But I didn’t manage to go very far down into this dream at all because the alarm went off and awoke me.

What a shame that the alarm awoke me just as this dream was starting up. I would have loved to have known how it would have developed.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my legs and feet. He didn’t have much to say today, especially after I’d told him that I’d gone to bed at 20:00. I suppose that he was pondering on how to deal with the situation in his capacity as a nurse, but he simply dealt with my legs and feet and left.

Once he’d gone, I could deal with breakfast — the first meal that I’d had in twenty-four hours — and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve finally finished the sorry tale of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, like just everywhere else in the Balkans, the citizens handed their country over to the Ottomans on a plate. We’re now turning our attention to Rome, which seems to be where all of the exiled Kings and Princes ended up, living at the mercy of the Pope.

The list of royal personages who found refuge there is impressively long, that’s for sure, and it includes the names of some of the most powerful in the medieval Balkans.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do now that my week’s work is finished. The most important was to pay my property taxes for my place in Canada, and now that’s done. There was also the food order for Leclerc to review and send off. And as you might expect, there were several items unavailable.

However, they did have a butternut squash, so my roasted butternut squash soup for Easter Saturday looks like it might be on.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to back up the files. Now that I have an 8 TB disc drive in the new office computer, I’ve been merging all of the files that were on different hard drives, and they are all now on this large one. I’ve merged in the working files too, and the next plan is to format the two external drives, split the contents of the large back-up drive into two and copy them onto the two external drives, half each, as an extra insurance back-up.

My cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff. I explained that I wasn’t well, so she sensibly left me to it and left at the end of her session.

Not that I had much rest because fifteen minutes after she had gone, Leclerc turned up with the shopping. So I had all of that to put away (and it’s still not all away) and one kg of carrots to dice, blanch and freeze. And to save the water for the base of the butternut squash soup.

Back in here, I drifted off on my travels for a short while and then had a look at some of the notes that I’d dictated just now. Two of them were the notes for joining tracks so I edited them both and assembled the programmes. That’s me now well ahead for self-sufficiency.

Tea tonight was the curry that I was going to eat last night, a korma from out of the freezer, with rice and veg followed by vegan trifle. And I noticed that the agar-agar jelly seems to be breaking up. It’s probably not meant to be kept as long as this, so I shall have to make a smaller one next time. I hope that this one survives a little longer and doesn’t end up completely in the waste bin. That would be a tragedy.

It will also be a tragedy if I don’t get a move on and go to bed while I still can. I need a good night’s sleep and this looks like the best chance of having one.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about weddings … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked "why does the bride always wear white at her wedding?"
"It’s to symbolise purity and chastity" I replied
"Of course it isn’t" retorted someone else. "If you look around, you’ll find that all kitchen appliances come in white these days."

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Wednesday 18th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today? I don’t know where I found all of this energy, but I wish that I could find it more often. A good supply of it would do me some good.

And guess who is going to be a late boy too? Once more, making tea seemed to take forever tonight and it’s set me back quite a long way.

Not like last night, when, although it was after 22:30, my preferred curfew time, it wasn’t far after it … "22:40 in fact" – ed … when I finally crawled into bed, in the hope of having a good, painless sleep to make up for the sleep on which I missed out last night.

Unfortunately, it seemed to take an age for me to go off to sleep, and that’s something quite rare these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Once asleep, though, I stayed asleep until all of … errr … 05:00, and that’s good for neither man nor beast. Round about 05:30, I decided that I ought to take advantage of the early start and go to do some work, but while I was debating the issue with myself, I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

As usual, it took me a good while to summon up the energy and motivation to go into the bathroom, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There were some headlines in some paper somewhere about how the navy and the army had missed a glorious opportunity to catch a German submarine. It seemed that the German submarine, in need of a refit, put into a neutral harbour somewhere and moored itself between two ships that were there so it couldn’t be seen. The refit actually took place on the surface between the two ships, with the submarine between these two ships. And then the submarine was able to sneak out of the harbour again without too many people being aware of what had happened. This was seen as an embarrassment to the US Navy and the US Army.

There were a few stories similar to this during World War II when German submarines would put into ports on small, obscure islands, destroy the island’s radio communication network and then have a rest and a refit before sailing back out again, ready for more action.

If it had been me in charge, though, I would have fitted out a few ships from a friendly neutral fleet, such as the Spanish fleet, and loaded them with torpedoes, fuel, spare parts and fuel and sent them to these obscure islands to repair and refit the submarines so that they could stay out at sea almost indefinitely.

This was another one of these games played by Cymru against some foreign opposition. This time, it was Iran in the Middle East. We were in Deauville talking about this particular game, but unfortunately I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went after that, but I know that there was some kind of discussion about my right foot and leg and my inability to walk correctly these days.

There are a lot of current events in this dream, even the casino at Deauville, which relates to a radio programme that I prepared earlier in the week.

While I was at work, I was reading the file of a trainee stockbroker who had an enormous amount to say on the structure of non-league football, of its faults, and on how it could be improved. As it was a lovely day, I went and took this file outside and stood in the sunlight, in the shade of the trees and read it there. After I’d finished, I thought that I’d go for a little walk to clear my head and digest what I’d read, but I noticed that the time was 06:20 and the alarm would be going off soon, so I turned to head back to the office, which was in a huge, Gothic type of building like the Houses of Parliament. There were several ways to go into my office – a choice of several doors – but one door involved taking a lift so high and then climbing up and walking through the dead space in the false ceiling and climbing out again back down into my office. As I turned to set off back to the office, I found myself carrying a bottle of wine that was half-empty. I thought “what was I doing with this bottle of wine? I don’t drink alcohol”. Just in front of me was one of my colleagues, a one-legged guy who had lost his leg in the war and had an artificial leg fitted. He was walking back to the office, and for some reason, I decided to follow him but to keep a discreet distance and not let him know that I was there. He walked in through the door where it was necessary to take the lift. I’d be intrigued to find out how he managed to climb up into the roofspace, so again, I followed at a discreet distance. When he took one lift, I noticed that he went to floor three instead of floor four, so I took the next lift and came out at floor three. A couple of people loitering around there looked at me and said “oh, another one”. But then I wondered “where do I go next? I couldn’t see my colleague – he’s disappeared”. I didn’t know that there was a way through from floor three into my office. I thought that we still had to go to floor four and climb through the roof. So I was standing there, wondering how on earth he’d managed to disappear from me just like that.

As it happens, I did have, at one place where I worked, a colleague such as I described. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that quite a long time ago, there was a dream when we were clambering through the roof of another building such as this one.

But there is a story that relates to this. Where my office was when I was chauffeuring in Brussels, to go to another part of the office, I had to pass through two security doors. It wasn’t until I’d been there for six months that someone explained to me that if I were to have gone up one floor by the stairs or lift, I could have walked down a corridor and then down another set of stairs at the far end and avoided the security doors completely.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, in a happy, joyful mood as she desperately tried to cheer my up and raise my morale, but without much success.

After she left, I made my breakfast, remembering to put the coffee into the percolator today, which was more than Bane of Britain did yesterday, and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still discussing the island of Lesbos and also the island of Tenedos and the colony of Aenos. And once again, we’re seeing different Christian groups and kingdoms arguing amongst themselves as the Ottomans are massing on their frontiers, and some disaffected and disappointed Christian groups are even calling on the Sultan to help them.

There’s no doubt that all the way through the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, these various Christian groups and kingdoms were writing out their own death warrants.

Back in here, there was plenty to do, but first, there were the highlights of the Cardiff Metropolitan – Llansawel game from the other night. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, we discussed this awful new development of “playing it out from the back”. By pure coincidence, we had a lovely example of that during this game, with the oh-so-predictable result.

After I’d sorted out quite a few other things, I began to work on the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. And by the time that I’d knocked off, I’d not only finished that one (bar a little piece that is holding me up for the moment) but also organised and almost completely sorted out and chosen the music for one of the ones that is due to be written next week. I’m really getting ahead of myself at the moment.

There was an interruption too. My late birthday present to me turned up this afternoon. And so for Friday afternoon and all of the weekend, I’ll be a very busy boy organising all of this. And that will at least give me a return to sanity.

Tea tonight was a vegetable curry with rice, followed by a slice of vegan cheesecake. And it really was delicious yet again. And I managed to eat a fair-sized helping of curry, which is good news after the vicissitudes of the last few months.

But now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my one-legged colleague … "well, one of us has" – ed … he once told me a story about how he went into a barber’s for a shave.
The barber wasn’t, however, very good at shaving, and he nicked him a couple of times.
To try to lighten the situation, the barber began to chat with my coleague.
"I don’t think that I’ve seen you before" he said. "Is this your first time in here?"
"That’s right" replied my colleague. "I lost my leg during the war."

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Wednesday 11th March 2026 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… really nice tea, even though it took me over two hours to prepare it and then to tidy up afterwards. And consequently, I’m running even later than I was last night, and that was late enough.

So much so that, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing and had crawled into bed, it was about 23:20 – so much for any possible idea of having an early night.

And just as the previous night, it was another bad one, and by 05:20, I’d given up all possible hope of going back to sleep. But not to worry – round about 06:00 I raised myself from the Dead and attacked the two lots of radio notes that I’d written last week. They are now dictated and ready for editing, and there’s nothing outstanding in that respect.

However, there are no fewer than six lots of radio notes that need editing, so I am going to have a busy weekend by the looks of things.

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a scrub-up and then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. And the medication is much better in the drawer opposite the microwave rather than scattered all over the place.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something about being back in historical times. There was a young boy who was in bed in this house and having to measure how far away from the nearest plug he was in his bed so that we could put the correct amount of cable on a table lamp. For some reason, instead of calculating it from a plug in his bedroom, we calculated it from a plug in the living room and that seemed to go for metres – maybe there were five, six or seven metres. And if we’d taken it from the plug by the bed, it would have been next-to-nothing in the way of cable. But while we were measuring it, we had a metal ruler that was a metre long and a scribe that we were using to mark everything. Part of this route took us outside, and we were measuring in the snow and ice. We were looking at the ice and thinking of how things were frozen up, thinking that we’d better hurry and take ourselves inside again before we freeze in this weather.

It’s not very likely that they would have had table lamps back in historical times, but it’s certainly possible that there might not have been electrical sockets in every room. I can remember times like that in the dim and distant past. And don’t forget that the farm down in Virlet doesn’t have mains electricity or running water.

It would be interesting to know, though, why our route from one bedroom to another took us outside into the snow and ice.

Did I dictate the dream about being in Germany with my German friend? … "No, you didn’t" – ed … We ended up going around one of the supermarkets in his town looking for things that he needed. I saw some Heinz baked beans on special offer, so I went to look, but they were beans with pork sausages, so that ruled it out for me. So we had a good wander around and we noticed a couple of tins of beans on the shelf which were for sale. He asked me if they would be any good, so I replied that there was only one way to find out, so we put them in the trolley. I went to the check-out and waited for my friend who was still looking. I was chatting to the cashier, and he was saying goodbye and talking politely to everyone who was leaving the shop, but no-one seemed to reply to him. He was very annoyed by this. Eventually, we climbed into our car and drove out of the car park into the main street, but we were in Wandsworth by this time. Seeing as we were here, I asked him to turn to the left, which he did. I pointed out a row of shops, which in the past included an Indian takeaway, which was really nice. Up at the junction ahead, the round swung round to the left and headed down towards Wimbledon. Where the Italian restaurant had been, where I used to work, it had all been demolished and it was modern shopping units, things like these tool supply places and DIY hardware fittings places etc. I couldn’t believe how things had changed since the early 1990s when I was working down there. I was really, really disappointed by this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my desperate search for decent baked beans, and it would be just my luck to find a huge supply, only to be thwarted by something like several pork sausages.

A while ago, I was looking at one of these online 3-D mapping sites, checking the area where I used to live in Wandsworth for that couple of months, and I didn’t recognise any of it. How it’s all changed since those days. It was really difficult to believe just how different the area is now, compared to how it used to be.

The nurse came extremely early today. He had several blood tests to carry out, including one on me! Unfortunately, he doesn’t have “the touch”, and as my veins are very small and fragile, I suffer enormously.

Not only that, I should have been à jeun – that is, without any food. However, I’d forgotten, so heaven alone knows what they are going to think at the laboratory when they find my blood full of home-made lemon, ginger and honey drink.

After he’d sorted out my feet, which was also agony because the pain in my right foot has returned, he left, and I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, having finished the accounts of the downfall of the individual duchies, he’s discussing the situations on the islands. It’s, regrettably, exactly the same as on the mainland, with different groups in conflict with others, internal revolution, external warfare, appeals to various European bodies and even craven submission to the Ottomans in order to seek protection from a different Christian force.

It really is difficult to understand why these people couldn’t see that they were signing their own death warrants.

Back in here, I finished off a few things and then, regrettably, I had a little “doze” in my chair for an hour or so. I can’t say that I was surprised.

Once I’d brought myself back round fully into the Land of the Living, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working yesterday. And by lunchtime, I’d finished everything. So this idea of being “up to date” didn’t last any longer than six hours.

After a disgusting drink break, I had a few things to do.

This fibre-optic cable issue is still rumbling on … "and on, and on" – ed … due to the inability of the estate agent’s manager to understand the problem. And now another inhabitant of the building, not exactly known for his patience, has thrown his hat into the ring following the failure of the installation chez lui. It seems that I am shortly to have a visit from a technician nominated by the estate agent, who intends to check the situation.

And not before time, either.

There was also an order to pass to my online retailer, and as a result, my late birthday present to myself should be arriving in about a week or ten days or so. In fact, a part of it should be here within the next couple of days, as it was “en route” about an hour after I’d ordered it.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

A third thing was to reply to a letter that I’d received from the Auvergne. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a letter that I’d received from someone sending me his sympathies for my illness. I’d written back with an update as to my condition, and he’d replied. He’s going to carry out a little task or two for me, something that should come as quite a pleasant surprise to whoever inherits my possessions.

And finally, I’ve had my tax demand for my property in Canada. Looking at the increases over the last few years, property values close to the border with the Great Satan (and you can’t be much closer to the border with the Great Satan than my property) are rising dramatically since the orange utan took power down there.

Rosemary rang for a little chat. And it was a “little chat” too – it only lasted one hour. She’s been noticing the lack of worms in her garden these last couple of years, and the compost that she spreads on her vegetable plots doesn’t seem to break down as quickly as it should. Consequently, she’s planning on ordering a couple of hundred worms from a place in France so that she can dig them in with the compost.

With the time that was left, I chose the music for the next radio programme. And some of that took a lot of finding too. But it’s all now present, reformatted, remixed and re-edited. I can pair it and segue it tomorrow and maybe even write a couple of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a fresh vegetable curry … "well, frozen vegetable curry actually" – ed … with onion, mushrooms, tomato, lentils, broccoli, cauliflower and sprouts in a thick vegan yoghurt sauce with rice, followed by birthday cake and home-made ice cream. And it really was delicious.

However, I might have to smile sweetly at Alison and ask her to take a little trip into Leuven on my behalf because my stock of spices is running rather low right now.

But that’s a job for the weekend because right now, I’m off to bed, hours later than I would like.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my blood test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told one of my friends from Crewe that I had had a blood test this morning.
And so she asked "did you have to study hard last night, then?"

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Thursday 5th February 2026 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, I was actually feeling hungry this afternoon. So much so that I had a decent meal for tea tonight and still felt as if I could eat some more.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, of course, but I’ll be interested to see if this return of my appetite keeps on going. We’ll probably find out at teatime tomorrow evening when sausage, chips and baked beans with cheese will be on the menu.

There wasn’t a hint of this last night. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but last night’s tea was just a handful of crackers with cheese spread followed by a few biscuits. I wasn’t in the mood at all.

Nevertheless, I was still hours late going to bed. It was round about 23:30 when I finally crawled underneath the covers. And there I lay without moving until about … errr … 02:05. After that, it was a very fitful night, lying awake, dozing off, dropping off to sleep, waking up again. At one point, I was convinced that the alarm had gone off and made ready to leave the bed, but it was only 04:20.

When the alarm finally did go off, I was actually awake, although you wouldn’t have thought so. It was another long, desperate struggle to rise to my feet and head off into the bathroom. A good wash and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the previous day. And now, they are online and raring to go. I didn’t have much time to do those from last night because Isabelle the Nurse appeared. She sorted out my legs and feet and then headed off on her rounds.

Mind you, she did confirm a piece of news that I’d heard at the cardiologist’s yesterday, and that is that my cardiologist will be heading off to pastures new fairly shortly. That will mean that there’s no cardiologist between Caen and Rennes unless someone takes over his office.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE . And at page seventy-nine, we finally reach the end of this meandering, rambling preamble. He’s now starting to examine the different layers in the ditches and the pits on the site to try to identify the times of the different periods of occupation.

Back in here, I finished off transcribing last night’s dictaphone notes.

During a dream last night, my aunt had been murdered by her husband. He’d been taken away and his children practically left on their own. There was some issue about the food that the children were eating. They had been eating practically anything without any organisation and were having all kinds of illnesses because of the diet and not eating the necessary products, minerals, vitamins etc. My eldest sister said something that she couldn’t understand why the kids didn’t eat more healthy food etc. I told her that she’s a girl, she’s done cookery and home economics, things like that, and the chances are that my aunt’s children haven’t done anything like that at all. From there, the discussion turned round to some kind of film where there had been some young girls who had been responsible for providing meals etc. There was a girl starring in this film, but they did a flashback to some time in the past where the girl playing that rôle was her sister. This ended up with the kids cooking some chips, adding a little salt to one portion, and in the next room, they added rather a lot more salt to the portion that they made in there. The funny thing is that I awoke at that moment and thought that the chips were real because I could smell them. I was going to look for them as soon as I awoke and probably eat them.

My aunt (my father’s sister) committed suicide thirty-odd years ago and her husband, from whom she was divorced, died of cancer, leaving the whole tribe of cousins orphaned, some of them still quite young. And it’s true that, coming from a rural agricultural background, they didn’t have the same opportunities that we had. Although I never did see eye-to-eye with my parents and was glad to leave home and never go back, I won’t ever deny that my mother fought for us to have a decent education, and we could all read and write long before we started school.

But those chips – I can still smell them now even though it was in a dream, and they did smell delicious.

We were in Colditz prison and two prisoners had made an attempt to escape, but they had been intercepted. One of them had been captured but the other two had put up a fight and were both injured. Somehow, the one who had been captured managed to break free and he ran. He managed to pick up this other prisoner and they both jumped down, holding on, shot down this chute and disappeared. There was a huge hue and cry about all of this. Several other prisoners took the opportunity to go to ground, that is, hiding within the prison so that the prison officers would think that they’d escaped. From there, they could work on tunnels and things without being missed during roll calls. They managed to barricade themselves into an old assembly hall. From there, they were living and organising things to do that needed doing that the others couldn’t do. It came fairly close to the time for them to escape, but they had been discovered by one of the prison officers. He’d taken two of the prisoners to his commandant who told him to take them to the General overseeing the region, so he took them on the train. The General overseeing the region was extremely unhappy with this prison officer because of the fact that these prisoners had been missing for ages. He prepared a document ordering him to be transferred from the prison service to the Eastern Front, which broke the heart of this officer when he was talking to the prisoners of everything that he’d planned to do. The prisoners quite simply took the order which the General hadn’t stamped – he’d signed it but not stamped – and said that only the prisoners knew about this document now, and there’s no reason why the General should want to know anything further about it. The prisoners would basically keep quiet about the document if the officer would. They went back to the prison, and the officers went to hide in this ice rink again – this hall place again – and the officer went back to his work. Now, the prisoners had a hold over this officer with this document. It became time, almost time to leave. One of the prisoners said that he wasn’t going to bother watering his plants because he wouldn’t be back. I decided that I’d water all mine, so I took the bucket. But one of my friends from Canada was there, and he insisted on having the bucket first to water some of his. After a big argument, I let him take it. Then he brought it back and I had a race against time then to fill the bucket with water, run to my plants and water them, come back and keep on going. The tap wasn’t very fast, but someone showed me a faster one. I was running back and to, watering my plants.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE WENT TO COLDITZ CASTLE back in May 2015 and had a good wander around.

It is actually true that in several prison camps in World War II, some prisoners would “go to ground” within the prison, and for a variety of reasons too. Firstly, the Germans would spend thousands of fruitless man-hours searching the surrounding countryside and that would keep soldiers away from the battle zones.

Secondly, they could spend their time digging tunnels and forging documents without the risk of being interrupted for a snap roll-call or barracks search.

The usual procedure was to look for two prisoners who looked alike. One would “go to ground”, and then they would swap over occasionally to allow the grounded one to have some fresh air and sunlight.

There were also many, many cases of the prison officers and the prisoners collaborating with each other against the Army High Command and the Gestapo.

The part about plants is interesting. It reminds me of the late 1970s when everyone had a house that, inside, looked like a Vietnamese rainforest with all the tropical plants. And where did my Canadian friend come from?

We were in London last night. It wasn’t the London modern but the London of two thousand years ago AD. The Romans had captured the leader of the British Army and he was crying on the British Army to restrain, but they were determined to go ahead to rescue him. They built about four platforms about a mile inland from the river to which they could shoot over the walls. They had their batter away through the stand-up album period but at the end they were still trying to persuade this guy to come down from his turret. In the end they launched a whole barrage of sweet presents at the prisoner and forced him to come down, where he was captured … fell asleep here …

This, of course, is pretty meaningless and it’s no surprise that I fell asleep in the middle of it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating. So when I say that “I fell asleep”, what I mean is that there’s a silence and then you can hear my deep breathing.

The rest of the morning was spent writing the radio notes that I should have done yesterday, and they are now almost finished.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then we had a good chat for a while.

The taxi was early today and the driver was Speedy Gonzales. It was a wild ride down to Champeaux to pick up my fellow passenger and we arrived at the dialysis centre half an hour early.

And this is where it all went wrong.

Today, I was in a room with eight beds, manned … "PERSONned" – ed … by just one trained nurse and two new starters. Consequently, everything went at a snail’s pace. The new starter who eventually dealt with me missed her aim with the second and they had to fetch the electrograph to check and to identify the correct location. So she had to take the needle out and reinsert a fresh one elsewhere in my forearm.

Not that I’m complaining, though. I ended up being surrounded by a bunch of my favourite nurses and one of them couldn’t resist a stroke of my shoulder. If that’s the reward for the new starter missing her aim, she can miss her aim every session and I won’t say a word.

After that, they left me pretty much alone to fill out my shopping list. But the doctor on duty clearly doesn’t love me any more. She came into the room, saw most of the people, but didn’t come to see me. And when she wanted something, she sent a nurse on an errand to ask me instead of coming herself

When they finally unplugged me and threw me out, the taxi driver was waiting. And although he didn’t say a single word to me and the other passenger all the way home, he drove just like the one who had brought me and we were home in no time.

My faithful cleaner helped me indoors through the rainstorm and we continued our chat from lunchtime. In the end, we had quite a laugh as she told me a story that I couldn’t possibly repeat on these pages without causing offence

After she left, I made tea. My friend in Munich told me the other day about a vegetable curry with mashed potatoes that he had made for tea, and so I decided to make one. Sprouts, cauliflower, carrots, peas, broccoli out of the freezer in a home-made curry sauce with soya yoghurt, and plenty of bulghour and quinoa for protein, all with potatoes mashed in vegan butter and soya milk. It was delicious, and I could eat it again.

It was followed by the last of those apricots with mango sorbet, and I could eat that again too.

So having finished my notes, I’ll be off to bed as soon as THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN finishes.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about causing offence … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of someone in Crewe who was in Court charged with causing criminal damage to someone’s garden.
"First offence?" asked the judge.
"Oh no" replied the prosecuting counsel. "First he did a gate and then a greenhouse. A fence was third."

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Thursday 11th December 2025 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… one of those days when absolutely nothing at all newsworthy has happened.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that these days, most days are not really newsworthy at all, but today has been the day to cap it all. In fact, before I began to write my notes, I had to think for over half an hour about how to begin, and after that, I reckon that I had lost interest.

Such is the life that I lead these days.

It all went wrong last night, as it happened. I finished writing my notes at about 22:45 but then, to my dismay, I fell asleep at my desk. It was almost an hour later when I awoke, and by the time that I’d taken the stats, done the backing-up and crawled into bed, it was after midnight, and I was still letting it all hang out.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly and I remember nothing whatever until the alarm went off at 06:29.

This was another morning when I would quite happily have stayed under the covers and gone back to sleep, but in the end, with an enormous amount of willpower, I heaved myself out of the bed and staggered off into the bathroom. I even managed a shave this morning, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

In the kitchen, I made my ginger, honey and hot lemon drink for my medication and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was taxi-driving again last night. I’d changed my Cortina and I had a Peugeot 505 diesel saloon, but that’s really all that I remember about this dream. I can’t remember anything else.

So here I am, taxiing yet again. I wonder if my subconscious is telling me something. Whatever it is, though, I shan’t be doing it again. Once was enough.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, and she reminded me to ask them at the dialysis centre if I am fit enough to have the ‘flu jab.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Today, we haven’t been anywhere interesting. Just wandering up and down the Fosse Way without any real ad hoc investigation down any kind of side alley.

After breakfast, I came in here to carry on with the next radio programme. By the time that I knocked off to prepare for dialysis, I’d chosen all of the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it all. Tomorrow, I’ll start writing the notes and hope that I finish it before the weekend begins.

My cleaner came to sort out my anaesthetic and then, for once, the taxi came early. However, the driver rang the bell and then went back to sit in his car. I had to summon my cleaner to set off after him and bring him back to help me to the car.

For once, we were early at dialysis and I was actually coupled up quickly too. And doesn’t that make a change?

My nurse had asked me to check if I could have the ‘flu jab, so I summoned the doctor to ask him. He confirmed that it would cause no problems.

That was the only interruption that I had. For the rest of the time, I was left alone so I organised my shopping list ready to send off tomorrow morning.

When I was finished, they unplugged me quite quickly too and as the driver was already waiting for me, I ended up being back home fairly early. It was pouring with rain so I was soaked to the skin as my cleaner helped me back to the building.

After she left, I made tea. A leftover curry, of which I left about half. I thought that I was showing signs of regaining my appetite but apparently not. However, I managed to eat all of my fruitcake and chocolate soya dessert.

So now, after a really boring, miserable day, I’m off to bed. I have an appointment at the allergy clinic tomorrow afternoon, which I shan’t enjoy but I have been ordered to attend by the dialysis centre so I have no choice

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about allergies … "well, one of us has" – ed … at the dialysis centre, they asked me about my penicillin allergy .
"Every time that someone gives me penicillin" I said "it’s as if I’m on fire, burning up from the inside."
"Is it an allergy?" they asked.
"No" I replied. "It’s actually a metaphor."

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Thursday 23rd October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that happens is that I wake up correspondingly early next morning.

Mind you, the howling gale that sprung up at about 01:10 probably had something to do with that. I have, quite seriously, never heard winds quite like it.

It will be interesting to find out what wind speed was reached during the night, to see if it was anywhere near the record 209 kph that we had once. At the airfield, a speed of 87 kph was recorded but the airfield is quite secluded. It will be a different matter up here on the headland, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic storms.

While I was at dialysis, my cleaner sent me A VIDEO OF THE STORM. And it’s quite sheltered around that side of the bay.

Throughout the day, it’s gone from bad to worse, and this is one of the reasons – only one – why I’ve had such a lousy day today.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d had no tea. When I’d finished everything else, I dashed through my evening routine and, much to my delight, I was in bed by 21:20 and that made a lovely change.

Not that it would last, though. As I mentioned just now, I was awake at 01:10 as the storm raged. And for the rest of the night, I drifted in and out of sleep.

Round about 05:20, I finally gave it up as a bad job and went to organise myself for the day, including doing the washing-up from yesterday.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a rock concert taking place with three groups in it. One of them was playing from 18:30 – 19:30, the second one from 19:30 onwards and the third was to come on later. At least, that was how I understood the situation to be. Someone asked me for some further information but I wasn’t able to give them any, except the proposed starting times for the first two groups because that was all the information that I had.

This reminds me of one of the rock concerts that I organised in Crewe in 1975 or thereabouts. Two local groups with the third one being a group from Chester in which a friend played. It was good fun, this one, but it wasn’t particularly successful and I didn’t organise many more after that.

We were given half an hour at school to write a story. It had to be a story about a holiday. I began to write a story about a young girl who had gone on holiday to Italy. She’d somehow ended up watching a beauty contest. She was all of the competitors and she saw the crowd cheering them. She was extremely envious and wished that she was up there with them. The situation carried on and eventually, she found herself in the arms of a young Italian boy. Just as she was starting to relax for perhaps her very first kiss, I dunno, there was this huge bellow of her name. She looked round and it was her mother. The boy ran away immediately and the mother gave this girl an enormous dressing-down and ordered her up to her room, so she ran off upstairs crying.

Now, this dream has a great deal of significance for someone whom I know. However, I’m not going to mention any further details in order to protect the anonymity of a certain young lady who will be familiar to regular readers of this rubbish.

A few of us were out there in these really high storms. Some kind of ball was being used for some purpose or other and it happened to fall to the ground in this wind just as one of the most feeble patients from dialysis was walking past. It hit her and she was rushed to hospital. A couple of days later we saw one of the taxi drivers, the guy who seems to be the senior driver. He expressed the opinion that if this ball was going to fall, it was bound to hit her more than anyone else just by simple Sod’s Law. Then he described in graphic detail the operation that had been taking place upon her. I had to leave the room again because I couldn’t stand to listen to it.

The lady concerned these days doesn’t walk to dialysis and hasn’t done for quite a while. But the part about the high winds is certainly apposite.

At some point or other I was out in the brown Cortina estate that I had for a while. I’d met some friends in the centre of Brussels. Before that, I’d been to see a psychiatrist. We had the interview in Brussels and she was asking me all kinds of questions. The answer in almost every case was “no”. She became frustrated and asked me if I was interested in pursuing this. I replied that I was, but she would have to ask me some meaningful questions if she wanted meaningful answers. In the end, I left and went to meet my friends. They told me to park up the car and come to join them. I parked up the car, but they wanted me to park in another car park next to it, which was a paying car park. I went in there, but as I was reversing into a car parking space, my foot slipped off the brake and the car rolled and hit an old Ford Escort. My friends came round to see what had happened. It had made something of a mess of the rear of my car but it was just the bumper that was bent on his. The guy came over and we agreed that I’d pay £20:00 for it, but I had a hell of a job searching through my wallet and all my papers for some money. They were becoming frustrated. In the end, I gave him this £20:00 to shut him up. We went for a walk, and we went past where I had a series of lock-up garages. We saw that two of them were open and were empty. I wondered what had happened to all my stuff and the cars that were in there. The third one had had its door broken but the stuff was still in there. I was wondering now what I was going to do about all of this because I couldn’t leave the door like this. And what about the stuff that had gone missing?

There’s a lot of relevant information in this one too, one way or another, although we can leave the trick cyclist out of the equation.

The nurse was early today, soaking wet and dripping everywhere. He told me that it was vicious out there, and I could well believe it from the noise of the howling wind. The soaking wet clothes just seemed to underline everything.

After he left, I had breakfast, not that I felt much like it, and then came back in here.

First task was to make an important ‘phone call, and that took quite some time. And for the rest of the morning, I was choosing music for another radio programme.

My cleaner blew in – quite literally – and applied my anaesthetic. She told me to summon her when the taxi came because I was going to need all the help that I could find.

She wasn’t wrong either. The howling gale was such that it needed the driver and my cleaner to hold on to me the moment that I stepped outside. It took over fifteen minutes to stagger the twenty metres to where the taxi was parked and there were times that the three of us didn’t really think that we could make it.

It was the most hair-raising fifteen minutes that I had had for quite some considerable time.

With picking up someone else along the way, I was hours late arriving at dialysis and as I was exiting the car, we had a torrential rainstorm and I was drenched.

Despite how I’d been watching my food and drink intake, I was well over the maximum limit and I’ve no idea at all why that should be. I’ve been very, very careful, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

As a result, they set up the machine leaving me with three hundred grams to take out “next time”.

The doctor came to see me, wrote a new medical prescription for me and gave me a prescription for a pedicure. Apparently I’m entitled to one every year.

After that, they left me alone – until the alarm on the machine began to go berserk.

Apparently, my blood had begun to clot so it was developing an airlock. There was nothing else to do but to cut the session short. So now I’m an enormous amount over the limit and the next few sessions are going to be gruelling.

Finishing early, I had to wait around for my driver. Luckily, it was one of my favourite taxi drivers, the one who took me to Rennes on Tuesday. We had a good chat as usual on the way home, talking about taxi operations and the like.

Back here, we managed to manoeuvre the car into the emergency space at the back of the building while my cleaner opened the fire escape. While the wind was even more ferocious at the back, there were only three metres to walk. Even so, it was still quite a struggle.

However, I’ll be in the taxi company’s bad books tomorrow. The wind tore the door out of my hand and slammed it against the front pillar with an almighty crash. I didn’t look to see if there was any damage, but I bet that they will when the car returns to the garage.

Tea was a leftover curry, and once more, I left a pile of food on my plate. I really don’t know from where this extra weight is coming, seeing as I’ve already cut down dramatically on the amount of food that I eat and I’m still throwing tons away.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now I’m off to bed. And I bet I won’t be able to sleep with all of this racket going on outside.

These winds are crazy. Since I moved here in 2017, I’m convinced that we are having more and stronger winds. There’s hardly a week that goes by without a very strong wind, and not a month without a hurricane.

But seeing as we have been talking about psychiatrists … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to see a psychiatrist about a problem that I had, where if anything was lying around, I would pick it up and disappear with it.
"I recognise your problem" he said. "You’re a kleptomaniac."
"Can you cure me?" I asked him.
"I’ll certainly try" he said.
"And if your cure doesn’t work?" I asked.
"In that case, could you pick up a new television for me?"

0

Wednesday 15th October 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little more like it today.

Well, let’s just say that I have managed to go from about 05:30 or so until right now without falling asleep anywhere. That is of course not to say that I’m not tired or that I’ve done a lot of work today, but almost anything is an improvement on how I have been on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

That very long afternoon in bed asleep must have done me the world of good, I reckon, even if I did fall asleep on the porcelain horse once more when I should have been preparing for bed.

It was just after 23:30 when I fell into bed, far later than I would have liked, but I was asleep quite quickly. However, at about 05:30 (or probably a little before because I didn’t look at the time for a while when I awoke) I awoke and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Round about 06:00 I left the bed and was still sitting on the edge thereof, trying to summon up the courage and energy, when the alarm went off at 06:29. It wasn’t exactly one of my quickest starts to the day.

After a good wash, I went for my medication and that was another leisurely “somewhat-more-than-a-moment” too.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see what had gone on during the night. Nerina and I were living apart, although in the same house. After being out one night, she brought her boyfriend home with her. I was in bed, and had two of the cats cuddled up around me. When she came in, she made quite a bit of noise that awoke me, and couldn’t go back to sleep. In the end, she came into my bedroom looking for something. At that moment, I awoke completely and asked her what was going on. She just mumbled a few things and wandered off. At that point, I left the bed and walked into the kitchen, still carrying one of my cats, and went to find a drink; However the fridge was just full of bits and pieces of plastic and paper. I asked her if the rubbish in the fridge was anything to do with her. She said that it was hers but I wasn’t to touch it. I said that I wasn’t even going to take it out, never mind throw it away. I couldn’t find a drink, but in the end I found some kind of strawberry yoghurt that I ate. Then I couldn’t find the cat so I went to the door and shouted for her. It was pouring down with rain, and two of the other cats came in, but she didn’t. Nerina said that she would go outside to look for her. Seeing as it was raining, I thought that that was a good idea. She took two paces outside, abandoned the search and came back in. After another couple of minutes calling the cat and she still didn’t arrive, I closed the door and went back to bed again, relying on the cat flap for her to come in, and then left Nerina and her boyfriend to it.

Nothing at all that would appear in a dream involving Nerina would surprise me. Our life together was quite lively and interesting and, as there are no Statutory Limitations for some of the things that went on, it’s probably not a good idea to discuss them anywhere.

It’s nice, though, to see the cats appear in my dream. I had my old black cat of course, but when Nerina and I began to make a home together, we ended up with a total of four. We were, in fact, quite a big happy family. I wish, of course, that I had a cat here with me now and one day, maybe I will.

There was something at one point though about her stripping all the plasterboard off the wall in the kitchen and talking about a few things that needed replacing. I told her that I wasn’t going to bother about that because I was planning to sell the place and move on, and let the new owner of the house worry about things like that.

This sounds like something that was going on in the Spring of this year and which, even now, isn’t completely finished.

Later on, I was in Stoke-on-Trent, but before that, I’d been talking over the internet with my German friend. He was saying that his water heater had to be switched off at 06:00 exactly. Not knowing exactly how to do it, I told him to call me up on the radio at 06:00 from wherever he is and talk me through it. When he did, there was some confusion but we managed to work out how to do it and we were able to switch it off. From there, I had a load of things to take round to Stoke-on-Trent on a trailer. When I turned up, I was at my brother’s house. We had then to go to somewhere else where the rest of my family was waiting and meet up with them. We reached this place and began to unload the trailer. I ended up being totally dirty, both me and my clothes. I suddenly realised that I had a white shirt on. I’d noticed one of my tee shirts before and I wondered how I’d still had that, but this was the answer. I should have changed into that tee-shirt before I’d unloaded. We both had to have a quick change and a quick wash, and our meeting-up with the family was going to be hours late. As we were ready to leave, there was an album playing a live concert. We had just reached a suitable break so I went to switch off the CD. But it wasn’t a CD playing, for the music carried on. It was an LP. In the end, we decided to leave it playing and we would go. Just outside his place was a Football League ground of one of these small clubs that was at the bottom of the old Fourth Division somewhere. I said “there’s a shortcut around the back”. He didn’t remember it but I told him that I’d reminded him of this when he came to live here. We took this shortcut around the back, and found that the football club had gone. It was now some kind of kiddies’ park with playground and adventure equipment etc. I was completely surprised by this because I’d heard nothing about this football club moving. We began to walk across the park and met a couple of girls who were about 10 or 11. They were eyeing us suspiciously for some reason but I couldn’t understand why because it was not as if we were doing anything that would attract any kind of attention at all.

There’s a feeling going around my head that I know where this football ground is, but I can’t think of it right now. I can actually see it still in my mind – situated on the angle of a couple of streets such as Catherine Street and Frances Street where the old Security Printers used to be before it burned down.

At the back of the park that they had built over where the football ground used to be, there was a run-down semi-derelict grassy park with a lake, and I’ve a feeling that I ought to know where that is too.

However, you can tell that this is a dream. In real life, I wouldn’t be in any kind of rush at all to go for a meal with my family. "Old sins" as they say "cast long shadows."

Isabelle the Nurse turned up at her usual time. I told her the good news that her partner will have to be here before 06:45 next Tuesday to sort me out before I go to Rennes. "I don’t think he’ll come" she said.

Somehow, neither do I.

After breakfast, I came back in here. There were plenty of things to do, of which I managed to do a couple, and then I began to concentrate (as best as I could) on the radio programme.

It wasn’t a rush, just a slow, steady amble and I managed to finish it with plenty of time to spare, which is always nice.

There were the usual interruptions, such as my faithful cleaner coming to do her stuff and trying to persuade me to have a shower, but I’m not that well as yet.

There were also a couple of disgusting drinks breaks, but, as I mentioned earlier, there wasn’t a sleep break, and that can only be good news.

Tea was a frozen curry from the fridge with rice and veg, and it was a struggle to eat it. Once more, I left food on my plate, so obviously I’m not feeling that much better.

But now, I’m going to capitalise on my apparent good fortune so far by going to bed ready for dialysis (I don’t think) tomorrow, and to see what the doctors think about my state of health

But seeing as we have been talking about cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me when we were learning addition at Primary School.
"If I gave you two cats" said my teacher "and the headmaster gave you two cats, how many cats would you have?"
"Five!" I replied.
The teacher was aghast. She thought for a moment and asked "so if I gave you two cakes and the headmaster gave you two cakes, how many cakes would you have?"
"Four!" I replied.
So she asked again "if I gave you two cats and the headmaster gave you two cats, why do you say that you would have five cats?"
"Because we’ve already got one at home, miss."

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Thursday 9th October 2025 – IT WAS HARD …

… today at dialysis.

The weight to be taken out was exactly on the maximum for a period of three and a half hours, so they wound the machine up to full speed.

During the session though, my blood pressure dropped to 7.5 and I was riddled with cramps and pains. I was all set to push on, but they refused to countenance it and wound the machine back somewhat.

That wasn’t at all what I had planned, because it means that for the following session, the one on Saturday afternoon, there will be correspondingly more to take out so that I (hopefully) will be back at my target weight. And it better had all be taken out on Saturday too because with chemotherapy on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, they will be pumping even more fluid into me than I usually take on board.

Yes, it’s been a right tale of woe today

This really sad day started off yesterday evening, to be precise. Once more, being totally unable to concentrate yet again, it was another horribly late night when I finally crawled into bed. It may not have been midnight, but it wasn’t all that far off.

It was another night where I couldn’t go to sleep very quickly. I ended up tossing and turning around in bed for quite some considerable time before I fell into the arms of Morpheus.

Even worse, I was wide awake at 04:20, without (so it seemed) very much prospect of going back to sleep. In fact, I tried very hard without success, but just as I was on the point oof giving it up as a bad job and leaving the bed, the alarm sounded and awoke me.

So whether I’d been dreaming that I was awake, or whether I really had been awake and had gone back to sleep, I really don’t know.

Something else that seems to be quite usual these days is that it took an age to leave the bed to sort myself out. And what with the washing to do and the medication to take, it was really late by the time that I came back in here.

To my surprise, there was something on the dictaphone from the night. Not a lot, it has to be said, but there we are. This was something to do with having some kind of naval base in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. Various ships and submarines would go out on patrol to try to keep the area clear of the enemy but I can’t remember very much at all about this unfortunately.

This is the kind of dream that you have when you spend most of your free time reading about commerce raider, submarines and the like.

The nurse was early again today. As well as the usual procedure, we discussed the question of these foot supports. He’s agreed to help me fit them on Sunday, so that shall be interesting.

Then it was time for breakfast and more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The British army has now all but given up the struggle and I reckon that the next few pages will see the Fall of Yorktown and the end of British resistance – the very end of a sad, sorry campaign of delay, inaction and lack of aggressiveness.

Back in here, I had to ring up to book my taxi for Rennes next week, and then I had things to do. Finally, I carried on with my radio programme.

My cleaner arrived as usual and sorted me out, followed by the taxi, that was on time for once.

Well, the taxi might have called here on time and my arrival at the dialysis centre might also have been on time, but as usual these days, I was the last to be connected up. I’ve no idea why that might be, but it’s becoming far too frequent for my liking.

As I said a little earlier, it was a very painful session and I didn’t enjoy it at all. I couldn’t concentrate on doing any work which was a shame because I have plenty to do these days and it’s not being done.

After all of the confusion, they finally let me out – late as usual – and then I had to await the taxi which had not arrived. And what with having to drop off someone else, I was horribly late returning here, yet again. And here I found a pile of tax bills awaiting me. I told you that it was a bad day today.

After a little while to recover, I made tea – a leftover curry. And once more, I left a pile of food on the plate. I’m really not doing too well these days.

But right now, I’m off to bed. I can’t keep on going any longer. Whatever happened to the days (and nights) when I’d be still awake at 04:00 and 05:00?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about how hard it is … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember talking to an Australian friend of mine about my illness and how fed up I was of the whole situation.
"It seems to be really hard to die" I told him.
"Too right" he replied "but it’s not as hard as it was yester-die"

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Wednesday 1st October 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days where nothing whatever seems to have gone your way? Well, that’s how it seems to have been today.

Actually, it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and one or two (but only one or two) things did seem to go according to plan, but the rest of the time seems to have been spent lurching from one disaster to another.

There’s no point complaining about last night, because finishing my notes early but going to bed late seems to be par for the course these days and nothing that I seem to be able to do will ever change that, by the looks of things.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly but whatever happened after that was the first entry in this catalogue of disasters.

When I awoke, I had a feeling that there was something totally wrong, so I checked the time. Yes, it was actually 07:10 – some forty minutes after the alarm should have gone off. Did I sleep through the 06:29 alarm and its repeater at 06:33? Or did I forget to set it last night (it should set itself automatically)?

When you consider how loud BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE is, first thing in the morning, it can really only be the latter.

So at that point, I leaped to my feet … “well, not exactly” – ed … and staggered off into the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for my medication. That was when Bane of Britain found that he had forgotten to take his Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D on Saturday

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was playing American football last night. We were all lined up on the goal line of our team, and someone threw the ball in from the touchline. It landed almost right at my feet so I fell on it to try to kill the ball. For some reason, the referee didn’t call the ball dead so I had to struggle to my feet, with two or three of the opposing players clinging on, and tried to move it away from near the goal. I managed to make about three or four paces before the weight pulled me down to the floor. I thought that that was really impressive, given everything else happening at the time.

Throwing in from the touchline in Gridiron? Somehow I’m confusing my sports here. It might be possible to do so in Rugby Union, I suppose, but then the ball wouldn’t be called dead in that kind of circumstance anyway.

And then there was something else about being in the kitchen of someone else’s house. They had a large white dog that was always hungry, looking for its food, so they simply turned the door of the cupboard upside-down so that the dog’s food was at the top and the dog couldn’t reach it. After a couple of minutes of sniffing around, the dog suddenly began scratching at the bottom of the cupboard door. It had only worked out where the food was, but it couldn’t manage to open the door. The old man of the house was quite comfortable with this going on, although everyone else wasn’t so much. Then this girl appeared. She walked into the kitchen where everyone was sitting. She said something along the lines that she was feeling hungry, but she had to hurry because she was having to go out. The young boy of the family said “the food’s off tonight”. She wondered what he meant. He told her that her father was fed up of the kitchen not actually making a profit so was rather in the way of putting various restrictions on what went on. The dog was amongst the first people to suffer.

That’s another dream that is totally meaningless as far as I am concerned. Whoever heard of a kitchen making a profit? I wish mine would.

But at least there’s no mention of anything to do with the American Revolutionary War.

Isabelle the nurse breezed in as usual, full of good humour and bonhomie. She dealt with my legs and feet, and then breezed out as rapidly as she had come. I could then push on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Today, we’re discussing the British attack on Philadelphia where, for once, it’s the American dilatory tactics that affect the battle, with the British for once pushing on rapidly.

But Henry Carrington’s writing is sometimes, quite unintentionally amusing because of the stance that he takes. He writes pages about the “looting, pillaging and plundering undertaken by the British Army” but glosses over the “American Army seeking forced contributions from the local inhabitants”

Back in here, I had to prepare my timetable for the Centre de Ré-education and then do one or two other things, but the taxi driver rang me to say that he would be early, so I had to abandon everything in order to make myself ready.

At the Centre de Ré-education, my first appointment was with a physiotherapist who gave me a good in-depth examination in order to work out what programme of exercises would do me most good.

The second one was with with someone from the APA – the organisation that deals with autonomy. She wanted to see what I could do and what I needed in order to continue to live alone in my own property.

My next sessions are organised for Friday, so it’s all going to be really quick.

The taxi was due to come to pick me up at 12:30, but by 13:00 I was still waiting, so I ‘phoned them up. Eventually, the car arrived. The driver had had a breakdown … “he means ‘the car'” – ed … and it had taken a while to fix.

Back here, I could hear the computer in the office making strange noises, but I needed a disgusting drink break and to take my midday medication.

My cleaner appeared shortly afterwards and so I went for a shower. It seemed to be easier to climb into the shower today, which made a pleasant change, and it was beautiful. This shower really works and I’m glad that I had it done.

The washing is building up, due to not being able to use the washing machine until the leak somewhere is fixed, so my cleaner grabbed an armful of clothes to wash in her machine, which was nice.

Back in here, we had the ultimate catastrophe. The computer had ground to a halt and wouldn’t restart. There was just an error message “auto-repair cannot fix this drive”. And that’s bad news because I’d only bought this drive in March this year.

This could, in normal circumstances, be considered a calamity but that’s not so in here.

First of all, I keep the system files on one disk and the data files on a second, so that if one fails, the other one still is accessible.

Secondly, it’s the system disk that has failed, and I still have the previous disk, the one prior to March 2025, that I had put on one side after I’d taken it out. So having found it again (which is a surprise after the house move when I can’t find anything at all), I swapped it back and reinstalled it.

But it’s totally disappointing, and it’s shattered my illusions. The drive that has failed is a 1TB Solid State Drive and because these drives have no moving parts, which, according to their publicity, makes “them faster, quieter, and more durable. This absence of mechanical components means SSDs are less prone to physical wear and mechanical failure”

Well, so much for the publicity

In the middle of all of this, I crashed out yet again with another one of these catatonic attacks followed by actually slipping off to sleep for twenty minutes. I hope that this isn’t going to become a regular feature. I’ll be totally dismayed if it is.

Rosemary rang me later for a little chat. And it was a little chat too – only one hour long today. One of the subjects of discussion was the semi-feral cat that has adopted her and has rapidly transformed itself into a pampered domestic feline. It makes me even more determined to find a cat that will adopt me.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and once more, I left food on my plate. This is all rather worrying because it’s not like me at all and it’s a sure sign that things aren’t as they should be. I’m definitely sickening for something

But I’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I’ve had quite enough of today, thank you very much.

But seeing as we have been talking about my new computer drive … “well, one of us has” – ed … it’s a good job that I can remember my password.
It takes me back to when my brother first had a computer. When setting it up, he needed to create a password so he asked me about it
My reply was “You need at least six characters, plus one capital and also one special character”
So he replied “How about ‘HawkeyeTheLoneRangerThe VirginianMickyMouseBossHoggGandalfParisHermionebecauseIloveher”

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Thursday 11th September 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened at dialysis this afternoon, but there are a couple of things that just aren’t correct.

Take the diabetes reading, for example. My blood sugar level is usually around the critical minimum level of 0.8, but today, according to their machine, it was at an excessive 1.29, and it’s never been that high.

And then there’s the blood pressure. I’m plagued with low blood pressure, usually around 9.0, often down to 8.0 and even sometimes down to 7.0 when they have to call for help. It needs constant monitoring at dialysis so they check it automatically every half-hour and if it’s less than 9.0 an alarm sounds, which it does with monotonous regularity.

However, today the alarm didn’t sound at all and the blood pressure hovered around the 11.0 mark.

So what on earth is going on? It’s not like me at all, any of this.

It might be something to do with the night that I had last night. I was in bed by 23:30 – not early by any means but earlier than some have been just recently – and I slept right through without interruption all the way through to 06:23 – one minute earlier than yesterday.

That was when I awoke. It was not necessarily when I left the bed, but let’s not argue about that. But once I was up and about, I went for a good wash and brush up, and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had some kind of project going to re-equip an old supermarket with new shelving, racking etc. We had a lot of the stuff already so it meant going up to our warehouse and sorting out what we had. The trouble was that there were bits and pieces everywhere and it took a while to sort it all out. There was about half-a-dozen of us doing all this. It involved collecting everything together and making a start, but because of the difficulties of finding the stuff, we’d been working on one particular range of shelving for quite some time, and I thought that the people in the supermarket would be fed up, so we should prioritise having that finished. It meant collecting together all of the stuff that was lying around for that particular range, so I began to collect everything together. I had to find a box in which to put it all so I went into the storeroom in which someone was searching through, to ask if there was a box. However, one of the girls who should have been helping us was there fitting a new speedometer to her motorbike. I thought that this isn’t really helping the situation of pushing on with this job. This goes back to some kind of situation where I’d been shopping, trying to collect everything that we needed but I’d only ended up going round half the supermarket before I ended up somehow at the checkout, so the following day I had to go back and do the other half. That’s where the story of this renovation came in.

There is nothing that I have done recently that ties in with anything in this dream, except maybe to look for a few cardboard boxes, so this is a puzzle.

There was also something about driving my old red Cortina estate around the back roads and dirt tracks near the North Wales coast in the Prestatyn area, and at the end of one dirt track was a big abandoned building with a castellated roof, that I recognised as the headquarters of the old local electricity company so I took a few photos of it. The road stopped abruptly there but in the distance directly across the fields I could see the North Wales Expressway near Rhuddlan and the huge spire of the marble church near Bodelwyddan. Back home I went to show the photos to some of my friends but they all seemed to have failed, showing only a portion of the building in close-up instead of all of it.

Yesterday I was reading up about the Kinmel Bay riots in 1919, the camp at Kinmel Bay being just a short distance from Bodelwyddan. But again, I’ve no idea where the reference to some fictitious building supposed to be the MANWEB (Merseyside And North Wales Electricity Board) head offices (which were actually at Rhostyllen) fits in. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall however much discussion about my red Cortina estate, currently languishing in my warehouse in Montaigut en Combraille with a 2000E saloon and a Traction Avant for company.

The nurse was once again much more like his cheerful self this morning, which is good news. He didn’t stay long, and after he left I could make breakfast and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

In fact, I’ve read all of it now because our author has arrived in Montréal, which is where his story ends. But he finished it with a delightful anecdote. Discussing the “conjugal” arrangements between some of the Native American women and some of the officers of the fur-trading companies, he tells us that "Mr. J was transferred that autumn from the Columbia to the Athabasca department, to replace a Mr. C who was about quitting the country, and leaving behind him a handsome" Métisse "wife. J succeeded him both in bed and board".

Tomorrow, I’ll be starting on a new book, which looks as if it might be Colonel Carrington’s testimony in relation to the Fort Phil Kearny debacle. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the summer 2019 we went into the Powder River country to visit THE SITE OF FORT PHIL KEARNY and the battle site where Lieutenant Fetterman led an absolutely reckless pursuit of a group of Native Americans who led him and his men straight into an ambush where they were wiped out to a man, all eighty-one of them.

We spent a good couple of weeks roaming around Northern Wyoming, North and South Dakota visiting many of the sites of conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, including places like LITTLE BIG HORN and finishing up at SOUTH PASS where the emigrants on the Oregon and California Trail in the 1840s passed from the Atlantic basin to the Pacific basin and where you can still see the wagon ruts today.

Back in here, I carried on with the next radio programme. All of the music has been chosen, edited, paired and segued, and I’ve made a start writing the notes. With a little luck, I might be finished tomorrow.

My cleaner came round to apply my anaesthetic cream, and then I had to wait for the taxi, which was late. Not that I minded because it was the cute young driver who came to pick me up and we had a lovely chat all the way down to the dialysis centre.

Although it was a late arrival, I was attended to straight away so the connection was even earlier than some have been. But despite the lack of interruptions, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and it was rather a waste of an afternoon.

My Belgian friend brought me back home, so we had another good chat and I gave her the number of my plumber, because she needs some bathroom work doing. And although he was more expensive than I was hoping, he did a magnificent job and I’m well-satisfied.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry but it’s given me a wicked indigestion, so I’ll be glad to go to bed tonight and sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about Colonel Carrington’s expedition into Native American territory … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one occasion he went to smoke the pipe of peace with one of the local chiefs.
The chief began to introduce his entourage to Carrington
"My name is Chief Running Buffalo"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"This is my brother, Laughing Spirit"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"This is my mother, Flying Eagle. She came from the Comanche Tribe"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"And this is my squaw, Shining Moon. I bought her for three buffalo skins."
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"Never mind ‘How’" said Colonel Carrington’s aide-de-camp. "Where?"

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Thursday 4th September 2025 – I AM HAVING …

… another bad day today. I’ve pulled a muscle or something in my left shoulder and it’s aching like Hades. I’m having trouble eating, typing, all kinds of things and preventing me from doing all kinds of things.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my painkiller is called “sleep” and I’ll be crawling underneath the covers before long, whether I finish this posting or not, in the hope that it passes during the night.

But not if it’s anything like last night, because I had another really late night, quite a way after midnight. I don’t know where the time goes but I just don’t seem to be able to push on with any sense of urgency.

Anyway, once in bed, it took an age to go off to sleep again, but I ended up being awake at 05:10. Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep – or, at least, I thought that I couldn’t, but the next thing that I knew was the alarm going off at 06:29 so I suppose that I must have done.

It took a while for me to leave the bed yet again and go into the bathroom where I had a really good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, although that’s most unlikely because since my explosive discussion the other week with her boss, she’s keeping a more-than-respectable distance.

Once again, it was a very slow start to the day, what with the medication too. It was 07:50 when I came back in here, although some of that was probably due to putting away the crockery and cutlery from the last few days.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone, but Isabelle the Nurse caught me right in the middle of it all. She breezed into the apartment, sorted out my legs, gave me another dire warning about accepting this offer of “dialysis at home”, and then breezed out even quicker than she came in.

Breakfast was next, and reading some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Today, we are discussing Anglo-Saxon Charters, and how you can tell family trees and orders of importance in Saxon regal families by the order and the way that the signer and the witnesses to the signature are listed on the document.

There were loads of Charters signed in Anglo-Saxon times, some as early as 675AD, and it’s astonishing how many of them have managed to have been retained intact despite all of the upheaval and turmoil that has taken place since they were signed.

We’ve also begun to discuss assemblies, folk-moots and all of that kind of thing during the Anglo-Saxon period, and with men being bound in groups of ten to answer for any of their number who became delinquent. It’s all quite fascinating stuff.

Back in here, I carried on with the dictaphone and eventually managed to finish it. I was back driving taxis again. I had an ordinary saloon car. One of the cars being used as a taxi was some kind of convertible that looked really nice and futuristic but I didn’t have the chance to drive it. Owing to some kind of confusion I ended up not picking up a passenger who was destined to come to me, who went to the car behind which was this sports car. It was a woman with two children, two girls, and I thought “how I would have liked to have taken her for a drive and had a chat” but I was there, stuck in the rank without moving. Later on, I was in the sports car for the very first time but it seemed that everyone, all the public, was ignoring me and I was sitting there waiting. Then someone from our office came over to say that there was a job to be done. He climbed into the car with me and we went to pick up this couple to drop them off somewhere else. I thought that this convertible was really nice, a lovely thing to have in the summer. We dropped everyone off and then we went back to the office. The guy with me told the dispatcher but she said that it wasn’t supposed to have been done until 07:00 tomorrow but we couldn’t understand why it had been confused like this. The guy said that that probably explains why the passengers were feeling rather miserable and wouldn’t talk very much.

As far as a convertible goes, I have yet to meet any Council that will license one as a taxi. Someone once gave me a Cortina MkIII with a full roll-back canvas sunroof but the Council wouldn’t license it so in the end I broke it for spares. As for sitting there being ignored, that seems to be the story of my life.

Later on, I was in Newfoundland again last night, but it was not the Newfoundland that I knew. There was a large fishing port there and someone had the idea of running a car ferry across from there to Europe, so we went for a good look around the port. It was a small port, so we weren’t sure how they were going to fit a large ferry into it. We had a walk around all the same and saw the arrangements, which were very primitive to say the least. There was someone there talking to everyone, a visitor. They offered him a free hot chocolate, saying that this is a thing that they can do while they are in the harbour. I had to go to rewire some switches, but this was extremely complicated because the switches were rusty. I was putting the pins into the switch and then putting the contacts on which, on reflection, I thought was the wrong way round. I should have put the pins into the contacts and then pushed them in. When I decided to change it and do it the other way, I couldn’t get the pins out. I thought that if I couldn’t get the pins out, I’m not going to be able to put the contacts on it. Eventually we were ready to leave so I climbed on board a bus. I’d taken a magazine with me from somewhere, and I’d read it so I put it in the magazine net under my seat. Someone came up to me and asked me if he could borrow it. Later on, when I was walking around the streets outside, I came across the workmen mending the road. I asked them what time they were knocking off and they replied “about 12:00 for lunch”. However, I wanted to know what time they finished. They said that they usually finish at about 17:00 but they didn’t think that they would still be here by then. They would have finished and gone to another site. I asked them at what time they thought they might be finished here this afternoon but the guy couldn’t really give me an idea. He thought in the end that maybe they would spend half the afternoon here and half the afternoon on the other site, which wasn’t really as helpful as I was hoping.

It’s a little-known fact that there is actually A CAR FERRY OF SORTS BETWEEN EUROPE AND THE REST OF THE WORLD and at one stage I was making some serious enquiries about shipping vehicles over to North America. I actually ENCOUNTERED ONE OF THEIR CLIENTS on the Saguenay Ferry on the Forgotten Coast of Québec.

Then there was the issue of the Fleet Data Recorder. Thanks to the little video that I sent the Head Office yesterday, they have worked out that there’s a fault in the equipment so I had all kinds of incident reports to fill in. The upshot is that they will send me some new equipment to replace that which is defective.

For the rest of the morning, I was doing some more sorting out of boxes. Things are starting to look a bit more like home here, but I still can’t find whatever I need. I suppose that this will be a very long process of sorting myself out, but the way that I feel right now, I won’t ever finish it.

My faithful cleaner was late coming to sort out my anaesthetic, which was cutting things fine as the taxi company had sent me a message to say that they would be early. Once more though, my cleaner stayed chatting until it arrived.

The reason that the taxi was early was because there were two other passengers to pick up, and they lived right out in the back of beyond. I really am seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

The taxi was late dropping me off at dialysis but it wasn’t as ridiculous as on Monday. I was seen quickly, connected up, and disconnected quite smartly at the end of the session.

The downsides were that firstly, the internet wasn’t working today, pretty sad when I wanted to use the time to organise my shopping, and with a late start, it was a late finish.

It was during the dialysis that my aches and pains began and by the time that I was back home, I really was in no mood for anything.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, of which about half of it went into the bin. I really wasn’t in the mood for anything. And washing-up was agony too.

So now, I’m off to bed where I intend to sleep for forty years. Crashing out for fifteen minutes at dialysis doesn’t seem to have done me much good at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about cars and suchlike crossing the Atlantic … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of 2010 when, just after the Trans-Labrador Highway, a muddy morass of a dirt-track, opened, I drove all round it IN A CHRYSLER PT CRUISER.
Right near the end, I encountered a very nice woman, whom I met on a few other occasions (but that’s another story) subsequently. She looked at the car and said "did you drive the Trans-Labrador Highway in THAT?"
"Ohh, it’s not the car, it’s the driver that counts" I replied. "And for my next trick, I shall be crossing the Atlantic on a motorbike"

0

Thursday 28th August 2025 – YET ANOTHER MORNING …

… when I slept right the way through until the alarm at 06:29. And once more, I had no end of a struggle to leave the bed prior to the alarm going off.

Last night wasn’t however as late as some have been just recently. I was actually, for once, in bed prior to midnight although it does have to be said that there can’t have been much in it.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and that’s all that I remember of anything until 06:29 when the alarm went off. It’s not very often that I sleep as soundly as that.

It took me an age to make myself ready this morning too. What with having a good wash, scrub up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went into the kitchen for my medication and didn’t come out again until 07:41 precisely. That was what I would call a “slow start”.

Yes, and “Emilie the Cute Consultant” … while I was waiting for my Doppler examination yesterday, with nothing better to do, I found a copy of the “Patients’ Charter” and read it. I do strange things like that every now and again.

Article 11 states that "a person who has been hospitalised has the right to express his observations on his treatment and on his reception." Consequently, if I have received an “over-generous” welcome from a member of staff, I shall say so, whether or not the doctor in charge of the service blows a gasket.

Even more importantly, Article 9 says that "every hospitalised person has the right to have his private life respected." It continues by saying that such a person "has the right to confidentiality respect of his …" communications.

Therefore, if the chef de service doesn’t like what I’m writing, I shall want to know why someone has been disrespecting my private life by hunting me down on the internet and reading my communications.

Frankly, I’m not in the least bothered about who tracks me down on the internet and who reads anything that I have written. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if you have seen something that displeases you, no matter how you found it, there’s a “contact” button on the bottom right.

But if you are reading this and you aren’t supposed to, no matter what the reason, you only have yourself to blame.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At some point during the night, I was at Aberystwyth watching Aberystwyth Town playing in the JD Cymru South League following their relegation from the Premier League. It was a completely new side with all their old favourites missing. It just wasn’t the same kind of team that it was before. Several of their former players who had left in the summer were there but seemed not to become involved or take any kind of side during anything that was going on. That was a disappointment again.

Amongst the players whom I recognised in the stand was Louis Bradford, Aberystwyth’s former centre-half, but also Alec Mudimu, someone who has no connection at all with Aberystwyth. He’s a Zimbabwe international defender who played in the JD Cymru League previously with Cefn Druids and after a spell playing in Eastern Europe, signed for Y Fflint the other day.

The nurse came at the usual time for a change today, and once more, he was full of jovial good humour. I really don’t know from where it’s coming, but I hope that he keeps it up. He’s a much more agreeable person when he’s in this kind of mood.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is still setting the scene but he’s now moved on to talk about hunting. And in the middle of his discourse, he stops to paint a very illuminating but fanciful account of a fictional hunt involving Cunobelinus and his “daughter” Helena, a personage just as fictitious as Montagu Sharpe’s description.

Sharpe talks about the wild "animals turned by the long line of bank and hedge now known as Grimm’s dyke, blindly rushing towards these outstretched leafy arms," of the hunting trap. And then he loses the plot completely as he talks about the "blast from a long bronze carnyx, the sportsmen scatter to their places, and with weapons ready".

Would anyone like to guess what might happen to a herd of wild animals if someone in their vicinity were to blow a note on a solid bronze anything?

Really, this kind of writing has no place in what is supposed to be a genuine and serious historical account.

Back in here, I had a few things to do but time caught up with me quite rapidly and my cleaner arrived to sort out my anaesthetic patches. After she’d finished, we had a very long chat and then she left me to await the taxi to take me to dialysis.

It was late coming this afternoon and the other passenger in the car with me had the air of being extremely unhappy. We were late arriving at Avranches and as you might expect, I was the last to be plugged in.

To make matters worse, having had the session interrupted on Monday, I had so much liquid to lose that I had to stay for four hours. And the internet was down all day too, which really put the tin hat on it.

Océane was looking after me today, which was nice. The first needle, I felt a sensation when she pierced the skin but that was all. As for the second, the one that gives me problems, I didn’t even realise that she’d injected me, so good was the puncture. She can do it again like that and I’ll be happy. And once she had finished, I crashed out for a whole forty-five minutes

The doctor came to see me at one point. They had had the report from the hospital. The implant is definitely faulty and they are discussing whether to repair it or replace it. That was not what I wanted to hear.

During the session, the blood pressure alarm kept sounding as my blood pressure dropped. With twenty minutes to go, it was down to just about eight so at that point, Océane stopped the session. She’s already seen me in a coma once and doesn’t want to see it again.

She raised the bottom of the bed to give my blood pressure the space to recover, and when my pressure was stable at 9.5 she uncoupled me. The doctor gave me a prescription for the nurse to monitor my blood pressure for the next couple of days.

The taxi driver was waiting for me, last out of the building as I was, and she brought me home. My faithful cleaner was awaiting me and what a relief it was to come back into my apartment without those wretched 25 steps.

After a good while to recover, I made tea – a leftover curry. And now I’m off to bed, exhausted once again. I don’t know what’s the matter with me these last few days.

But seeing as we have been talking about hunting … "well, one of us has" – ed … two guys are out hunting in the forests of Maine when they are attacked by a black bear. One of them escapes but the other one is badly mauled.
Eventually, the one who escapes goes back to his friend and sees the bloody mass on the floor.
Taking up his ‘phone, he ‘phones 911."My friend has just been badly mauled by a black bear. I think that he’s dead"
"Really?" asks the dispatcher. "Can you make sure?"
On the other end of the ‘phone, the dispatcher hears a “BANG”
"I’m really sure now" says the surviving hunter. "What do I do next?"

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Wednesday 13th August 2025 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 6th August 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something this afternoon that I haven’t done for several weeks. That is, I have crashed out in my chair.

It might have been only for fifteen minutes but nevertheless, you have no idea how disappointing it is to have done so.

What was worse was that it was one of those moments where I didn’t realise that I’d crashed out until I awoke. I had not the slightest idea that I was on the verge of going. The only reason that I knew that it was for fifteen minutes was because I had just started listening to a concert soundtrack and when I awoke, I was just about fifteen minutes in. Otherwise, it could have been fifteen hours or even fifteen years and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

It wasn’t as if I was tired either. Admittedly, I didn’t go to bed until a little after 23:30 but I slept right the way through until all of 05:50 and these days, that’s a very long time for me.

It could, and should have been much earlier than that but as usual, I was carried away by all kinds of irrelevancies that distracted me from what I was supposed to be doing and I couldn’t press on with the important tasks at hand.

When I eventually found my way to bed, I wasn’t in the least bit tired. I imagined that I would be awake for quite a while but I didn’t hold out for very long at all and I was soon deep in the arms of Morpheus.

Awakening was another one of these sudden jolts upright. It was still dark so I was surprised to see that it was as late as it was. The nights are drawing in quite rapidly already. Gone are the days when it was becoming light at 04:00.

As usual, it took a good few minutes to haul myself out of bed and head into the bathroom for a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. Last night I was with Percy Penguin. I was in Canada preparing to go back to Europe but for some reason it took me an age to pack my things. Percy Penguin was sorry to see me go. My brother was preparing to leave too. We were struggling to have everything done when suddenly the bus put in an appearance so we had to rush. I found myself outside the gates of the garden with my suitcase and had to shout to the bus to tell him to wait for me for two minutes until I caught him up. Then I realised that again that I wasn’t on my crutches and I had my suitcase and my rucksack but by now the gates were closed and I couldn’t go back in, and the bus was there to take me to the airport, I’d forgotten the sandwiches that I had just made and I could see that this was going to be some kind of catastrophe. Then I heard that, with my brother deciding not to come, Percy penguin was trying to find her way out to catch the bus and come along. While this was all going on, we were listening to some kind of radio programme that was being prepared. It sounded totally crazy to me but it turned out to be a broadcast of the Goon Show. They were talking there about someone who had been responsible for a lot of Britain’s landscape and had designed the last foam rubber road and the last patchwork quilt field. I didn’t know what was happening with all of this.

It’s nice to see Percy Penguin back in my dreams. It’s years since I’ve seen her and a good while since she last came to see me during the night. She doesn’t figure in my dreams half as often as she deserves, seeing as she helped me through some very dark times all those years ago. But here we go again with my family and not only that, with Canada, without my crutches and another panic attack too. This dream is obviously telling me something and I wish that I knew just what it was.

Later on, I had a pick-up to do for someone at 20:30. I was quite early so I went to the village hall or whatever it was at 20:00 because I noticed a few people hanging around there. When I went in, a rock group was taking to the stage. I recognised it as being the modern equivalent of Man with John Mckenzie playing guitar. I didn’t recognise the bassist but he said that he had been with the group for twenty years so I assumed that it was Josh Ace, son of Martin. They began to play and it was a really good concert. There weren’t all that many people there but it was enjoyable all the same and I began to regret very much that I had this job to do at 20:30 because I could have stayed there all night.

By the way, I’ve added in the name of John McKenzie because during the night, I couldn’t think of it. He was the bassist with Man for a while but last night, he was playing a six-string guitar with Josh Ace, a guitarist, on bass, a black Rickenbacker 4000-series. At least, I think that it was Josh Ace. He was tall, well, built and with red hair and a beard. I met his parents, Martin and Georgina, when they were in Hanley years and years ago playing with their group, The Flying Aces. I seem to remember that they had Richard Treece, ex Help Yourself, also on guitar but I can’t for the life of me remember who the drummer was.

However, I do remember once in the early 90s driving halfway across Europe to a village hall somewhere because I’d heard that Man were playing there. It was a tiny village hall, just like the one in the dream, but the band was a totally different band of the same name and their music was … errr … disappointing.

Isabelle the nurse breezed into the apartment to sort out my legs and feet. She didn’t stop long, and I could press on with making my breakfast and reading some more of MY BOOK.

We’re reaching the end of the book so our author is summing up his work to date. But one thing that I have noticed is that despite the passage of time, there is very little that has changed.

He tells us, for example, that Londoners "be natural subjects, a part of the commons of this realm, and are by birth for the most part a mixture of all countries", very much like the London of today.

Another subject that is very topical today is what is considered to be the drain of wealth from beyond the M25 into the capital. Stow tells us that back in the last 16th Century there were"men which charge London with the loss and decay of many (or most) of the ancient cities, corporate towns and markets of this realm."

A third thing that he mentions is that one of"the only inconveniences of London" is "the immoderate drinking."

As you can see from the above, in the four centuries since Stow wrote his book, nothing whatever has changed.

However, I did have a smile when I read what he had to say about certain privileges of the Londoners being revoked by the King and only reinstated on payment of a heavy fine. He states various reasons why this should have taken place, such as that the citizens "misbehaved themselves in point of government and justice" but concludes by saying "to speak the plain truth, the princes have taken hold of small matters and coined good sums of money out of them."

But seeing as we have been talking about concluding … "well, one of us has" – ed … the book is now, regrettably, concluded. I found it a fascinating book and really enjoyed reading it too. Tomorrow we’ll be starting on Hilaire Belloc’s THE OLD ROAD – the story of the old Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Thomas a Beckett’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral.

Back in here, I had the important task of going all the way through the list of what I need for the apartment downstairs, such as curtains, internet cables and the like. When my cleaner arrived to do her stuff, we went through it again and I sent it off. The stuff will start arriving on Friday and then we can crack on.

In the meantime, I’ve had some more disappointing news. One of my friends who was down to help me move has had a bad fall and dislocated his shoulder, so he’s had to withdraw. It seems that people are dropping like flies when I try to round them up.

This other plumber turned up this afternoon to inspect that work that needs doing. First of all, he couldn’t do half of the work but after a lengthy discussion, he went away and he’s now found a tiler who will fit the false wall and tile it. So if this plumber who is supposed to start on Monday fails to turn up, we may well have a Plan B.

In between everything else, I was writing the notes for the next radio programme and they are almost complete. And I could have finished them too had I not had that unfortunate doze off. Ahh well!

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry, and how I enjoyed it too. It really was one of the best that I have ever made.

So late again, I am off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. And when I come back, there will only be five more trips after that back up the stairs – assuming that there will still be people alive and kicking to help me move. At the rate that people are dropping out, it’s most unlikely that there will be anyone left.

But seeing as we have been talking about falling asleep … "well, one of us has" – ed … I think that if I were to die, that’s just how I would like to go. Just like this afternoon. All of a sudden, with no warning, no notice, nothing at all. Peacefully and quietly, just like my paternal grandfather.
Not yelling, screaming and panicking like the passengers in his minibus.

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