Tag Archives: vegan pizza

LIVE: Sunday 13th September 2026 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S SHENANIGANS …

Live: Sunday 6th September 2026 – CAFE AU LAIT …

… is nothing like as good as Café Au Lit, Ay? … "and I bet that that went clean over the heads of most of your readers" – ed …

So when I was awoken by my friend bringing in a mug of coffee to my bedside table, I made no complaint at all, even if I had been fast asleep up to that point.

And “fast asleep” was quite right too. I’d collapsed into bed at about 20:30 and was probably asleep before my head touched the pillow. I was only going for a crash-out of about an hour then I’d wake up and carry on with the notes. That was the plan, anyway.

However, when I awoke and checked the time, it was 03:48 – much later than I had intended. Nevertheless, by 04:00 I was attacking my notes.

They were finished and on line round about 05:10, and I went back to bed. This time, though, I changed from my day clothes into my night clothes for the sake of decorum. And once more, I was asleep before my head touched the pillow.

When my friend brought in the coffee, it was about 08:15, and I hadn’t had three mouthfuls out of the mug before my nurse came to deal with me. And the Hound of the Baskervilles too, as well as his German lessons.

After he left, I finished my coffee and eventually made it into the kitchen, having dressed myself first. My friend was just about to be dragged out on walkies duty by the Hound of the Baskervilles, so I made another supply of croissants.

Once the croissants were in the oven, I set about making my porridge and also the juice for my morning medication. And everything was ready at the same time so I grabbed two warm croissants and put them on a plate to have after my porridge.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged my friend back, we chatted for a while … "with the friend, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed … and then I came in here to check the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it.

There was something about my middle sister last night. She was going to go to school in Paris. She was not really the sharpest knife in the box so we were wondering how she was going to cope. My mother seemed to think that she would cope OK with very few problems at all, but I said that I could imagine her getting herself lost on the Paris underground without any problems whatsoever. I didn’t think that anything augured particularly well in this plan to send her there.

This is one of those dreams that’s so unexpected. I’ve no idea why a dream like this would be going around my head. It’s extremely unlikely that she would have gone to Paris because she was not very good on her own in strange places. Not to mention the fact that our family would never ever have had the money to send her there.

But it’s interesting nevertheless that she appears in my dreams because she is the least likely member of my family to do so.

After that, there were two football matches to see.

They were both in Scotland – the first was Forfar Athletic v Stranraer. The Loons have always been Stranraer’s Nemesis but today, the tables were well-and-truly turned as Stranraer deservedly shellacked the Loons 0-3.

The next game wasn’t so interesting. Greenock Morton and Queen’s Park are struggling at the foot of the table so these three points were vital to both clubs.

Morton have recently signed about six loan stars, so I was looking for a vast improvement, but it wasn’t to be. From what I saw, it was a team that hadn’t knitted together yet, and a 2-1 defeat was about right.

There were several other things to do too, and then I made a start on fine-tuning the captcha. And I won’t tell you the saga about that because you’ll be pulling out your hair just as I would be if I had any hair left to pull.

Round about 13:30 we decided to take advantage of the lovely weather by going for a drive and buying a bag of chips at our favourite chippy in Avranches. So all three of us, my friend, the Hound of the Baskervilles and me, piled into the car like three superheroes and set off.

We went via a couple of garages in the area that were selling motorhomes to see what was on offer, but there was nothing that would fit in my friend’s garage so we didn’t pursue our enquiries. From there we went into the centre of Avranches but to our dismay, the chippy was closed.

Instead, we went to the car park by the cathedral. There’s a big public park there that is another one of the favourite places to visit of the Hound of the Baskervilles so he dragged his master off for another walkies. However, he spent most of his time being fascinated by the fish in the fishpond.

We came back a different way today – via La Haye Pesnel and Folligny, where we went to look at the old railway station and marshalling yard there. The yard was important because it was there that loads coming from the docks at Cherbourg would be trans-shipped to a train going to Granville and was heavily bombed by Stukas on 17th June 1940.

When the Germans arrived, they put it back into commission, and it was bombed by the allies in 1944 during the D-Day landings.

Back at home, rather much later than intended and not having had our chips in Avranches, I made a pizza. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve made one of those so, do you know, I’d forgotten how long the cooking time was? Consequently, we had a “rather crisp” base that, rather than a knife, you needed an axe to cut your way through it, and it spoiled somewhat the lovely taste of the topping.

The pudding afterwards was another one of these new soya yoghurts, and they tasted just as good as the previous ones.

There were still plenty of things to do so I came in here to do them, but as usual, there was an enormous wave of fatigue that swept over me when I was only halfway through my notes, so I posted online what I’d already written, took my nighttime medication and crawled into bed. I can always finish my notes off tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizza disasters … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met a friend who told me that he had burned his pizza while it was in the oven.
"What type of pizza was it?" I asked.
"It was a Hawaiian pizza" he replied
"So next time, put it on aloha temperature."

Thursday 18th June 2026 – YET ANOTHER DAY …

… that hasn’t gone anything like I wanted it to. But that’s not really a surprise because I don’t think that I’ve had a day just recently that has gone according to plan and it’s high time that I pulled myself together and made things work for me.

Fair enough, I finished my work at some kind of reasonable time (although after 22:30) and was soon in bed. I was asleep quite quickly too, but not for long.

Round about 02:00 I awoke with an enormous fit of coughing of the like that I hadn’t seen before, not even during the bad old days of a month or two ago. It went on for an hour with no respite at all, and then after that, it was “cough – sleep – cough – sleep” right the way through to when the alarm went off, when I was actually awake.

Once I’d gathered my wits, etc., I slid over to my comfy chair and began to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

After I left school, I was working as a trainee accountant for a coin-machine company that had coin machines scattered everywhere all over various towns. I was in Crewe, of course, so I was learning my trade at the office in Crewe and one of my tasks was, late at night, usually on a Tuesday because it was quiet, to go round and empty the various machines. What I didn’t realise at first, but I soon did, was that I was always being followed by three men in a green Vauxhall Viva convertible. It turned out that their role was that if I were attacked in the street, they would all pile out of the Vauxhall Viva and give my opponent a severe beating. I wasn’t sure how legal it was, but first of all, it was comforting that I was being looked after like this late at night, but also, I wasn’t sure what was likely to happen to me if someone were attacked and badly beaten and the police came round to talk to me about it, so I was being torn away in two halves here.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I could see myself being “suckered in” to some kind of criminal enterprise when I was younger. Boredom and the quest for adventure are usually very good motivators for that

And three men following in a dark green Vauxhall Viva convertible (a Mark II Viva, by the way) to protect the cash and not necessarily me would be exactly the kind of thing that I would organise if I were running the show.

We’d found this old bicycle so we were using it to keep in touch with all of the outposts and outlying fortifications for the city of Avranches. We were afraid that the intermission would be over and the fighting would restart imminently so they had sent their guy on a bicycle to me. I was well to the east of the city, covering the bridges at Ponts and making sure that we weren’t outflanked in the town. The guy who arrived on the bike wasn’t very happy at all. He couldn’t understand why he had been chosen, he couldn’t understand why he’d come on this bike or why he was the one who had to do the cycling or not. There was also, in my post, a girl from a previous dream. She was rather the aggressive type so she began to have a row with him. I was just sitting there watching this, but eventually I put my hand in where all the cans and bottles were. I pulled out a can and began to drink it. In the end, the other two calmed down and agreed to cycle off in different directions – the girl went back to London and he went back to Avranches. I went then with my team to defend the eastern flank of Avranches.

Avranches would be a lovely city to defend in a war. It’s situated several hundred feet up on top of a sheer cliff of a ridge that stretches for several miles, with clear views from the top of much of the southern part of the département of La Manche. I would fortify many of the buildings in the town that overlook the cliff, and towards the east, I’d dig in a variety of defensive positions on top of the ridge. My position seems to be on the ridge overlooking the town of Ponts, from where it would be possible for attackers to outflank the town.

At one point in this dream when they began to argue, the girl had come downstairs from somewhere and the boy was down at the far end of this post, so when he saw her, he came back and I had to bend my body out of the way so that he could come past. But when they were doing something with this cup of sausages, I don’t know what I was doing but the guy was coming past me, and as he came past me, the girl climbed onto her bike and cycled away so he did the same in his direction.

So it seemed that I’d stepped back into this dream at some point later, and our two guests cycled away from each other again. But I wonder what they were doing with this cup of sausages.

The nurse came by as usual, bringing his floozy with him. But the bad news is that it’s her last day. Tomorrow is, apparently, report writing and then she returns to the educational establishment from whence she came for the final week before summer break.

After they left, I made my breakfast and read some more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

Our discussion on artefacts found in Eburacum has continued, with plenty of “artefacts known to have been found but now lost from view”. And these are just the ones that we know of. There must be scores, if not hundreds, of artefacts found whose existence has never been made known to the World at large.

And somehow, we seem to have entered into a discussion about Roman brick-making. I certainly am learning a lot!

Back in here, there were plenty more things to do, such as to write the notes from yesterday when I was overwhelmed by fatigue and went to bed instead. That wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because I’d forgotten much of what had happened.

Nevertheless, I finished with just about enough to go for a wash and shave before my faithful cleaner came to apply my anaesthetic. It didn’t take her long and she was soon off again, being in a rush as usual.

The taxi was early for a change but we had to go to pick up someone else at the hospital here, someone with whom I’ve travelled before.

We were still early arriving at the dialysis centre, where for some reason, I was put into an individual room – the room which is the farthest possible away from the entrance. They make me work, don’t they?

The time that it took me to walk there meant that I was once again last to be settled so it was 14:25 when they finally finished connecting me and began the procedure.

At first, all went normally and I had no interruptions, which meant that I could have quite a sleep, but later in the session, the machine kept on sounding the alarm every five minutes or so and the nurses came a-runnin’. When the machine sounds the alarm, it pauses the operation until it’s reset so I saw the session lengthen and lengthen all the time.

In the end, they worked out that my blood was coagulating because of the sun shining directly on the machine so they decided to cut short the session with just ten minutes to go. That was disappointing.

But in the time that it took them to come to unplug me and to compress my arm, I may just as well have carried on to the bitter end with the session. It was five past seven when I eventually left the premises and we didn’t return home until ten to eight, having had to go to drop someone else off on the way. Luckily, it was my favourite driver, so I didn’t mind that at all. We had a good chat all the way home.

My cleaner had almost given up waiting for me, but she helped me into the apartment and did her best to organise me, which was very nice.

After she left, I warmed up the other half of the pizza that I made yesterday, but after four mouthfuls, the rest of that went into the bin too. It’s gone back to tasking of nothing but salt, like everything did just after chemotherapy. Instead, I did the washing-up, grabbed a packet of biscuits and came back in here.

There were a few things to do before I started the notes for the day. But I’d barely started them when I was overwhelmed by tiredness, so I abandoned the attempt and went to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizza … "well, one of us has" – ed … not many people know this, but Good King Wenceslaus’s favourite meal was pizza.
One of my friends, to whom I told this story, didn’t believe me. "Really?" he asked.
"Yes, he did" I retorted. "And you know how he liked his pizza?"
"No."
"He liked them deep pan, crisp and even."

Wednesday 17th June 2026 – LAST NIGHT, I …

… was actually in bed as late as 21:30, would you believe?

Mind you, there was a very good reason for that. After I’d finished writing my notes at round about 20:00, I just closed my eyes for a little relax, and the next thing that I knew, it was 21:15.

In the present state in which I find myself, I’m not going to turn away the opportunity of a good sleep, regrettable though it is, so it is something that has cheered me up a little rather than disappointed me.

All that was left to do was to do the stats and the backup, and by 21:30 I was sliding into bed under the covers.

The strange thing, though, was that once in bed, I couldn’t go off to sleep. I lay there for hour after hour tossing and turning and hoping that sleep would catch up with me, but to no avail. At one moment, I checked the time and it was 02:20 and I’d still not managed to go to sleep.

At some point, though, I must have done because I suddenly had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. I checked the time, and it was 06:13. When the alarm went off, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, half-dressed, so I’m claiming that as an early start.

The first thing that I did was, as usual, listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was going to this extremely interesting party that was taking place round by Worcester way. There were all kinds of people here, people of my age, people younger, people older, and we all seemed to mix together really quite well. As the party progressed, there were different kinds of things taking place. Someone had arranged for some kind of water feature where we could swim, and there were these two really ancient ladies, one playing a clarinet and one playing an oboe. This party continued, but when it finished, we all had to go to bed but the younger ones of us, we were engaged in tidying up, so we were desperately trying to find hooks on which to hang towels, etc., sorting things out, trying to find out where they went to be put away. I had a necklace of black jet, faced with white stones that I was cleaning by putting it in my mouth and running it around, I don’t know why. At the end, the sound of this clarinet and this oboe coming upstairs and we were told that they were coming upstairs to spend the night here too. As I began to talk to them, they began to tell me about life with JRR Tolkein, how they used to go to all of his parties in Worcestershire, and how marvellous and mysterious they were. And as they carried on talking, I was totally and utterly entranced. There was all this movement and noise, and people rushing around behind me, but I was totally carried away by the conversations of these two old women.

It’s very easy to imagine house parties like this. There are dozens of them in AGATHA CHRISTIE and JEEVES AND WOOSTER films and I for one … "and probably the only one too" – ed … would be quite happy to go to one such and talk to some of the older guests to see what they remember of high society.

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 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

And we mustn’t forget that Tolkien was brought up in Worcestershire when he was a child following the family’s return from South Africa.

The nurse came in with his floozy at the usual time to sort out my legs and feet and to fit my elastic socks. After he left, I made my breakfast – the first food I’d had for forty-eight hours – and I was good and ready for it. While I was eating, I was also reading more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

At the moment, we’re finishing off religion and beginning to turn our attention to artefacts. And, very regrettably, there are dozens of reports of “in such and such a year, so-and-so was found (and the book gives a long list of its attributes and sometimes even a photograph) but it has been lost to view in the meantime and I have been unable to trace its current whereabouts”.

It’s a really sad state of affairs, the amount of British architecture that has disappeared into private hands.

There were a few private things to do back in here, and then I began to choose, re-edit, reformat, pair and segue the tracks. And that took me right up to lunchtime, so I wandered off for a disgusting drink break and the lunchtime medication.

Back in here, no sooner had I sat down at my desk when Ingrid rang. She must have a camera in here too or else she’s using Rosemary’s. We had a Rosemaryesque chat that went on for an hour and eight minutes about life in the Auvergne, life here in Normandy, life in Paris etc. I think that Isabelle is feeling the strain of solitude.

After our chat was over, I began to write the notes for the radio programme, and now there are only three left to write. Fortunately, they are not going to take me very long to do.

While I was doing it, though, I had the bedroom window open, and my faithful cleaner stuck her head in through the opening so as to have a chat.

Tea tonight was the vegan pizza that I should have had on Sunday, but it wasn’t a success, mainly due to the dough having sat around in the fridge since Sunday. I only served myself half of the pizza, and then I could only eat half of that and the rest went into the bin.

After tea, I came back in here to write my notes but I was overwhelmed by a giant wave of fatigue that completely knocked me out. I wrote some kind of brief note on my blog and went to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artefacts … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Queen Mother went once to open a village fête.
Crowds of people were milling around er when she was heard to say "Please don’t touch the exhibits."

Sunday 14th June 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… that was today. It was easily the worst day of my life so far.

The time was getting on for midnight last night when I finally crawled into bed and threw the quilt over my head. I was soon asleep as well, which was good news. Not so good was the news that at some point, I had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse, but back in bed later, I was soon asleep.

It was at about 08:00 when I awoke, but that’s far too early for a Sunday. I checked the time and then threw the covers back over me.

The next thing that I remember was Isabelle the Nurse pulling the quilt off my feet and legs and then going to work. She was in full chat mode this morning, but I was in no mood for any of that. I just wanted to sleep. 08:30 had no interest for me this morning.

When I finally awoke, it was 10:33, and I decided that this would be the best time for me to leave the bed. Mind you, it was 11:00 when I finally made it into the kitchen. There were the croissants yesterday that needed brushing with milk and then baking.

While they were baking, I was busy making my breakfast – porridge and coffee – and when the croissants were finally baked, I stuck two on my plate and then went to sit down and eat it. While I was eating my breakfast, I was reading some more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

He’s moving on now and is beginning to discuss religion in Roman York. Someone has discovered a shrine of Mithreas and so we are having an interesting discussion on Mithraeism at the moment.

That leads to a brief flurry of writing to help clarify a couple of issues.

Now back on my feet, I head for the bedroom and office. It’s only 12:13 and that’s a reasonable time to start work. First task is to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

Some young boy had a mini – an old-type mini – and there was something happening with the brakes to it so he hadn’t used it very much. But when I went to live on that estate where he lived, he was chatting to me about this, so I said that I’d help him achieve what he was trying to do. First thing was to strip down the mini, seeing as it was on the outside on the roads … fell asleep here … so we went to have a look at it, and I could see that the brakes had seized on, so I jacked up the offside rear wheel, but first, before I did that, I had to undo the wheelnuts, and they were really tightly on. I had to use all of my force with a box spanner and screwdriver through the hole at the end to undo the wheel nuts and take off the wheel and then take off the hub. The hub was held on by two little grub screws. I found my screwdriver with the metal end, put it in the slot on one of the grub screws and hit it several times with the hammer. That freed it off so then I did exactly the same to the other screw, and that freed off too and came out.

The number of times I’ve done that. When I lived in Gainsborough Road, a young lad asked me to look over his car, a Ford Cortina. I gave it a good looking over and fixed a few things on it, and he drove off.

He came back later, absolutely delighted, saying "it passed, it passed, first attempt too. How much do I owe you?"

"Actually, I don’t like taking money. prefer an exchange of services. What do you do for a living?"

"I’m a landscape gardener" he replied.

After that, I never had a better-looking garden. His car needed a lot of work and maintenance.

After that, I had a lot of work to do, including dozing off regularly and being confused about where I was and what I was doing. And it was becoming worse and worse, but at 16:00, I remembered that I had to go outside for my hundred paces

Here is a shot taken from my 100 paces turn-round, depicting the building across the road from where we live. I’ve no idea what it used to be, but today, it’s apartments just like this building is.

When I arrived, there were still two apartments for sale. I contacted the agents, but they never replied, so I came here as a tenant and had to wait almost seven years until my ideal apartment was put up for sale.

When I finally settled in down here, I was really grateful that I’d bough here because access into and out of this apartment is quite easy

Back in here, I began to make the pizza base but I was feeling more and more tired and more and more ill. By the time the pizza base needed its second kneading and its rolling out, I was on a different planet somewhere else in the sky. I unrolled the pizza base and rolled it out and put it on its tray. But that was that, all I was going to do.

So I wrote a terse note on my blog and climbed into bed. It wasn’t even 19:00 but I didn’t care. I was going to bed, and that was all that counted.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going to dleep … "well, one of us has" – ed … some girl I know said that she always goes to sleep with the lights on.
"What does your boyfriend think?" I asked her
"He says it’s pretty weird, but I don’t know why. It’s just my size, and it makes a great hat!"

Monday 8th June 2026 – I’M COMPLETELY FED UP …

… with all of this. Who in their right minds would put two experienced nurses of a good length of service into a ward with just six people and two inexperienced nurses (one who started here on 1st January and the other on 1st May) together in a ward full of eight people?

And guess where I was!

It totally defies description that the staffing organisation in a place like this could be so totally chaotic. I really felt sorry for the two girls being so snowed under like this. It’s true that the two experienced nurses came into our ward near the end and helped them tidy up, but by then, it was far too late to do any good.

Just like last night, really. By the time that I climbed into bed, it was too late for me to have the kind of sleep that would do any good, especially after the early morning on Sunday.

However, I’d only been in bed for five minutes when I began to dream about some home improvements I wanted to do. There was someone, a British guy, doing some work on a place up the road so I went to see him about coming along to do some work for me. He didn’t say very much, but after a while, what he said was that he would give me some of his tools to carry down to my house so that they were there when he came. He gave me what looked like an enormous professional mastic gun that ran off the mains and was on two wheels, and somehow, I had to take this home. He unplugged the machine from the wall and then we came to a huge cable drum with three or four different cables on it that you wound in. It was divided into four or so compartments. He had the white power lead, and there was a splitter in the middle of it, so he unplugged the lead that was in the splitter and worked his way round, winding this cable off the cable drum until eventually they were both free. But there was a box in the middle of this white cable so he opened it up and took a battery out. It looked like a PP3 to me, so I asked him what sort of battery it was, and he replied that it was a PP2, which was one that I hadn’t heard of. I didn’t say anything – I just took the cable as best as I could and there was no battery in that box now so I had to find a PP2 battery from somewhere to make it work, and I was making myself ready to push it on down to my house.

This must be something to do with the guy who rang me on Sunday. He was telling me about all of the improvements that he had made to his property.

The battery issue presumably relates to my friend who was just here for a while. “Batteries” was quite a topic of discussion.

At that point, I awoke dramatically, but only for a moment and I was soon back to sleep.

The next time that I awoke, the day was just starting to dawn. But even though I was contemplating leaving the bed at one point, I must have gone quickly back to sleep because when the alarm went off, it awoke me.

Once I was dressed, I slid over to the computer and began to start work. The first task was to see where I’d been during the night.

Seren made another appearance last night. We were in North Africa, somewhere in a desert condition where there was a town. For some reason, we were walking around on the edge of town and I noticed that these cars were driving along this straight road but suddenly moved to the left and back to the right again, so we went over to find out why. There was no apparent reason except for a hollow in the ground, so Seren began to dig in this hole and she came upon a metal box. She picked up the metal box and we went back to our hotel. We couldn’t open the box, but it looked quite old so we rang a local museum, which came to look at it. They took it away and gave us a receipt. It turned out that it was a treasure from some sheikh from some hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. They offered her 100,000 dirhams for it, but she said that maybe it might be worth a bit more if they looked more at it. In the end, she settled for 900,000 dirhams.

This dream relates to the guided tour that I was giving around Chester the other day and the story of the Roman amphitheatre that had my visitors so enthralled.

And by the way, 900,000 Moroccan dirhams is worth about €85,000 and never mind the treasure – I would sell my own grandmother for that amount of folding stuff.

For some reason, we were living in a three-bedroom detached house with an integral garage, quite modern. And with the story of this treasure, I had to take it to the museum but Seren was ill. But we moved suddenly in this dream to a hotel that also had an integral one-car garage so I left Seren in there with instructions not to open the door to anyone. If she needed anything, ask the receptionist in the hotel, and I went off. It wasn’t to the museum, it was to the police and they wanted to know more about finding this box. They said that a group of criminals was eager to lay their hands on it. He showed me a photo of the man who was said to be their ringleader. I recognised him immediately as someone who had seen us dig it up, so he sent orders out to someone to do something. He then switched back to French and said that it’s quite possible that this box is going to end up being more valuable than I might think. So I left there and went back to the hotel to find that Seren had gone. At that point, I had a ‘phone call saying that it’s one million dirhams to have her back. And then the ‘phone was cut.

Yes, I’ve given those kinds of instructions out to some people before. And the house was just like a house that Nerina and I once saw with a view to buying if only we could have sold ours quickly.

But this dream is starting to sound too much like the plot to CARRY ON SPYING for my liking.

What made me go to the police was that there was a message on this box inscribed in runes. And whilst I can read some runes, I can’t read the rest but I did know that the Norse never came this far south so I assumed that it had been stolen from somewhere and brought and hidden in the desert.

And this part relates to the book that I’m reading right now. They’ve discovered a spearhead and when they x-rayed it, they saw a mark on it that, to some, resembled a rune and to others, no, it didn’t.

At some point, a man and a few of his sidekicks turned up. They asked me how I could live with the recent election results but not live without Seren. It suddenly became clear what was going on. This man was a Bedouin and all the time that he was talking to me, he was combing his hair. And then, when he had finished, he sent one of his sidekicks off to fetch him another comb. He had really thick bushy hair and a bushy moustache and beard but I hadn’t seen him before.

The beard and moustache remind me of my friend, but my caller was much more like the Fat Man in the above-mentioned film.

So, not just going back into the same dream once more, but three times more. Is this a record for stepping back into dreams?

And did I succeed in rescuing Seren? Tune in next time, people, same time, same place.

The nurse turned up as usual, even more cheerful than yesterday. Still, he’s off on his week’s break tonight and it’s Isabelle the Nurse starting tomorrow. He was in chat mode, talking about the commerces in Granville. After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Vera Evison’s book AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT HOLBOROUGH, KENT while I was eating.

And I had to laugh, although I know that I shouldn’t. Someone broke into their workshed and stole some tools and a couple of artefacts. She was quite indignant, but what is she doing in the graves that they are exposing? A well-known phrase involving a pot and a kettle springs to my mind.

Back in here, I carried on adding products to MY AMAZON STORE for a while. And then I went to make myself look pretty for Emilie the Cute Consultant.

My faithful cleaner sorted out my anaesthetic, and then, the taxi was early for me. And believe it or not, it was a Mercedes-Benz. Apparently, my taxi company had taken over this one at the start of the month, and it’s a bit more upmarket than what we are used to.

It was pouring with rain outside and I had to find my raincoat.

Our driver had to go via Sartilly to pick up our usual Monday partner, and then we set off for the dialysis centre.

The driver threw me out at 13:35 and due to the chaos in our room, I wasn’t plugged in until exactly an hour later as the two girls struggled against the odds. And when they did, it hurt like hell and it’s still hurting now.

Once I was up and running, I was able to do some work until the doctor on duty came to see me. No prizes for guessing who. That’s right, Emilie the Cute Consultant. She asked me how I was, and I told her that the pain in my foot had started up again, and in spades too. So she wrote a prescription basically telling me to double the dose of the painkillers.

That was exactly what I was afraid of, right at the very beginning, but it’s too late to back out now. At least, she was cheerful and smiling about it.

At the end of the session, we had exactly the reverse procedure, and so although I’d finished at 18:05, it was 17:55 when I returned home. At least the driver was waiting for me, and he’d been waiting quite a bit too.

There was a howling gale outside now, so he dropped me off at the back of the building where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me in and settled me down.

After she left, I had the half-pizza from Sunday, and now, late as it may be, I’m off to bed. Welsh in the morning so I want to be on form.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being in the desert … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told a friend that I’d once taken Nerina to the North African desert.
"And what happened?" he asked
"I came back with nine camels and fifteen goats."

Sunday 7th June 2026 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my promised lie-in this morning!

I was really looking forward to that when I went to bed last night. Quite late, it was, a good while after midnight but I thought “never mind. I can sleep until the nurse arrives at about 08:30 and after he’s gone, I can go back to sleep until I feel like getting up.

That was the plan anyway. And although I have some vague kind of memory that I awoke at some point, I must have gone back to sleep again – but not for long.

The next time that I awoke, it was slowly bcoming light so I stuffed my head back down under the quilt. But even in my favourite sleeping position, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there watching the day grow lighter and lighter until we had bright sunlight coming through the gaps in the blinds and the birds outside were singing.

“By now, I bet it’s about 08:00 and the nurse will be here shortly,” I said to myself. So I looked at the clock and it said “06:08”. So much for 08:00 and the nurse.

By 06:30 I was up, dressed and sitting at my desk working. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

Yesterday, I was in Chester, walking through the city. There was a sudden “boom” and a huge flock of birds flew up off a roof just behind me, so I looked. Just as they were about to settle again, there was another “boom” so they all got into the air and flew off. I thought that obviously that was some kind of bird scarer on the roof of that building. So I carried on walking down by the river. I began to think that if I were a carer of someone disabled and in need of help, being taken to Chester for a walk down by the river would be one of those really nice things to do.

Believe it or not, I was in Chester yesterday, although not in any physical or tangible way. I was giving a guided tour of the city walls from Watergate Street to the Eastgate, going via the waterfront of the River Dee, then from the Eastgate along Eastgate Street and the Rows up to The Cross, then down Bridge Street, along Pepper Street and finally down Park Street to the river again.

The things that I am expected to do these days!

But the flock of birds – it reminded me of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the Daphne du Maurier book THE BIRDS

The nurse turned up as usual and was surprised to find me up and about on a Sunday (but I bet that he wasn’t as surprised as me). He was also very surprised to find that my friend spoke German. He’d only ever heard him speak English. The nurse had learnt German at school and had kept up with it to a certain degree but didn’t have much chance to practise. He wondered if my friend would speak to him in German next time he’s here. I said that I would ask.

After he left, I began to make breakfast, including the two croissants that I had forgotten to serve up last Sunday. And while I was eating, I finished off reading RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge and turned my attention to the next on the list.

This is called ‘AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT HOLBOROUGH, KENT’ by Vera L Evison, which I downloaded from ACADEMIA a long time ago, and regrettably, I can’t find the link now, but it was published by the Kent Archaeological Society. There is, however, another on-line copy to be found at THIS LINK

This was a “panic excavation” as diggers working a chalk quarry uncovered a couple of skeletons, so the excavation team had to be in and out as quickly as possible so that work could carry on. To speed things up, the quarry company lent them a bulldozer!

Back in here, I had things to do. I had a “mystery ‘phone call” from an English-speaking voice, and it turned out that although this guy lives up here, he has a friend down in Pionsat who is also a good friend of mine. My friend had given him my ‘phone number and so he had called me, and we went on to have a very Rosemary-esque chat about old vehicles, World War II events, house renovations and life in a rural French village.

The chat finally ended with a promise that he’d call me again for a chat and even drop in to see me whenever he’s next over here. Whatever have I done to suddenly become “flavour of the month”?

The rest of the day carried on as usual, except that I managed once more to trip up an AI chatbot.

There was an interesting group chat going on about AI chats. My complaint was that everything in an AI chat is too structured, organised and logical, and I’ve never ever in my life known a family like that.

In almost every family, they might all be sitting quietly having a fireside chat when the cat comes in through the catflap carrying a dead mouse. Or in the middle of a heated argument the mother shouts out “oh God! I’ve left the oven on” and dashes into the kitchen. Or you hear a “bang” and find a child standing next to a pile of broken glass. “How did that happen”? “It just fell”.

That’s what real families are like but this AI programming is far too logical and structured to include events like that at random moments.

The conversation drifted around quite wildly and I somehow managed to throw into the chat the lyrics of the song that’s been going round and round in my head for the last three weeks –
"You may have got your silver
But I swear upon my life
Your sister gave me diamonds
But I lay down with your wife"

“Romeo and Juliet” suggested the chatbot. But no, it’s THIS MAN’S TOO STRONG. Another point to me.

And this is the thing about AI chatbots. Many people rely on them for things like medical advice, but they aren’t always right.

The reason why I’m mentioning chatbots, though, is for another reason. LORD OF THE RINGS came up in the discussion too.

In the discussion, I mentioned that I had a theory as to what the book represents. Everyone listened to it, including the chatbot, and when I’d finished, the chatbot mentioned that that was a theory that it had never heard before. It recommended that I publish it on the internet somewhere so that it could index it and add it into its list for future reference.

Not that I mind being told what to do by a computer, of course, but here goes.

Tolkein was a visionary and a romantic with a fertile imagination. That much we know.

In 1914, like many people, Tolkien joined the army, probably thinking how heroic and romantic it would be to fight for his country and lead his soldiers to glory. He was appointed an officer and had his own little platoon of soldiers to lead, each soldier with his own character and personality.

And there was Lieutenant Tolkien, in his imagination leading his platoon of soldiers on to Berlin, to victory and to glory.

But then there was a shambolic, panic-stricken flight, and there was Lieutenant Tolkien romantically holding off the advancing Germans to let his men escape. But somehow he was wounded and found himself in a hospital back in Blighty.

After a lengthy convalescence, he wanted to go back to his men and carry on leading them forward, but they refused to let him go as he hadn’t fully recovered. So he stayed behind.

All he had left was his imagination.

So there was Gandalf, finding a troop of different beings, each with his own character and personality. He leads them forward through all kinds of struggles, until under the mountains, he fights the Balrog to give his “men” time to escape.

He falls into the abyss, which is really the hospital into which Tolkien “fell”, and then he’s a prisoner, corresponding to the period when Tolkien was being refused permission to return to the front.

But then Gandalf escapes, as Tolkien would have liked to have done, and leads his army to victory and to glory. They smash the enemy on “their” side of the river, which is presumably the Germans’ Spring offensive in 1918, with the aid of fresh and unknown troops, probably the arrival of the American army, and then cross the river themselves, which presumably relates to when the Allies crossed the Rhine into Germany.

So I reckon that Gandalf was just how Tolkien saw himself in World War I

But be that as it may, after the chat I went into the kitchen and made the dough for a pizza, and while I was waiting for the dough to rise, I fell asleep which meant that I’m not running quite a bit late.

When I awoke, I made the pizza itself. And there’s some left over for tomorrow after dialysis too.

But right now, my bed is calling me, later than I would have liked, but never mind. I’m finishing off and going to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Birds … "well, one of us has" – ed … and I’ve probably told this story before –
Alfred Hitchcock, Kenneth Williams and Ingrid Bergman were chatting together and the subject of “The Birds” came up.
Hitchcock was saying that whenever the flock of birds chased Jessica Tandy, she would clutch her skirt between her legs before she would run.
"Ahh well" said Kenneth Williams. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the …"
Williams never finished his sentence because by then, both he and Hitchcock were rolling around the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Meanwhile, Ingrid Bergman was sitting there asking "what’s so funny?"
To which Hitchcock replied to Williams "There you are. It’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 – AS I HAVE …

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

And so no-one should be surprised to learn that at 05:50 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Mind you, there was a reason behind it all, as you will find out for yourself if you read on a little further.

But last night, as some of you may have realised if you logged on early, I was simply overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with pain, overwhelmed with discomfort, overwhelmed with everything. In the end, I abandoned my notes and went to bed.

It didn’t take much rocking last night either, and I was soon asleep. But not for long. Round about 03:00 we had one of the fiercest storms that I have known since I’ve been here, and we have had a few.

This storm was wicked. It was lashing down with rain and the howling winds at probably over one hundred kilometres per hour were making mincemeat of the car park. No-one could sleep through this racket.

Round about 04:30, it all calmed down, only to spring up again from a different direction. This was full on to the front of the house and it was so powerful that it blew my windows open. I had to climb out of bed to close them.

After sitting on the bed for fifteen minutes thinking, that was when I decided that there was no point in staying in bed. Instead, I dressed … "at a very leisurely pace" – ed … and began work.

First task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

This is another dream that I seem to have forgotten from during the night. I know that I was in it, and there was something about bottling something or putting things in jars and putting them on one side. Out of the stuff that we had made, there were four of these huge flip-top bottles and two ordinary ones. They had to be taken away, stocked and generally looked after. This is where it was all confusing, with us putting them into the van to take them away. There was a lot more to it than this. There were scenes when I was in bed, another scene where I was sulking and the tied cottage that we had, and I wish that I could write more about it.

This is another dream that I would have loved to finish. You can’t leave me on a cliffhanger like this

I went to a rock concert with a friend of mine and one or two of this friend. This was a friend whom I’d had for years and for some reason, he was extremely depressed, something that affected him quite often in the past. It was really going on late, this concert, and at the end of it, the three of us left. My friend turned to me and said “I don’t think that I’ll be having any more Cortinas again. I asked him “why not” and in the end, he explained that in his opinion, they were far out of date now and he needed a new, modern car to keep up and all that stuff. As we walked into town, he made it perfectly clear that he and his friend were going off in one direction and I should go off in the other. It was a cold, rainy thing but I started to walk away. I noticed that it was getting light and the birds were singing. At that moment, I went into Boots the Chemist and wandered around looking at the products for a while. I really wanted some deodorant but instead, I bought a packet of tomatoes and a huge packet of crisps. I paid for them at the checkout, which was quite funny because the cashier lost my bag of tomatoes somewhere on my conveyor belt

There is a story about this going back to about 1974 when I was “sent off” from a pub crawl, but that’s another one that the World is not yet ready to hear.

However, I did have a friend who once was so overwhelmed at work that he took a holiday not knowing where he was going and ended up being lost. And the incident at Boots at Crewe – the interior is very suggestive of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago of a shopping mall in Montréal, but the outside was definitely the Crewe British Home Stores.

When the nurse came, the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t even lift an eyelid, never mind barking at him. He allowed the nurse to stroke him and then the nurse turned his attention to me. He didn’t actually stroke me but massaged my feet and legs with the cream and put my elastic compression socks on my feet.

Then, after another stroke of the beast, he cleared off on the rest of his rounds and I could make my breakfast.

The next book on the list is RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge, an author whom we have encountered before.

He starts off his book by saying "this work is nothing more than a report on certain excavations, and as such, follows the modern pattern of being as colourless as possible. In the last century, a similar work would have included musings on the brevity of life, scraps of poetry and various other frills. Now, archaeology has become so stern a subject that I have not even dared to describe our feelings when a skull at Hollywell Row began to walk away with a young rabbit inside it."

He goes on to add "most readers would surely prefer the older method" and he’s not wrong there, because I know what I would, except when the author goes berserk with his remarks.

Lethbridge also makes the remark that "it would seem probable that male skeletons without weapons in this cemetery and others of the pagan period are those of slaves". Slavery was quite common in those days. These slaves were usually captured in battle or criminal slaves doing penance for their crimes, and, believe it or not, some people actually gave themselves voluntarily into slavery.

That latter phrase is certainly true, whether modern people like to admit it or not. But the life of a peasant in early Mediaeval times was a struggle between life and death, with not much margin between the two. But if your crops failed and your wife and children were starving, what options did you have? The duty of a lord was to feed, clothe and house his slaves, and it was better than starving to death. And let’s face it – the life of an early mediaeval peasant was not much more than that anyway.

At this point, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I came in here to go through my Welsh, ready for the lesson. And while I was breakfasting, our tutor had sent us by e-mail a huge pile of work that we were going to be doing during our lesson. I had less than an hour to go through it and that was rather unfair.

The lesson itself passed really well, although one or two of my classmates laughed when I told them about my Welsh-speaking artificial intelligence character. I still think, though, that it’s an excellent idea for someone who is isolated from the mainstream.

Next on the list was my cleaner, who breezed in to do her stuff and to shoo me into the shower. When I came out, I found that I had a nice, clean bed with nice, clean bedding. And so there will be a nice, clean me inside it tonight … "well, clean, anyway" – ed …

While I’d been at my Welsh class, the new battery had arrived and my friend had taken it out to the vehicle. He’d managed to couple it up and when he turned the key to make sure that there was a current passing through to the ignition circuit, the vehicle fired up as if it hadn’t ever been left unattended.

So after I’d come out of the shower and sorted myself out, we went over there for a triumphant drive around the car park.

However, our plans were blighted. The handbrake has seized, with the callipers stuck to the brake discs. That’s a nuisance. So near and yet so far. It seems that every step we take to advance, a new problem comes along to stifle us.

Not everybody agreed with this, of course. We’d attached the Hound of the Baskervilles to a lamppost behind the bus shelter, and when we looked around, we found that there were two schoolgirls making a big fuss of him and he was enjoying every minute of it. The girls told my friend that they thought that he was “magnifique”.

Back in here, I cleaned myself up and began to make the dough for tonight’s pizza. We’d missed out on a pizza on Sunday and I can’t possibly go two weeks without one. And while I was cooking, we were chatting about an electrical company and its website, and I was having a lengthy conversation online with an old schoolfriend from my Shavington days. It’s nice to catch up with friends from years ago.

One of the subjects that we were discussing online was “The Dockers’ Umbrella” – the Liverpool Overhead Railway that ran close to the docks from the latter part of the nineteenth century to December 1956 and so nicknamed because it allegedly sheltered the dock workers from the rain as they went to work.

The pizza tonight was acclaimed by my friend as “the best you have ever made”, and who can argue with that? He did also mention that “you look really tired tonight” and that will be the subject of later discussion.

Back in here afterwards, I had a few things to do, and then I started on my notes. However, after about five minutes, I fell asleep at my desk. When I awoke, I carried on and then fell asleep again. I lost count of how many times I fell asleep whilst trying to bring my notes up-to-date, and in the end, I gave it up as a bad job and hit the hay. There’s always another time to finish them off.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that electrical website … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend from Shavington that part of the menu on the site was “watch batteries”.
He asked "and what about it?"
I replied "we were there for half an hour looking at them but they didn’t seem to be doing anything."

Sunday 24th May 2026 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … “What a way to start the day!”

It wasn’t café au lait – “coffee with milk” – but café au lit – “coffee in bed”, and how much did I enjoy that? In fact, the nurse caught me in flagrante delicto in bed with a mug of coffee in my hand when he arrived.

That was a good start to the day, much better than the end of the previous one. As seems to be the case these days, it took an age to finish off everything that I needed to do, and then, on coming out of the bathroom, my friend asked me “have you remembered to take your night-time medication?”.

Ten minutes later, I finally made it into bed. It was actually a few minutes after midnight. And then, a strange thing happened.

I’d only been in bed thirty seconds when I began to dream. It was about a marriage bureau and there was something about your tax return or paying your tax or something and you could go to this marriage bureau. Some guy went there but he was only half-heartedly interested and they could tell that there, so one of the women told him that he was going to miss out on a couple of great opportunities. So while I was there, I thought to myself that probably I’m going to as well because I’m not all that interested in having a partner either.

In actual fact, looking at the timestamp on the recording, it was about fifteen minutes after I went to bed that all of this happened.

Firstly, the dream reminds me that I have my tax return to do, but secondly, even if they were to offer me a free encounter at a marriage bureau, I’d turn it down. I’m too old, I’m too set in my ways, I have all my own habits and so on, and having a woman around the place would just disrupt me far too much. I’m much happier on my own.

Having fallen asleep quite quickly for once, I stayed asleep until about 07:00, after which I was falling asleep and waking up on a regular basis every few minutes. When my friend brought in the coffee, I was asleep but I awoke as soon as the bedroom door opened.

And five minutes later, the nurse arrived. When he rang the doorbell to announce his arrival, the Hound of the Baskervilles let out a short yelp as if he had been taken by surprise, and then he didn’t react at all once the nurse had come into the apartment.

After he left, I dressed and went into the kitchen to make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I read some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT.

We’ve finally finished our visit to Richborough, or Rutupiae, as the Romans knew it, and so I thought that I’d post a photograph that I took of the place when I visited it in July 2006 before we leave.

You can see just how impressive the Roman walls actually were, so what must they have been like when they were erected nearly two thousand years ago?

And much closer to us, you can see part of the Roman defensive trench and how it was lined with rocks to stop the sides sliding back down into the bottom of the trench. These Roman forts were really well built and intended to last forever.

And so now, we are going to visit Reculver, or Regulbium, as the Romans knew it.

Back in those days, the Isle of Thanet really was an island as the River Wantsum cut it off from the sea before it all silted up. But just as Rutupiae guarded the southern entrance to the river, near Sandwich, Regulbium guarded the northern entrance.

In this photo, which I also took in July 2006, you can see the two mediaeval western towers of the old church that was there and some Roman remains to the right. And once more, you can see some Roman stonework below the remains, presumably also reinforcing the banks of what was once a defensive ditch.

Incidentally, I have quite a few more photos of Rutupiae and Regulbium, taken at the same time, if anyone wants to see them.

We carried on talking for a while at the breakfast table and when the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies, I came in here and found plenty of things with which to occupy myself.

Later on, I paired and segued the music for the first of the two radio programmes on which I’d been working. That’s all done now and I’ll find some time to write the notes. I have to keep on going forward, even if I don’t feel like it or if I have too many other things to do.

Seeing as we have been talking about having other things to do … "well, one of us has" – ed … I knocked off work at 16:00 to start to make the week’s bread and then the bases for tonight’s pizza. The home-made bread looks really good, and as chance would have it, I’d just finished assembling the pizzas when the oven pinged to say that the bread had finished. So it was a case of “one out and two straight back in” with no waiting.

When the pizzas came out of the oven, they looked wonderful. And when we tasted them, I do have to say that they were the best that I have ever made – and I’ve made some good ones in the past.

We chatted for a while afterwards, and then I had to come in here to do some work before starting my notes. And all the time, I was being serenaded by a singer with a guitar in the living room. There’s nothing like a bit of live music while you work.

So now that the notes are all finished, I’m going to do the stats and the backing-up, take my medication and sort myself out in the bathroom. I’ll close the window in here too. It’s been open since early this morning, as we’ve had another sweltering day of heat and it was nice to let a little breeze come in.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about marriage bureaux … "well, one of us has" – ed … there was a scene in CARRY ON LOVING that you couldn’t possibly broadcast today, and I used it as an example of a change in humour over time for an essay that I wrote at university.
It was Hattie Jacques interviewing Kenneth Williams in the marriage bureau and she asked him "as a fully grown man, I suppose you are thinking that you would like to have a child?"
"Oh, no" replied Kenneth Williams. "A fully-grown woman, I think."

Sunday 17th May 2026 – CAUGHT IN THE …

act!

While we were talking this morning, my friend … "who is a well-known blues guitarist around southern Germany" – ed … suggested that we might put on some kind of show while he was here, playing some music together.

It’s been quite a while – in fact, ever since I had the implant put in my left arm nearly two years ago – since I last played guitar, due to the pain that it gives me in the left arm, but after he left to go walkies with the Hound of the Baskervilles, I picked up the acoustic bass and began to play a few scales and the odd twelve-bar blues.

However, my secret practice session did not remain a secret for long, because the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t fancy his walk so they came back sooner than I was expecting.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

It was about 23:30 when everything was finished and I was ready to crawl into bed, looking forward to my lovely lie-in. And so no-one was more disappointed than I was to wake up at … errr … 06:06 precisely (because I checked).

Despite trying everything that I knew, I couldn’t go back to sleep again. In fact, it just made me more wide-awake than I had been. When I heard movement in the living room round about 07:15 that made me think that those in there were also waking up, I left the bed and dressed so that I could join them, and we had a beautiful, hot, strong coffee with which I washed down my medication.

There was a song going round in my head again. It had been there since last night and I thought that I had slept it off, but that wasn’t the case, so THIS MAN’S TOO STRONG by Dire Straits was still going round and round in my head, and in fact, it still is now.

We had a chat for a while and then the Hound of the Baskervilles decided that he wanted to go for his first morning walkies, so he dragged my friend off outside. Isabelle the Nurse came shortly afterwards, and her first words on entering the apartment were “where’s the Hound of the Baskervilles?”. You can imagine how that made me feel, playing second fiddle to the beast.

After she left, the others came back and we made breakfast. Another hot, strong coffee, porridge, a slice of toast and a home-made croissant and it was all delicious. We then spent several hours talking and with my friend playing the acoustic six-string that I bought in Munich IN 2020, and all of that led to the incident as described above.

We spent the rest of the day chatting, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly the time goes by when you are talking about nothing in particular.

My friend wanted another one of my mega-pizzas for tea so there was an interruption or two while I was making the base and then doing the topping and everything. And while I was at it, I made a very small pizza for me. I have to try to eat something, and cooking for other people is the best way to deal with the issue, no matter how it ends up. But, according to my friend, the pizza that I made was one of my best, which is nice to know.

After I’d finished washing up and cleaning the kitchen, I came back in here to write up my notes and, while I was at it, to check the dictaphone. However, I needn’t have bothered with the latter as there was, unfortunately, nothing on it from last night.

So right now, having finished my notes, I’ll do the backing up and take the stats and then I’ll be off to bed. Another short sleep tonight, but I don’t care. I can always sleep at dialysis if necessary.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizza … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend that a group of us had gone to a pizza place for a meal, and one of our group had been taken to hospital after eating a pizza.
"Blimey!" said my friend. "Why was that?"
"Because it was my pizza that he ate and I wasn’t very happy about it!"

Monday 30th March 2026 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that Emilie the Cute Consultant still loves me. Or so she told me this afternoon at dialysis when she came to see me about the new medication.

The not-so-good news is that the pain in my foot is back after having been absent since Wednesday. I suppose that that’s the effect of this new medication wearing off since I took the last batch on Friday. I shall have to take some more tonight before going to bed.

Last night was rather a painless night, except that it was later than I wanted it to be, as usual. It was much closer to 23:00 when I finally crawled into my stinking pit after doing everything that needed doing.

And it was another really mixed night too, with moments of deep sleep followed by moments of turbulent tossing and turning, and so on. One thing for sure though was that when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in one of the turbulent phases.

As usual, it took an age for me to sort myself out and head to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and what a miserable effort that was.

There was something about my brother going to convince someone else to do something but it was all extremely vague, and I didn’t remember anything more about it unfortunately

The last time that I changed my medication, the flow of dreams dried up for a while and it looks as if the same thing is happening right now. That’s a shame because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend on my dreams for my excitement. It’s the best that I can do these days.

So with some free time on my hands, I watched the highlights of Sunday’s game between Connah’s Quay Nomads and Y Barri. But there was nothing of any real interest in the match – none of these “let’s play it out from the back, lads” catastrophes that seem to liven up more than just a few of these games.

The nurse turned up as usual, still his cheerful self, no doubt due to the fact that he’s off on his week’s break this evening.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we were discussing the collapse of the Latin Empire in the Holy Land, and as usual, it makes dismal reading, all of these disputes amongst the Crusaders while the Moslem armies are gathering on their borders. How many times is this that the Europeans preferred to fight amongst themselves rather than make common cause against the “enemy”?

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I spent an hour revising my Welsh, seeing as we have no course for the next two weeks.

There was even time to start the next radio programme, and I actually made some headway with it too.

My cleaner turned up as usual to sort out my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi, which was twenty minutes late. There were already two other people on board, but luckily, I was dropped off first.

We were early arriving and, luckily, I was seen to quite quickly. And then they left me alone for most of the session.

As I mentioned earlier, Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She told me that the dry throat was a side effect of one of the medicaments that she had prescribed for me. And she assured me that she still loves me, which was really quite nice. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been worrying me for quite a while.

Being plugged in early was one thing. Being unplugged was quite another thing. When four people finish at the same time and there are only two nurses, it’s evident that someone will have to wait. And guess who drew the short straw?

Still, the taxi was waiting for me, but there was someone else to drop off and we became tangled up in roadworks. So it was just as late as it usually is.

My cleaner helped me back into the building, and after she left, I finished off my pizza and had some more trifle.

So now with the pain back in my foot … "and back in spades too" – ed … I’m off to bed for an early night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned that I thought that she didn’t love me any more because of the suicide pills, and how I imagined her sitting at her desk with her fingers crossed.
"That’s not true at all!" she retorted.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yes, it is" she replied. "I’m paid according to the number of patients I treat, and if you die, I’d have to take a pay cut!"

Sunday 29th March 2026 – THERE IS SOMETHING …

… extremely democratic about sitting down to your breakfast at 11:55. Even though an hour of that was “lost” due to the change to Summer Time, it was still quite impressive, and it shows you just how tired I have been.

What made it even more impressive was that when I was just about to climb into bed, it was 22:28 – two minutes before my ideal curfew time. That’s the advantage of going to bed without any tea – being able to write my notes and do the usual housekeeping without any pressure at all.

Maybe I should try it more often. An early night, plus a session of losing weight for dialysis can’t be bad.

Mind you, the night wasn’t as good as it might have been. I awoke on a couple of occasions and even had to leave the bed at one point to … errr … siphon the python, which is very unusual.

Once more, it was the tail-end of the nurse’s buzzing that awoke me, but I still pretended to be asleep when he came in here. He sorted out my legs and feet without saying too much, and after he left, I went straight back to sleep.

At some point though, I awoke. I’ve no idea what time it was but it took me a good while to bring myself to sit on the edge of the bed, and just as long again before I rose to my feet to stagger off into the bathroom.

It was 11:35 when I made it into the kitchen and by the time that my breakfast was ready and I could sit down to eat it, it was 11:55. Hot black coffee, porridge, and the last of this batch of croissants. Next weekend, I shall, of course, be attacking the somewhat overdone hot cross buns. Overdone they might be, but I bet that they’ll taste just as nice, toasted and with loads of vegan butter.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve finished the pages on the émigré nobles expelled from their lands to Rome where they were living on a papal allowance of, in some cases, as little as 40 ducats per month, the equivalent of about £1,100 today. That, of course, is hardly enough to keep an exiled nobleman or king in the luxury to which he would like to be accustomed.

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

There was something about a whole new raft of legislation in one of these ancient cities that may well have been Rome. One of the things concerned sending a maid out with the washing. Another thing concerned the heating in these apartments that they used to have, but I can’t really remember any more that this because I awoke at this point.

Collapsed apartment blocks caused by jerry-building and raging fires due to out-of-control wood stoves were a common occurrence in Ancient Rome. In fact, Leonardo III Tocco, Duke of Cephalonia and Despot of Epirus, one of our exiled leaders living in Rome on the Pope’s charity, was killed when his house collapsed on top of him.

I’d enrolled in an online course for something or other and it was time for some kind of class, so I turned up. I was sitting there when someone came in with someone else. She presented him to me and said to him that I was another student from Asia who was doing this course. We had a little chat about how things were, etc. He asked me if I ever had any regrets about leaving the UK. I replied “none at all”. He asked “do you find a lot of people surprised when you tell them where you live?”. I replied that I didn’t talk to a lot of people these days. His next question was “did you ever regret the days a long time ago when people who went to live abroad were envied rather than criticised?”. I replied “I don’t really regret anything but I haven’t really encountered that kind of feeling. However, if it exists, I think that it’s down to pure jealousy rather than anything else. I think that a lot of people would up sticks and move to the continent if they could, on their account”.

Not that I’ve ever lived, or even been to Asia, but no matter where I am, I have no regrets whatever about leaving the UK. And it’s strange, but the majority of my closest friends are also British people who have moved to mainland Europe. Birds of a feather flock together, so they say.

After the dictaphone notes and a few other things that needed doing, we had a footfest – the highlights of the matches in the JD Cymru Premier League from yesterday. And one of the most surprising results was that Llanelli, hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table, beat Welsh Cup finalists Y Fflint 2-1 away at Y Fflint’s ground. I’m not sure how that happened but it’s certainly thrown the relegation battle between Y Bala and Y Fflint wide open again.

Following that, there were two matches of Stranraer’s to watch. The first was Tuesday night’s 3-1 home win over Clyde and the second was a disappointing 1-0 defeat away at Annan. But I do have to say that I’m sure that the referee was refereeing a different game to the one that the crowd, the match commentators and I were watching.

There wasn’t much time after that, but nevertheless I managed to edit another lot of radio notes and prepare the two halves of the programme. The joining track has been selected and the notes written for it too, ready for dictation at some point in the future.

When it was baking time, I went into the kitchen to bake a chocolate oil-cake, with coconut oil. And with real chocolate chips from a whizzed-up bar of cooking chocolate and with ground almonds and ground Brazil nuts.

And at some point during the week, it will have a coating of melted cooking chocolate bar. Sickly as anything, but that’s my Easter treat along with my hot cross buns.

After that, I made the base for tonight’s pizza. And another really delicious one, with half left over for tomorrow, as usual.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … and all of the doctors in their little room, crossing their fingers in the hope that this “serious risk of suicide” comes to pass.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my hot cross buns … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me if I would enjoy them, despite their being over-baked.
"Not a problem" I replied. "It reminds me of my mother when we were kids."
"How do you mean?"
"She used to treat us all like Gods."
"In what way?"
"Every time we came home from school, she presented us with a burnt offering."

Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

… at dialysis today spilled a whole beaker of hot coffee all over the keyboard of his nearly-new laptop?

Yes, I’m convinced that I’m going from bad to worse these days and I don’t know why, but everything seems to be taking so long, and I seem to be creating difficulty after difficulty for myself.

Like last night, for example. It could — and should — have been another early night, but when I’d finished my tea, it was already 21:45 and that leaves me very little time to do anything that I want.

Consequently, it was closer to 23:30 when I crawled into bed last night, and this is good for neither man nor beast.

Once in bed, though, it didn’t take long to go to sleep, and apart from one or two awakenings, more of which anon, I stayed asleep until about 06:15.

Not that I felt much like leaving my bed when the alarm went off. It was quite a struggle to drag myself into the bathroom and once again, it was horribly late when I went in for my hot drink and medication.

To make matters worse, the computer in here wouldn’t boot up. In the end, I had to go into the BIOS to check and, sure enough, the bootable disk had fallen to the bottom of the pile, so I had to promote it to the top and we could start again.

Once it was up and running correctly, I uploaded the dictaphone files to see what had gone on during the night.

A friend of mine had reached his 118th birthday. He was living in an old people’s home where it was customary once every couple of months to let them out for a week to go to some kind of rehabilitation and re-education class. What they did with him was that they combined two groups together so that he could have a couple of weeks away from the home doing different things because he’d been a very active man. They had rung us up on a Monday morning to say that he was being released for a week and did we have any calculations that he could do for recipes etc. We said that we’d sort a few out. But ten minutes later, he was at our door with his carer. Firstly, she was concerned about this process that we had of combining the two series, and secondly, there was some kind of delay in this week’s course starting, so could he come to take part in our group activities? We all went out and saw him in the corridor, and we were delighted to see him and began to chat to him — he was called George — and make some plans about some kind of activity. However, his tutor told us to slow down and take it easy rather than him letting all at once, but we weren’t interested in that. We had our own things to do and the race between one of the tenants from Rhyl and Cardiff Met, and their coach Ryan Valentine … fell asleep here …

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating, but what happens at times like this, I slowly drift off into silence and then you can hear me breathing deeply.

So if you want to hear what I’m like during … errr … four hours and a few minutes of deep sleep, don’t hesitate to ask.

But what this dream means, I’ve really no idea because, … "as usual" – ed … it makes no sense at all. And Ryan Jenkins is the manager of Cardiff Metropolitan – Ryan Valentine is the number two at Y Bala.

Did I dictate the dream … "well, sort of" – ed … about the kind of old man who was being looked after somewhere, and they had programmes and things for him. One day, I noticed that the programmes had returned to the shelf where they stay sometimes, so I wondered which ones they had ended up keeping and which ones had returned. However, they were all returned and the old guy had died or something. From there, I headed back to my van, which was where I was living at the time. There was some kind of squat or something like that, and there were quite a few people living there in all kinds of situations, including several people who were living in some kind of tent, I suppose. But instead of being on the ground, it was hanging by a rope from a tree, with the idea that it would keep out the damp in the cold weather. As you walked into this camp, the glow of the open fires make these kind-of tent things look extremely weird and surreal.

Wanting to dictate this dream led to a mad panic-stricken search of the bed for the dictaphone, which had fallen out of my hand when I fell asleep just now. And it was still running, four hours and a bit after I’d lost it. That’s a long time-gap to drop back into a previous dream.

There were some workmen coming into our office to paint and decorate it, so round about 17:30, I went out to buy a couple of things and some tile cement that I needed for home because these workmen were starting at 18:00 and they needed some kind of supervision. I went into Crewe town centre where I found a really cheap set of golf clubs so I bought them so that I could practise playing my golf. I wandered around BHS and Woolies but they didn’t have any tile cement. When I came to Halford’s up the road, that was just closed so I went back to the office, hoping that no-one would notice me because it was now slightly after 18:00. I noticed that the colours that they were using to paint were horrible, a kind of dark blue in the main office. When I went into my office, there was a guy there preparing everything and I noticed that one of the walls was a horrible dark green. I asked him, and he replied that it wasn’t he who had chosen the colours — the colours had been chosen by the Head Office. I went outside to begin to play with a car — an old MkIII Cortina that I’d found in a shed five or so years ago. After playing around with it, I managed to make it start so I crawled underneath it to see what it would need for the MoT. One thing that it would need was a new silencer, and the silencer was routed so that it expelled air through the hollow rear axle rather than the tailpipe. I thought that this is going to be complicated if I were to renew the exhaust. Then a young Chinese guy came along. He was with the workmen. He began to talk to me about the cars, and the subject moved on to girls as it usually did back in those days. He told me a few little secrets about his life and a girl or two. I thought to myself “why is he telling me all of this? This is something that I don’t need to know especially as he worked with this office-renovating firm and not in our business

No chance of going to Wooolies, BHS or Halfords in Crewe Town Centre these days. Those shops have long-gone and the whole town centre has been flattened by the Council to prepare it for the massive investment of cash and facilities once HS2 arrives in Crewe. It looks as if Crewe Town Centre will be a war zone for many years to come.

But much as I try to keep politics off these pages, Crewe’s decision to flatten the town centre probably came about as a result of Louise Haigh, Labour’s spokesperson on transport who “appeared” during a speech in March 2023 to promise to build phase 2 of HS2, sentiments echoed later by shadow Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who said in September 2023 that “We will build HS2 in full”.

And a Cortina in a dream? What a surprise! Just as surprising as it would be if I ever decided to play golf.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and, just as quickly, breezed out again. She’s off on her week’s break this evening so I imagine that she wants to finish as quickly as possible.

After she had left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re dealing with the miscellanea — the little remote areas of the southern Balkans that haven’t as yet figured in the main part of the story. This is proving to be interesting as it highlights how several of these areas managed to skate nimbly in between the various major warring parties and preserve some of their independence.

Back in here, I reviewed this week’s radio programme and sent it off, and then once I’d done what else needed to be done, I revised my Welsh until it was time to prepare for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic, and then I waited for the taxi. Bang on 13:00 he turned up, and once we’d picked up another passenger in Granville, we headed for Avranches.

For a change, I was early arriving, and in even more of a change, I was seen to quite quickly. And then I could press on and do some work.

That was, until I spilled the coffee all over the laptop. Luckily, I don’t take sugar, but even so, it was a mess. I managed to throw my sheet over it to absorb what it could, and after some love and attention from one of the nurses, it still manages to work, which is just as well. How long it stays working is anyone’s guess. I’ve left it switched on overnight in the hope that the heat generated will dry it out.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and she definitely doesn’t love me any more now. I told her what my nurse and my cleaner had said about the cough and the pain in the foot. She confirmed that there is nothing that can be done about the pain. It’s due to the breaking up of my nervous system, but she’ll do her best to put together a cocktail of painkillers that have no side-effects, and we’ll see where we go.

As for the cough, she’ll try to make an appointment for me to have a thoracic scan, followed by an appointment with a lung specialist. And not before time.

The taxi driver was waiting for me when I was unplugged, but the chaos on the roads meant that we weren’t home any earlier, which was a shame.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and after she left, I had the other half of my pizza. And I didn’t enjoy it at all. My taste buds really are changing again and it’s not very nice.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for my Welsh course tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that old man … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met an old man in a Greek cemetery who was there for a funeral.
"How old are you?" I asked
"A hundred and three" he replied
"Where do you know him from?" asked my Greek friend.
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "But I bet that he comes from Ikaria."

Sunday 22nd March 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again today. You wouldn’t believe that it’s a Sunday, which is supposed to be a Day of Rest for me.

Not that it was much of a rest last night because it was another really late night again. I’ve no idea what time it was when I finally crawled underneath the covers, but it certainly wasn’t 23:30 I’d seen that come and go some time earlier.

It took longer than usual for me to go off to sleep, which appears to be par for the course these days. And although I have a vague recollection of waking up once or twice during the night, the next thing that I remember was the tail-end of the doorbell as Isabelle the Nurse announced her arrival.

She found me in bed, of course, and as well as sorting out my legs and feet, she also had to take some measurements of them too. That was complicated enough, and as much as I wanted just to go back to sleep, her irrepressible good nature meant that she talked all the way through the procedure.

After she left, try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards and so, about half an hour later, I raised myself from the Dead and went off to the bathroom.

In the kitchen later, I remembered to take some of my medication, and then I made breakfast. Porridge, strong coffee and two of my home-made croissants. And there’s no doubt about it — these croissants are some of the best that I have ever made.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the (brief) Venetian recapture of some of the Greek territory from the Ottomans.

But it’s the same story as usual — disputes among the conquerors, disputes among their subjects, disputes between the conquerors and their subjects. Here, you have all of the ingredients that you need to ensure that, once the Ottomans gather up their strength and their resources, they will simply walk back into their former territories.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I’d been chatting to a taxi driver around Granville, related to a company that had a lot of Mercedes cars and a few odd, indiscriminate ones. At the end of the shift, I was talking to this taxi driver and looking through the window of the garage where you could see all of the vehicles there. He asked if I would go in to see if he’d been given credit for the final job that he had done. That meant going up and touching the taxi plate, pushing it and the last job would appear in the windscreen of the car. I went in, but I couldn’t find his particular car. There were all sorts of cars in there. The dream then moved on to something about the work in the European Union and an article on the chauffeurs. I was really disappointed to see that my name wasn’t mentioned, but it described some of the work that we had to do. It said that only two of the chauffeurs were authorised to take the luggage down to the south of France. This dream carried on, discussing the work, and then there was an article that the chauffeurs had decided to stop issuing certain visas to certain people. The company that controlled the issue of visas agreed with them, so these visas were stopped being issued

The first part of the dream relates to the taxi company that takes me about to my hospital appointments. I’ve been to their premises a few times late at night, and seen through the window their taxis parked up in the barn until next morning. Pressing the taxi plate wouldn’t do anything, though, because they don’t have plates — they have stickers.

As for the second part, we did have the press round the EU on several occasions and on one of them, I was actually filmed. Not that I ever denied anyone a visa though — I don’t understand that. It was however my responsibility to take one of my boss’s subordinates around for visas when someone from that office was required to travel.

There had been a rise in pilgrims from the Latin, the Frank and the Byzantine communities heading towards Jerusalem, and their habit of lying prostrate on the floor and kissing the soil when they arrived was inciting a lot of comments. It was therefore decided that they would stop the ferries that were bringing the pilgrims over by sea and the Byzantines were delighted by this.

This presumably relates to the book that I’m reading right now.

After that, I had a footfest – the highlights of the games in the JD Cymru League yesterday. However, there was nothing interesting or controversial in there.

Afterwards, there was Stranraer once again losing — this time to Clyde 2-1 in a game that they should have won had it not been for them falling asleep for five minutes shortly after the start of the second half.

We then had Greenock Morton recording a surprising away win against Ayr United. The way that Morton have been playing just recently, I wouldn’t have thought that they would win a raffle, even if they were the only entrants.

After a rather late disgusting drink break, I attacked the new computer. Yesterday, I couldn’t seem to make it read the disks in the array, so I concentrated on that for several hours. In the end, I managed to make it function, and now I have most of what I want in the way of disks connected to the computer.

With what time was left, I was uploading my entire suite of programs to the computer, and now, that’s pretty much how I would like it to be.

At about 17:00 I knocked off for cooking. Firstly, I made the dough for my pizza base and then secondly, I made my really thick custard.

While I was baking my pizza, I poured the cooled custard all over the vegan jelly. Now it’s beginning to look like a trifle. I hope that it actually tastes like one too. I shall find out on Tuesday.

The pizza was delicious, though. I experimented by using sliced cheese that I grated rather than the grated cheese. And indeed, it was much nicer. It’s more time-consuming though, but you can’t win everything.

And now I’m off to bed if this appalling cough will let me. It’s really bad tonight. I just hope that they will be impressed by it at dialysis tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the disk array … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was speaking to one of my friends about it, and I asked her to send her congratulations to the array now that the computer can read it
"Certainly" she replied. "Hip, hip, array!"

Monday 16th March 2026 – LATE HOME AGAIN!

Yes, this is really getting on my wick these days. Nothing that I can seem to do seems to galvanise them into action at the dialysis clinic, and I’m always the last to be plugged in and the last to be thrown out.

Having left the apartment at just after 13:00, it was just after 19:30 when I finally put my sooty foot back inside my apartment

In fact, there are quite a few things that are getting on my wick right now, and if I’m not very careful, I’ll blow a gasket. If only I were to still have a spleen, I could vent it in peace without all of this.

Last night wasn’t much better either. As seems to be the case these days, I was horribly late going to bed. It was getting on for 23:45 when I finally slid underneath the covers, and with an alarm set for 6:29, that is good for neither man nor beast.

Although I went to sleep quite quickly, I awoke a few times during the night but luckily, I was able to go back to sleep quite quickly.

When the alarm finally did go off this morning, it took another one of these Herculean efforts to raise myself from the Dead and stagger off to the bathroom.

Apart from a good wash, I also had a shave. Even though Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, we have to go through all the motions.

In the kitchen, I had my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if anything went on during the night.

I was with my brother. We were sitting in some kind of cheap café in a town centre that might have been Chester. We were talking about various different things and it became quite late at night or early in the morning. I fell asleep while I was sitting there and was actually quite comfortable. I awoke after about an hour or so, and my brother was still there looking gloomy and glum, so I asked him if he’d managed to go to sleep. He replied that he hadn’t slept for twelve days. I thought that that was surprising, so I asked him why and whether he had considered taking anything for it, but he hadn’t. So we just carried on the chatting when one of my schoolfriends came in and joined in the conversation. Every hour or so, I had to leave the café to go into some kind of gift shop. There was some reason for this that I can’t remember. I didn’t have to buy anything – I just had to go in, go up to the counter and go back out again. So every hour or so, I’d be doing this. In this gift shop was, presumably, the proprietor, but on a bench in what was probably the waiting area was a homeless man who was apparently sleeping there. He was wearing a white suit, but it was the filthiest piece of clothing that I had ever seen, all stained under the arms etc. So I’d go in, go up to the counter, turn round and go back out again and go back to the café. When I came back to the café on one occasion, my schoolfriend was still there, but by now, he had a cup of tea. I said to them “well, if it looks as if we aren’t going to be going to sleep tonight, does anyone want a coffee?”. My schoolfriend said that he had just bought a cup of tea, which I could see, so I asked my brother if he would like a coffee. He said that he did, so I ordered two coffees from the person behind the counter. However, I ordered them in a different language but I can’t remember now what language it was that I used.

So here we go again – yet more family. And a schoolfriend whom I haven’t seen since 1972 except for a brief glimpse a year or two later when he was waiting at a bus stop as I was driving past the other way.

The significance of going into the gift shop or whatever it was, and the homeless person in the filthy white suit totally defeats me, but falling asleep in a café does have a history to it.

In the past, I’ve spoken about the Windsor Free Festival and our trip down there when some of the people with us nearly came to grief when a tyre on the van blew out going down the motorway. My friend and I, after chatting up two girls who wouldn’t come with us, went down on his motorbike, a Triumph 350.

On the way back, after forty-eight hours with no sleep, my friend who was at the front fell asleep and we almost crashed. He asked me to drive the machine after that, but he fell asleep on the pillion and fell off the seat onto the rear mudguard.

After that, he took over the controls but when we reached Oxford Services, he’d had enough. We went inside and we both fell asleep, sitting on chairs and hunched over a table.

Ohh happy days!

There was something else about being with a group of students. It involved them going rock-climbing. One of them fell and broke his ankle but that’s really all that I remember of that dream.

This doesn’t seem to relate to anything.

The nurse came quite early this morning, full of life and energy, seeing as he’s off on his week’s break this evening. He didn’t stay long and I could make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re now discussing the Genoese possessions in the islands of Greece, one of which was the island of Ikaria.

Reading some notes about the island, I found that it’s been said to be one of the healthiest places on the planet, "where the population regularly lives to an advanced age (one in three make it to their 90s and a significant percentage are centenarians and beyond)".

It’s said too that their … errr … inter-couple private activity continues to an advanced age, with "80% of Ikarian males aged between 65 and 100 were found to still be having" … errr … friendly relations " on a regular basis". So when is the next ‘plane to Ikaria?

After breakfast, I reviewed the forthcoming radio programme and then sent it off. After that, I revised my Welsh until it was time for my cleaner to arrive.

After she’d sorted out my anaesthetic, I waited for the taxi to arrive, and then we cleared off to pick up someone else to take to Avranches. Her appointment was at 13:45 and mine was at 14:00 so, even though her rendezvous was right across the other side of Avranches, we went there first.

And Avranches is in total chaos. For the next six weeks, the bridge over the railway line by the station is closed and the diversion adds miles to the route. And then, there was an entrance to the motorway closed, so that we had all of that to deal with, and to make matters worse, there was an accident that had closed off part of the motorway a little further down.

We did actually make it for 14:00, but I wasn’t plugged in until 14:50. And it was quite late when I was unplugged too.

The doctor came to see me, so I discussed my “dry weight” with him. He agreed that it should have been reduced the other week and he’ll note it starting the next session. Emilie the Cute Consultant said “hello” too.

Once I’d been thrown out, we joined the chaos outside and then slowly headed back home, going as quickly as we could, which wasn’t all that fast.

Tea tonight was the rest of the pizza followed by vegan cheesecake, and now I’m ready to go to bed if the stabbing pain in my foot would only stop.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Ikaria … "well, one of us has" – ed … an Ikarian man of 97 went to the doctor to complain that he could no longer make love to his wife.
"It’s not really a surprise" said the doctor. "At your age, you’ll be slowing down."
"But my neighbour, he’s 99 and he says that he makes love to his wife three times per week. What can I do?"
"Well, you could always say the same thing."

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality