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Sunday 16th March 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy today and have hardly stopped at all. I could do with a few more days like that, except that almost none of it was to do with any of the work that has been building up in here.

It actually started last night when, after finishing off my notes and doing the back-ups, I recorded the notes that I wrote for the radio programme that I began last week, and also for the final track for the previous week.

That took me up to just after midnight and it wasn’t many minutes after that that I was in bed, underneath the bedclothes.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 (it’s lie-in day today) I was already sitting on the edge of the bed. I had beaten the alarm, not by many seconds, it’s true, but nevertheless I’m going to claim it as an early start all the same. They all count.

After a good wash I came back in here and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes while I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to turn up.

She was late again – even later than usual, but she brought with her the photos and videos of her Carnaval float and costumes. They did a really good job again and it was quite impressive. The way some of the owners of the floats let themselves go with their designs and lampooning of politicians, local and national, should be an inspiration for other countries to let themselves loose.

After she left I made a late breakfast and read MY BOOK. And it’s now finished, ready for the next one to start tomorrow.

Our author, having explored the effects on Christianity is summing up and tells us that he considers that the folklore that existed in many rural communities until fairly modern times is not Celtic but belongs to the Brythonic people whole the Celts found when they arrived here.

He quotes the mystery and mysticism that surrounded it that the Celts, whom Caesar encountered, told him all of the rumours and fairy-tales that litter Caesar’s writings. That may well be the case because Pytheas, who voyaged around the British Isles in the 4th Century BC, presumably met some of the Brythonic peoples in their coastal outposts before the Celts arrived, and he told similar (but not identical) stories.

Gomme states further that he considers that the Celts and the Brythonic people lived side-by-side, with the Celts in their tribal settlements and the Brythonic people in their rural villages, and there they stayed. But we’ve seen anthropological evidence that there was very little, if any, mixing of the people, and all of the later Brythonic human remains were found in caves, hinting that they may probably have been in hiding out of the way of the marauding Celts.

Furthermore, many of these magnificent hill-forts that we saw earlier date from round about 500-400BC – the time that the Celts were beginning to arrive in Britain. That doesn’t look to me like anything like people living side by side at all, It looks like defenders living in total fear and panic.

And so,even though it was a very interesting and thought-provoking book that made quite a number of good points and taught me quite a lot, as far as the contact between the Brythonic and Celtic people, and indeed the Celtic people and the subsequent Saxon people, I’m still going for defeat and extermination.

There was bread to make after breakfast – a bread roll for lunch. With the air fryer, it’s much easier to dash off a roll like this rather than go for a batch in the big oven. So I ran up 100 grams of flour and made a dough, leaving it to fester.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. And I’d travelled far during the night. I was in a strange town and fancied going to the swimming baths. I turned up, paid for my entry and went in, changed and went through the double doors. It was the smallest room that you could imagine. There was some clear tiled flooring and there was a shower tray that was probably big enough to fit ten people. That was the bath, just one shower head. I thought “how disappointing this is for having spent this money to come for a swim. Nevertheless, people began to arrive. I thought “they probably enjoy it” and made ready to leave. Just as I was about to step out of the door, the room made a really funny noise and began to move. I looked out and the room was turning round through 90°. At the end of its cycle it coupled up to something. I had a look through another door. There was a huge Olympic-quality swimming pool there with cafés, shops, a swimming costume shop, everything like that. I was obviously in the ante-room where you showered before going into the water. At opening time the room simply spun round and connected up with the main pool. I was ever so impressed. I had a listen to the conversations of some of these people talking about what they had been doing, where they had been, what swimming clothes they had bought. It was really interesting.

When I was driving coaches I’d often go to the swimming baths to relax when I was away on a tour. When I lived in the Auvergne I looked forward to my Saturday afternoon swim at Neris-les-Bains and later at the new pool at Commentry. But my worst-ever encounter with a swimming baths was in Loretteville, a short distance from the city of Québec where I froze to death in water that was, if I remember correctly, 11°C. I must have been out of my mind, but there again I’d been living in a car for two weeks so it was not before time that I washed.

Later on I’d just been uploading a file to my computer, watching it, and it was going up, 20,000 items, 30,000 items and still going on. I was wondering how long it was going to take before it loaded. It was only supposed to be one item that I was adding.

And how many times have I, instead of deleting a single file, deleted a whole directory instead and had to go scurrying off to the recycle bin.

Later on, I’d been in a pub in Audlem. I asked if they had something to eat, but apparently not. I explained that i’d been on the road all day and was desperate to try to find something. In the end she suggested that I could make a sandwich if I had some bread, but I didn’t have any. She took me over to a corner where an old man was asleep. She said “see what he has”. I opened his bag thinking that there were some fish and chips in there but there was a loaf of bread which of course I couldn’t touch – the loaf of bread of someone else. A guy came over and gave me a set of keys. he said “take my tractor, there’s a blue Massey Ferguson, and go down this road. It’s called Cegidfa Road but it goes nowhere near Cegidfa and that should take you to the shop if you do a zig-zag as you go down”. I climbed into the tractor and set off but ended up in a completely different town so I climbed out and walked down a street of old, decaying, crumbling terraced houses with water cascading off the roofs etc. I suddenly found myself standing next to this really big, heavy stone wall. I wondered what it was so I looked round behind it and it was like a forest but with bits of building and bits of equipment and an old, decayed toilet in there. I saw a poster that said that this was the old RASC Stafford military base. Regretting that I didn’t have a camera I set off to go back to the tractor. But there was some discussion going on about how in view of the increased tension in the World and talking about National Service there is just not the infrastructure in the UK for supporting the National Service any more with all of the military depots that have been closed and wound down, some sold off, the rest abandoned. If they were to have a general call-out for one day it would be absolute chaos and totally impossible

This deserted and abandoned camp reminded me very much like Camp B70, the civilian internment camp at Ripples in New Brunswick that WE VISITED IN 2011. And it’s true that, having lived for so long under the shade of the American umbrella, Europe is totally uprepared for war. Regular readers of this rubbish in an earlier guise will remember the endless disputes that I had with the Finnish General in charge of the EU’s military force, trying to steel the force into filling the power vacuum that was developing in the World at the end of the 20th Century.

Later on, down the coast towards St Pair I’d met some British people who had a house right on the seafront. I’d come down from London. I wasn’t quite sure exactly whattheir game was but they were rather shady characters, I suspected. I was out with them one day. We’d been to some kind of do and there had been a buffet there. They told me where I could find something to eat. I went to the table to ask what they had but they didn’t really have anything. I had a coffee in a plastic mug so they poured it into a glass mug and they charged me £0:40, or €0:40. All I had was a £5:00 note so I paid with it and they gave it all back in change. I went and sat down and began to talk.
Shortly later we found ourselves in their house. It’s a big rambling house but so untidy, the garden was full of rubbish and the room in which we were sitting was full of paint tins, people and objects, all DiY stuff etc, paper everywhere. They were talking about all kinds of things, saying that they had a job available for someone who wanted it. I suggested “why don’t we write down on a piece of paper all the skills that we are all good at doing and we can see what we can do”. They thought that that was a funny idea but I thought it an excellent one. In the end they all dispersed and I was sitting there having a think when a girl came in. She asked me if that job had been taken. I replied “as far as I’m aware it’s still going”. She wondered what she could do about it so I told her “why don’t you ask?”. The woman of this house then came in to say that they were all planning to go off to London for a concert or something or other. I said “I’d like to go too”. She replied “you can go in a car with someone and the rest of us will have to go in the buses”. We began to think about preparing to go. I began to have this really uncomfortable feeling about this situation. It’s nice to meet people and it’s nice to be friends and to be involved in things but this was simply far too shady a situation in which I should be involved.

And this reminds me of the “Pink Palace” – that place where I stayed while I was waiting for the previous occupier to move out of “Reyers” when I’d bought it, so that I could move in, back in 1994. That house was a huge house with many single rooms, each one occupied as a kind-of pied-à-terre by single British businessmen when they came to do business in Brussels. That was a very happy three months and I learned a great deal from those people.

Having dealt with the dictaphone I sat back and watched Stranraer totally demolish league-leaders East Fife up in Methil. 3-0 was the final scoreline and it was not undeserved. What I wish though, having seen the dismal displays against Clyde and Forfar, is that they could do this every week.

Next task was to edit the radio notes that I had dictated. But I was nowhere anything like even halfway through when I had to break off for lunch

My bread roll was perfect, my cheese on toasted bread roll exquisite, and I ate it in here, something that I vowed never to do, but today it was because of the other Welsh Cup semi-final.

Cambrian United are seventh in the second tier and have had better seasons than this, and today they have the unenviable task of facing runaway Premier League leaders TNS, fresh from their triumphs in European competition

For the first five or so minutes the team from Tonypandy took the game to TNS but when TNS scored their inevitable first goal, the heads went down and the floodgates opened. At half-time the score was 5-0 and it looked as if we were going to be heading for an embarrassing scoreline.

However, I don’t know what the Cambrian manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a swig of that myself, because it was a different game in the second half. Cambrian were much more relaxed and played some neat football. They kept TNS out for the rest of the game (although I suspect that TNS could have changed up a gear had it been necessary) and had a few chances of their own. Had the referee seen the foul by McGahey on Tim Parker as he was one-on-one with Connor Roberts in the TNS goal, TNS would have finished the game with ten men.

After the final whistle there was bread to make as I have run out (well, I haven’t – there’s some in the freezer but it can stay there for now). It was another sunflower seed loaf, and I set the dough off and left it to rise.

While it was doing its stuff, I had some over-ripe fruit here, apples and kiwis. I’m right of my fruit at the moment so I made a batch of apple and kiwi purée to have at breakfast with half of the stuff. I’ll make some more later on with the rest.

There’s also some oranges that I can’t seem to eat (my taste buds changed dramatically a few weeks ago when I was ill) so when the current breakfast orange juice is finished, I’ll experiment with the liquidiser attachment on my food processor and make some fresh orange juice.

The bread was excellent and my pizza (I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier) was perfect too. In fact, all of today’s baking etc seemed to have gone very well. It killed my legs though, standing up, and when I move downstairs I’ll have one of these screwable stools that I can raise the height of the seat.

But now I’m going to bed. I’ll finish the radio notes tomorrow and do half of my Welsh homework too ready for Tuesday’s lesson. We’re cracking on with our Welsh course but we won’t be anywhere near finishing it by the end of the year and it’s going to over-run.

But while we are on the subject of swimming pools … "well, one of us is" – ed … a boy at that swimming pool in Loretteville ws thrown out while I was there, for … errr … relieving himself into the water.
"But everyone does that in a swimming pool" pleaded the boy
"Maybe they do" said the lifeguard "but not from the top of the high diving board"

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Sunday 9th March 2025 – THAT WAS MORE …

… like what I call a decent night after the last couple that I have had. I was in bed just after midnight and slept right through until about 07:45 without any interruption at all, taking almost full advantage of my extra hour’s Sunday lie-in. I could certainly have done with it too.

After I finished my notes and everything last night I dictated the radio notes ready for editing and refraining from doing more work on the computer, I crawled off to bed for a good night’s sleep.

At 07:45 I had another one of these dramatic awakenings and although I didn’t look at the time I had a good idea of what time it might have been by the fact that it was light outside. I simply curled up under the quilt until the alarm went off.

Last weekend the nurse caught me in flagrante delicto in the bathroom. Today either I was quicker than that or he was later arriving because I was actually back in here when he turned up.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. His take on religion (which we are discussing today) is that "I venture to think that civilised man shares with the savage of today, and with the primitive ancestors of all mankind, the charge of applying perfectly good logic to an insufficiency of facts."

Interestingly he notes a great similarity in religious beliefs between various bands of Native Americans, natives in Guyana and in Brazil, as well as other beliefs shared by other widely-dispersed groups of natives.

Back in here there were the dictaphone notes that needed transcribing. I was with one of the boys from school last night. We were walking along Alton Street in Crewe. He was telling me that what he was looking for was some kind of place where he could give singing lessons and have a kind of pied-à-terre there too. I asked him “what kind of place? But what? First-floor balcony? Open-air roof garden?”. In the end he came down to the idea of a singing workshop with apartment. I said “what you are actually looking for is what you would used to find on every street corner in Crewe in the pre-1920s Crewe which is the old local shop that would have been a grocer’s or a hairdresser’s or something with a two-roomed apartment above it”. Just at that moment we walked past what was a florist’s so I said “just like this in fact”. He wasn’t very enthusiastic but I couldn’t see exactly what he was hoping to do if that wasn’t the solution. While we were pondering on this I stepped out off the kerb into the side-street and was nearly run down by a car coming the other way. I looked around and we were in Nantwich Road near the Earl of Crewe. I wondered what on earth I’d been doing to have walked this kind of distance from Alton Street up to Nantwich Road without thinking about what I was doing and where I was going.

Whoever this boy was and if I recognised him in the dream, I have no idea. But it was certainly a quick transition up the hill from Alton Street to Nantwich Road.

Later on, we were round at my house in Virlet last night, me and a couple of my siblings. The house was in a total mess with dust and rubbish and papers everywhere and hadn’t been lived in for fifty years. They were having a good look around it. We were wandering into the next room looking at the damage and the decay and the waste, all the rubbish and dust. They came to a door in the side wall and managed to force it open. Next door was the Council Chamber which was all richly furnished with seats and huge tables and chairs with silks and everything. The contrast between that room and the rooms in my house was astonishing. They all noticed it and made some remarks. They they picked up a couple of brushes and began to sweep everything up. I’d left everything as it was because I was intending to go through the rubbish and sort out everything that I needed but they just began to brush things up and stick them in bin bags. They went into the bedroom and found that the bedroom was in total disorder and mess that someone must have left the door open, the Christmas tree had fallen down so I’d better go to have a look at that. Then they came to the door at the end of the house and couldn’t open it so they all pushed against it. Suddenly it opened and they cascaded out, falling down one storey into the yard at the back. They asked “how do we come out of here?”. I told them to go down to the end of the alleyway and turn left. I thought “this is the moment when I suppose that I ought to go too”. I locked up the house and left. When I reached the place where they should have been, there was one of these cryptic signs so in the end I interpreted it as “Eric, forget this and go home” so I thought that I’d better set off for home. It was a sunny day with lots of cloud though. All the rain that we’d had over the last few months was slowly beginning to dry out. I thought that this is going to be a really nice day.

The house I actually recognised. It was one in Gresty Road opposite the football ground, one that I knew quite well at one time. But the idea that the Council Offices were next door is a long way short of the mark. The story about the house and dust everywhere sounds just like the farm in Virlet when I was plastering it and dropped a huge bag of screws all over the floor into the dust. I loved my place down in Virlet but it was no place to be when ill-health strikes. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the old man with whom I was quite friendly who had a fall in his house in the middle of a minus eighteen degree winter and lay on the floor undiscovered for four days and never recovered.

There was a bread roll to make for lunch. Last week the fresh bread roll was an excellent idea so I was keen to give it another try.

After that we had the football, Stranraer v Peterhead. It was a tough gritty match that finished 0-0 and quite rightly too because no-one had any much more play than the other. But the disgraceful scenes at the end when the Peterhead coach came onto the field and attacked a Stranraer player have no place whatever in football. And even worse, the referee took no notice whatever of the incident. Whether he mentions it in his match report remains to be seen.

There were the highlights of the matches in the Cymru Premier League to watch too. And Penybont finally won a match in the second phase as they beat Y Bala. Aberystwyth went down 3-0 though and now look certainties for the drop down to Tier Two. Y Drenewydd live to fight another day after a draw with Y Fflint but Llansawel went down at home against Y Barri by a last-minute goal.

Much of the rest of the day has been spent finishing off the uploading of data onto the new system disk. It’s all there now but it needs unpacking and sorting and that is going to be a mammoth task and will take an age until it’s finished

The cheese on toast on fresh bread roll, all cooked nicely in the air fryer, was excellent again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am really impressed with my air fryer, almost as much as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

Later on I had bread to make and following the success of the loaf last week I put sunflower seeds in this one too. And it rose up just as well as the one last week did

There was pizza dough to make too. This was another really good batch that rose up really well. Two lumps are in the freezer and the third made a lovely tea tonight – a tea that would have been even nicer had I remembered to put the cheese on before the cherry tomatoes. I really don’t know what’s happening to me and my memory these days.

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’ll carry on unzipping *.RAR archives for a while and then go to bed ready for Welsh homework and dialysis tomorrow

A few days ago though, we were talking about the dams in Germany that the Dambusters breached. So while we’re on the subject of religion today … "well, one of us is" – ed … when the Mohne Dam broke, the warden telephoned the church in the valley to tell the vicar to flee
"I’ll be okay" he said. "The Good Lord will provide"
When the water reached the church the vicar climbed into the tower. A few minutes later a boat rowed past. "Quick, vicar, leap aboard"
"I’ll be okay" he said. "The Good Lord will provide"
When the church was flooded the vicar climbed up to the steeple
Another boat came past. "Quick vicar, leap aboard!"
"I’ll be okay" he said. "The Good Lord will provide"
But the Good Lord didn’t and the vicar drowned
At the Pearly Gates he met St Peter and he remonstrated with him. "I always believed in the Lord and he betrayed me. Why did the Good Lord let me down and let me drown?"
"Well" said St Peter. "He did send two boats for you."

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Sunday 2nd March 2025 – I NOW HAVE …

… a complete flapjack and also a complete loaf of home-made bread.

And as well as that, I also have a large bowl of leek soup, mainly in the grounds that at lunchtime I wasn’t at all hungry and there’s no point in forcing food down if I don’t feel like eating it. It will do for tea tomorrow night instead, complete with a fresh bread roll that I also made today.

There were in fact lots of things that I didn’t feel like doing, but what accounts for that is the really miserable, wretched night that I had.

It was late when I went to bed, for one reason or another … "mainly the football highlights" – ed … but I was soon asleep. However, not for long. As I said into the dictaphone at the time, “not long after I went to sleep I was talking to a girl about music and one or two popular musical sayings. I didn’t go very far into that dream before someone walked past in the street blowing a saxophone and awoke me, and that was that”.

And that was it too. Not the noise from the disco or the fairground last night, but a whole series of attacks of the most severe cramp that I’d had for ages. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I was having regular severe attacks of cramp, and last night they were back.

There wasn’t much danger of going back to sleep after that.

Anyway, I stayed in bed until the alarm went off at 08:00 and then had a difficult climb out of bed and into the real World. The nurse came round very early today and caught me in flagrante delicto in the bathroom. He wasn’t happy about being made to be kept waiting but that’s his problem not mine.

After he left I made breakfast, had my meditation and read some more of MY BOOK.

We are still wandering around the South Downs admiring the scenery, something that has very little, if anything at all to do with the “Earthwork of England”.

However, I’m still puzzled over his book, even more so these days. Is it a historical account, a scholarly work of reference, a travel guide for the educated tourist or simply an exercise in prose? When you see flowery phrases such as "your dreams here should be of times and peoples yet earlier than the Roman—of taller warriors clad in skins and armed with stone, and of others harnessed in bronze or helmeted with the horned casque of the iron time, but not of those terrible squat interlopers who made such play with the short sword and the pilum, and carried upon their shields the blazon of the thunderbolt." you begin to wonder what on earth he must have been smoking, and could he maybe pass it round to the rest of us?

Back in here there was the dictaphone. Surprisingly, there was something else on it from last night. I went back into that dream … "presumably the one where the saxophone awoke me" – ed … later on and I was talking to a girl from Crewe, one of the friends of a girl whom I knew. She was actually doing something like being a hairdresser, something like that, and I was waiting to have my hair cut. I recognised her and remembered her name, Jennifer Marie something so I said “hello Jennifer Marie”. She looked at me and said “well I’m going to obviously have to change my name if people start recognising me”. I said “yes, change it to ‘Miss Crewe 1962’ ” which made her smile. Then we began to have a chat about the old days when a group of us used to go to the rock venue in High Street in Crewe. It was a real surprise to see her in a dream.

This is rather interesting because the girl concerned didn’t have a friend of that name, and I knew most of them. They were much younger than we were but used to sneak into the rock music venue to watch the groups on Saturday night – the one where I had that very long and interesting chat with that Dutch rock group “Alquin”. At their age (the girls, not Alquin) they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a bar, never mind a night club full of rockers, but they used to tell their mothers that they were sleeping over at a friend’s and the friend would tell her mother that they were sleeping over at the first friend’s – you get the picture. Then at 03:00 when we were thrown out of the club they would go and sit on the station drinking coffee until it was time for them to “come home after breakfast”. I’m surprised that they got away with it for as long as they did but the downfall was inevitable. For once, I managed to keep myself well out of trouble and well out of the picture because even then, the young, naïve irresponsible me had no doubts at all about how it was going to finish. It’s strange though that it should all come flooding back last night.

After that, there was football to watch, Edinburgh City v Stranraer. Stranraer seem to be on a roll at the moment and it carried on today with a hard-fought 1-0 away win up at Meadowbank. Once again, luck was on their side as they survived a few desperate scrambles on their goal-line,

They were also lucky to have finished with all eleven players still on the pitch after a foul that would have seen many other players in many other clubs and many similar moments taking the walk of shame to the tunnel for the early bath.

Then I’ve been intermittently working. I’ve been sketching out the bones of how my “Woodstock” programme is going to work and it’s going to take some organising too. I have very little live music for the groups and artists who played on the Friday night and not much more for the blues artists that appeared on the Sunday night. As for the rock groups on Saturday, I could fill half a dozen programmes with what I have and still have plenty left over.

No lunch, as I said, but I did make a bread roll to eat with it. It will still be good tomorrow night. It means that if I have another bad time at dialysis I shan’t need to worry too much about tea.

The flapjack was interesting though. I added some coconut oil in place of some of the vegan margarine and it certainly made it sweeter. A little softer too, which was surprising.

As for the bread, in view of my recent successes I went back to where I was right at the beginning and added several handfuls of sunflower seeds. Once more, it rose up light a lift and was as soft as anything that I have ever made. And because it was a full-sized loaf, that was baked in the big oven too after the flapjack.

Jamais deux sans trois as they say around here, and the third thing that went into the oven was the pizza. I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier.

This pizza was another resounding success too and tasted as delicious as any that I have ever made. In fact, my baking seems to have moved up another gear right now. I hope that it keeps going.

But I’m not going to keep going. I’m going to bed, hoping that there are no attacks of cramp or people playing the saxophone.

Yesterday though, we were talking about Carnaval and dressing up … "well, one of us was" – ed …
Today I spent some time thinking about if I were fit, well and able to join in, how would I dress up?
At one time I thought to myself "why shouldn’t I dress up and disguise myself as a suitcase?"
But then of course a touch of realism crept in with ourselves and I thought "now let’s not go getting ourselves carried away here with this idea"

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Sunday 23rd February 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy again today. Not only have I completed everything that I intended, or, as TS McPhee would have it, I’ve DONE EVERYTHING THAT I’VE EVER SET OUT TO DO, I had half an hour to spare too, and that’s not something that happens every day. And how I wish that it did.

That was despite several interruptions too, because I can’t seem to have a day without something happening to knock me right out of my stride.

Things actually set off with a good start because I’d finished my work and all of the dictating quite early. Although it was after 23:00 when I went to bed, it was before midnight which means, with my lie-in, that I could have over eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

In theory, at least.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m back with my turbulent sleep patterns, and last night was no exception. And following a Dialysis Day, it was a hot, sweaty night too and I really am going to have to find a solution to this

However, for a change on a Sunday morning, I was still in the bed when the alarm went off at 08:00 and although I can remember times when I have felt less like rising from the bed, there aren’t many of them that have been more difficult than today.

After my trip to the bathroom I came back in here because on a Sunday there’s not much time before the nurse arrives. I made a start on the dictaphone notes (of which there were more than just a few) instead.

In midstream I was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse who tended to my legs and then spent a few minutes trying to make his card reader read my health card so that he can invoice the Social Security for his visits. Being someone who is terminally ill, I’m 100% covered for my medical expenses so I don’t have to pay anything.

After he left, I made breakfast, took my medication and carried on reading MY BOOK.

Today we’re discussing dykes and ditches and we’re back on things about which I might know something.

He’s discussing the building of these earth ramparts and ditches that straddle the countryside and I’m not following his logic at all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the discussion from a few days ago where he stresses that invaders wouldn’t build earthworks and complicated defences. They would be the work of the beleaguered defenders.

Now when you build a wall, the purpose of the wall is twofold – one is to hide behind it and the second is to stop your enemy crossing it. To build a wall, you need to find the earth, so you would have to dig a ditch from which to extract it. That serves two purposes too – it means that you only need to build the wall half as high, because the other half of height is the depth of the ditch, and it also makes the defence stronger.

So if you are going to dig a ditch, you would dig it in front of the earthen bank, firstly to make the defence stronger, and secondly to keep your enemy farther from the wall. If you had the ditch behind the wall, it would allow your enemy to shelter behind the wall and you wouldn’t be able to come close enough to dislodge them. So the ditch will be the direction from where you are expecting the attackers to arrive.

Having said all of that, if the Cambridge ditches are to the south-west of the dykes, why does he propose, on page 511, that "they may very well represent the work of some of the earliest of the Baltic immigrants, who, as is now believed, began to make settlements on the east coast of Britain".

Why would the “earliest of the Baltic immigrants” be building these extravagant earthworks when they are the invaders? Especially when he tells us on page 518 he tells us "none of the finer and more elaborate English dykes contradicts the fact that the civilization of the island has moved always from east to west.", which is, I imagine, what the “earliest of the Baltic immigrants” will be doing.

So although I don’t have a clue exactly what his argument is, I shall refrain from saying “neither does he” because you will all be calling me “T Rice Holmes”.

When I’d finished I began to make a small bread roll for lunch. I’ve enjoyed the ones with my soups and the flexibility of an air fryer means that I can serve up one or two without any effort or heating the big oven

Back in here the first task today was to finish the dictaphone notes. I was preparing myself ready to go to dialysis, explaining to Nerina just how painful it was. She didn’t seem to believe it particularly. She thought that I was being a baby. She told me that I ought to do better with it and think more positively. Then she began to discuss operations with me. That’s the kind of thing that makes me squirm and was causing me all kinds of agony in all different parts of my body so I asked her if she would stop talking about it. Eventually she agreed. Later on that night though I was writing out my notes. She asked if I was writing out the story of what had happened early in the day between the two of us. I replied that I was. She replied “that’s fine as long as you don’t write anything personal about me”. I replied “that’s rather difficult to avoid because the fact that you and I were together is something rather personal”.

Actually, I suspect that the nurses are secretly, under their breath, telling me “not to be a baby” but we all have our phobias. But the situation about people in my dreams, I had a discussion about this with someone just recently. I’m not obviously in control of what goes on during the night and so I don’t usually “name and shame” people who appear. It’s bad enough that they know me at all, poor people, without being outed for it. But some people’s association with me is too well-known to be hidden behind a nickname.

There was a plot of waste land opposite out house in Crewe that actually belonged to us. One day I sat down to clear it all out. I removed most of the weeds, bushes and shrubs, and there was a stream that ran through it. When I was upstairs in the bedroom I could see that it was full of big fish swimming around. I thought that it was wonderful. From a horrible, stony limestone surface it gradually began to turn green as I watched it. I thought that with another couple of hours work we’d have a nice lawn over there with a little featured brook running through. I went outside and sorted out a few things. I had an old Ford Thames van … "a Thames 400E" – ed … parked in the street with no tax and no MoT so I pushed that onto there too. In the end it was really looking quite nice and I was quite impressed with it

There actually was a patch of waste land (almost) opposite the family home in Davenport Avenue when we moved there in 1970. And the story of the fish relates presumably to the fish farming from the other day.

Later on I was working in the despatching of the ambulance company. One of the drivers came in towards the end of his shift and said that he had to go to fuel up his taxi ready for the morning. He asked if he could still keep the same car for tomorrow morning. I said that there’s no reason why he shouldn’t but he’d have to let me know what number it is so that I could mark it down on the sheets. He went outside and I heard his car start so I called him up on the radio and asked him to tell me his number but he didn’t reply and drove out. Then I was in the car with him after that. he said that he still had to go to pick up fuel and his car was number 210. I noted “210” on the sheets and he set off. He drove through Crewe down Badger Avenue and up to Bradfield Road at probably 100 mph. Someone pulled out a little further ahead and he said “look at that person there! No respect for anyone else. I whispered to the other passenger and said “said he, driving at 100mph through the town”. We turned onto Bradfield Road and he said “I hope that the petrol station down here is still open”. When we passed over the railway bridge there was a queue of taxis, the biggest queue you have ever seen. he looked at me and said “all of these will be alright for you, Eric” because of course they were Crewe taxis. He swung round and pulled up onto the station with a big line of vehicles but he weaved his way up the inside and went to an empty pump to fuel the car. There was a van next to us. Our driver had a jerry can and went to fill the car and the jerry can. The woman next to us was pumping diesel and it smelt horrible. he said “that’s a disgusting diesel, isn’t it?”. I replied “it’s the low sugar stuff so it doesn’t smoke and clog up your injectors”. he replied “I can’t think why people use it so I repeated that it doesn’t smoke and doesn’t clog up the injectors.

There is actually a petrol station where this one in the dream was situated. But the whole place being saturated in taxis is most unlikely, particularly as many as there were parked around there last night. But despite all that I have said about Crewe in the past, they do stop and fuel up their cars with diesel. There’s not one single driver left in the town today who stops at the stables to fuel up his cab with a nosebag full of oats

There was also a dream where I was with some friends of my own age. maybe we were at school, I don’t know. Someone turned up with some parcels and I wondered what this was all about because it was nearly Christmas. It turned out that it was a girl who had left. She’d sent some of us some presents and one of them was for me. It looked as if it might have been a cake. I thought “this is nice of her”. When I looked at it, it was the wrapping that resembled the cake. When I undid it, it was a board game all about growing your crops, harvesting them and making all kinds of vegetarian and vegan food, which I thought was really wonderful. One of two of the others then received some strange board games from this girl too. I thought “this is a really nice idea. I shall have to try to find where this shop is and investigate it for myself to see what else they had that I could maybe give as presents to other people”.

That game actually sounds quite interesting and I wonder how it could be made to work. There’s an on-line course doing the rounds on OpenLearn about making a game app for a smartphone and I’ve been debating about using my dialysis spells to catch up with a few more short courses. This game app one might be interesting, with this idea as its theme.

I’d been in Northampton and was heading back out towards the motorway with “that” Liz. We’d gone a different way this time to see what was alongside the motorway the other way. We ended up in this town but didn’t recognise it. It was a very modern town with a huge distribution centre for a supermarket, one of the ones in red, right at the end of the main street. We parked up and walked out to have a look round. We asked these two boys the name of the place. They wanted to know why we were here if we didn’t know where we were. We explained that we’d been to Northampton and wanted to go back a different way. He began to ask passers-by “which is the best way from here to reach the motorway?”. He told us that this place was called TW17. He then went to a travel agent’s to ask her where she could send him on a flight while we decided that we’d go for a look around and maybe have a meal. I set off to find the car to park it somewhere better so that we’d have time to eat.

So here’s “that” Liz back yet again. We had someone who sat on a University Committee on which we served who lived in Northampton and we went there a couple of times. But Liz was more of a friend with her partner and she unfortunately sought her release from her difficulties in an extremely tragic way and we never went again. One thing is certain though. None of this took place in Shepperton.

Next task was to watch the football, Stranraer at home to high-flying Stirling Albion, and against the run of play demolish them 3-0 even though a friend of mine from University days plays in goal for Stirling Albion.

And hats off to Robbie Foster. A big, burly, clumsy but quick and powerful centre-forward, out of his depth at this level of football but due to an injury crisis of epic proportions, forced into the side for the last couple of months.

He knows where to be and what to do – he has all of the strikers’ instincts, but he’s just not able to do it. No-one on any football field ever has ever tried harder than him and today he had his reward when he muscled his way into the path of a loose ball and prodded it home

But one day someone is going to give the “man of the match” award to eighteen year-old Josh Lane, forced into goal for the first team for the last few games. A nervous start a few weeks ago but the last few matches he has pulled off some wonderful saves to give his team a fighting chance.

If you are interested in the highlights, you can SEE THEM HERE

Today’s work was to edit a series of radio programme notes that I’d dictated last night, and prepare or complete the programmes.

The first one was a concert that I stumbled upon in Germany in 1981. I’d written the notes the other day and they were the first that I’d dictated.

By the time that I’d finished the editing I was almost four minutes over, but that was part of the plan because there were several short tracks that I could edit out to fit everything down. So one track then went, a pile of applause and other “irrelevances” followed and it all went together quite nicely

There were two “extra tracks” for the two programmes that I’d prepared last Sunday, and I managed to resolve one of them and complete the programme before lunch.

Lunch was a fresh bread roll cut in half and transformed into “cheese and tomato on toast” in the air fryer. And it really was delicious too. I shall do all of this again too.

This afternoon I attacked the remaining programmes and despite stopping to make a full-sized loaf of bread, I finished bang on the moment as the telephone rang. I’m convinced that Rosemary mounted a camera in this apartment when she was last here.

Our chat today was only a small one, just one hour and three minutes. And the most exciting news is that Myrtille the cat goes to sleep under the bed but when Rosemary awakens, the cat is asleep on the foot of the bed. I’ll give it two weeks before they are both curled up together.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no-one I ever knew ever won a battle with a cat.

After a half-hour break I went to make my pizza. And it’s another one of the “best ever made” pizzas. My loaf was perfection itself too . it all seems to be working fine these days. What I think has been happening is that firstly my technique is improving and secondly, I think that my water measurer is inaccurate. If I use more water than suggested in the recipe it works so much better.

So having done all of my work, I’m having a Day of Rest tomorrow. Well-earned too, I reckon. If only I could work as hard as this all the time.

If I had worked as hard as this when I was at school I probably would have had a different path. I had this discussion with Nerina once and she asked me "what would you have done?"
"I would have been a criminal lawyer" I replied
"How far did you go in your studies?" she asked me.
"Only half-way, I’m afraid" I said. "I still have to do the ‘lawyer’ part."

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Sunday 8th February 2025 – WHEN I DON’T …

… have to go to dialysis, I can have some good days. And today was one of these, in many repsects.

Dictating the notes for the three radio programmes wasn’t so good though. There were loads of errors that I made and I don’t know why. I just couldn’t seem to get it together and once I slipped out of the rhythm I was gone completely. Some of the parts were dictated three times and there will be a lot of editing in the morning.

But one good thing about it was that it wasn’t all that long after midnight that I finished so with the lie-in until 08:00 in the morning I stand a good chance of having a decent sleep.

And I did too. After having sorted myself out ready for bed, once underneath the covers there I stayed, and I didn’t move a muscle until the alarm went off at 08:00.

What a struggle it was to tear myself out of my bed this morning. But I made it and just about finished washing and dressing as Isabelle the Nurse came in.

She told me that there isn’t a real problem about having eaten before the blood test and whether it might be 24 or 72 hours before the hospital visit instead of the prescribed 48. I’ll speak to the dialysis centre people on Monday and see what they have to day.

Seeing as it was Sunday she had plenty of time on her hands so she showed me some photos and videos of her skiing trip, just to make me jealous.

After she left I had my medication, made my breakfast and then went to read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve now moved out of the hills and onto the plains and circular forts. These are, as their name implies, areas with circular defences down on the lowland and being mainly small, it implies that the area was occupied by some kind of closely-related agricultural period.

The difficulty with these is that, being a universal design, they could date from any era at all, even the modern age. But even if they are modern, they more likely have an ancient history, being erected on the site of a previous version of the camp.

If ever you drive up the A6 or M6 to Carlisle, up in Cumbria you’ll see farmhouses in the middle of fields closely surrounded by barns and other buildings, in a circular formation, and I’ve often wondered as I drove past whether they are modern equivalents of the circular camp. Being in an isolated spot near the border with Scotland, it’s almost inevitable that they were going to be targets for any Scottish raider crossing the border and bent on plunder.

One thing though – I’m not sure who his audience is by the style of his writing. I’m not uneducated (at least, I don’t think so) but even I am having trouble with some of his sentence phrasing and the meaning of some deep, hidden archaeological name.

Back in here we had a footfest. All of the JD Cymru League from Saturday including the Cymru North grudge match between Airbus UK Broughton and Colwyn Bay, a real top-of-the-table clash with probably the biggest crowd that has ever been at the Airfield.

That was followed by Clyde v Stranraer and our regular commentator Lawrence Nelson missed the game. He must have known what was coming because I have never ever in my life seen a team play so badly.

The score finished 2-0 to Clyde, and Stranraer were lucky to get nil. Clyde weren’t much better. They missed so many sitters that I gave up counting after seven. Had Clyde been any good it could have been an embarrassing scoreline.

This is a match that no fan of either team will want to see again but if you are feeling brave, THEN THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE HERE, complete with the Keystone Cops defending.

For lunch I had a lovely cheese salad butty. That bread that I made the other day really is exceptionally good and with vegan cheese, lettuce, tomato and salad dressing, it’s really good.

Back in here this afternoon I’ve been radioing.

The notes for the final track of programme 251024 have been edited and incorporated into the two halves of the rest of the programme. The music for the final track had been edited into the stream and so that programme is now ready to go.

The notes for programme 251107 were then edited and my little “discussion phrase” has been edited in. As it’s a concert these notes go onto the front of the music, which I had assembled during the week.

It ended up over-running by 36 seconds but that’s no problem to edit out. That’s now complete and ready to go to

Finally, the notes for 251114 need editing. That’s a full programme of 10 tracks (and one to come later) and I’d almost finished when Rosemary rang.

“Can you spare a minute?” she asked, and so 46 minutes later …. . Yes, only 46 minutes. We’re losing our touch.

There had been a few other interruptions too. There was my 16:15 mid-afternoon pause and after that I had a few things to do.

First was to make some pizza dough. That was absolutely excellent and it rose up like a train. Once it had proofed I divided it into three balls – two into the freezer and a third ready to use

Next was some date bread. I’d bought a pile of dates for Christmas and hadn’t even opened them so I must use them soon. I found a date bread recipe that is quite similar to an oil cake, so seeing as I can make one of those, then why not?

I then rolled out the lump of dough on the table and put it in the pizza tray ready for later.

After I’d finished with Rosemary I dashed into the kitchen to check the date bread and it was perfect. I’ll tell you all tomorrow how it tastes. And I assembled quickly the pizza and bunged it in the oven.

30 minutes later I had the best pizza that I have ever made. Really and honestly. If I could make them as good as this every time I wouldn’t be bothered by anyone or anything.

But seeing as we have been talking about rhythms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was once asked "what name is given to people who practise the rhythm method of birth control?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "What name is given to people who practise the rhythm method of birth control?"
"We call them ‘parents’."

0

Sunday 2nd February 2025 – MY VEGAN PIZZA …

…. tonight was rather like the curate’s egg – good and bad in parts. It was not up to the standard of the previous weeks.

Mind you, there was a very good reason for that, as you will find out as you draw near to the end. And if you do arrive at the end, I’ll admire you for your patience because you certainly have more than I do.

So I’m getting well ahead of myself right now.

Last night after finishing my notes and backing up, I had some things to do and then I dictated the notes that I’d written. There are the notes for the final track from programme 251017, the notes for the ten tracks that make up the bulk of programme 251024 and then the notes for the concert on which I’ve been working for programme 251031.

And it was the latter one where I had all of the headaches. On dictating it, I discovered that for some reason I’d missed out a whole line when I’d copied the notes from the note-tab onto the database. I had to stop in mid-dictate, write the missing line (which ended up being two lines) because God only knows where the electrons went and then re-dictate the rest of the programme to include the missing parts.

It’s no wonder at all that I run so late sometimes

Eventually I made it into bed, much later than I intended. But despite a really deep, sound sleep, how many times is it now that I’ve awoken on a Sunday morning well before the alarm went off and covered in sweat? Because that’s precisely what happened again this morning.

Yes, when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already in the bathroom having a good scrub up ready for the morning, not that there’s anything likely to be happening here but you never know.

Back in here I’d made a start on the dictaphone notes but I was interrupted by the nurse. He didn’t have too much to say for himself today and was soon gone. However, I wish that he’d taken the empty box of gloves with him or put it in the paper bin instead of just leaving it lying around on the kitchen worktop

Once he’d gone I could make breakfast and carry on reading.

There is, for a change, a bibliograohy, something that T Rice Holmes conveniently omitted from his magnum opus. And so, with a bibliography to hand I followed it up.

Most of the books were far too modern to be on an out-of-copyright site, but some of them were research notes in *.pdf format, freely available on line to download.

Except one, that is, and I had to jump through various hoops in order to arrive at the download portal. And no prizes for guessing who manages this particular download portal. That’s right – it’s Cambridge University and they want €48:00 for me to look at the research notes that they hold.

Most of the research notes, as I have said, are on-line and are freely available to anyone who cares to look at them but Cambridge University is grimly clutching on to theirs like death.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I went there to look at the papers of William Cory Johnson but I was sharply dismissed with a flea in my ear, being told that "the papers have been bequeathed to us, and so you can’t see them until any researcher from our own University has had first choice of looking at them."

That’s fair enough, but they have been there waiting since 1877 and no-one from the University has bothered to look at them in almost 150 years. How long are we expected to wait?

Cambridge University is really taking the mickey with the academic papers that it holds.

So, abandoning another good rant for the moment I came back in here to carry on listening to the dictaphone. I was watching one of these playful silent comedy films about a playful cat. He had found fun chasing after the leaves etc. He’d somehow ended up with a really bushy tail. There was something in the street like a cylindrical piece of cardboard that was propped upright. He’d dashed into the street and had somehow managed to end up underneath it. The tube was around him and you couldn’t see him but you could see his tail. It looked as if the tail was attached to this centre of cardboard. Every now and again this centre of cardboard would move – it would move backwards and cover the tail so that there was nothing there but it would move forwards and it would uncover the tail, and then rattle back and forth rapidly, and the suddenly would take off down the street. Everyone who was watching must have had a strange idea about what was happening. Eventually the cat lost interest and went into the local pub for a beer. It left its cylinder outside.

It’s not easy to overcome the image of a cat going into a pub for a beer, I’ll tell you that. But the idea of the playful cat with the fluffy tail reminds me of Gilligan, the little … "little?" – ed … Maine Coon kitten that my niece found at the mill as if someone had dumped it there.

Anyway she took it home and it joined the other two cats. But being a kitten, it’s extremely playful and when I was there in the Autumn of 2022 I watched it play for hours with wind-blown leaves.

So does this dream mean that I’m hankering after a trip to Maritime Canada again? It was there and then in Autumn 2022 that I caught that bug that nearly killed me and left me damaged for life.

Once I’d finished the dictaphone notes, I looked for the football and Stranraer’s game against Spartans. For just about the first time for as long as I have been watching Stranraer’s games, they actually did have the rub of the green and all of the lucky breaks went their way today

They certainly rode their luck and at the final whistle they were 2-0 winners. But had the game gone as previous ones had, they would have been well-beaten. It just goes to show what luck will do on a football pitch.

Afterwards I went and made a bread roll and then began the broccoli stalk soup.

And with the pot of soya yoghurt thrown in for good measure, it really was delicious for lunch, especially with the best bread roll that I have ever made. It would have been even better had I remembered the fresh ground pepper.

This afternoon I had to edit all of the notes that I dictated last night.

For programme 251017 I edited them down combined them with the extra track to which they relate and assembled the complete programme. I was 11 seconds over but I can edit that out, no problem. What I dictate is written in a way that paragraphs or sentences can be cut out without losing the meaning, the sense or the rhythm of the commentary.

And doing that in a different language to your own native tongue is not easy.

For programme 251014 there were the notes for the first ten tracks. I always aim for ten tracks and their notes to be about 55 minutes and 30 seconds, and add in the final track and its notes (that I dictate at a later date) once I know how big the gap is.

For example, the ten tracks and their notes ran to 55:12, meaning that I had 4:48 left over, so with 45 seconds of notes, means that the final track has to be 4:03 long. So I choose a track that length, write one minute of notes that I can edit down as necessary, and there we are. A programme exactly one hour long.

There’s a natural break in the programme when I’m having my discussion with Louis de Funès so the extra track and its notes are inserted after there.

However, at teatime I hadn’t arrived anywhere near the end of editing the notes. Rosemary rang me for a chat just as I was getting into my stride, and so we had a little chat.

Just a little chat today. Only one hour and fifty-one minutes. We are definitely losing our touch

That’s the reason why my pizza wasn’t so good tonight. It was very, very rushed and the dough did not have the time to prove. But I enjoyed it nevertheless.

So, running late once again, I’m off to bed. The notes for the programme 251024 are now completed and the two halves are prepared, the final track has been chosen and remixed, and the notes written ready for dictation.

The notes for the concert, which remain unedited, I reckon that I might be able to edit them with one hand so I’m going to have a go at the dialysis centre tomorrow. The portable computer is old and slow so I don’t know how it will do, but it’s worth a try. If I can accomplish that, then it opens up whole new doors for me.

We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about Cambridge University … "well, one of us has" – ed … a young girl from Magdalene College was changing in the gymnasium when her tutor noticed a rather large “W” on her stomach.
She sent her to the doctor who looked at it and laughed. "it looks as if you have a boyfriend in Wolfson College. Does he wear his college jumper when he is making love to you?"
"I don’t have a boyfriend at all" she replied nervously. "In fact my only close friend here in Cambridge is my room-mate here in Magdalene, and she’s never without her college jumper."

0

Sunday 19th January 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… what at first might sound like a really quiet day but it really wasn’t. I might not have seemed to have done much but I haven’t stopped. Not even for a moment.

After I’d finished writing out my notes I had some dictation to do – to dictate the notes that I’d written earlier in the week. That didn’t take too long and after I’d watched a couple of TV interviews on the internet, I crawled off to bed. I’d actually made it (for once) before midnight so with the lie-in until 08:00 I was going to have a decent sleep.

And I didn’t turn over or turn round much either. It did take an age to drop off, but once I’d gone, that was it.

Whatever it was that awoke me, I’ve no idea but at 07:45 I was wide awake, bolt-upright, 15 minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

And so, if I’m awake and there’s a possibility of recording an “early start”, then why not? When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was actually in the bathroom sorting myself out. How many times is this since dialysis began that a Saturday morning has been an “early start”?

After the bathroom I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, to find out where I’d been during the night. We’d been on a holiday, on a cruise. The cruise had come round ready for people now to start the homeward leg. There was a fair bit of grumbling amongst the passengers about, first of all, parking the cars. There was some strangely-worded statement about people not turning up at the office, which, if interpreted in some way, meant that there was no parking for their vehicles. I somehow felt that it meant that one couldn’t go along and queue inside the office while you were waiting to be signed in. Everyone had his own interpretation on this. We talked about cars parked in a long-term car park for ages, and people with fork-lift trucks lifting them out of the way to put their cars in their place. We came back from this excursion and had to change out of our wet clothes into dry clothes. everyone else had done this and was drifting off on board and I couldn’t get out of my clothes. I couldn’t push my feet through my trouser legs. Everyone was drifting further and further away and I was still struggling. There was one guy and his wife still there. He’d been criticising some of the arrangements because he’d noticed that it was a very early start that morning. He’d posted something on the Group’s chat site that “I bet that it will be a packed lunch and cup of coffee on board the train for our breakfast rather than a sit-down meal in the hotel”. He’d been summoned by the Cruise Director and given a lecture and telling-off, so he reckoned that that was exactly what was going to happen. Eventually I managed to put on some kind of clothing and was able to catch up with the throngs although it was most uncomfortable. Then I heard that the rumour that this guy had started had actually been the truth. We were all to board the train and we’d be given a packed breakfast and cup of coffee once we were on board. The walkway over to this train was a narrow, rickety bridge suspended over a huge gap that was probably over 100 feet down. With all the people on this bridge swarming towards the train I was thinking that this bridge wasn’t going to withstand the pressure and we’d all go crashing down to the ground.

Whatever the story about the car park is, I’ve no idea. When I read this I had an image of a car hire office at the airport in Montreal, but don’t ask me why that vision came into my head because I can’t think of any comparable incident. Changing out of wet gear into our normal clothes was something that we did twice a day (at least) on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR after we clambered out of the zodiacs that ran us around in the various bays and straits up in the High Arctic. However the struggle was usually when we had to put on our gear and rush for a zodiac that we might otherwise miss and all our friends and fellow-passengers would leave the ship without us. There wasn’t a chat group for the passengers though – sometimes we were in places where not even a satellite wi-fi system would work.

There was however a passerelle or “walkway” that collapsed – AT RAMSGATE IN 1994 but I was nowhere near that at the time. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and didn’t stop for long. She didn’t have very much to say today, except that the weather really was freezing this morning, which was what I expected.

After she left I made myself breakfast, and then took my time eating it while I read MY BOOK.

Once more, I wasn’t going to waste neither my time nor yours posting more of the same old same old, except to say that at one point he describes with absolute and utter derision the argument of someone whom he freely admits is described as "at the head of living students of English history"

He spends page after page after page scoffing at the idea that Wissant was the port from which Caesar set sail (as if it matters in a book about Britain) concluding with "the claim of Wissant to be identified with the Portus Itius cannot be admitted.".

That was his position in 1907. Having spent page after page in treating with derision the writers who have changed their position over the years, in May 1909 he submitted a paper to the Classical Review, giving "strong reasons for preferring Wissant".

There was bread to make next. I had soup to make later and so I need a fresh bread roll. And that’s the advantage of the air fryer – I can bash out a bread roll whenever I like.

Today’s soup was broccoli stalk soup, with potato, onion, shallot and various herbs and spices, using up the last of the water from the blanching exercise of last weekend.

Heaping in a pot of soya yoghurt gave it that final touch, even if I did forget the black pepper and the tiny pasta elbows. Nevertheless, it was delicious and I’ll make more of that any time. If you want the recipe it’s HERE but it now has a shallot added to it too.

After lunch I came back in here ready to start work but first there was the football – Stranraer v East Fife. East Fife won 2-0 with the first goal being a foul and a wicked deflection, and the second being a handball. And if you think that I’m making it up, you can see for yourself in the HIGHLIGHTS. And you can hear the best TV football commentators in the entire country while you watch the game.

After that I settled down to edit the notes that I dictated last night but I didn’t get far. Someone came on line to whom I wanted to chat and this desultory chat went on until late in the evening, meaning that I could only edit the notes in the pauses between the chats.

We did however stop for tea. I’d taken a lump of dough out of the freezer earlier and it had been defrosting. Later on I rolled it out and put it onto the pizza tray ready to assemble.

Once it had risen I attacked the base and put on the tomato and pepper sauce, the olives, onions and mushrooms, sprinkled it with herbs, put on the vegan cheese and then a couple of nice rows of cherry tomatoes cut in half.

This one was nothing very much different than any other that I have baked but for some reason it tasted by far the best that I have ever made, and the cheese melted wonderfully. If only I knew the secret I’d make many more of those.

So tonight I’m off to bed, and tomorrow we’ll all wake up in a New World where the people of Canada and Greenland will be looking for the rest of the World to save them. Being threatened by a madman armed to the teeth backed by a crowd of paranoid lunatics is no way to live.

While we’re on that subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of Trump’s aides dashed into his office. "I dreamed about you last night" He said.
"Really?" asked Trump. "What was it?"
"Well," replied the aide. "You were being driven down Pennsylvania Avenue. People were cheering, flags were waving, kids were dancing and everyone was partying "
"Wow" Replied Trump. "That must have been wonderful. But tell me – my hair – how was my hair?"
"We couldn’t see" replied the aide. "We couldn’t get the lid off your coffin."

-1

Sunday 12th January 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to put his lentils in the slow cooker overnight ready to make his vegan pies today?

That’s right, folks. Brain of Britain strikes again!

What I’ll have to do, if I remember, is to put them in the slow cooker overnight on Tuesday so that they are ready for baking on Wednesday. I can’t leave things another whole week or the pastry will walk out of the fridge on its own.

The thing about the lentils is that you put them in the slow cooker on high heat, and after about an hour when they begin to boil, you drain them off and rinse them. Then put them back in with fresh clean water and a variety of herbs and spices, and leave them on a slow setting for twelve hours by which time they should be cooked and taste nice.

Then fry some onions, shallots, garlic and a block of tofu (chopped finely) in a wok with herbs and spices and anything else you like (I used a tin of sweet corn last time),.

When it’s cooked, tip the lentils in and then simmer it right down with a stock cube, and then add a few handfuls of oats to stiffen the mix, and there you have your filling for a vegan pie. Mine will of course be different because I’ll probably be adding other stuff too, but I never know what, until the final moment.

That’s the thing about vegan cooking – you can experiment with all different kinds of things to see how it all ends up.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, after I’d finished my notes I had some dictating to do – the eleventh or “missing” track from the programme that I recorded before Christmas, and then the one for this famous concert that I’ve been pasting together from a collection of off-cuts.

After that I should have gone to bed, but onto the playlist came Neil Young and a mammoth 16-minute version of DOWN BY THE RIVER and how is it possible for anyone to go to bed when Neil Young is singing “Down By The River”?

There once was a girl who "could drag me over the rainbow and send me away" but that ship sailed a long time ago.

So last night we ended up with a “Neil Young Live” playlist and it was horribly late once more when I went to bed.

Once in bed though, I stayed in bed fast asleep with just the odd awakening here and there. But I was definitely asleep when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE aroused me from my slumber. It’s not just “Peel’s view-halloo” that “could awaken the dead” or “the sound of his horn” that “brought me from my bed”.

Bearing in mind it’s Sunday and I’ve had a small lie-in, I can’t hang about and I was straight into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for today.

Back in here there was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing some 3D modelling during the night, making figures and shapes. I wanted to make the shape of a girl but when I looked on my workspace I already had made a shape that I wanted so I had to rework it into a different shape. While I was doing that the first girl disappeared so that meant that I could make this figure back into the shape that I wanted at the start. When it was finished there was no enemy or anything in sight so I just had to make any kind of poses on a hillside. Then this other girl came to join her and this was when it began to be complicated. I decided that I’d better rework the new arrival and make some other figure that wouldn’t be similar to the one that I had.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any serious 3-D modelling. But now that my adventure down in the Auvergne is over, there’s no real need for it – certainly not in this apartment. It might come in handy if ever I decide to join a Virtual World community but I don’t even have the time to cope with all of the problems that arise in this World, never mind another one.

And then I was staying in some boarding house somewhere. I’d only not long arrived. It had been concerned with a road accident in which a vehicle pulling out onto a main road had sent a small child hurtling through the air so everything had come to a standstill. I found myself at the front of the queue where I could see a car parked in the middle of the road, a person on his ‘phone and a small child lying in the roadway so I imagined that everyone would be ‘phoning the police and ambulance. There was also something quite interesting. At another road junction was a guy digging a hole in the road from underneath. To protect his head when he came out he had a wooden box that he put over the hole and he put his head in it to work. One car came over and flattened it. He raised his head again and another car stopped. This was a side-lift fork lift truck and it began to lift up this box. It lifted up this guy and his girlfriend with it and pulled them out of the hole. This began a huge argument and dispute with a lot of name-calling. When I arrived back at my little hostel place whatever there was another couple there being interviewed for signing in. They were two young people, quite tall, quite well-built and speaking in a North American accent. After they had signed in, they came into the room where the rest of us were sitting and asked if there were any other Canadians in here. I was on the point of working out whether I should speak to them in English or French to see whether they were Québecois or Anglophone.

That was a totally strange dream too, tunnelling up to the road surface and putting a box over your head and then being pulled out by a side-life forklift truck. There’s no doubt that my dreams are usually quite interesting, even if I have no idea of what has brought them to the forefront.

The nurse was late today. He’d probably had a lie-in too . He didn’t hag around long, so I could make my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Apart from the usual scything and scathing remarks directed at his contemporaries, he notes that two of his colleagues consider that "a tall, broad-headed, dark-haired, light-eyed people ’, whom they regard as the descendants of the men of the Bronze Age ’, formerly inhabited Aberdeenshire, but were driven inland by later blond immigrants, who were shorter and had narrower heads ….. But is it the fact?" and then devotes a couple of pages in rubbishing their theories.

However, remember a week or so when we were discussing the presence of stone circles, menhirs … "PERSONhirs" – ed … and “nothing”? It looks to me as if his two colleagues do have some kind of case worth arguing.

On page 428 of his book, he attacks the arguments of a colleague by saying that "Very likely the round-headed race which he has in mind did not make its way across Europe unmixed ; but the mixture did not greatly diminish the roundness"

However, on page 445, he attacks another one of his colleagues because "his arguments, which I have examined fully elsewhere, do not prove that the dominant Celts among the Belgae were dark, but simply that, before they invaded Britain, they had become largely intermixed with an older dark population, and that, since they reached this country, they and their descendants have intermarried with people darker than themselves"

Leaving aside the question about “intermarriage” and that any cross-breeding of invader and native inhabitant is more likely to be by violence than by a priest turning up to bless the union, I’m trying now to work out how “crossbreeding” can cause one characteristic to be inherited to some great extent but not another to at least the same extent.

Back in here afterwards, there was football to watch. Clyde peppering the East Fife goal with shots and East Fife just having three shots on goal. Anyone care to guess the score?

And why was I watching that game? Because, once more, Stranraer’s game was postponed. And that’s just as well because Stranraer seems to have lost half its team in this transfer window so far.

Once the football was finished, I had the soundtrack of two radio programme notes to edit.

The first one was quite straightforward and hardly needed anything at all editing out – just the odd second or two which is no big deal.

The second one was this complicated concert and its notes. That overran by well over a minute and it’s really ironic that part of the vocal introduction that had given me some of the most difficulty was one of the parts that ended in the bin. It’s always like that, isn’t it?

The joins however where I’ve had to fade songs in and out and edit in a few rounds of applause seem to be done perfectly. I’m listening to it right now and I’m really impressed with those. But strange as it is, I’ve been using this sound-editing program for ten years and I’m still finding out tips and hints about it and making it work better for me.

There were several breaks – for making soup and a bread roll for a start. It was a beautiful leek and potato soup today with a pot of soya yoghurt and plenty of black pepper stirred in. The fresh bread roll, hot out of the air-fryer, made all the difference.

Later on, there was pizza dough to make. That went well too, and there are now two balls in the freezer and the third I rolled out, assembled and baked. And that was perfect.

So what’s going to happen at the Dialysis Centre tomorrow? Will it be another three and a half hours of excruciating agony? I don’t see what else it could be. In any respect I’m not looking forward to it.

But going back to these stone circles … "well, one of us is" – ed … archaeologists were puzzled by a strange, fossilised spiky animal that they had unearthed when they were excavating a stone circle somewhere
The took it to the Natural History Museum and found the curator. They asked him if he could identify it
"We found it when we were excavating that stone circle" said an archaeologist. "Do you know what it is?"
"Now that you told me where you found it, of course I do" said the curator. "It can only be a hengehog!"

0

Sunday 5th January 2025 – DID YOU ALL ..

… enjoy my radio programme this weekend? I hope that you all listened to it over the weekend. But if you missed it, shame on you, and you can hear it HERE and even dpwnload it it you like.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, today is the last day of my two weeks off work. Tomorrow the alarm goes on at 07:00 again and I start work, whenever the dialysis centre and my Welsh course (which restarts on Tuesday) let me.

So to celebrate, I intended to have a late night last night but I gave up the struggle round about midnight and crawled off to bed instead.

It was another hot, sweaty night after the Saturday dialysis session, as I have observed on several occasions. But I must have been asleep at some point because at 06:55 I was awoken by a phantom alarm call.

It was definitely a phantom call because I don’t have an alarm recorded at that time. Nevertheless, it certainly sounded like an alarm and I ended up sitting on the edge of the bed before realising that it was a false alarm, and once I’d realised that it was in fact a false alarm I went back to bed.

It goes without saying though that I couldn’t go back to sleep so at about 07:30 I gave up the struggle and arose from the Dead.

When the alarm went off I was at my desk working. I’d already had a really good wash and been into the kitchen to take my medicine so that I could have a good start to the day.

With time to spend, I had a listen to the dicaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was actually with a girl last night and I don’t know why because it was someone about whom I wouldn’t have thought anything in a million years. We were a couple. There had been something going on that had left everyone very dirty. It was an extremely messy day, something like that. At the end of it, I had to go somewhere so off I went. When I came back she was waiting. We ended up talking about our children although we didn’t have any at that particular moment. The plan was that we’d have two. She asked which one was going to be mine. I replied that it’s inevitable that it’s going to be a daddy’s girl, isn’t it? The assumption then is that she’s going to be a mummy’s boy. For some reason she quite liked the sound of all of that

“I was with a girl last night and I don’t know why”. … "Of course you do. Be your age!" – ed … But even though I might have known her in my dream, I don’t have a clue who she was now that I’m awake – if I really am awake right now. I keep on thinking that one day I’m going to awaken and it’s all, this last few years, been a rather unpleasant dream. But if I were to have had a daughter, my little princess would have been a daddy’s girl alright and been spoiled rotten.

And everyone very dirty? It sounds just like real life used to be, and I’m not talking about mud either. It just seems that a lot of smut has been wiped out of everyone’s mind these days compared to the good times that we had in the 60s and 70s

Did I dictate the dream about the children who used to go swimming with the whales in a swimming pool? … "no you didn’t" – ed … They launched some kind of fund-raising activity to raise funds and support the whales. It proved to be extremely successful so someone else organised a fund-raising activity. His aim was to provide food for the whales, to put something in their mouths, with the implication that they’d been doing this with these kids previously. For some reason that didn’t seem to be quite so popular as the previous one

That must relate to some news that we heard on the radio in the car about a big Marine holiday park closing down, and thousands of animals there are in danger. It’s all very well having these places closed down and I’m all in favour, but what becomes of the animals there? They can’t usually be released into the wild as they have no idea of how to fend for themselves.

And then finally Liz and I were back in the good old days of running “Radio Anglais”. It suddenly occurred to me one day that we hadn’t prepared a magazine for Radio Anglais for years. That was something that we used to do every couple of weeks religiously, to have something prepared and something organised. I wondered why it had suddenly fallen off the radar somehow. I had to have a sit and think about this – about how I was going to revitalise it and how I was going to restore it. We used to receive contributions from all of the other people working on the radio. What had happened that had stopped it? Should we go back and maybe restart it? Or is it a case of letting sleeping dogs lie? I remember being extremely perplexed and bewildered about this.

This dream was actually so real that I still can’t make up my mind even now that I’m awake whether it was ever something that we really did. It was actually quite disturbing that I found myself in such a state. It’s a long time since I’ve had such a vivid, realistic dream.

Isabelle the Nurse had a few more minutes to spare today and wasn’t in such a rush as usual. I suppose that with it being a Sunday the Laboratory is closed so there ae no blood tests. She spent her last week off working on her Carnaval float. It’ll be Carnaval Weekend sometime soon. She’s not telling me anything about the design of her float – it needs to be a big surprise for everyone.

After she left, I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK Caesar is now back in Gaul suppressing rebellions and fading from our picture as other Roman Emperors discuss the problem of what to do with the Britons. The story is that now that Caesar has regulated things with them, they can import and export to Gaul and the port taxes for unloading and loading far exceed any tribute that might be demanded, so it’s best to leave things be for a while.

Our author has made several references to Strabo’s “Geographia”. Strabo was a Roman scholar who travelled extensively and over a period of about 30 years from 7BC to AD24 wrote a whole series of books about the places that he visited and also the places about which he had extracted information from other traveller. It goes without saying that a copy of all 17 of his books IS AVAILABLE ON-LINE so I downloaded them for future reference. The list of books to read is growing enormously right now.

After breakfast I made some bread – a loaf for the week to come and a bread roll for this lunchtime because there is plenty of soup in the fridge and it needs using.

So at lunchtime I had a bowl of leftover butternut squash and potato soup with a fresh bread roll straight out of the air fryer. Lunch doesn’t get much better than this. There are some leeks that need using so I imagine that I’ll be having soup next weekend too.

Once lunch was out of the way I had a relaxing afternoon, not doing very much at all. In fact, I was trying to design a 3D head from a couple of photograph. The head itself didn’t take too long but I still can’t produce an accurate nose and the more I try, the worse it becomes. I’ve already restarted three times because I’ve got myself into such a mess

At one point I switched it all off and went for a slice of Christmas Cake to raise my morale so that I could start again.

Tea tonight was a vegan pizza, and another good job that was. At lunchtime I’d taken the last helping of dough out of the freezer and once it had defrosted I gave it a good kneading and then rolled it out onto the pizza tray. This evening I almost forgot the olives on the pizza but luckily I remembered them on time

There’s no doubt though – I’m going to have to do something about my oven. This table-top oven is really not up to the job. When I finally do move downstairs I’ll certainly be having an enlarged kitchen complete with built-in oven and built-in microwave.

Right now though, I’m off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But that story about the Marine Park reminds me of the two rather large girls talking and having a drink in a bar in Bar Harbor, Maine. A local comes over to them and says "what a beautiful accent you have. I’ve not heard that before."
"Thank you" replied the girls
"Tell me" he continued. "are you two ladies from Ireland?"
"It’s ‘Wales’ actually" said one of them
"I’m terribly sorry" replied the man. "Are you two whales from Ireland then?"

0

Sunday 29th December 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy yet again today, and in the kitchen is a pile of food, all busy cooling down.

However, it’s not without its downside. I have been on my feet since 10:30 this morning and I’m totally wasted. In both my knees I have a pain that I can’t describe and I’m in agony.

As well as all of that, when the Sunday alarm went off at 08:00 this morning I was already up and about, and that’s despite the very late night … "or early morning" – ed … that I’d had.

It was approaching 02:00 when I crawled into bed last night. After I’d finished writing my notes and doing my backing-up, I stayed up for quite some time looking for stuff on the internet and reading a few various website. I wasn’t in any hurry.

But once in bed I stayed in bed, fast asleep until something dramatic awoke me at 07:05. No idea what it was, but I do recall that I have awoken dramatically before at that time. There’s something in the area happening that’s disturbing me.

So having awoken at that unearthly time I gave up trying to sleep at about 07:40 and headed to the bathroom for a wash and scrub up.

Next port of call was the kitchen to take my medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. I’m dictating into my hand again. I was down in Virlet last night at one of the big ruined houses on the land that I own. I was thinking of doing something on one of the plots there with one of the ruins so I went down to look. There were enough ruins there and enough plots of land so if necessary I could submit a planning application for each one and that way, see what happens and how things develop. Virlet in the dream was nothing like my place at all. It was like a place that we have visited before with a much more traditionally-rural area with fewer hedges, more-open fields and a kind-of metal fence with plenty of tracks criss-crossing the area. These ruins were behind my house but raised up slightly so that they overlooked it.

This is a place that we’ve visited before during the night. But a long time ago, I think. But for a fleeting minute it did remind me of the place where we squatted near Audlem that winter 1977/78. Or was it 1976/77? But in any case, going from living in a squat and in the back of a van, within two years I was living in a brand new two-bed semi in Winsford.

Later on, I was with my girlfriend last night. She was a small, dark-haired girl. We were wandering around somewhere near a hotel and we suddenly realised that my brother and his girlfriend were there. We decided to go along and pay them a visit. When we arrived, my brother was on the ‘phone. He’d advertised a couple of his things for sale and was talking to someone as if someone had rung up to enquire about one of them. Whilst he was speaking on the ‘phone I went to tickle him. That interrupted his flow and he was not impressed. His girlfriend was there, a tall willowy girl. My girlfriend went in the meantime to look at his books. She found a book that she didn’t like for various reasons and boohed at it. The two of us were on our way into town for a wander round, go for a meal, look at the shops. We mentioned it to my brother, and he and his girlfriend agreed to come. We left his hotel room and walked down the corridor. My girlfriend suddenly said “I’ve left my pen on your leather chair”. We agreed to come back for it later. When we reached the door (we were on about the fifth floor) we had to wait for the lift, or go down the steps. Of course I had to use the lift because I couldn’t walk very well. My girlfriend looked out of this door and just jumped all the way down to the ground floor. We thought that she was crazy. The other two dashed down the steps after her. What I did was to position myself on the edge of one of the stairs and push myself. After a couple of minutes I had enough momentum and could slide all the way down. There were all these football supporters on the steps and they all cleared off out of the way as I shot past. When I reached the bottom, some of them came over. They expressed their admiration of what I’d done. To me, it was no big deal. It was just a case of finding the correct position, but they were really impressed by me coming down all those flights of stairs by just sitting on the edge of a stair and sliding down. In the end the manager of one of the teams came over and told me that he would like to meet me in the boardroom on one occasion in the near future. I asked myself “what on earth have I started now?”.

This is obviously a dream because I cannot imagine any circumstance in real life that would make me want to visit my brother. And also I can’t imagine any circumstance in real life during which I would have a girlfriend either, but that’s another story.

Girlfriends going berserk wouldn’t be a surprise either – there were a couple of those, and “what on earth have I started now?” – there have been quite a few moments where I have said that to myself.

The nurse was late today – he’d had a lie-in. And we had the usual banal questions before he cleared off and I could bet on with things. I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are discussing the Hallstatt community in Austria. This existed for about 800 years, from 1200BC to 400BC and is classed as one of the first of the modern civilisations, with a modern industrialised community.

It centres around an important salt mine and several settlements around there were continuously occupied over this period, and so it’s been possible for archaeologists to observe quite closely the transformation from the end of the Stone Age all the way through to the modern Iron Age.

It’s a fascinating subject, and I was lost for hours amongst the pages of various websites that I’d found where this civilisation was discussed.

Interestingly though, the site ended in disorder. We are told that "there was widespread disruption throughout the western Hallstatt zone" and that "many Hallstatt graves were robbed, probably at this time"

As to what happened round about that time,."the apparently largely peaceful and prosperous life of Hallstatt D culture was disrupted, perhaps even collapsed, right at the end of the period. There has been much speculation as to the causes of this, which remain uncertain. Large settlements such as Heuneburg and the Burgstallkogel were destroyed or abandoned, rich tumulus burials ended, and old ones were looted. There was probably a significant movement of population westwards"

There has also been a discussion about a Carthaginian named Himilco.

The story of the navigation of Pytheas around the British Isles and Iceland in about 325BC is well-known, but 200 years earlier, Himilco set sail from somewhere in modern Portugal to the British Isles to bring back the tin that could be found there, according to rumour.

And there’s no doubt that he succeeded too because his reports were found to be quite accurate. However he didn’t return because the journey completely frightened him. Instead, the tin from Cornwall was shipped across to France and came to the Mediterranean by land and river.

First task this morning was to make a bread roll. And then some soup using most of the butternut that is left. That was lunch, and I do have to say that butternut squash soup is delicious, especially with fresh bread warm from the air fryer. Even better, there’s some left over and that will do for New Year.

This afternoon I’ve been making chocolate, ginger, coconut and orange cake and another large helping of flapjack. It took ages but mixing the stuff in the food processor is definitely the way to go. That was a good purchase, even though it was expensive.

Some pizza dough from the freezer was defrosting through the afternoon too, and I made a really nice pizza for tea. My cooking is definitely improving, but I wish that I had a decent oven.

As for “licking the bowl”, what can I say? It was every kid’s ambition to do that whenever mummy was baking (except in our house of course) and I can understand why. This afternoon I enjoyed cleaning the cooking utensils by using my tongue and it’s surely the best part of the cooking.

So right now there’s plenty of flapjack for lunch and chocolate cake for dessert for the next couple of weeks.

Something interesting that I noticed was that my bit of ginger root has started to grow. I’ll have to find some soil in which to plant it, to see what happens

Right now though I’m going to finish my notes and then I have things to do, so it will be another late night.

But seeing as we’re talking about cooking… "well, one of us is" – ed … I remember one of my siblings ask my mother "mummy, mummy, may I lick the bowl?"
"No you can’t" replied our mother. "You flush it like everyone else"

0

Sunday 22nd December 2024 – I SOMETIMES WONDER …

… where I’d be now if I head my head switched on all the time, instead of just occasionally in the odd, rare flashing moments of inspiration.

But when it does happen, it reminds me of Kenneth Williams who once famously said "sometimes I’m taken aback by my own brilliance".

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for a number of weeks now I’ve been having a really hard time in the kitchen, as standing on my feet for several hours is killing me completely.

So this morning, as Isabelle the nurse was oiling my legs and fitting my compression socks and I had my leg resting on the stool for the electronic drum kit, I suddenly thought “stool”.

For weeks now I’ve wanted one of these screw stools, where the seat is adjustable for height, so I could sit in the kitchen at the right height when I’m working and just swivel round to reach for what I needed. And there this morning, I thought “drum stool”.

Sure enough, when I had a look at my stool I found that the seat was adjustable for height. Not as much as I would like, but it made a real difference. For much of the day I’ve been working in the kitchen and being quite comfortable about it, because I’ve been sitting down and that makes quite a difference.

But returning to last night, after I’d finished my notes and everything that I had to do, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written last week and then went to bed. it was 23:40 which meant that although it was later than my ideal time of 23:00, the alarm was set for 08:00 so I was due for a decent, long sleep.

Or so I thought.

It might have been that I was asleep quite quickly, but it didn’t stay like that. It was another night of fitful sleep, tossing and turning and drenched in sweat like a few nights have been after the dialysis.. By 07:40 I decided to call it a day and when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and about

Isabelle the nurse was early to day. There are no blood tests to perform as the laboratory is closed on Sundays. She did what we had to and we talked about the storm, the train cancellations and the cancellation of the Christmas parade.

The storm – yes. It’s a permanent fixture now. We have another one blowing like a hurricane. All trains along the coastal line between Caen, Granville and Rennes are cancelled and as I said just now, the Christmas parade is cancelled too.

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

We’re discussing Palaeolithic, Stone Age Britain at the moment and in particular, the religious element.

The author, Thomas Rice Holmes, is struck with the idea that the Ancient Briton worshipped his weapons and prayed to his God to bless them. However, I have another theory.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m a great believer in the existence of the sixth sense. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few months ago we discussed how it was possible to stare at someone from a window, and after a while they would suddenly turn round and look up at you. Did anyone try it?

So what I’m thinking about this devotion or prayer is that it isn’t devotion or prayer at all. It’s ancient, prehistoric man concentrating hard on his weapon and transferring some of his mysticism and will to it so that when he would throw it, it would travel straight and true in accordance with its owner’s wishes.

Of course, that’s not so far removed from praying, but I think that it’s important to identify it correctly. But what do I know anyway?

There’s an interesting quote in the book that certainly struck a chord with me. He quotes an unknown author who once said "as I moved from place to place, I somehow seemed to know less and less, and I cannot say what would have been the result" That is something to which I can really relate.

But while we’re on the subject of Thomas Rice Holmes … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a look on the internet to see what was known about him. I mentioned the other day his love of polemic and light-hearted “frank exchanges of views”, and someone called Bill Thayer, a commentator on ancient texts, notes that amongst Rice Holmes and his contemporaries, there was "a flurry of argument and counter-argument"

It looks as if I’m going to be in for a bumpy ride.

After reading my book, I started work, armed with my revolving stool.

First thing was to make some dough. If I’m having soup at lunchtime, I’m having fresh bread so I want to make a bap. One thing about the air fryer is that you can cook small amounts of bread so 100 grams of flour made a lovely bread mix, which I left to fester.

And then, people, I marzipanned my Christmas cake. The marzipan rolled out nicely and with some of the jam that my friends in Macon gave me last time I was there, it stuck a treat to the Christmas cake. Then the cake went back into the fridge to cool down

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Someone came round to the house for a taxi. While he was waiting for a taxi to pull up, he began to nibble away at all my cheese on the kitchen worktop. After a couple of minutes I told him that if he doesn’t stop I’m going to charge him for it. He carried on nibbling so I had a look at the shopping list and said “right, that’s £1:60 for the cheese”. He replied “oh no, it’s £0:60”. I insisted on £1:60 and if he didn’t like it he could clear off. He cleared off, uttering all kinds of threats like dancing up and down on the vehicles, making a noise, slitting the tyres etc. I told him that anyone who does anything to any of my vehicles would need a very good doctor. Then he left. When I came back in the girl on the radio said “you’d better go to see your brother in law. His car’s on fire”. Just then a car pulled up. Two passengers, a very young girl and a woman alighted and so did my youngest sister’s husband. I had a look underneath it. It looked clean and tidy, and I couldn’t see anything. A asked “are you sure that this car has caught fire?”. He replied “the little girl is”. I replied “I can’t see anything at all under here that shows any sign of flames”.

The one thing that I miss since I’ve been on this vegan diet is the cheese. I used to love cheese and I could eat tons of it. But not any more, unfortunately. Vegan cheese is a very poor substitute. It’s just over 32 years – October 1992 in fact – since my pancreas gave out. And all the meat in my freezer that I had to give away that night when I came home from the doctor’s!

At the hospital they had given me four options –
1) – transplant. But the transplant was in its infancy and the success rate wasn’t assured.
2) – injections every day. But then I’d lose my professional driving licences
3) – die
4) – try to control it by diet, eliminating all animal fats

So while I went onto this extreme diet overnight, I thought that I may as well go the whole hog too so apart from that evening up on that mountain in Bulgaria with Percy Penguin and a host of other skiers lost in the fog in 1994, not a drop of alcohol has crossed my lips.

And it worked too. I lost 10kg almost immediately and in Brussels a couple of months later I started running again. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was still running up until just two or three years ago.

Later on, I had to go to see a psychiatrist or psychologist or someone or other so I took myself off to his premises. It turned out to be a shop somewhere in the Ardennes and he was the shopkeeper. He was busy serving people so I sat myself down in the corner, took up my laptop and began to work. After a while he finished serving his customers and came over. I put everything away. He asked “you aren’t working today are you?”. I explained that I was always working. He was astonished by that. He said “we aren’t all that enthusiastic about work here in the Ardennes”. I replied “I can see that, looking at some of these dusty shops that need a good clean”. He smiled and just then another customer came in and was waiting to be served. I told him that he had a customer. He replied “so what?”. I asked “aren’t you going to serve her?”. He grudgingly picked himself up and wandered off over there and I took out my laptop again anfd began to work.

Having done that, this dream restarted when he came back and sat down on the bench by me. I said “I hear that you have been having trouble to pee”. I wondered how he’d heard that. I hadn’t said anything to him about that up until that moment just then.

Anyone who wants to go to see a psychiatrist needs his head examined. Quite But here’s another dream into which I stepped back later. What can’t I do that whenever Zero, Castor or TOTGA come around? I can’t imagine wanting to do that with a psychiatrist. I must need my head examining.

And that reminds me – the trick cyclist from the hospital hasn’t been to see me for ages. Has she forgotten me too?

Finally, I was at school and had been into town for lunch. I’d ended up in a big shoe shop, toy shop, department store. The queues were enormous and I had to fight my way around. There were people queueing on the stairs and I had a great deal of difficulty trying to go down them. People were going down either side of these people queueing on the stairs, making things even more difficult. Eventually I could extract myself and head back to school. I heard a voice behind me say “oh there’s someone else late for school. Let’s run and see if we can beat him and he’ll be last”. I made it back to school first and the teacher was already in my classroom teaching so I slunk in and sat at my seat, late again. He was already talking to the kids about the “Dirty Harry”, or was it “The Godfather” films, asking how long this series continued. Someone said “fifteen years” but he replied that in fact it was thirty years, which surprised everyone. Then we began to discuss the plot for another film. I began to dream about Eastwood who had been on a mission somewhere and had met a lonely girl in a bar. He’d spent the evening with her and then gone his separate ways. Next morning he’d looked for her name in the ‘phone book, went to a florist’s and ordered some flowers and sent them to her. Then, as arranged, went round to see her in the afternoon. He had a gold-coloured sports car in which he took off from the side of the kerb on the wrong side of the road and had to weave in through the traffic to do a U-turn and then headed off. He reached the address where there were a few people wandering around. Some woman came up to him and said something about him being in his work clothes. He asked “how do you know?”. She replied “you’ve changed since you were here last night”. He asked the people what was going on. Someone said “it’s a woman”. he worked out that it was the woman whom he’d come to see. “She’d committed suicide last night just after you had gone”. It turned out that she had a gunshot wound in the neck from previously. When he’d given her a playful karate chop he’d missed that gunshot wound by millimetres. He was wondering what on earth had happened that had made her want to commit suicide because she was certainly the kind who was depressed, being lonely in a bar but he thought that his presence would have cheered her up a little

It’s been a long time since I’ve had an epic dream like that. It’s one of these major ones that keep on going and going and it’s a shame that there was no nice young female involved with me appearing in that dream, as there sometimes is. It’s interesting though that there’s a “dream within a dream”. We’ve had a few of those where we’ve managed to move up a level. Not quite the 25th level, about which Dennis Wheatley used to brag, but a step up all the same

And here I am, scriptwriting in the night too. Is there no end to my nocturnal talents?

Back in the kitchen, I made my broccoli stalk soup, remembering to put the little pasta elbows in today. My bread went up like a lift, the best that I’ve ever made, and the soup was totally delicious with a tub of soya yoghurt tipped into it. What a nice lunch that was!

Then it was mince pie time. I have two rolls of puff pastry but I only used one. That made the bases and tops for five pies which is a nice number over Christmas. And in my silicon pie mould, five pies used half a jar of mincemeat. At this rate there will be enough mincemeat in stock for five more years

Football was next, Stranraer against Stirling Albion, who had a friend of mine in goal. And I have never seen so many open goals missed by Stranraer or saved by David Gaston. Some phrase concerning stringed musical instruments and the nether regions of certain ruminant animals sprung to my mind as I watched Stranraer miss open goal after open goal.

They finally managed to score right at the end of the game, only for Stirling to roar upfield and score an equaliser with probably their only shot of the game.

There won’t be another game like that ever again.

Making dough was next. I’ve run out for the pizza and that’s a calamity so I made a 500 gram mix, put two lumps in the freezer and the third lump I used as tonight’s meal.

Next was icing the Christmas cake. And despite it being cold, the icing kept on sliding down the side and I had to keep on spreading it back up. But that icing knife that I bought from Noz is a great tool to have. It made the job much easier than it might have been

While I was assembling the pizza I had the oven on, baking the mince pies. Now they are done and they look delicious. My pizza was delicious too.

You might think that after all of that, with the pudding that’s in the freezer, I’m ready for Christmas. But that’s not so. While I was working this afternoon I kept on thinking, as I was talking to Rosemary (I managed that too) “thers’s something else that I’ve forgotten”.

And now I know what it is. I forgot the hash browns.

So that will be the job tomorrow before I go to the Dialysis Clinic.

As well as all of that and chatting to Rosemary, I’ve been working on some of the radio notes too, and I’m exhausted which is no surprise.

In a few minutes, I’ll be off to bed. And then it’ll start all over again tomorrow. It’s relentless

But while we’re on the subject of football, dreams and psychiatrists … "well, one of us is" – ed … I once went to see a psychiatrist (well, I actually went more than once, but that’s another story)
"Doctor doctor" I said "I’m having these terrible dreams. I’ve seen all these ants playing football in the Ants World Cup. We’ve had a round of thirty-two, then a round of sixteen, then a round of eight, then a round of four. It’s driving me out of my mind, doctor. Please help me"
"Well, never mind" said the doctor. "Take this prescription to the chemist, have it made up and take two of the tablets tonight. I promise you – you’ll sleep like a baby and you won’t have any dreams at all"
"Ohh – I can’t do that tonight doctor" I said
"Why not?"
"Well, they are playing in the final tonight and I don’t want to miss that!"

0

Sunday 15th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off at 08:00 this morning I was already up and about.

That’s the kind of thing that totally defeats the purpose of having a lie in. I mean – it wasn’t as if I was in bed early either. It was about 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed after dictating the radio notes, so with a later start on Sunday it meant 7:30 hours of sleep in principle, but I didn’t even have that

There wasn’t even much to dictate in the way of radio notes either. Just the notes for one programme so it shouldn’t have taken me that long but these days, prevarication seems to be the way forward. I keep meaning to see some professional about the problems that I have with prevarication but I might do that another side.

So once I was in bed, that was that until all of … errr … 07:15 when I awoke, and couldn’t go back to sleep. After a while I thought that there’s no point in wasting time lying here doing nothing when there is so much that I ought to be doing so I rose up and left the bed.

After having a good wash and scrub up I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone but I didn’t get very far when the nurse came. He forgot to ring on the doorbell from downstairs so he took me somewhat by surprise.

We had “words” again this morning. His very first question was "did you sleep well?"

He knows full well that I don’t because he asks it almost every single day and I always tell him that being a very light sleeper I don’t ever sleep well, so I expressed my discontent with his question, to which he took umbrage.

After he left I had my medication and then made breakfast. Taking it over to the dining room table, I could sit and read ISAAC WELD’S BOOK which, regrettably, I have now finished. And I do have to say that his books would be certainly in my Top 10.

He’s now about to leave New York, and boards his ship "without a sigh, and without entertaining the slightest wish to revisit it."

While he was in Bethlehem he was lucky (if that’s correct) to be invited to visit the Women and Girls’ Home. He makes quite a few interesting observations including "Pink ribands are said to be worn as a badge by those who are inclined to marry; however, I observed that all the unmarried women wore them, not excepting those whose age and features seemed to have excluded them from every chance of becoming the votaries of Hymen" … "he means ‘Hypersons’" – ed …

He notes that Long Island is mainly inhabited by the Dutch (New York was a Dutch colony, “New Amsterdam” until the British took it in 1664) who "have inherited all the coldness, reserve, and covetousness of their ancestors".

He continues by saying that "If you do but ask any simple question relative to the neighbouring country, they will eye you with suspicion and evidently strive to disengage themselves from you; widely different from the Anglo-Americans, whose inquisitiveness in similar circumstances would lead them to a thousand impertinent and troublesome enquiries, in order to discover what your business was in that place, and how they could possibly take any advantage of it."

So having learned more from this one book than any thousand others, I’ve now begun to read the report of the investigation of a Gallo-Roman (not Roman) farm near Chartres. And it’s nothing like as interesting as Isaac Weld’s book, which is a shame. And it’s in French too, so there’s not much point in posting any interesting quotes.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone. We were on an island in the Western Pacific or was it the Eastern Pacific. The Japanese had suddenly declared war and there were all kinds of attacks taking place. We were on this island when the Japanese were beginning to take a foothold on it. The decision was taken to retreat onto an island off the shore of this island where we could be collected and then decide how best to act. We thought that a headlong flight out of the area would mean that we wouldn’t be back for many years. We had to put up some kind of defence. Gradually everyone began to retreat to this island where they were armed, given weapons etc. I was one of the last to leave. As I went downstairs there was one of the boys at the bottom of the stairs. He was telling me to go out of the stairs and to the left. However there was something going on to the right so I went out to the right. He absolutely had an explosion. When I came to the end of the path there was a boy playing on the beach, a small boy. I wondered about what he was doing. However this other boy came down after me and began to give me a huge lecture about not following his commands, everything like that. I told him that he’d better cheer up a little because I was quite able to go down this path and look at what was going on. I thought that he was behaving like the Japanese, just as he happened to say to me that he thought that I was. Having assured myself that it wasn’t a Japanese patrol that was landing, I went off in the other direction. I eventually ended up in the town from where the ferry over to the other island was sailing. There were all kinds of things happening here. I had to walk through the town and all the action. Then I heard one of my colleagues from work being called over the public address system about the lights on his car. I thought that this is the last thing about which anyone needs to worry at the moment, isn’t it? I gradually made my way down towards the docks where I could catch the ferry over to the island where we could all sit and have a think and start again.

Not that there’s much chance of the Japanese attacking these days. Any conflict in the Pacific Islands is likely to come in that area disputed by China, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, which, I suppose, is the North Pacific. I’m not sure either why one of the boys from school, about whom I have hardly thought in the last 50-odd years, should suddenly appear.

Apart from that, retreating onto a small island is hardly a sound military strategy, unless we are hoping to be evacuated.

There was some thing during the night between someone of a family that was quite well-known, whether he was a military officer or something. While he was searching around in the old libraries he came across a Latin phrase. He thought that this phrase was something really wonderful so he wrote to the College of Heralds to see whether it had been registered as someone’s slogan. On finding that it hadn’t, he announced that he was going to adopt it for his family’s slogan henceforth. He’d have a think about finding some Coat of Arms or other that might be appropriate

It’s a little-known fact that my family has its own slogan nihil expectore in omnibus which means, roughly translated “wait for nothing at all”, although some wag suggested that it means “no spitting on the public transport”

And then a young girl just walked into my room and tucked something under my pillow. She said “that’s the volume for your dream to awaken you”. I looked at her, and couldn’t understand exactly what she meant by that, but she turned on her heel and walked out of the room and left me. I wondered if that was a sign that I was late, that I’d missed the alarm and needed to set the alarm louder to awaken me in te future but I really couldn’t understand that

It’s hardly surprising, is it? I can still in fact see her hand even now sliding something under my pillow so it was something along the same lines as the phantom alarms that we have. But there’s definitely nothing under the pillow.

After the dictaphone we had a footfest. I hadn’t realised that Stranraer had played a midweek game so I had two matches to watch.

The first was away in Edinburgh against Spartans, and Edinburgh seems to be a happy hunting ground for Stranraer because after beating Edinburgh City the other week, they beat Spartans 3-1

That was actually the best that I have ever seen Stranraer play, so it gave some hope for the weekend’s game, the return match against Edinburgh City but they couldn’t build on the success. Once more, they played well but so did Edinburgh City. Neither team managed to break the other down and it finished 0-0.

After lunch I started to edit the radio notes and by the time I finished work it was all complete, 11th track and all. So that’s another hour’s worth to add to the collection.

There were several interruptions, which was why it took so long. The first was for the hot chocolate of course, and then there was bread to make and bake.

The pizza too required attention. I’d taken the last of the frozen dough out of the freezer earlier in the day so I had to knead it, roll it and assemble it.

When the bread came out of the oven the pizza went in and I had another candidate for “best pizza ever”.

So now I’m off to bed ready for the morning, hoping that someone interesting will come to see me during the night.

But talking of Isaac Weld leaving New York … "well, one of us is" – ed … before he left he went into a branch of that chain of places that a British judge agreed “exploit children”, are “culpably responsible for animal cruelty”, “pay low wages” and “pretended to a positive nutritional benefit which their food (high in fat & salt etc) did not match”
And with his quarter-pounder he ordered a beer
"You can’t buy a beer in here" said the burger-flipper
"What?" he exclaimed. "You mean that you’re sober when you eat this mess?"

0

Sunday 8th December 2024 – THIS BLASTED STORM …

… Darragh or whatever it’s called is crazy. It’s only just now beginning to abate after one of the wildest weekends that I can remember.

This morning there was a report of 5,000 homes in this département alone having their electricity cut off, and I don’t suppose that the situation has improved any over the course of the day.

There have been no trains running this weekend and I imagine that they won’t restart for a couple of days while the track is inspected for damaged infrastructure and fallen trees

Reports this morning also mentioned gusts of wind at 153 kph – not quite the 203 kph of earlier in the year but it’s still impressive enough

One thing is for certain though – and that is that if the weather keeps on deteriorating like this, we aren’t ever going to be short of electricity. The wind turbines must have been going around like the clappers.

There was that much noise outside with the wind that I had to use some sound-proofing techniques when I wanted to dictate the radio notes last night. I’d waited until quite late when whatever traffic that there might have been had all gone to bed but coping with the wind was something else.

Once it was finished though, I could head for bed. Before midnight too, which meant that with a lie-in until 08:00 I was for once going to have a decent sleep

Sure enough, it was, too. I didn’t stir at all and neither was I disturbed. Whatever the wind was doing didn’t bother me, with my head tucked well down underneath the quilt

The alarm going off at 08:00 shook me from my slumbers and it was quite an effort to scramble to my feet before the next alarm.

After the bathroom I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone, and I was disappointed because there was hardly anything on it. When the alarm went off we were discussing ethnicity and particularly Native Americans, about how people were too busy trying to classify them into little boxes. Someone was doing some kind of ethnic review. He had five different boxes that had to be ticked. I thought that that was over-simplifying something far too much when it came down to the spirituality and individuality of these people.

This all relates to Isaac Weld and his observations as he travels around North America, and probably my eternal gripe about PhD students in Labrador too.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in this morning too, totally windswept in this hurricane that’s blowing. She’s just visited one of her clients who lives on the top floor of a large building in the town, and she told me about how that building is shaking and windows rattling.

After she left, I made breakfast and carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s now in Detroit, or what passed for Detroit in the late Eighteen Century, and the thing that struck him the most was that "you see numberless old squaws leading about their daughters, ever ready to dispose of them, ‘pro tempore’, to the highest bidder." Of course, having studied Latin, I know what pro tempore means, and I’m sure that most of you can work out the meaning too. But once more, it tells me more about the morals of the Europeans in Detroit than it does about the native Americans

He’s also present at the annual distribution of presents to the First-Nations people by the British officials in Canada, across the river from Detroit. The officials are handing out "bales of thick blankets, of blue scarlet, and brown cloth, and of coarse figured cottons, together with large rolls of tobacco, guns,, flints, powder, balls, shot, case-knives, ivory and horn combs, looking-glasses, pipe-tomahawks, hatchets scissars, needles, vermilion in bags copper and iron pots and kettles,".

He goes on to say "Besides the presents, such as I have described, others of a different nature again, namely, provisions, were dealt out this year amongst certain tribes of the Indians that were encamped on the island of Bois Blanc, These were some of the tribes that had been at war with the people of the United States, whose villages, fields of corn, and stores of provisions had been totally destroyed during the contest by General Wayne, and who having been thereby bereft of every means of support, had come, as soon as peace was concluded, to beg for subsistence from their good friends the British.".

For a European living in the late Eighteenth Century, he shows a surprising amount of humanity. He talks quite considerably about the First-Nation people and the presents that they receive from the British, "presents of a less value even than what arc now distributed amongst them would perhaps be found sufficient to keep up that good understanding which now subsists between us; it could not, however, be deemed a very advisable measure to curtail them, as long as a possibility remained that the loss of their friendship might be incurred thereby; and, indeed, when we consider what a happy and numerous people the Indians were before Europeans intruded themselves into the territories allotted to them by nature; when we consider how many thousands have perished in battle, embroiled in our contests for power and dominion, and how many thousands more have perished by the use of the poisonous beverages which we have introduced amongst them; when we consider how many artificial wants have been raised in the minds of the few nations of them that yet remain,, and how sadly the morals of these nations have been corrupted by their intercourse with the whites; when we consider, finally that in the course of fifty years more no vestige even of these once virtuous and amiable people will probably be found in the whole of that extensive territory which lies between the Mississippi and the Atlantic and was formerly inhabited solely by them; instead of wishing to lessen the value or the number of the few trifles that we find are acceptable to them in their present state we ought rather to be desirous of contributing still more largely to their comfort and happiness."

He certainly hits the nail right on the head with his comment about "how many artificial wants have been raised in the minds of the few nations of them that yet remain". Is it any surprise to anyone that the more the Western World pounds on about how marvellous and wonderful our style of life is, that more and more people from the deprived areas of the World will want to flood here and take part in it? And how disappointed and what their reaction is going to be when they find out that the streets really aren’t paved with gold as they were promised?

Another comment that he made about the First-Nation and Native American people that impressed itself upon me was "yon must treat them as men that are your equals and in some measure even adopt their native manners. It was by such steps as these that the French when they had possession of Canada gained their favour in such a very eminent manner, and acquired so wonderful an ascendancy over them," and "The necessity of treating the Indians with respect and attention is strongly inculcated on the minds of the English settlers, and they endeavour to act accordingly; but still they cannot banish wholly from their minds, as the French do, the idea that the Indians are an inferior race of people to them"

As for the Americans, "to the conduct of the people of the States themselves alone, and to no other cause, is unquestionably to be attributed the continuance of the warfare between them and the Indians, after the definitive treaty of peace was signed. Instead of then taking the opportunity to reconcile the Indians, as they might easily have done by presents, and by treating them with kindness, they still continued hostile towards them ; they looked upon them, as indeed they still do, merely as wild beasts, that ought to be banished from the face of the earth,"

Even 200 years later, the Americans are still treating the First-Nation people as inferior beings and racism is, if anything even worse these days.

In case you haven’t already gathered, I am finding this book to be one of the most fascinating that I have ever read and I am in awe of Weld’s observations.

Back in here, later than usual, I made a start on my radio programme. And by the time I came to finish work, I’d completed it, right down to the final track and it is ready to go, some time in nine months’ time

There were the usual interruptions of course, lunch, the hot chocolate, making my pizza. And tonight I ended up with another candidate for one of the best pizzas that I have ever made.

Just recently I’ve been watching a French film about a serial killer who roamed the mountains of France at the end of the Nineteenth Century. It turns out to be based on a true story and there was a contemporary book written about it. Having had a look round I found a copy on my ARCHIVE SITE so that’s been added to this ever-increasing list of books to read.

So right now, I’m off to bed. I have my Welsh homework to start tomorrow morning and then I have another painful dialysis session tomorrow afternoon. How I hate those.

Before I go, Isaac Weld told a story of an incident that happened during the giving out of presents, a story that I feel obliged to repeat.
One First-Nation member went back to his teepee carrying a bright red blouse
"Where did you get that?" asked his neighbour
"from the Palefaces" said the First-Nationer. "I got it for the wife"
"Blimey!" said his neighbour. "That was a good trade."

0

Sunday 1st December 2024 – MY CAULIFLOWER STALK …

… and broccoli stalk soup at lunchtime was absolutely delicious. I made myself a bread roll to dip in it too, and baked in the air fryer, it was perfection too. All in all it was one of the best lunches that I have ever eaten.

It’s the period of winter veg at LeClerc and so with broccoli and cauliflower being sold at giveaway prices, it’s too good to turn down

In fact, it’s been a good day today. And it started last night when I actually made it into bed at 23:45. Not 23:00 I know, but with it being a Sunday, there’s a lie-in until 08:00.

But at 08:00 I was actually up and about, working away at my desk in here. Something had awoken me from at 06:00 while I was in one of the deepest sleeps that I’ve had for ages. I’ve no idea what it was but I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. And by the time that 06:45 came round I’d given up and left the bed.

After I’d washed I came back in here and checked the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. There was something to do with a rock group and the young girl who was in it. She was attacked at some point by some kind of unearthly being. I’ve no idea why that should be but it was certainly the case.

We had a rock group yesterday, if I remember correctly. And a few days ago, we had a girl attacked by some kind of extra-terrestrial being. We seem to be doing a lot of repeating these days.

Then there was a Secret Service operation going on in London to do with the Russian embassy. They had to find a certain vehicle, break into it and steal some papers but they didn’t know exactly how they were going to do this. They knew that it was in some kind of code so they took with them one of Britain’s leading Civil Service codebreaker people. He was a very scared, elderly gentleman who was most uncomfortable as they were roaming around London looking for this keyword or whatever. They were surprised while they were searching somewhere and this elderly gentleman ended up stabbing someone. Of course that made him really panic. They had to try to restrain him and keep him with them even though he was ready to run at any moment. When someone came round, the caretaker of this building to find out what the noise had been, this elderly gentleman said “oh, I hear my ‘phone ringing” and ran away as fast as he could. Of course there was no way that these two people could stop him. They ended up roaming around this certain area in London on their own. They were looking at this shop that had closed down, some kind of vegan restaurant or shop, looking at all the adverts plastered everywhere all over it. There were four adverts for something or other but there stuck in the corner of one of the adverts was something like “Ron’s Taxis 5150”. That immediately gave them a clue because this taxi sticker wasn’t on any of the other three posters. It had something to do with the vehicle 515 or 5150 so they set off to wander around thinking that the ‘phone sticker advertising this taxi service was to do with the vehicle. They hadn’t yet figured out that at some stage they were going to see a taxi vehicle with the registration number RON 515 or RON 5150 that I’d figured out but they were wandering around London, something like that, when the dream evaporated

Codebreaking now in my dreams? It’s certainly impressive. Is there no end to my nocturnal skills? As I have said before, … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if only I had had in my life someone who was capable of harnessing all of these hidden talents that I must have buried deep within me.

The nurse was early yet again and he didn’t hang about long this time. That suited me fine and I could make my breakfast and carry on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s now In the city of Québec, having left Montréal, and he’s just as enamoured of the city as I was. He tells us that "I must not conclude this letter without making mention of the fcenery that is exhibited to the view, from various parts of the upper town of Quebec, which, for its grandeur, its beauty, and its diverfity, furpafles all that I have hitherto feen in America, or indeed in any other part of the globe." and I cannot disagree.

He’s really in his element here, in fact. He’s given me a fascinating description of Wolfe’s storming of the Heights of Abraham and an excellent lecture on how Montcalm should have organised his defence to prevent his army and the city being overrun.

He’s also given us a lecture on the manufacture of sugar from maple syrup and how he would do it on a large scale and on a commercial basis, even calculating how much profit he would make per acre.

In fact, he’s given so many lectures and seems to be an expert on so many things that, when he said a few days ago that "A rational and agreeable companion, to whom you might communicate the refult of your obfervations, and with whom you might interchange fentiments on all occafions, could not but be deemed a pleafing acquisition,’", I would have been the first to volunteer to go with him. The two of us would have been experts on just about everything, boring the pants off just about everyone else whom we met.

Much of my free time was spent editing the radio notes that I’d dictated last night. I now hove two more programmes to add to the pile but I still can’t afford to relax. I have a lot to do and a short time to do it.

Stranraer were at home from a team way down the pyramid in the Scottish Cup. Although they played well and had a great deal of possession, and even though they hit the woodwork on a couple of occasions, they only scored one goal. Their opponents, Broxburn, just had two shots on target so you can guess the final score without too much effort.

This really was the nadir of Stranraer’s season to date.

It took quite a while to make my broccoli stalk and cauliflower stalk soup at lunchtime. It involved

  1. one large onion
  2. two cloves of garlic
  3. one medium-sized potato
  4. a broccoli stalk
  5. a cauliflower stalk
  6. cumin
  7. coriander
  8. marjoram
  9. chives
  10. chervil
  11. half a litre of the water that you saved from the blanching of the carrots, broccoli and cauliflower on Saturday
  12. vegetable stock cube
  13. soya cream
  14. fresh ground black pepper
  1. chop and fry the onion until soft
  2. chop the broccoli stalk, cauliflower stalk, garlic and potatoes into very tiny pieces and add them to the onion
  3. add the herbs and spices
  4. fry them for about 10-15 minutes
  5. add enough water to cover the vegetables
  6. add the stock cube and let everything simmer for 15 minutes
  7. when everything is mushy, whizz it all up, adding the soya cream as you do so
  8. serve with fresh ground pepper and fresh bread roll

There was pizza dough to make later on, and also a cake. This week I chose a ginger cake seeing as I had some fresh ginger on hand, and together with some desiccated coconut, coconut oil and orange flavouring, it smells delicious

Tonight’s pizza was one of the best that I have ever made too, and that’s good news because one or two just recently seem to have gone off the boil somewhat.

All in all it seems to have been a very good day for baking and making. There’s plenty of food on hand now to keep me going for a while.

Tomorrow I have my Welsh homework to finish off and then I’m off to dialysis – more agony and pain. I suppose that I’d better hurry up and go to bed to prepare myself.

But before I go, General Wolfe, who led the British Army to victory on the Heights of Abraham, was killed on the battlefield just as the victory was won. And there used to be an obelisk making the spot.
When I was there once though, a helpful local, and a very vocal local yokel at that too, told me that members of the Québec Libre – the Québec Separationists – sent it back to the UK
"Surely it was far, far too big to go in the post" I said
"Indeed it was" said the helpful local "but you’ll be amazed at the velocity released by 100 kilos of dynamite."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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