Tag Archives: wandsworth

Wednesday 8th April 2026 – AND YET ANOTHER …

… night when I’m going to bed without any tea, apart, of course, from my wonderful chocolate cake and my delicious home-made ice cream.

Another early night is on the cards … "he hopes" – ed … and a better sleep tonight than I had last night … "ditto" – ed …

Yesterday, I’d finished my cake round about 20:00, and I came straight back in here and began to write out my notes. By the time I’d finished, done everything else that I needed to do and crawled into bed, it was a mere 21:45, and that’s good going.

Once in bed, I went to sleep quickly and there I lay, flat out, until all of … errr … 22:57. That’s what I call a long sleep!

After that, we had a continual bout of tossing and turning, dozing off, waking up and all that kind of thing until the alarm went off at 06:29. At that point, I must have been asleep but nevertheless, it was a huge disappointment, last night, except for the fact that I didn’t have to leave the bed for once during the night.

When the alarm went off, for some strange reason, it didn’t take as long as usual to rise up from the bed and head off into the bathroom to sort myself out. And then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night, and I was astonished that there had been so much.

This dream involved a couple of kids, about eleven or twelve years old. They were being compared against other people but that’s really all that I remember about this dream at the moment. It’s one of these that evaporated as soon as I reached for the dictaphone.

This is another one of those dreams that seems to have no meaning at all. But wouldn’t it have been nice to have remembered the rest of it to find out to what it relates?

There was something about a rock group remixing some of its songs. They’d gone back into a previous album, selected a song and they wanted to put snippets of this into appropriate places on their new album so they sent a copy of their album and a copy of the track from the previous album. They put it in one big black plastic bag inside another and took it round to the guy’s house in Flag Lane who was going to remix it. But when they came to play back the result a few days later, it had all the wrong soundbytes in from a completely different song so they wanted it doing again. They had to threaten this guy in Flag Lane – it wasn’t Flag Lane, it was Wistaston Road – they had to threaten this guy in Wistaston Road with legal action for breaching the copyright in order for him to redo the task, this time with the correct song sliced up and pasted in.

There’s an interesting story about the Flag Lane – Wistaston Road area of Crewe but the World is not yet ready to hear it. And there is a recording studio involved in it somewhere too. However, it had nothing whatever to do with the subject of this dream.

Later on, there was something going on in a bakery. There were a few people there, and there was a guy there who was moving all of the stuff around. He picked up several large trays at the time and hoisted them over his shoulder. But one tray began to slide off and I immediately reached out to grab it as it fell, and I ended up grabbing the hoof of STRAWBERRY MOOSE instead.

This actually did happen last night too. I remember the tray of bread starting to fall and I did reach out to grab it. Then I awoke and found that I was actually holding a hoof of His Nibs. How bizarre!

There had also been a lot of discussion about the prefix “an-” and what it actually meant. It occurs quite regularly in Welsh in words such as anrhegion and we had to try to work out its meaning and think of other words that began with it. In the end, after a lot of calculating around and trying to work out things, we came to the conclusion that it actually meant “to” and that was what it was supposed to mean.

When I was dreaming this, I was actually in Flag Lane looking down the slope towards the traffic lights on Wistaston Road. That was bizarre too.

However, “an” as a prefix actually means the negative of a word that doesn’t have it, i.e. – onest = honest, anonest = dishonest, gwybodus = knowledgeable, anwybodus = ignorant. The exercises with prefixes and so on are things that we have to do regularly in our Welsh course.

There was another short dream about my class at school, and it really was my class at school. We were in one of the new laboratories, working on some kind of project for our school exam. However, it just seemed to fade away at that point. I remember that there was one of the girls there, holding some chemical product in some kind of large eye-glass … "he means “watch glass”" – ed … but that’s about everything.

This is happening far too often these days, dreams evaporating while I’m reaching for the dictaphone. And it’s getting on my nerves. I would love to know how they all end.

I was working in an Italian restaurant somewhere in Birmingham and I had to tell them that I was going to have to leave because my full-time job had transferred me to Shrewsbury. We’d set the restaurant out for the night but it started really slowly and we didn’t have a client for quite some time. I remember someone walking up to the restaurant – he looked very official – and he looked at me and my colleague who were waiting outside, shook his head and walked away again. Some people then turned up and went inside and went to sit in the garden to have their meal, which I thought was strange because it was cold. But we were talking about lights and light fittings. Someone in the area was making something out of lights and had used over three hundred tacks to hold the lights in. I said that if I’d put up the fairy lights that were in the back of the restaurant and in the garden, I’d have probably used about half a dozen. Then I noticed that in the annexe across the road, a girl walked in. I went in with the menus to see her, and it was someone whom I knew from years ago, but I couldn’t think of her name, but she looked a lot better now than she did back in those days. I asked her how she was, and she replied that she was alright. I replied, jokingly, “yes, I know that, but how are you really?” because I seem to remember that she was ill at one time. I gave her the menu but she didn’t seem to want it. She just wrote down what she wanted, and things for three other people too. I asked “don’t they have any choice?”, and she smiled. I took the order over to the restaurant. They were having an argument in the kitchen about the lack of business and how they were going to have to close. I gave them the receipt and said “well, here’s another thirty quid’s worth for you for tonight”.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that one winter when I was looking for work, I went down to London and ended up living in Wandsworth where I worked in the day driving a school bus for the local council and in the evenings and weekends in an Italian restaurant. That work in the restaurant was probably the hardest work that I have ever done, but I enjoyed it immensely and I’d do it again if I had the chance.

As for the girl in the story, I do know who she is but I just can’t think of her name. And she certainly did look better than she did when I knew her for real.

The nurse turned up as usual and we had a little chat, but he didn’t stay long and was soon off on his rounds. I could make breakfast and carry on reading THE CELT THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Today, we’ve been discussing the campaign of Suetonius Paulinus in North Wales, followed by the revolt of Boudicca and its consequent suppression. One thing that stands out from this is that the brutality and cruelty committed by both sides were appalling, and with the savage treatment of the locals by the Romans, it’s no wonder that they were quite often in rebellion.

Back in here, there were things to do and then later on, I attacked this confounded radio programme.

What with one thing or another, I lost count of how many blind alleys I’d run up while I was trying my best to track down the music that I need. Eventually though, with what I already had on hand and what I’d managed to find, I ended up with just about enough music to make a programme. I’m not very happy with it, but there’s no other choice.

Anyway, all the music is remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’ve even begun to write the notes for it. I could actually have finished the notes except that later in the afternoon, I crashed out. And it was a major one too – I was away with the fairies – although not in any fashion that would have excited comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine – for about two hours. I was totally wasted and that’s another reason why I’m off to bed with no tea.

And that means “right now” because I’ve had enough for today. As I said just now, my chocolate cake and ice cream was delicious and just the job to round off a day of hard work. Tomorrow, I have dialysis, and I wish that I hadn’t. But there’s nothing that I can do about it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about a bakery … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once knew a girl who worked in a bakery.
"What was she like?" asked a friend of mine.
"At first, I thought she was well-bred" I replied. "But once I’d known her for a while, I came to the conclusion that she was half-baked."

0