… one of these miserable sessions at dialysis today, where nothing whatever seems to have gone my way.

The only bright spark of the afternoon there was the interaction with some of the nurses. We had a good laugh at times, although I imagine that if the doctor in charge of the service were to overhear it, he would put a stop to it in an instant.

But after the events of yesterday, I needed a good cheering-up. My depression went on and on, culminating in forgetting to switch on the water AGAIN last night, meaning that I had no hot water today.

It was probably due to the fact that I had yet another late night when I failed to concentrate on anything, and finished hours later than I would have liked. I crawled into bed at about 23:30, and at least, I was asleep quite quickly.

The night though was another one of these turbulent ones where I’m tossing and turning, trying to make myself comfortable. And although I had had some amount of sleep, at about 05:50 I gave up the struggle. By 06:00 I was up and about.

After a wash and shave (in lukewarm water) I went for breakfast. And then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And what a task that was!

There was a group of prisoners in a prisoner-of-war camp who decided that they were going to escape. They had thought of a foolproof plan and were making their preparations before leaving. The first thing that they had done was that they had arranged to have six cups of coffee each to take with them. They were busy sorting out these cups onto some kind of trolley that they could pull along behind them. They were discussing their route. The obvious route was to head for Switzerland, but one of the people planned to head for the interior first – the interior of Germany, and make his way round in some kind of arc. They were discussing various towns that they would pass through on the way. There was some guy there with his wife, and they were planning on escaping. When they were out of the prison, the wife fell into the River Rhine or one of the rivers that pass into Switzerland. It was ice-cold and she was in danger of freezing. A barge was going past so she put out her hand and caught hold of a trailing rope from the barge and allowed herself to be pulled on down the river. That way, she managed to cross into Switzerland, although her husband was miles behind, trying to make his way down to the Swiss border on foot.

Part of this relates to the story of Edouard Izac, a lieutenant in the American Navy in World War I. He was captured when his ship was torpedoed and was taken to Germany. He escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp and although he was only eighteen miles from the Swiss border, he took a circuitous route of almost ten times that in order to throw his pursuers off the scent.

As for the rest of it, I’ve no idea at all.

Then there were two athletes, male athletes, who were caught in a wave of a German advance. Rather than be taken prisoner, they linked their arms between each other’s elbow joints and, hanging on to their necks, they counted to three and suddenly wound and moved their bodies, thus breaking their necks.

We discussed the “Fetterman massacre” a few weeks ago. The opinion of the fort’s medical officer was that the two officers had linked arms and shot each other, presumably to avoid capture and torture by the Native Americans.

There was then a story about a guy and an associate of his who were tramping miles across the country accompanied by two cats. They came to a big girder bridge across a river. They had to toss these cats onto the bridge and then leap onto the bridge themselves in order to cross. Instead of crossing, they went to the bridge-keeper’s office. The bridge-keeper was discussing various criminal matters with various different people, about robberies and crimes and everything that was due to take place, as if he was some kind of organiser. The guy in this dream went over to him and was talking about his plan to kill some businessman by looping two chains around his door. When the guy opened the door and subsequently closed it, the chains would pull in really tightly and break his spine. The bridge-keeper warned him about doing this and didn’t recommend it at all. But early next morning at the house of this wealthy guy, he came out of his door and then went and slammed it, and you could hear the groan from outside. A couple of hours later, his wife awoke and went downstairs. She couldn’t find her husband so she called the police. The police found the guy who had climbed onto the bridge. He was sitting in his car, naked. The Police Inspector interrogated him but extracted no particular information so he had a Constable sit behind him in the car, armed with a shotgun. The guy in the front seat said that he was nervous about the shotgun, but the Inspector told him that he could be even more nervous if he knows that it’s loaded.

What I shall do with this dream is to leave you lot to interpret it.

From there, it went on back to my house. I was in my bedroom, somehow confined there and wasn’t allowed out. I heard the front door open and it was the nurse apparently who came in. When I was finally allowed out of my bedroom, he was giving Nerina an injection for something or other and a series of tablets. I wondered why this had taken place. Then he gave me my injection. Nerina was there with some kind of machine that had a recoil starter. She was pulling on this starter, but it was very, very difficult to start. She had to cut part of the cowling away to reach the choke, which was one of these flip-chokes that you work with your thumb. Eventually she managed to cut the piece away and it was quite a neat job. I could see these thousands of tiny, tiny LED lights around this machine so I asked her what they were for. She told me that they were for Carnaval. I asked her if we were going to have a float at Carnaval then.

It won’t be long before we shall be preparing for Carnaval, assuming that the current mayor doesn’t ban it and he doesn’t want to redevelop the funfair site or the workshop where they build the floats. Anything is possible around here at the moment. And it’s nice to see Nerina back, although why she would confine me to my room I have no idea at all.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and sorted me out, and then I could press on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The British, having captured Philadelphia, have now abandoned it and are retreating to New York. That was a mystifying decision, because the only way to defeat an army is to bring it to battle. Retreating like this and abandoning posts that the enemy would like to occupy is a pointless exercise. They may just as well have stayed in New York in the first place.

After breakfast, I came back in here and carried on sorting out the hard drive, making sure that the directories run how they should and linking files to programmes. But I was interrupted by the charity shop that took away the unwanted furniture. They were only here ten minutes yet in that time they must have worked like heroes.

My faithful cleaner came along as usual to deal with the anaesthetic cream, and then I had to wait (and wait and wait) for the taxi. If that wasn’t enough, there was someone else to pick up so we were hours late arriving.

One thing that they had asked me to do on Monday was to conserve one day’s output of … errr … liquid waste and take it in a plastic bottle so that the laboratory could examine the contents. That was embarrassing.

And I also have to say that I was surprised about how little there was. And that’s probably why my weight had almost gone off the scale today and why they said that I had to stay for four hours. What with being so late arriving, that was horrendous news.

“Never mind” said one of the nurses. “You can sleep here with us tonight.”

“You know what” I replied. “That’s the best proposition that I’ve had for quite some considerable time.”

There were cramps, low blood pressure ringing the alarm, all kinds of things. A patient had a funny turn in her bed, and another one collapsed when he stood up. It was all go this afternoon.

The dietician came to see me too and had another little moan about my diet. It’s not doing her much good though because I’m not changing, even if my appetite has plummeted dramatically.

The taxi was waiting when I finished, but even so, I was hours late coming home. Especially as we had to go via his office to pick up some papers.

Tea was late tonight – bangers and mash with cheese sauce and veg – and no washing-up as I have no hot water. That’s a horrible task awaiting me in the morning, assuming that I switch the water on again tonight. I hate waking up to washing-up in the sink waiting to be done.

But now I’m off to bed, ready for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow. But not looking forward to it. I have a pain in the neck and in the shoulders and I’m not feeling too well at all. I wish that I could have a good night’s sleep.

But before I go, seeing as I have been talking about my … errr … liquid output … “well, one of us has” – ed … my cleaner saw me pick up the bottle and put it in a plastic bag
“What are you doing with that?” she asked.
“Nothing really” I replied. “I’m just taking the p***.”