Tag Archives: welsh

… seen a most extraordinary incident in a football match – the kind that will be played back on these “blooper” videos on social networking channels for years and years to come. And it won’t be any surprise because I had to look at it twice and still find it hard to believe, and so did the commentator and everyone in the crowd too.

But more of that anon. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing and was about to crawl into bed, it was long after midnight, and I’d been letting it all hang out until 00:30, I suppose. And that kind of time for going to bed is doing me no favours at all.

However, with no alarm clock and being awoken in bed by the nurse, at whatever time he comes on a Sunday, that’s much more positive.

Always assuming that I sleep right the way through, which in these days is highly unlikely, of course. And so it proved last night. It was about 04:30 or so when I awoke, and after that, it was one of those early mornings when I’m drifting in and out of sleep without anything being definitive. I was awake at 06:20, which I know because I looked at the time, and the next thing I remember was the nurse coming into the apartment round about 08:30.

He sorted out my legs and feet while I was still in bed, and then he cleared off until tomorrow. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, so a short time later, I threw off the covers, and when I eventually summoned up the courage and energy to stand up, I headed into the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning.

When I’d finished dressing, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast. It was only 09:15 too, so it wasn’t actually all that late compared to a weekday.

Breakfast was quite good today. There was the usual porridge, juice and cafe, and two more of my home-made croissants filled with apricot jam. Yes, they were really delicious. There was no book today, though. The travelling laptop is still in my bag, as it will be going with me tomorrow to the day hospital before dialysis. The time has come round for the second instalment of this product that stimulates my white blood cells. And if it gives me the same kind of boost as the first one did four weeks ago, it will be pretty good.

And when it’s all over, across the road I go, off to the dialysis centre without a break and, more importantly, without breakfast. And that will hurt the most. That is, unless, once more, the nurse who looks after me goes for lunch, forgetting that she has to put the anaesthetic on my arm. That will hurt much more when I go to dialysis and they come to plug me in.

After breakfast, I came back in here to carry on with yesterday’s notes, and you may well have noticed that they are now on line, almost two thousand four hundred words of them. That meant that I could now transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was round at my niece’s house last night, and it was the usual chaotic place with all of their families and friends there. I was having to leave that evening as I was somewhere near Stranraer. My niece’s husband was talking to me about an oak that he’d been growing since it was an acorn, and now it was ready to be cut down, and he told me that I could have it. He explained that he’d been curing it with mushrooms and everything like that. I kept on asking for him to tell me where it was, but for some reason, he was very reticent. Then they all decided to go to someone’s party up in town, but I was planning to leave that night and I had a lot of things to do. One of the things that I’d promised to do was to take all the scaffolding and piping that was by the front door and put it somewhere, so I’d already put it in my van. My elder sister, she should have been helping me as she promised, but she went to this party too. Now that the van was all ready, apart from the piping that I’d put in it – this tubing that I’d put into it – and I didn’t have the address of this tree and had stuck all these tubes in my van, so in the end, I went down to where this party was and took hold of my sister. I said “are you still going to help me move these things?” She replied “oh yes, I’ll help you tomorrow”. I answered “you know I’m leaving tonight” so she reluctantly came out of the party. I asked my niece’s husband if he had the keys to these two garages that he had across the yard at the bottom under the trees, and he gave them to me. They were two half-keys that you had to fit together in order to open the door. So I picked those up and then went outside. I saw my sister walking around the street, so I drove over to pick her up. She came over extremely reluctantly as if she had no interest whatsoever in giving me a hand to move these tubes and piping in the van, even though they were for her daughter’s husband.

There have been quite a few dreams in the comparatively recent past about being at my niece’s house, all of which have put the house in an unreal situation, somewhere a long way from its actual position in real life, and all of them recounting stories that have absolutely no basis in fact.

But the significance of Stranraer is easy to explain, seeing as I watch Stranraer FC’s matches almost every weekend and sometimes when they are playing in midweek too. We’ve also been going to parties on a regular basis through the night just recently too.

The oak tree is significant too, seeing as I’m reading a chapter on special trees in Herefordshire in my morning book right now, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, I bet that the oak in this dream wasn’t ready to be cut down quite yet either. They need a few hundred years to mature first. And the mushrooms relate to that chapter on parasitic mushrooms that we read too.

The scaffolding and tubing is interesting as well. Regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall, I own quite a bit of scaffolding that I bought from that huge painting project in Liverpool City Centre when I was in the UK once, and I also bought some heavy duty tubing from Stoke on Trent to use as wind turbine masts and so on. My van was full of the stuff when I came back from the UK that time.

And, of course, there’s the usual visit of someone from the rest of my family. They always seem to pop up when they aren’t required

This took me up to today’s football – Afan Lido, tenth in the second tier v Penybont, third in the first tier.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Afan Lido’s ground. They haven’t been in the first tier and televised matches since they were relegated at the end of season 2013/2014, and although it’s a fairly new ground, it was looking rather tired and neglected back in those days. However, it looks as if it’s had a refurbishment and a few good coats of paint and looks much nicer.

As for the match, I don’t think that there was ever a doubt about who was going to win it. Penybont was by far the better team and had, I reckon, about two thirds of the play. At times, Afan Lido were struggling to get out of their own penalty area. However, they held on for a good forty-odd minutes before Penybont scored their first goal, a header by a Penybont defender from a corner.

And then we had a calamity!

The very same defender who had scored the goal, about thirty seconds later intercepted a loose ball down by his own goal line. His keeper was up near the penalty spot, so we all expected a pass to the keeper. Instead, the defender, calmly and nonchalantly, kicked the ball into his own net to give Afan Lido an equaliser, and no-one watching the game could believe what they had just seen.

Whatever Penybont’s manager, Rhys Griffiths, had put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I’d like a drink of that myself because within three minutes into the second half, Penybont had scored two more goals to go 3-1 up. However, Afan Lido woke up quite quickly and managed to keep the Penybont attackers out for the rest of the game, albeit with some desperate defending at times.

Afan Lido had some good moments of their own too, and with a few minutes to go, they won a corner. The ball pinged around inside Penybont’s six yard area for a few seconds, then hit a Lido player and went into the net. I don’t think that he knew anything about it – he was just in the way – but it was a goal for his team and they were now just one goal behind.

As the game came up to the final whistle, the Lido won yet another corner. This led to a game of head tennis, and the same player as just now put the ball in the net. But while he and his team were dancing around to celebrate, the linesman had his flag up for offside.

So Penybont won the game 3-2, meaning that Afan Lido were just so close, but on the balance of play, the result did rather flatter Afan Lido.

There was yet more football after that. The first match was Stranraer away at Spartans. And the Stranraer juggernaut rolls on with yet another win, this time 2-0. Still top of the table, on goal difference from Clyde, and those two have opened up a five-point gap to third place. The next few months will be interesting.

There was another 2-0 scoreline too, this time in the game between Greenock Morton and Queen’s Park. And since having sacked their manager a couple of weeks ago, Morton have become a different team. The players have finally gained some confidence and are looking as if they are enjoying themselves, and they had more shots on target in this match than they had in all of the matches under Ian Murray. They fully deserved their victory this afternoon. Here’s hoping that they can keep it up.

Two other important tasks remained to be done. The first one was to freeze the remains of my shepherd’s pie. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several days ago I had invited comments from my readers. Most of the suggestions that I received had nothing to do with the shepherd’s pie, and they were physically impossible anyway, but Seàn sent me a couple of ideas, for which I was grateful.

However, in the end, I found some small ice cream containers that Marianne had had. They were 900 mg instead of 1 litre, and the portions of shepherd’s pie were just about the right size to fit in. They are now in the freezer, freezing away.

The final job was my Welsh homework, seeing as I’m not here tomorrow morning. That’s all done now, and I’ll review it on Tuesday morning before I send it off to be marked.

So now my notes are also finished, so I’ll just finish off everything else before I go to bed. Hospital tomorrow morning, and I don’t really want to go. Here’s hoping that the effects of the perfusion make it worthwhile.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pies … "well, one of us has" – ed … a well-known cook from one of these celebrity TV programmes went to Australia, and while he was there, in front of an invited audience, he made a lemon meringue pie, and all of the audience cheered.
He stood there, scratching his head in bewilderment.
"What’s the matter?" asked the producer.
"Everyone cheered" he replied. "I don’t understand it."
"Why’s that?"
"Because back in the UK, I was told that Australians like to boo meringue."

LIVE: Tuesday 13th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

… had one of the worst days of my life.

But I’m not talking medically, because I’m actually feeling quite good right now … "makes a change" – ed … but I mean as far as work goes. I’ve done nothing, finished nothing, accomplished nothing, and all in all I have totally wasted a complete day.

To give you some idea of what I mean, I was still writing up the dictaphone notes (something that I usually do before breakfast) at 21:05 tonight. That’s how far I am behind. I really am going to have to stop being so nice to people in the hope that they stop taking advantage of my good nature.

Nature seemed to take advantage of my good nature last night. I was in bed round about 22:45, not too much later than my ideal curfew time of 22:30, and I was looking for a really good sleep so that I’d be refreshed for my Welsh class later this morning, but it was not to be … "no surprise there" – ed …

Even though I’d gone to sleep quite quickly, thanks to that little mantra that I used to recite a few years ago, round about 03:50 or something, I awoke, and that was the end of any ideas of sleep that I might have had. I tried my best to go back to sleep but that was impossible.

When the alarm went off, it took a few minutes for me to pull myself up and sit on the edge of the bed, and then about ten minutes for me to rise to my feet. Once I was up and about, I went to unlock the front door, ready for the nurse when he arrives later this morning, and then I went to the bathroom to sort myself out.

Once I was looking and feeling a little more reasonable, I came back in here, where my first job would be to finish off the notes from last night that I had abandoned when sleep overwhelmed me rather dramatically.

Whatever it was that held me up, I really don’t know because I hadn’t made much progress when the nurse arrived. While he was dealing with my legs and my feet, we were chatting about his week off, and he was asking me questions about what I’d been up to, not that any of it really mattered.

After he left, I made my breakfast of porridge, coffee, toast and juice, and the morning medication that I need to take, which is probably enough for a meal on its own. I should have been reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870 except that I was hopelessly side-tracked.

The party of Woolhope Naturalists are descending from Croft Ambrey camp to Croft Castle, lower down below the camp. I read about the history of the castle, and that started off on an adventure that led me, for some weird twist of fate, as far as the German “Albatros C1”, to which I’ve just arrived. I shall have to try to get back to the book tomorrow.

Back in here after breakfast, I had to prepare for my Welsh lesson and send off this week’s homework. I’d done the homework yesterday so it simply involved checking it over, converting it to a *.pdf and then sending it off.

The revision passed really well today. It was comparatively straightforward without any complications, so I attended the lesson in an air of optimism. And the preparation had done its job because for the questions that we had to do in the middle of the lesson, I got almost all of them right.

There was a stop in midstream for a paned, or “cuppa”, when I had my disgusting drink and midday medication, and by the time the lesson was over later, I was feeling that I’d actually made a useful contribution to the lesson rather than being a passenger.

Then there were the blog notes to finish off and bring that entry to a conclusion, however, I didn’t get far – not that I was expecting to – because my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff and to chase me under the shower. And a really nice shower it was too. I really feel like a nice, clean boy now, although where I’m going to find a nice, clean boy at this time of night, I really don’t know.

That led to finishing off … "yet another attempt" – ed … the notes from last night. That, however, was a task that took much longer than it ought to have done, and in the end, when it was finished, I rejoiced somewhat, and as the waves of fatigue were already washing over me, I called for an energy drink instead of another disgusting drink.

Right now, I could turn my attention to the dictaphone notes at last.

There had been some kind of festival taking place, and as the crowds were leaving, my brother and I were cleaning everything up. We had a pile of it and set it on fire. The more things we found, the more we added to the flames, and at one stage it was burning quite well. But there was something happening with my health, and I reached the point where I wasn’t able to really do much more. My brother was teasing me about that kind of thing but I noticed that he had stopped adding things to the fire too, so we had to shovel the fire around to make sure that it burnt everything that was in the fire and didn’t leave anything unburnt or simply charred. But that was another big, difficult thing to do as well for me and I wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

This actually sounds like the very first Glastonbury Festival. At Woodstock, they simply dug a big hole and bulldozed all the waste into the hole, whereas at the first Glastonbury Festival, they did go along and pick it all up to burn. Rumour has it that three or four festival-goers, still asleep in their sleeping bags, were thrown into the fire, but then again, they said that at Woodstock with them being bulldozed into the hole.

But the story about my health giving out has a very sound base to it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in 2015, I was with a friend and we were cutting down a big tree. Or, rather, he was cutting down a big tree and I was removing the wood in a wheelbarrow. When I was halfway through, I began to lose my breath, and later on, it all went completely. I could no longer work and no longer breathe, and I didn’t have the breath to climb the stairs at home. That was when I went to see the local doctor, and that was when they discovered that I was seriously ill and all of this lot began.

The next interruption was from someone who wanted a chat, so I was there until 18:30, thinking as the discussion came to a close that I’d have thirty minutes to finish the dictaphone notes and then I could go for tea.

But that didn’t work out because Rosemary wanted to talk to me. She was having problems doing a scan, and she’d also lost a Word file that she’d just saved. Could I help as it was urgent?

So how long do you think that I spent helping her? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Not a bit of it. I was there on line with her for one hour and fifty minutes, we didn’t find the files and I’m still at a loss as to what she’s doing and where her files are going. We tried everything to find them, even down to creating some more and savng them into a known directory, but when you are trying remotely to help someone four hundred and fifty kilometres away and you can’t see their screen, you’re relying completely on what they are telling you. And what she was telling me made no sense at all.

In the end, I’m glad that her ‘phone rang, otherwise I’d still be there now, I suppose.

But the answer to all of this is simple. I’m going to have to stop being so nice to people and somehow stop them bothering me like this. I can’t do anything, I can’t get anything started, never mind finished. I have so much to do and I’m living on borrowed time. Dialysis is taking up far too much of my time and I need everything that’s left so that I can push on with my own life, but all of this is driving me up the wall.

And that includes the food. For once in my life, I was actually feeling hungry, but look what happened to my mealtime. Instead, there I was at 20:30, when I should have been doing other things, putting half a dozen falafel balls into the air fryer, a diced potato in the microwave and adding them all to the rest of that nice potato salad that I made last week. What a meal that wasn’t.

Once I’d finished eating, there was the rest of the dictaphone notes.

There were three guys who were having a lesson in my apartment with a particular woman teacher. This lesson turned out somehow to be a rather nasty lesson and this woman left in quite a bad temper. Anyway, these three guys decided to set out and go after her. I tried to dissuade them but they just went out anyway. I made sure that the house was tidy and went out a little later on. saw these three boys going back, but they were each somehow sitting at a table and chair with wheels on it. They had a coffee or something, and they were pushing themselves along with their feet to go back to my place, so I avoided them and headed to the corner where my friends were due to meet me. They were all there, even the kids, and even this woman was there and she was most upset. There had been some kind of confrontation. Anyway, we all agreed to go back to my house, and when we arrived, there were these three tables and chair things parked in a car parking space in the street. It was the day of a strike or something, and someone was trying to pay for a parking fee without success, so we told him that there was no parking fee today. Anyway, we went into my apartment and I could hear music coming from one of the bedrooms, so I went, and these three guys were in there. One of them was in my bed and the other two were lounging around on it, so I told them that they would have to go now as I was having company, so they simply packed up, went downstairs and left. Then the people began to come in. One woman was smoking, so I told her that smoking was not allowed in my apartment but she made some kind of gesture and carried on, so I thought that I would deal with her in a minute. Everyone came in, including one actor-type guy. He was being his usual expansive self and he asked “what’s going to happen now?”. I said “you can always help in the kitchen making us some food”. He looked at me and said “no”. Then he went to find this woman and said “do you know what that man said to me? He said that I had to work in the kitchen, so I told him ‘no I’m not'”. She said something like “it’s OK” and then she said to me “well, don’t worry. He never helps anywhere”. I thought “well, if he doesn’t help anywhere, I can’t see him being allowed back to my apartment again”.

Believe it or not, I do actually know a thespian (or who thinks that he’s a thespian, anyway) who thinks like this. “I’m exceptional” and “I’m special”. And, in fact, he won’t be coming around here any time soon (not that he would anyway because he doesn’t live around here). My friend are lovely people, and we all chip in to do the work that’s necessary wherever we are.

It’s the same with the cigarette smoker. I know people like that too, and they won’t be coming to visit me either. There’s this thing called “respect”.

As for the rest of the dream, it doesn’t mean much to me, although the woman teacher could be my old friend Marianne who died in 2013. And I’ve been in an apartment like this before in a dream too, where there were loads of children hanging about. But that’s about it, I suppose.

There was something in that dream about a girl who had a Chrysler V8 sewn onto her jeans. I said that if I wanted to do that, I’d get one off my niece’s husband’s truck. She asked what he had and I replied that it was a big Dodge 5.8 diesel pickup and so we were talking for a while about these big American pick-ups after that.

My niece’s husband in Canada does have a V8 diesel, but it’s in a Chevrolet lorry, the one that I drove down to New Hampshire in the USA to drop off that racing engine that had shot a con-rod through the side during a tractor-pulling event. And I don’t recall it having a badge like the one on this girl’s jeans, but what does that matter.

Anyway, now that I’m starting to calm down and cool down after my outburst just now, and my notes are finished, I’ll finish off whatever needs fnishing and then go to bed. I have a hospital appointment in the morning and I have never felt less like going to it, but I supose that I must, although I’m not sure why.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about thespians … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of the famous pathologist Dr Keith Simpson, performing an autopsy in front of a class of university students.
"In real life," he said "this man was an actor …"
And someone shouted up from the back of the class "well, if he’s acting now, he’s bloody good!"

LIVE: Monday 12th October 2026 – MY COTTAGE PIE …

… is delicious, even if it isn’t made with real cottages. That was an excellent recipe that my chatbot found for me, and if he knows any others as good as this one, I shall pick his brains again.

However, no matter how nice it was, I hope that it makes me sleep better than last night. I ended up in bed much later than I had intended, and although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long enough. I awoke quite early on – I’ve no idea of the time because I didn’t look – and after that, despite everything that I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was still awake, but even so, it still took me a good few minutes to leave the bed and stand up.

The first port of call was at the front door to unlock it ready for when Isabelle the Nurse arrives, and after that, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and to have a good scrub up. And even a shave too, in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me at dialysis this afternoon.

Back in here, I checked the dictaphone to see what was on there, but there was nothing much, so I found a few other things to do until Isabelle the Nurse breezed in.

Today, we talked about my cottage pie, or Hachis Parmontier as they say around here, and a few other things too before she parted off on her week’s break, where planning the installation of her Halloween decorations seems to be Priority Number One.

After she left, I made my breakfast, and as I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

The commissioner is talking today about the Bower Oak close to Croft Ambrey. He tells us that "It should be called ”The Lovers’ Oak,” from the romantic scenes that have occurred there. Few trees have left more indelible impressions on young memories."

It beats me how he knows about “the romantic scenes that have occurred there”. Surely he hasn’t been spying on what goes on there in a dirty raincoat and binoculars? Perish the thought, hey?

After I’d finished my breakfast, I came in here to carry on working for a while.

The first task was to review the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and make sure that it’s good. And it is, too. There are one or two new groups and musicians featuring in it this week to give it an air of something different.

And that reminds me. If you don’t know how to listen to my programme, it’s broadcast HERE ON FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS at 21:00 CET (20:00 UK Time and 15:00 in Montréal and Toronto). And if you miss the broadcasts, there are PODCASTS HERE

After the radio, it was the Welsh homework. We had to write an essay about the plans of a new supermarket to be built in a small rural town, write about the background, the arguments for, the arguments against and what we think. And as usual, whenever I have to write an essay, I fall foul of the word count before I’ve really got going. That has been my bane ever since primary school and, let’s be honest, I’m not likely to change now at my age.

This all took me up to midday when it was time to drop everything and head into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and my midday medication, after which I began to prepare for going to dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up too, to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, not that it does much good really.

After she’d left to go and have her butties before going back out to work, I took the cottage pie out of the oven … "something that our hero had forgotten to do this morning" – ed … covered it with clingfilm and made some space for it in the fridge. It smelt just as nice and delicious as it did while it was cooking.

Yes, tonight I’ll give it a try and see what it’s like, but I’m going to have to work out a way of freezing some of it because there’s far too much to eat in one or two meals. You can’t just slop it into a plastic bag like you can do with a curry or a chilli. Answers on a postcard to …

While I was waiting for the taxi, I adopted the usual position of folding up over the table with my head resting on my arms, but I was rudely interrupted by the doorbell announcing the arrival of the taxi, ten minutes early. And it was “rudely” too. It took me a minute or two to work out where I was and what was going on.

Once I was in the taxi, we had to go to Sartilly for someone else. With the road closed at La Havaudière, we usually go down the road between St. Pair sur Mer and Champeaux, and turn off at Lezeaux Le Carrière to rejoin the main road. However, this driver took me along the coast as far as Carolles and then cut across country to Sartilly. It’s a much nicer road than the Champeaux road, that’s for sure, but it’s a much longer way around, and as a result, I was late for dialysis.

Arriving after 14:00 is one thing, but my nurse, the new young girl with the pet rabbit, was already waiting. There was a lot of preparatory work to do at first, but I was up and running by 14:30, and there are times when it’s been later than that when I’ve arrived early.

And bizarrely, the first puncture hurt a little, but the second didn’t hurt at all, and that’s the one that usually causes all the problems.

Once I was up and running, I had a footfest again. I watched the rest of the Hwlffordd v Caernarfon game, spending most of the time wondering what had happened to the technical skills of both teams as they slugged it out in a midfield maul.

However, I do know why Hwlffordd are stuck low down the table even if they have one of the meanest defences in the league. Whereas TNS have scored 44 goals, Caernarfon 37 and even Trefynnon, propping up the table by a mile, have scored 12, Hwlffordd have scored just 8 and that is simply not good enough.

Mind you, they added one goal to the total at the weekend against Caernarfon, but Caernarfon scored two and that was that, although the penalty awarded for the first goal was … errr … rather dubious, even though it was verified on VAR.

Afterwards, we had Penybont v Y Barri down at Bridgend in front of a big four-figure crowd, the sixth biggest of the season. However, I didn’t finish it all, and so you’ll have to wait for Thursday night for a report on that.

But it’s really strange. Five, ten, fifteen and more years ago, the league was struggling to have one four-figure crowd per season. These days, it’s having at least one four-figure crowd per week somewhere – usually at Caernarfon, Colwyn Bay and Penybont – and it’s rumoured that Connah’s Quay Nomads are pushing the boat out to drag in a four-figure crowd for the local derby at Y Fflint shortly.

And Bangor City in the second division have had two crowds of over four figures, and there was a third at Holyhead when Bangor were the visitors. Things are definitely looking up.

My foot fest was interrupted by the arrival of a doctor – not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant. He asked me how I was feeling and I replied moyen, or “average”, so he asked me what I meant, so I replied “not good but not bad”. So he asked me “is there anything else I can do for you?” but I replied “no”. That was the depth of his examination.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he doesn’t seem to be interested in his job, and I often get the impression that he’d much rather be elsewhere.

The snacks have changed at dialysis today too. I no longer have my coffee and orange juice. The coffee is still there, but the only other thing that I can have is a fruit purée. I suppose that I’ll have to make the best of that. Still, it’s all free, so I have no grounds to complain or to moan about it.

When the session was ended, which made a change to arrive at this point and not have the session cut short, the young nurse with the rabbit unplugged me quite quickly, but I had to wait for the taxi driver. But it didn’t matter. It was one of my favourite drivers and she’s taken me to Paris a few times. Travelling with her is “exciting” to say the least, so I know that we wouldn’t take long to be home.

There were two other people from another place nearby who needed collecting, and start as we mean to go on – at the roundabout at the end of the road, she shot round it, cutting up another couple of cars while she was at it, and I was home by 18:40, which makes a nice change.

My faithful cleaner helped me back into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink into my hand when I sat down. After she left, I helped myself to a small plateful of my cottage pie, made with real cottages, and it really is delicious. There’s no doubt at all about that. I shall definitely make a permanent note of that recipe.

Back in here, I came to write out the notes for today, but before I’d made much progress, I’d fallen asleep. When I awoke, I took myself off the bed after I’d posted on line what I’d written, and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow. What kind of failure am I?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about word counts for essays … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a very old limerick that had done the rounds long before I every heard it –
"There was a young man from Japan
Who could never make limericks scan.
He said ‘my old bean
I know just what you mean
But I always try to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

LIVE: Tuesday 6th October 2026 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of those days where I’ve not been able to accomplish much, much to my regret, of course, but I seem to have gone from one interruption to another.

Those interruptions started last night, as I’m sure that you will remember – typing out the notes quite efficiently until I crashed out at the desk, and the worst thing about it was not knowing that I’d crashed out until I awoke.

As I mentioned yesterday, when I awoke, I went more-or-less straight to bed, hoping for a good sleep.

And so I thought, but I had not one, but two phantom alarm calls during the night. The first one was sometime round about 02:30 and I managed to ignore that one pretty much. The second one, round about 04:30, I took much more seriously. I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the second alarm. And after a while, when it didn’t come, I checked the time and it was 04:38, so I climbed back into bed.

However, the damage had been done with the call at 02:30. From then on, I was just drifting in and out of sleep. I was definitely asleep at 04:30 or so, but I was awake before the alarm went off at 06:29.

Once again, we had the same old struggle to rise up from the bed and to unlock the front door, but I managed it eventually. And then back into the bathroom to sort myself out, ready for Isabelle the Nurse.

Back in here, I had last night’s notes to finish, so I buckled down and bashed them out, but just before I could put them on line, Isabelle the Nurse arrived. She asked me about my week while she was on her break, so I told her, but that didn’t leave much time for her to tell me about her week.

And she gave me a lecture about dialysis too, saying that I was expecting too much if I wanted things to go as normal every time. There could have been a hundred reasons why it all went wrong and she told me some of them. However, that’s not really the point. The point is that they didn’t tell me about them, so I couldn’t argue about the situation then and there.

After Isabelle the Nurse had left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, they are still discussing the safety concerns relating to the local weather, but something they mentioned caused me to go off on a tangent again and begin to search for the sinking of the Dublin Packet Boat in 1770, with the loss of all hands, without very much success.

Back in here, I finished off the notes and posted them on line, then I began to revise for my Welsh lesson. The revision went really well and I managed to finish the first unit, so I was looking forward to the lesson.

And the lesson went really well too. I did quite well, except for a couple of mistakes that I made, and I was quite happy with my progress. Sad as it is to say it, much as I loved my previous teacher and wished that she was still teaching our year, the current teacher, apart from being really scatty, seems to be more efficient, and I’m learning more with her than I did with her predecessor.

When the lesson was over, I wrote up the notes from the dictaphone last night – and about time too.

We were in a big city that might even have been London. In fact, it probably was, and we were walking down that street that we walk along quite often in a dream but this time, going the other way, from the city centre out to the suburbs. There were three of us, and we were fooling around a little. One of them wanted to go to use the toilet, but there was nowhere, so in the end we found a pub that was open early in the morning, and he allowed them to go to the bathroom there. I was much more interested in an old car across the road. Eventually, my friends came out and we carried on walking and chatting until, in the end, we came to a café where we thought that we’d go and have a coffee. We went in and sat down at a table and we noticed a couple of kids watching us. Suddenly, one of the kids blurted out something in English, so I mentioned it to Nerina and said that you can’t go anywhere, can you? Anyway, these people came over. She looked at my camera and asked if I was me. I said that I was, and she told me that I’d commented on a photo of hers ages ago, and she said that she was very pleased to see me. We chatted for quite a while, and then they invited us to come on their boat in the river. We began to get ready, but this couple was really strange. She insisted on appeal because, being polite and very well-dressed, but not on her own children. Eventually, we sat on this boat. We thought that we’d been on this boat before, so we wanted to know what else was going to happen. Then they began to put a few films on, and these films were dubious, to say the least, and … fell asleep here …

What a dream that was!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a dream a week or two back about Nerina and me being in New York for something to do with her work. This boat was moored on the Hudson River in New York, roughly where we were in the previous dream, although the crew of the British freighter were all for buying the boat and doing some privateering on the way home.

Apart from that, there’s the street in London that we know so well, although not this end. We know much more about the far end, which is presumably in Edmonton somewhere and where we buy our chips and pastries.

But, as usual, the dream is just an example of the kind of nonsense that I can conjure up when I try.

The cleaner turned up next to do her stuff, but she sorted out the bathroom first and then chased me under the shower for my weekly scrub.

Back in here, I did some work on my radio programme, and the music is really taking shape. For the last two or three weeks, I’ve had to search for loads of music that I don’t have to hand, and this week is no different. But as of tomorrow, I’m going to have to crack on if I want to finish it before the weekend.

When teatime came round, I went into the kitchen and made myself some mashed potato with onion, peas and carrots and the last slice of my vegan pie. That was delicious, and I’m going to have to make another one at some point. A slice of that makes a nice, traditional meal.

It was followed by a raspberry soya dessert, and they are quite nice too. I’ll have to order some more of these when they next come round on special offer.

Back in here, Rosemary ‘phoned me. Her external hard drive had arrived, but she wasn’t sure how to use it. We ended up just having a quick chat – a mere 00:53:48 today – and helped her install the external drive and perform her first complete backup. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, she won’t lose any more files.

Once I’d finished with Rosemary, I could crack on and do the notes for the day, and now, they are finished. There are just the stats and my back-up to perform, and then I can go to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about alarms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I heard a story that one of my friends had bought a new alarm clock earlier that day.
It had come by post from the Tourettes Society, and we were having a good discussion about it.
At least, we were, until one of my friends said "well, he’s going to be in for a rude awakening tomorrow morning then"

LIVE: Monday 5th October 2026 – I AM REALLY …

… convinced that the people at dialysis … "or some of them, anyway" – ed … are pulling my leg or taking the mickey. We’ve had yet another showdown about the length of the sessions.

More of this anon however. Let’s start at the very beginning … "♬ a very good place to start ♬" – ed … and go back to last night. By the time that I’d finished everything and crawled into bed, it was just a few minutes past 23:30. So much for my early night;

And it all went worse after that. I awoke a few hours later – don’t ask me what time – and after that, I didn’t go back to sleep at all. I just lay there, tossing and turning, all through the night.

When the alarm went off, I was still awake, but be that as it may, it was another desperate struggle to rise to my feet. And it wasn’t just a lack of motivation either. I had to wait a good few minutes for the room to stop spinning round before I felt able to stand up.

Having unlocked the front door for the nurse, I headed back into the bathroom to organise myself for dialysis. Except that I forgot to have a shave this morning. Whatever will Emilie the Cute Consultant think of me if she sees me this afternoon at dialysis?

Back in here, there was nothing on the dictaphone from last night, so I went to find myself something else to do. But there wasn’t very long in which to do it because the nurse turned up at 08:04 this morning, and that’s early.

While he was sorting out my legs and feet, he was telling me some more stories about Saturday’s fire in the restaurant in the town centre. Most of it, though, is pure gossip and speculation, so I’m not going to repeat it in a public forum.

After he left, I made breakfast (and my new loaf is wonderful) and while I was eating it, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’ve finished talking about fungi now and were discussing extremes of weather. And one example caught my eye – the entry for 1816.

"1816. July was unusually boisterous and wet.
Aug. 31. Accompanied by a fall of rain of nearly three inches in two days. A tremendous gale of wind visited Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, and other northern towns. Much damage done to shipping, and many vessels lost at sea. This was the diastrous harvest time previously mentioned."

This corresponds with the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in Sumbawa, in Indonesia, in April 1815, the most powerful volcanic eruption in modern times. It led to 1816 being called “The Year Without a Summer” as crops failed and extremes of weather battered the World.

Back in here later, I had this week’s radio programme to review, and when I was satisfied with it, I sent it off to the studio to be fitted into the stream for broadcasting on Friday and Saturday nights at 21:30.

Having done that, the next item that needed my intervention was my Welsh homework. I called up the page, copied and pasted the questions onto the computer, checked that they were appreciated as being quite the careful and faithful copy, and then began to answer them.

When I’d answered them, I checked with my chatbot to see if I was on the right lines, and once he confirmed that everything was as it should be, I sent them off. That’ll give our tutor something to think about.

There was an interruption when the telephone rang. A neighbour called me to ask if he could come to visit me sometime. We agreed on Wednesday morning at 11:00. Then he telephoned me again five minutes later to say that he’d forgotten about an appointment on Wednesday, so could he come another time? As long as I’m here and I’m not in my Welsh class, he can come when he likes.

But what with neighbours coming to visit, the possibility that I’m going to have a friend here for a week and all of that, I seem to be quite popular these days. I’m not sure why, though. Do I owe you any money?

It’s not as busy, though, as it was last year. I shall have to remind a few more people that it’s open house for whenever they want to come to stay.

When the alarm that reminds me that it’s time to prepare for dialysis went off, I wandered into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication and then began to pack the travelling laptop to take with me. My cleaner turned up too to sort out the anaesthetic for my arm.

After she left, I waited for the taxi, in my usual “slumped over the kitchen table, head resting on my arms” position. And I began to have a lovely dream and remember saying to myself that I really must remember this, but then the doorbell rang and the whole lot evaporated immediately, and that was that.

At first, I was alone in the car, but then we had to pick up a guy at the hospital as well as my regular companion from Sartilly, as a result of which we were a little late arriving.

Not only that, but several people had arrived together just before me, so I had to wait until 14:25 before I was finally connected up.

My plan was to sit quietly and watch a football match but my dialysis machine had other ideas. It was constantly ringing up errors, and that brought the nurses a-running when the alarm went off. I hardly had any peace at all.

Nevertheless, I did manage to watch Airbus UK Broughton v Trefelin, after a fashion. This game was played between two of the newly promoted sides, and what different sides they were too. Trefelin were more “kick and rush” whereas Airbus played some really good, technical football. The final result, 3-0 to Airbus, wasn’t a surprise to anyone.

It seems to me that Airbus have managed to suss out this Premier League, and while they are never going to win the championship, they have what it takes to avoid relegation, but unless Trefelin can find something magical from somewhere, it’s going to be a long, hard season.

In the middle of all of this, we had a confrontation. One of the doctors … "not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant" – ed …came to see me. She asked me how things were, and so I launched into my tirade about the last two sessions and how disappointed I was.

Of course, it wasn’t she who had made the decisions – she wasn’t on duty – so she only knew what was in the records.

First of all, I complained that whatever had gone on had gone on without my knowledge, and I thought that that was shameful. That surprised her because, apparently, every patient has the right to know what’s happening about his treatment.

Secondly, on Thursday, I’d made the decision to come home at the right weight by staying for four hours instead of three, and coming home 700 grammes over my weight, as I did last Thursday, was, in my opinion, a waste of forty-five minutes of my time when I have better things to do at home.

She couldn’t really find an answer to that. One thing that she suggested was that there wasn’t enough time even with four hours to take everything out. They are limiting my extraction to 950 millilitres per hour because of my low blood pressure. But leaving my blood pressure aside, which has been low like this for twenty-odd years, what with everything that’s pumped into me during a session, there were three thousand eight hundred millilitres to take out last Thursday, so that was exactly right – and I realised that the end of the World had come upon us when she – a doctor of medicine – had to use a calculator to divide three thousand eight hundred by four.

After much argument and discussion, we agreed that I should be leaving at my recognised dry weight, even if I have to stay there for a week to do it.

And having made such an agreement, the dialysis breathed its last, ten minutes before the end of the session with 200 grammes still to go, so I was unplugged, under-extracted and overweight. It wasn’t my day, was it?

The taxi was waiting for me when the dialysis was over and I was able to head for home quite quickly, especially as I was the only passenger. However, we ended up being stuck behind a service bus between La Havaudière and the roundabout at the ring road just outside Granville, and the bus was crawling along, stopping to drop off and pick up passengers all the way round and we couldn’t go past.

Eventually, we arrived at chez moi where my faithful cleaner was waiting for me. She helped me into the kitchen, and when I was sitting down on a chair, she stuck a disgusting drink into my hands.

After all of my exertions at dialysis today, I didn’t at all feel like cooking anything, so I grabbed some crackers and some of the cheese spread, and an orange for pudding. And when I went to spread the cheese on my crackers, I found that it had gone off. It’s really not my day, is it?

In the end, I started to write up the notes from the day, and I was pushing on quite well but the next thing that I knew was that it was almost 22:00 and I must have fallen asleep in mid-page at some time previously.

At that point, I was in absolutely no state at all to carry on working, so I posted what I had written, added a “To Be Continued” stamp and went to bed. I’ll finish everything off tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about things breaking down … "well, one of us has" – ed … two young Russian conscripts walk to the Ukraine front line and surrender to the Ukrainians.
"Our lorry has broken down, we’ve no more fuel, and we’ve been abandoned. " they said.
They are consequently taken prisoner, but one of the Ukrainians is a mechanic. "There’s no-one about" he said. "Let’s go and see if we can salvage it."
The Russian prisoners lead the Ukrainian patrol to the lorry, and the mechanic gives it a good examination.
After half an hour, he announces "the fuel pipe has come off and all the fuel has drained away. There’s a hole in the sump that has drained out all the oil, the cam belt has snapped, one of the tyres is punctured, the starter has fallen out and there’s a leak of water in the radiator."
"A leak in the radiator?" asks one of the Russians. "I can’t remember doing that."

LIVE: Tuesday 29th September 2026 – TODAY WAS A …

… much better day than yesterday – that is, up to a certain point anyway. It’s slowly starting to deteriorate now, so I’ll tell you all in due course how it ended. However, that won’t be tonight because there’s a football match on later this evening and it doesn’t finish until late, so I might end up just posting what I will have written, and you’ll get the rest tomorrow if you’re lucky.

Strangely enough, I was only thinking yesterday during the day that it’s been about a fortnight since you’ve had a “to be continued” when I’ve abandoned the notes due to tiredness and gone to bed, so things must be getting better. Only to have to post a “to be continued” the very same evening, as those of you who log in late at night or early in the morning will have seen.

It wasn’t so early when I went to bed, though. That was because I’d crashed out in the chair here while I was writing, and it wasn’t until later that I awoke. At that point, I went to bed and went straight to sleep, which is a surprise, considering the thunder and lightning that was crashing and flashing about outside.

Not that I was asleep for long. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke but it was a very long time before 06:29. I lay there tossing and turning for quite a while, and then I continued my experiment about sleeping. I made a definite effort to go to sleep lying on my side, but when I awoke each time, I was lying on my back. I’m not sure of why that is, but it’s annoying. I shall have to chain myself to the bed in memory of Kirk Anderson and Joyce McKinney, although I shan’t "ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose".

At some point, I did go back to sleep long enough to be awoken by the alarm, and then we had the usual struggle to convince myself to rise up off the edge of the bed and head to the bathroom to sort myself out. Not before having unlocked the front door, though.

Once I’d sorted myself out, I came back in here and carried on with the rest of yesterday’s notes. They are now on line, as many of you might have noticed. What I should have done next was to attack the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night, but the arrival of the nurse confounded me, and I forgot to do them afterwards. Next morning, they eventually found their way on line.

I was in St Pair last night, staying somewhere. We’d heard somewhere that a new Casino supermarket had opened on the edge of the town centre, so I went off to have a look because it wasn’t far away from where we were staying. When I came back, I told everyone that I was disappointed by it because it was only a small, local kind of superette thing rather than the big supermarket that we had been expecting, and they didn’t have very much choice in there at all. While I’d been away, there had been a hockey match played between Denmark and Wales. I heard the result, and Denmark had won 2-0. I was pleased in a sense because it showed that Wales was still being included in these international tournaments and was not being forgotten.

The first part of the dream means nothing to me really, but there was a huge Casino supermarket (now an Intermarché) on the edge of town and I didn’t much like going there because the place was dirty and it never carried much of what I needed.

As for the second part, Wales have recently (on Sunday, in fact) played football against Denmark, and Denmark beat them 2-0. And as for hockey, that’s something that is featuring quite heavily in something else that’s going on right now and I could tell you plenty of stories about it, but the World isn’t yet ready to hear them.

After his week’s rest, the nurse was quite on form, but he was in a rush with patients waiting down at his office so he couldn’t stay around long to talk. However, he was interested to know what they had pumped into me last Monday, but I told him that I didn’t know. He asked me to find out next time I was there.

His leaving was the cue for me to make my breakfast – the usual porridge, toast, coffee and fruit juice. I know that it sounds monotonous, but it’s really the only food that I enjoy eating these days.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’re now discussing the trees of the Clee and Longmynd Hills. Especially the giant elms and poplars that seem to thrive there. And although I don’t know much about trees from a biological point of view, I do know that a tree with a twenty-two-foot circumference measured five feet from the ground is an enormous tree and well worth its place on the list of giant trees.

Back in here, I had an hour and fifteen minutes of revision for my Welsh class, and now that my course book has turned up, it’s much easier to revise and prepare.

After that, I went to the lesson, all two and a half hours of it. And once more, it passed really well and I was quite pleased with it. But the acid test is yet to come – our tutor has set us some homework to be done by next Monday. Then we’ll see how much has stuck to my teflon brain.

When the lesson had finished, I went into the kitchen and began bagging up my curry from yesterday. There was enough for five portions, and that should keep me out of mischief for a while. My next effort will be an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit – it’s been ages since I’ve made one of those.

My faithful cleaner caught me in flagrante delicto packing up the stuff when she came in to do her thing. She gave me a hand to move things round in the freezer and then chased me under the shower for my weekly wash.

Back in here later, I started choosing the music for another radio programme. And I found that I was still short of some, so I had to start to search around to see what I could find.

Once I’d found everything that I needed, I had to reformat, re-edit and remix it. And then I had to pair the music off. I’ve not segued it as yet, but I’ll do that tomorrow. I ran out of time, mainly because, would you believe, I crashed out for about an hour while … errr … riding the porcelain horse. How embarrassing was that?

What with working late and there being a football match tonight, I didn’t have time for tea, so instead I had some of those small toasted squares with some of the nice spreading cheese that my cleaner found for me in Leclerc a while back. It was followed by a really nice, juicy orange for pudding.

After that, there was the football. Cardiff Metro v Hwlffordd, a match postponed from a few weeks ago when Cardiff Metro’s under-19 team was playing an European Junior Cup match on the Cyncoed pitch, and why the two teams didn’t offer to switch fixtures and play it at Hwlffordd, I really don’t know.

Anyway, the first half was absolutely dreadful. It was easily the worst forty-five minutes I have ever seen, and that’s a disappointment because both sides usually play some attractive football, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …

The first ten minutes of the second half were in the same vein, but then we had a really dramatic incident. A Hwlffordd player burst into the penalty area with the ball, but an excellent tackle by a Met defender put the ball out of play, with the Hwlffordd attacker falling over the body of the defender. In a decision that remains a mystery to everyone watching, the ref awarded a penalty.

Not surprisingly, the whole crowd and the Met players were incensed, and I don’t blame them either because I was too. After much dispute and debate, the referee went to consult the VAR cameras, and after a lengthy delay, he rightly revoked the penalty award.

What should then have happened was that he should have awarded a corner kick to Hwlffordd. However, he gave a dropped ball to the Cardiff Met keeper, who then kicked it upfield and the Met went on to score a goal from it.

After that, the game livened up somewhat as Hwlffordd tried to score a goal to equalise. However, they couldn’t make their mark on the game and it finished 1-0 to the Met.

So with that out of the way, I just have a couple more things to do and then I’m off to bed. There’s plenty of work for tomorrow, so I hope that this good-ish mood continues. I’ll have to add in last night’s dreams tomorrow too, so check back at some point.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about trees … "well, one of us has" – ed … a squirrel was sitting in a tree when it began to shake violently. He looked down and saw an elephant climbing the tree.
"Why are you climbing this tree?" asked the squirrel.
"I fancy eating some apples" replied the elephant.
"But this isn’t an apple tree" said the squirrel.
"I know" replied the elephant "but it’s OK. I brought some with me."

LIVE: Tuesday 22nd September 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why, but today, I seem to have had one of the better days that I have had for a considerable period of time. Even my cleaner noticed that I was much more bright and chirpy than my normal self.

It surely can’t be the perfusion that I had yesterday? I would imagine that that would take a few days before it started having any effect, but apart from that, nothing else seems to have changed, so I dunno.

It wasn’t the early night either because it wasn’t as early as I would have liked it to be either. It was probably about 22:45 when I finally hit the hay.

And that’s another thing too – looking back a couple of weeks or so ago, I was flat out and desperate to go to bed at some kind of ridiculously early hour, and that’s especially true of the nights when I have had dialysis in the afternoon, but just recently, there have been several nights after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out.

And last night, after dialysis, I would have normally expected to have gone to bed at about 20:30 or 21:00, but I was still going strong at, as I said just now, 22:45. So I’ve no idea what’s happening right now.

But once I’d gone to bed, I managed to go to sleep fairly quickly, but once more, it wasn’t for long. I awoke again at some early hour – I’ve no idea what time because I didn’t look – and couldn’t go back to sleep.

At some point, though, I must have managed it because I remember waking up again. This time I did look at the time and it was 05:52. I decided that I wouldn’t try to go back to bed but I’d have another early start.

By 06:15 I was in the bathroom sorting myself out and then came back in here to start work.

The first thing that I did was to transcribe the notes on the dictaphone. There was nothing on there from last night, but I dealt with Sunday’s dream and there was also something from Monday morning. Those two web pages are now on line, for the benefit of those of you who are here for the dreams and not for news of my really exciting and eventful life.

While I was at it, I checked the stats and there was yet another hit from an artificial intelligence chatbot.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to start her week and, silly me, I’d left the door locked from last night so she had to use the key that I gave her and her oppo the other week. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been locking the door to the apartment at night since I had that strange nocturnal visitor a few weeks ago.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Not very much of it because, as usual, I was side-tracked and ended up reading about the mountains on the fringe of the Mynyddoedd Duon or “Black Mountains” of Breconshire and neighbouring counties. That was much more exciting.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went to class. And surprisingly, it was one of the best lessons that I have ever had, even though it’s only the second lesson of another year. That probably contributed to my good humour, especially as after the lesson a few of us had a group chat on the internet and I managed to keep up with the conversation.

And that wasn’t the only conversation that I had had either. All in all, there was a total of four conversations with different people, and they were all welcome.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment and the first thing that she did was, as usual on a Tuesday, to chase me into the shower. While I was in there showering, she changed the bedclothes on my bed so now, you have a nice clean boy … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … and a nice clean bed.

We also had a good chat about several things, including about the retired skipper who was found dead in a burnt-out apartment the other day.

After she left, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been working on before my holidays. Now, all of the music has been located, re-edited and reformatted, paired and segued. All I need to do now is to write the notes and then that’s ready to go too. And that reminds me – I haven’t checked this week’s radio programme yet so I must do that tomorrow without fail.

On that point, I knocked off for tea. And surprisingly, I was hungry too so I made pasta and veg in tomato sauce with falafel, and it would have been delicious had I not dropped a lot of used oil onto it straight out of the air fryer. So I ate what I could and the incident reminded me to
1) Be more careful with the air fryer
2) Wash the air fryer out more regularly.

And when I did the washing up later, I did indeed wash out the air fryer and I hope that on Friday, when I have my chips, it will produce some really good ones.

But again, I had a meal tonight and half a meal last night, and I’m promising myself an evening meal on Friday. So what IS going on with me right now?

Back in the office, I typed up the notes for tonight and then checked the stats and so on. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, I might actually manage an early night tonight. So here’s hoping that this good mood continues tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the dreams from Sunday night, the first night and a friend … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of the story generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill but actually concerned Noël Coward and Randolph Churchill.
Coward – "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend—if you have one."
Churchill – "Cannot possibly attend the first night; will attend the second—if there is one"

LIVE: Tuesday 15th September 2026 – THAT WAS A …

… much better day today than yesterday was, although it does have to be said that it could hardly be any worse. For a start, I actually managed to go to sleep, which is more than I did the previous night.

Having gone to bed at about 21;00, after having been asleep on my chair for at least an hour, I was asleep quite quickly. And I didn’t need much rocking either. And there I lay, fast asleep, until something rather dramatic awoke me. It was one of these occasions where something makes me suddenly sit bolt-upright, but unlike most of the other times, it wasn’t a subconscious feeling but a real something.

After that, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. After a while I checked the time, and it was 02:48 so the noise or whatever must have been about 02:00, I reckon. But despite all that, I carried on trying to go to sleep, but it was of no use really. For all the good that it did me, I needn’t have bothered to try.

When I noticed that the time was 05:51, I decided that I may as well make an early start out of it all, so I stood up and began to dress. At east, I “tried to stand up” but for some reason my legs wouldn’t work to that much effect, and it took me about three or four goes before I was finally upright. And then, round about 06:00, I was sitting at the computer.

The first job, of course, was to deal with the notes from last night. I thought that it wouldn’t take long to finish them, but I was surprised at how much there was to write. I ended up with almost two thousand three hundred words – that’s about sixty per cent more than the average. Consequently, I was only just putting the finishing touches to them when I began to wake up and smell the coffee.

That brought the proceedings to a rapid conclusion, and I went into the kitchen to try to be sociable.

Hot, strong coffee first thing in the morning is delicious, especially the way that my friend makes it, so I quite enjoyed drinking it while we chatted.

Our leisurely morning was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse. The Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t bark at all – he just rolled onto his back ready for a tickle-tummy, and the nurse duly obliged.

He then attended to me … "the nurse, not the Hound of the Baskervilles" – ed …, and while he was sorting out my legs and feet, we had an interesting chat. But don’t ask me what it was about because I can’t remember now. It’s one of those things that I’ll probably remember about one tenth of a second after I’ve pressed “send” later on.

After saying goodbye to the Hound of the Baskervilles, the nurse cleared off, and the aforementioned … "the Hound of the Baskervilles, not the nurse" – ed …, dragged his master outside for another round of walkies. I stayed behind, of course, and made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

At the moment, everyone is agreeing with everyone else, there’s no dissent, no disagreement, and the World in rural Herefordshire is at peace. They are all admiring the beautiful view, and I am admiring the beautiful prose, such as "the magnificent vertical wall of the celebrated Coldwell rocks, so splendidly wooded, and through which we have wended our way hither"

Back in here later, I revised for my Welsh and then went to the lesson. We have loads of new students in our class, and a new teacher too. But unfortunately she swallows her words so we can’t make out half the time what she’s saying, and she’s nothing like as well organised as our previous one. I also remain unconvinced that she actually knows her subject as well as she ought to.

We shall see.

When the lesson ended, I had a few things to do and also to sort out my clean clothes for a shower, because my cleaner comes today and she usually chases me thereunder. So when she turned up, she gave the Hound of the Baskervilles his usual big stroke, and then I decided on a change of plan.

The temperature was slowly falling, the weather was slowly deteriorating and the wind was slowly rising. So what I thought that we’d do is that the three of us (and the Hound of the Baskervilles as bodyguard) go to do a little job outside that I’ve been trying to do for an absolute age.

So they walked off and I staggered off outside to see what we could do. We attacked this job, and surprisingly, it was completely finished in about fifteen minutes. The most difficult and longest part of the job was my walking back to the apartment afterwards, because the wind was definitely rising now. And today was the first day since spring that I’d work a jacket outside.

Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph.

Back in here, the first thing that I noticed was that we could hardly move around, there was that much stuff in here. But once a couple of things had gone up into my loft space, it made it slightly … "only slightly" – ed … better.

My cleaner organised the bathroom for me, and then she chased me under the shower, so we have a nice, clean boy … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … this evening. And once I’d come out of the bathroom, my cleaner stopped playing with the Hound of the Baskervilles, sorted out the bathroom and went back upstairs to her place, leaving the rest of us alone.

Once I was organised, I came back in here to do some work. However, I didn’t get very far because Rosemary rang for a chat. Only a very short one today – one hour, nineteen minutes and fifty-two seconds.

But one of the things that we discussed was diuretics, of course, and Rosemary suggested that many fruits and vegetables have diuretic properties. That set me off on another trail, and by the end of our chat, I had a pile of recipes and daily food programmes organised by my friendly neighbourhood chatbot, and there was a cheap good-make juicing machine in my shopping basket ready for purchase tomorrow. The idea of drinking more is something that I need to do, so drinking something that actually has a positive effect on my fluid retention has to be a good way forward.

While all of this was going on, my friend was making tea, and we ended up with sausage, chips and beans. And I know that that’s what Friday’s meal usually is, but the Hound of the Baskervilles is going home on Thursday, taking my friend with him, and so he wants to try the sausages once more before he goes.

The pudding of tinned apricots and my vegan ice cream from Noz was exceptionally good. The ice cream is lovely and I wish now that I’d bought some more the other day.

Later on in here, there was yet more football – another basement clash between two newly-promoted sides, Trefelin and Cambrian United.

It was a strange game too. Plenty of skill on offer and yet plenty of midfield slogging too. But the differences between the two sides were evident. Cambian’s defence was magnificent and never looked like being beaten. They were always thinking one step ahead of the ball and not one step behind, as were their opponents, and there was a difference in physical presence. I had to laugh at one point when a Cambrian central defender and a Trefelin attacker leapt for a ball in the air. The Cambrian defender simply stuck out two hands and pushed the attacker out of the way to have a clear header.

That just about summed up Trefelin’s day, but the final scoreline of 4-0 to Cambrian was something very much of an exaggeration.

But what I’m not going to exaggerate is my need to go to bed, so I’m clearing off. Another day of rest tomorrow and then we go again. That is, if I can get some sleep with this wind that is now howling around outside like the devil.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Report of the Woolhope Naturalists Club … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone asked me whether it would be a suitable thing to read to a group of prisoners in gaol.
"Well, it would have its prose and cons, wouldn’t it?" I replied.

LIVE: Tuesday 1st September 2026 – PHEW! WHAT A …

… day that was.

It actually started last night when I was so tired that I went to bed at about 22:00, totally exhausted. And although I wasn’t as quick going to sleep as I would have liked to have been, it was still quicker than some nights, and I hadn’t finished sucking my menthol and eucalyptus sweet.

The sleep didn’t last as long as it might have done either. I was awake at about 03:30, and, as far as that was concerned, that was the end of any reasonable hope of dozing off again. I stayed there, tossing and turning, trying to find a really good and comfortable position. And just as I was settling into a nice, comfortable position, the alarm went off.

Strangely, I was up and about rather quicker than I have been recently, and the first task that I had to do was to unlock the front door. And this time, I remembered where I put the keys when I’d finished.

Into the bathroom to sort myself out was next, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

There was something about my friend from Germany again – the one to whom I spoke on line the other day. She was planning on going somewhere in her old car, a little dark-blue 1984 Opel saloon. She had some of these stickers that you used to have in the window in the 1960s of where you’ve been. There was probably well over a hundred in her windscreen.

It’s pretty certain that most people my age and older remember those little triangular stickers that you bought in every seaside resort in the 1960s and stuck in your window to say where you’d been. We had dozens, and others had many more than that.

The nurse turned up as usual and asked how things went at dialysis. I told him of my various woes, but he didn’t react.

After he’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Our author is still moaning on about the end of the Gothic period of architecture. Of Renaissance architecture in Italy. He tells us that "Such a style as this cannot but be pronounced an utter barbarism ; it has no language, no meaning of its own, but owes all its splendour to the borrowed light of the very style which it is sedulously labouring to eradicate. Cinque-cento buildings exist of great magnificence, and even great beauty, but all their beauty is derived from the Gothic vestiges which linger about them, and give them at a distance the appearance of pure Gothic structures" and much more in this respect.

By now, I was back in here trying to sort out the radio to broadcast the programme that I’m hoping to make this week. The search for the music continued. However, it had an interruption, though, between 10:30 and 11:45 when I was crashed out on my chair, fast asleep.

When it awoke, I had another interruption too. I’d forgotten that I had yesterday’s notes to finish, and so I abandoned the radio for the moment and attacked the notes.

This was complicated because firstly, I was having to fight the waves of fatigue and sleep that kept on washing over me, and then there was the pause for the disgusting drink and the midday medication.

Not only that, at 14:00 my cleaner turned up, and by 14:15 she’d chased me under the shower. Once again, once she’d arranged the bathroom with everything that I needed, I went into the shower as nature intended, all by myself and without my crutches, hanging on to bits of furniture as I passed by.

The shower was delicious. As usual, I had the temperature at 40°C, and that makes the difference, as far as I’m concerned.

It was a nice, clean me … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … who emerged from the shower – on my own again and walking forwards rather than backwards as I used to. I’m getting better and far more independent than I was when I first started showering. If only I were to have these handrails installed, I could have a lot of showers, certainly more than one each week.

There was quite a bit to sort out with my cleaner today, so it wasn’t until after she left that I could restart the notes. That explains why they didn’t go on line until about 15:30 or something like that.

And once they were done and gone, I could return to the radio programme and continue to search for music. And with the help of my chatbot, I was eventually able to track down everything that I needed. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … artificial intelligence is saving me hours when you need to know “what is (some obscure musician)’s most well-known contribution to (some obscure group). You get the answer in milliseconds rather than spending hours trawling through the internet.

With all of the music downloaded, it needs reformatting and re-editing. And I was halfway through when it was time for me to knock off. However, that wasn’t the cue to put everything away

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have several other projects on the go at the moment too. For one of these, my chatbot has sent me a huge amount of text to review, amend if necessary, and post back. So, with no food again tonight – just a few crackers with the vegan spreading cheese followed by a handful of biscuits – I set to work.

And that was not interruption-free either. The new chat group for the coming year of our Welsh course was set up too, so we had the usual protocol of introducing ourselves, welcoming the newcomers and all of that jazz. And I shall have to get on and order the course book pretty soon because I don’t have long to go before I’m back in class.

After that, I continued with the artificial intelligence notes that needed reviewing and posted them back. They were so long that I had to send them back in four instalments. They wouldn’t all go back in one go.

No-one was more surprised than me to see the time when I’d finished. It was 22:10 – long past my working ultimate deadline. And I still had my notes to complete, so I began to attack them straight away. However, as time drew on, the waves of fatigue swept over me once again and this time, I was unable to resist. I posted on line what I’d written, and then I crawled off to bed. I can finish my notes tomorrow.

However, I’m as fed up with this as you are. Half the notes are better than none, but that’s still not as good as all of them. And having commitments “elsewhere” until about 21:45, there’s not much that I can do to change things. I can’t decide that “OK, I’ll change things around and start to post my notes the following morning” because with the nurse and breakfast and dialysis, there isn’t enough time to do them in the morning either. I shall have to think of a cunning plan.

And before anyone says anything, a vlog is ruled right out. Who wants to stare at my ugly mug anyway?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about having a shower … "well, one of us has" – ed … two girls from Crewe were living together in an apartment and one of them decided to take a shower.
After two hours, she was still in there, so the other one asked her "Are you ok?"
The girl in the shower replied "yes thanks."
"So what’s keeping you?"
"It’s these instructions on the shampoo. I have to follow them carefully."
"What instructions are those?"
"Where it says ‘lather, rinse, repeat’."

Tuesday 9th June 2026 – WHAT A DIFFERENCE …

… we have made to this apartment today. My faithful cleaner and I have been through the apartment like a dose of salts. Tonnes of stuff has gone down to the rubbish bins and there is actually a lot of unused space on the shelves now.

This is what I’ve been hoping to do for quite a while, and I’m glad that we managed to do it today.

Yesterday was an exciting evening too. I finished everything that I needed to do by 23:00 but organising myself for bed took much longer and I bet that it can’t have been much earlier than midnight before I climbed into bed.

For a change, I was asleep quite quickly, but I awoke at 04:00. Try as I might, I could not go back to sleep, and just when I was thinking of getting out of bed, the alarm rang. It was 06:29.

First thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. However, to my dismay, there was nothing on it. Instead, I found plenty of things to do in order to pass the time, including an interesting chat with a chatbot, would you believe, about the Oregon and California Trail and the fate of the Donner Party

Isabelle the Nurse turned up this morning. She was quite late, which is no surprise for her first day back. Of the two nurses in this practice, she’s the one with the “touch” for blood tests and injections, so anyone who needs one of those and it’s “the other one” on duty will usually wait until she starts her week.

After she left, I made breakfast and then carried on with Vera Evison’s book AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT HOLBOROUGH, KENT while I was eating.

The book didn’t last long – only 87 or so pages – and so when I’d finished, I turned to the next one. EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

It was written in 1842 so the introduction goes on for ever, it’s full of flowery prose and phrases along the lines of “would the gentle reader please excuse any faults that he has found …?”

Up to now I’ve not found any worth mentioning, so I came back in here to revise my Welsh.

At 11:00 I went for my lesson and it all passed quite well, even if the tutor didn’t send us the coursework until five minutes before the start of the lesson so we couldn’t review it.

At the end of the lesson, I sorted out the bathroom and some clean clothes, and when my faithful cleaner arrived, she shooed me under the shower.

The shower was really hot today and I enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, I wanted to stay in it for much longer. And this was also the second time that I managed to go into and come out of the shower without the help of my crutches.

Once I’d organised myself, I went to join my cleaner in the living room. We attacked the shelving and I sorted out one of the bags and the shopping trolley that we brought in last week. Quite a lot of the stuff went the Way of the West, but everything else was sorted and boxed quite quickly.

We then turned our attention to the bedroom and the cupboards in here have been emptied of much of the stuff they contained and the photography equipment moved to the top shelf over my desk. There are shelves galore free now.

By the time that we finished, I needed an energy drink. I was completely dazed and confused.

After my cleaner finally left – after an hour of overtime, I suppose – I found a few other things to do, including restarting the radio programmes and hunting down some music.

All of that took me up to teatime, which was a taco roll filled with one of the frozen leftovers that my friend cooked, lengthened with mushrooms, tomatoes and tomato sauce with peppers, all on a bed of rice and vegetables. And how nice was that?

Right now, though, later than ever, I’m off to bed. I’ve had a tough day.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Welsh … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met a boy from Wales who had been an “unexpected birth”.
"But didn’t your dad use precautions?" I asked.
"Yes" he replied. "He used a Welsh letter"
"What’s a Welsh letter?"
"A French letter with a leek in it."

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 – AS I HAVE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday 20th May 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good, if rather strange idea.

One of the reasons why my Welsh isn’t progressing as much as it should is because I’m not talking to anyone Welsh outside the class, and outside the class, all I’m listening to is the football, but, of course, only when the football is being played and filmed.

But in the Welsh class on Tuesday, one of the subjects that we were discussing was artificial intelligence. Someone came up with the question Sgen ti ffrind dychmygol? – “do you have an imaginary friend?”. She’d heard of lonely people who would invent characters on AI on one of these mini-chat programs, just to have someone to talk to or maybe even to have a romantic relationship.

That got me thinking … "and that’s dangerous" – ed … “why don’t I use an AI app to create a Welsh character who would speak to me in Welsh?”. So this afternoon, I spoke to an AI chat program in Welsh, and it replied in Welsh, so now I now know that that works. And of course, I know that it’s possible to create characters with their own personalities, so this weekend, I might give it a try and see how it all works

A character popping up unexpectedly when I’m working on the computer, asking beth ywt ti’n wneud? – “what are you doing?” – would certainly encourage me to dig deep in my memory in order to be able to reply.

That’s really about the only idea that I’ve had just recently. Of course, I’ve had plenty of ideas about going to bed early, but it never seems to work out in real life.

Take last night, for example. I came in here relatively early to write out my notes and do everything else that I need to do, but when I went to take my medication for the night, it was already 23:03 according to the microwave in the kitchen, and it was probably at least ten minutes after that before I climbed into bed.

However, once in bed, after the usual lengthy period of waiting time, I went to sleep and that’s the last that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29.

It was the usual struggle to rise to my feet, and on hearing no sound at all from those in the next room, I staggered over to the computer and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was another rambling dream last night about, well, it started off with some kind of shop. The boss had gone to a market or something and there were very few people actually serving in the shop. His wife, whom he had left behind, she had a heart attack and collapsed at the building. There was no news about what happened afterwards, whether the supermarket had been looted or not by the local residents. Going on from there, what then happened was that at work, everyone was discussing it and wondering what had happened. I was far too busy because not only had I my office work to do, but there was plenty of private work that I was doing too. I was checking a book for someone, two books in fact, because they were full of the most outrageous libels against this person, who just happened to be Roger Moore. He’d asked me if I’d go through it and make a list of what was wrong. There was another book where I was doing a similar thing. There was also someone’s Mercedes on which I had to change the oil. I knew where and how to lay my hands on the oil, but every time that I had to change the oil in his car, it meant going down with a bucket, filling it with oil from some kind of charitable station, then finding the spare parts and then fixing the car so that I was invisible. This went on for several weeks like this and I was hardly at my desk in the office at all, being far too busy with this.

What a strange dream this was. Nothing in here seemed to make any sense … "so what’s new?" – ed … There were claims that at one time Roger Moore lived near Nantwich, and there was someone who lived in a big, posh house near there who owned a Volvo P1800, but the matter is a subject of much debate.

And I can still see the person to whom the Mercedes belonged in the dream, and although I actually did work with him for a while, he never owned a Mercedes in his life. In fact, I wonder if it wasn’t the blue W123 Mercedes 240D that I had for a while in Brussels.

Then after this, I had to go to one of the smaller banks where the Open University funds were held to draw some cash, but I wondered if I had my cash card with me. When I arrived there, there was a guy trying to use the machine. He walked away in disgust and went to talk to the manager about how his accounts were always being mixed and merged up and his wife, who had “preferred customer” status, it never showed anything for her, and could she deal with it? While they were arguing like this, I went through my pockets but couldn’t find my fuel card, which made me think that I’d left it at the office or something.

This is another quite meaningless dream, although the bank did remind me of one of the old newsagents near the Sugar Loaf in Shavington. And I did once lose my fuel card, and that caused me quite a lot of embarrassment.

While I was doing a few other things, I heard movement from the other room, indicating that people were up and about. I went to join them and found, to my delight, that the coffee was en route. What a way to start the day!

In fact, we were still drinking coffee when the nurse arrived. The Hound of the Baskervilles was pleased to see him, but he wasn’t quite so keen to see the aforementioned so he didn’t hang about long. Mind you, he did tell us that these grey, wet and windy days may be over by tomorrow and we’ll have warmth and sun. And about time, too. The weather has been miserable so far this year.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT.

Today, we’ve moved on from pottery to glassware. He mentions that "it is remarkable that the knowledge of the ancients in glassmaking should have been so long … which proves that modern science has added comparatively little to what was practised in this useful and elegant art thousands of years ago."

After breakfast, we chatted for a while and then the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies. I came here and began to research the next radio programme.

When they came back, we continued our chat, and when they left again for walkies part II (which I suspect was to the pub), I carried on in here. The first task once I’d identified who would be featuring in the programme was to find the music. And there was a lot on which I couldn’t lay my hands so I had to cast a wide search net.

There was an interruption when a neighbour came round for a chat, and then I carried on.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles returned (from the pub) with his master, our chat carried on as I continued with the hunt for music, and then later on, I tried that experiment with the chat program.

It was my turn to cook tea again, and there was some vegan pie in the freezer, so we had mashed potato, vegan pie and mixed vegetables in gravy. Luckily, my friend likes Brussels sprouts as much as I do, so I didn’t have to cook some separately.

Once we’d finished and I’d washed up, I came in here to write my notes, do whatever else needs doing and then go to bed. But even as I type, I realise that once again I’ve forgotten my medication for the evening so I’ll have to go back into the kitchen again. But never mind – I’ll soon be in bed and asleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about heart attacks and shops … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a story about a shopkeeper who had had a heart attack and was on his deathbed with all of his family around him.
"Are you there, my darling wife?" he asked feebly
"I’m here, my darling husband" she replied.
"And are you all here, all of my five faithful children?"
"Yes, father, we are all here, all five of us."
"Then who the hell is looking after the shop?"

Tuesday 19th May 2026 – THAT WAS WHAT …

… you might call a lazy day.

It started last night when I finished writing my notes, etc. It was later than I imagined when I finally crawled into bed, but I certainly made the most of it.

Underneath the covers, I was well away with everything, and although it took me ages to fall asleep, which seems to be the case these days, I revelled in every minute that I lay there in the warmth, head underneath the quilt and all of that. There’s no doubt that I really enjoy the comfort of my own bed.

If I remember correctly … "which is not always the case" – ed … I awoke once or twice during the night, but if I did, I went to sleep quite rapidly again.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was well away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, and it took me a good few minutes to come back round into the Land of the Living.

There was no sound at all from the living room, meaning that they must have been fast asleep, so I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

There had been some kind of commotion over the use of skateboards, so their use had been banned by the general public, and the army had to go along and repossess all of the skateboards that they could possibly find. Once they were back in their barracks, a few of the soldiers began to practise using them, and they organised a competition which was based somewhere in the hills where there was a downslope that was part of the side of an old river valley. They were planning to have some kind of championships there. However, one of the bosses came to hear about it and he actually found them another place in Pillory Street in Nantwich where they could have this competition.

First of all, there’s only a slight downhill slope at the head of Pillory Street from where it joins Hospital Street and goes down to the White Horse, so skateboard racing wouldn’t be much good there. Secondly, it doesn’t seem to relate to anything that I know or have done in recent times.

There was a taxi driver around Crewe who was in all kinds of complicated money problems. He couldn’t afford this and he couldn’t afford that, and he was really on the breadline. They were thinking of ways in which they would try to make money. One of them was that this woman should serve as a councillor on the school committee but she didn’t know how to go about it. I had some paperwork which I lent to her, but she still wasn’t very sure. But this money problem continued, and in the end, they sent me out for a hundred of these sweets called “Ochs” because they had suddenly had a group of women come round for a chat. I had to walk around for a short while and found a shop that was selling them, where I asked for a hundred. He gave me a hundred and I gave him one hundred and sixty-nine pence. He showed me the way out of the back door and onto his boat that would take me back home without being intercepted by the other smugglers. But on the way there, on the corner of Market Street and Chester Street, was a big American car parked with a taxi sign on the roof, and I wondered what he was doing there. But he was looking for a passenger who had booked him. So while he was away looking, the car suddenly rolled forward and collided with a couple of other cars in the queue, but I carried on looking at this skateboard. I came home at some point and this is how the dream ended. But it was really confusing and long, and I’ve missed loads off, I think, including me playing bass with a guitarist and a drummer at a concert somewhere in a village hall type of place. I’d love to know more about that. But there was me on bass and singing, someone else on guitar and someone else on drums.

This is another dream that means very little. There’s a reference to the folk singer Phil Ochs, who committed suicide in April 1976, I suppose, but the rest could apply to many a taxi driver whom I knew in Crewe back in the old days, apart from the big American car.

As for playing bass and singing, I really used to enjoy playing in three-piece groups and singing, but it wasn’t very often that I had the chance to sing.

While I was halfway through doing everything else that needed doing, a mug of hot, strong coffee miraculously appeared on my desk. I took it as a hint that everyone else was awake and so I went into the living room to join them.

The nurse turned up later to do his weekly round, and the Hound of the Baskervilles gave him a hearty welcome, which took him aback. When he turned his attention to me (the nurse, not the Hound of the Baskervilles), we talked about the weather because it was really wet, windy, miserable and cold outside.

After he left, I made breakfast and we had a chat for a while, so Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT took a back seat for the day.

Later on, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies so I came in here to revise my Welsh. I joined the lesson as usual at 11:00 and it passed pretty well. We had a quiz at one point, and I surprised myself by finishing in the top three. It’s not every day that this happens, so I need to keep up with this revision and the reviewing of the coursework to make it more and more likely.

At the end of the lesson, I prepared the bathroom, and when my faithful cleaner appeared, she shooed me under the shower. And it really was beautiful today. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And so there’s a nice, clean … "clean, anyway" – ed … me ready to go to bed very shortly.

We spent the afternoon chatting, and my friend rigged up his tablet so that we could watch a couple of films, etc., on the internet. And while I was watching, I was making little notes about the next radio programme that I’ll be preparing at some point. The work must carry on.

You’ll be surprised at just how quickly time passes, because it was 19:20 in what seemed to be no time at all. But it was my cue to go into the kitchen and make tea.

Tonight, we had a Chinese stir-fry with noodles and soy sauce, and that was lovely too. It would have been even nicer had I added the ginger that I had taken out of the drawer specifically for the stir-fry. Ahh well, it will do for another time.

After I’d done the washing up and cleaning up, I came back in here to write up today’s notes, and when I’ve done the statistics and the backup, etc., I’ll be off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Chinese meals … "well, one of us has" – ed … the last time that I was in a Chinese restaurant, IN ST JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND, IN SEPTEMBER 2017 I was given a fortune cookie.
"What did the message say?" asked my friend.
"It said that I was very sociable and welcome the company of others" I replied.
"Hmmmm" replied my friend. "I bet it got your age wrong too!"

EPIC HALL

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